Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday that the Senate will not begin its planned two-week recess on March 30 if lawmakers fail to resolve funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
"We need to get this resolved and it needs to get resolved, you know, by the end of next week," Thune told reporters, according to Politico. "I can't see us taking a break if the [department's] still shut down."
DHS has been partially shut down since Feb. 13 after Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed appropriations bill for the current fiscal year. Democrats said their demands for changes to immigration enforcement were not met.
Immigration enforcement operations, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, remain fully funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But funding for other DHS components — including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Transportation Security Administration — has lapsed, leaving those agencies operating without new appropriations.
Thune's comments came as a bipartisan group of senators met privately at the Capitol with Tom Homan, President Donald Trump's point man on deportations and border security. The group included members of the Appropriations Committee and other Democrats who helped negotiate an end to the previous shutdown.
The meeting took place as TSA staffing shortages are creating long lines at airports nationwide. It also marked a potential sign of movement in the DHS funding standoff, though it ended without a breakthrough, according to Politico.
"I'm glad the White House was here, but we are a long ways apart," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, told Politico.
On Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee, in a statement blamed Democrats for what she described as disruptions caused by the funding lapse, including "chaos at our airports, delayed assistance to communities affected by disasters" and forcing "thousands of frontline employees to work without any guarantee of when they will be paid."
"The United States is less safe because the Democrats chose to walk away from the bipartisan DHS funding bill and have blocked repeated Republican efforts to pass a short-term funding patch to prevent disruptions while negotiations continue," she said.
"The White House made a good-faith offer last month that builds on the reforms included in the bipartisan funding bill negotiated earlier this year, with new safeguards to protect both the American public and law enforcement and increased oversight," Collins continued.
"Democrats waited 18 days to respond. In that time, we saw violent attacks at Old Dominion University and the Temple Israel Synagogue in Michigan and a massive cyberattack on the Stryker Corporation. It is time for Democrats to get serious and work with us in earnest to govern responsibly."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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