Republican fears about the budget system under Donald Trump deepened in Washington this week as senators scrambled to end a two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, now the longest in the department’s history. The impasse has become a test of whether the party can keep the government open while also protecting its priorities on immigration enforcement.
The Homeland Security shutdown has already outlasted last autumn’s 43-day federal shutdown, which was driven by a separate fight over healthcare subsidies. This time, the flashpoint is immigration enforcement, and Republicans are trying to hold together a funding strategy that would keep the Department of Homeland Security running while giving them a path to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol for years ahead.
John Thune said he was worried about the appropriations process and plans to move a budget resolution through the Senate as the framework for a reconciliation bill later in the spring. If it survives intact, that measure would let Republicans fund ICE and the Border Patrol through 2029 using the fast-track reconciliation process, which sidesteps a Democratic filibuster. Thune said he does not see Democrats agreeing to long-term funding for those agencies while Trump is in the White House.
The scramble in the Senate has also sharpened Republican expectations for another showdown in September, only weeks before Americans vote. Roger Marshall said, “You can bet on it that that's Chuck Schumer's game plan, to shut the government down at every chance he gets,” while Ted Cruz went further, saying, “I will wager, right now, $100, that Schumer intends — on Oct. 1 — to do the same thing, to shut the whole federal government down for a month, so that on Election Day, the government is shut down, you have four-hour lines again in airports, and the Democrats can say, 'See, the Republicans are in charge, they don't know what they're doing,'” Josh Hawley added that Democrats seemed to believe “the more chaos, the better” as November approaches.
There is no formal Democratic plan on the table committing to another shutdown. But the fight over ICE and the Border Patrol has convinced many Republicans that repeated shutdowns may be turning into a recurring tool rather than a one-off crisis. If that reading is right, the next clash will not be about whether shutdowns can happen. It will be about whether either party still has the power, or the will, to stop them.
