"Meltdown": House GOP Rejects Senate DHS Deal, Prolonging 42-Day Shutdown
Day 42 of the DHS shutdown: House Republicans rejected the bipartisan Senate deal and passed an 8-week punt that can't pass the Senate. 61,000 TSA workers have missed $1B+ in pay. 510 have quit. Johnson called the Senate deal "a joke."
On Day 42 of the DHS shutdown, House Republicans rejected a bipartisan Senate deal to reopen the department and instead passed an entirely different 8-week funding measure that has no path to passage in the Senate — where lawmakers had already left Washington for recess.
Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the Senate's bipartisan bill as "a joke." The Senate bill would have restored funding for most of DHS but excluded additional ICE and Border Patrol funding. The House bill insists on immigration enforcement funding that Democrats and Senate moderates refuse to support. The result: continued shutdown with no resolution in sight.
The human cost after 42 days is devastating:
- 61,000 TSA workers have missed two full paychecks and a partial one — over $1 billion in unpaid wages
- 510 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began
- Callout rates hit 55% at Houston Hobby — the highest single-day airport callout on record
- TSA officers are losing homes, having cars repossessed, struggling to feed their families
- Wait times at major airports reached 4.5 hours — worst in TSA history
- Thousands of Coast Guard and FEMA employees are also working without pay — with no executive order covering them
Trump signed an executive order on March 27 directing that TSA employees specifically be paid using other DHS funds — an acknowledgment of the crisis. But thousands of other DHS workers at the Coast Guard and FEMA remain unpaid, and the underlying funding dispute is no closer to resolution.
The shutdown was caused by a Republican failure to fund their own government. Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate. The inability to agree among themselves — with the House rejecting the Senate's bipartisan deal — is a governing failure entirely within one party.