How the Homeland Security deal unraveled and split Republican leaders in Congress

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., center, speaks while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer R-Minn., right, and House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., left, listen during a news conference on Capitol Hill, Friday, March 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) 2026-03-28T12:29:43Z WASHINGTON (AP) — For several hours Friday, in the stillness before dawn, the Senate appeared to have finally figured out how to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security before it faced the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history.

Senators handed House Speaker Mike Johnson , R-La., their deal and headed for the airports, seemingly confident of success.

Then it collapsed.

Spectacularly.

An incensed Johnson marched out of his office Friday afternoon.

He angrily rebuked the plan that the Senate had unanimously agreed to as a “joke.” “I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people,” Johnson told reporters.

It was a dramatic denunciation of a deal that his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader John Thune , R-S.D., had negotiated after weeks of effort, and was the latest abrupt turn in a funding saga that has bedeviled top Republicans for much of the year.

The collapse of the deal leaves Congress, now on a two-week spring break, with no easy way out of the impasse that has put DHS into a shutdown since mid-February.

It also has exposed a rare rupture between the two Republican leaders in Congress, testing their alliances as they labor to move another set of President Donald Trump’s priorities into law before the November elections.

Nothing ahead is likely to be easy.

How the deal collapsed Thune had a deal with Democratic senators after negotiating for weeks on their demands for new restrictions on the department’s immigration enforcement work.

Offers were traded several times.

The talks moved along at a stop-start pace.

Votes failed again and again.

Out of time and patience, senators essentially settled on a draw for the bill: They would not include funding for U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE and for U.S.

Border Patrol, while setting aside all the Democratic demands for new limits on the agencies.

Thune pointed out that Congress had allotted money for immigration enforcement and he told reporters that “we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again and then we’ll go from there.” Asked if he had cleared the compromise with Johnson, Thune said the two had texted. “I don’t know what the

原文链接: AP News