DHS Shutdown Continues as Congress Leaves for Two-Week Recess

Security checkpoints shuttered at airports across the country, producing long lines, flight delays and cancellations as the Department of Homeland Security partial shutdown reached 44 days Sunday, surpassing last year's 43-day record and becoming the longest in U.S. history. Congress left Washington for a two-week spring recess Friday with the two chambers deadlocked over competing funding approaches, ensuring the disruptions will continue.

Around 500 TSA employees quit since the funding lapse began Feb. 14, and call-outs pushed the agency to deploy ICE personnel to airports to fill staffing gaps. FEMA and the Coast Guard have operated without funding since mid-February; officials warn the shutdown is eroding mission readiness across both agencies.

President Trump signed an executive order Friday to pay TSA officers, who had gone more than a month without a paycheck. The order covers TSA only, leaving FEMA, the Coast Guard, and other DHS components still without funding, with payments expected to begin as early as Saturday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Trump's move "takes the immediate pressure off" to reach a broader deal, a comment Democrats said explained why Republicans were comfortable leaving town.

The stalemate persisted even after a brief early-morning breakthrough collapsed under House Republican resistance. Thune brought a measure to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS to a unanimous consent vote at 2 a.m. Friday, and it cleared the Senate. Hours later, House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the approach, telling reporters he was caught off guard by the Senate's actions and would not support funding DHS without also including ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

The House passed its own 60-day continuing resolution by a 213-203 vote Friday evening, with three centrist Democrats crossing the aisle: Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Henry Cuellar of Texas. The bill, the fourth House attempt to fund the whole department, would keep DHS funded through May 22. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared it dead on arrival, saying a bill "that locks in the status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it."

Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts accused House Republicans of deliberate obstruction, saying they "know this is a continuation of the shutdown because the Senate is gone."

Earlier in the week, the Senate confirmed former Sen. Markwayne Mullin as DHS Secretary on a 54-45 vote largely along party lines. All Republicans except Rand Paul of Kentucky supported Mullin; Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico also voted in favor.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, offered a blunt assessment of Congress leaving without a resolution. "I have never been more disgusted by the failure of elected leadership in my life," Kelley said. "No check. No relief. No apology as Congress packed their bags and left these American families to struggle."

Thune retains the procedural authority to recall senators during the recess to vote on the House stopgap, but that outcome was considered unlikely. With the Senate gone and the House's May 22 bill declared dead before it could travel a single block, the shutdown may approach two months before Congress returns.