In the early hours of Friday morning — with wraparound lines and cancelled flights at airports thanks to TSA officers not getting paid — the Senate passed a bill to fund its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for the rest of the fiscal year. This came after a 41-days-and-counting shutdown.
The legislation would not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and would not fund border patrol, given that Republicans refused to meet Democrats even halfway after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good and Customs and Border Protection shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis two months ago.
But already, the House Freedom Caucus revolted because the package did not include President Donald Trump’s 2026 signature legislative priority, the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. That put Speaker Mike Johnson in a bind on his and Trump’s lockstep messaging that Democrats were to blame for the shutdown. True to his form —which tends to be fashioned on the philosophy that whatever the president wants, the president gets — Johnson then torpedoed the bill.
Neither side “won” anything. Democrats did not get any guardrails to ICE’s practices — their major sticking point — since now Republicans are setting up a plan to fund ICE through the process of budget reconciliation, which allows them to avoid a Senate filibuster.
This is easily the dumbest government shutdown of the 21st century and here’s who is to blame:
Donald Trump
The president doesn’t write laws. He doesn’t appropriate funds, and he’s not responsible for passing a budget each year.
But since returning to power last January, Trump has taken little interest in the legislative gamesmanship and horse-trading that characterize relations between the White House and Capitol, especially on large, must-pass legislation such as appropriations bills.
Instead, he’s remained on the sidelines while allowing Johnson to be hijacked by a small group of the most extreme right-ward fringes of the GOP caucus that routinely rejects any compromise with the Senate because the Senate allows Democrats to have input into legislation — a sentiment he’s repeatedly encouraged through occasional Truth Social outbursts threatening to veto any legislation that puts any restrictions on immigration enforcement efforts.
Historically, Trump bullies the Freedom Caucus into folding. But if he remains checked out, he will face a major crisis on his hands as the internecine House-Senate warfare encouraged by Johnson causes his party’s approval ratings to sink lower and lower as the midterms loom.
House Speaker Mike Johnson
Despite his groaning, Johnson refused even the most modest reforms toward ICE. Similar to the White House, he said Good “weaponized” her vehicle against an ICE agent. When asked about why he could not go along with a provision to require that ICE remove their masks, he said: “ICE agents are being doxxed and targeted.”
Now, Johnson owns this shutdown.
The Senate passed a bill to reopen the department and ICE is already pre-funded until 2029 to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda. If brought to the House floor, the bill would likely receive unanimous support among Democrats and even a large contingent of Republican support.
Instead, Johnson is afraid of both Trump and an internal revolt from his own party, so he is throwing Senate Majority Leader John Thune under the bus.
Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security
This shutdown might have been avoided had it not been for the killings of Good and Pretti.
Noem proceeded to not only call them “domestic terrorists” but then refused to apologize when given the opportunity to do so after the facts and videos came to light. She also led the agency as Trump dispatched it to Minneapolis and regularly tried to show overwhelming muscle agaknst a civilian populace.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation regime was no longer seen as protecting the country from dangerous criminals but rather a rogue law enforcement agency patrolling the streets of American cities.
The rash decision-making and immediate attempts to smear American citizens led to Noem’s ouster. But many of the other architects of Trump’s mass deportation regime such as border czar Tom Homan and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller remain, meaning little will change at the agency.
John Thune
The fact that the Senate’s majority leader split off Homeland Security funding from the rest of the government spending package spoke to the outrage Americans felt about ICE’s actions.
But as negotiations continued, Thune and the Republican conference did not give one inch on ICE reform. By the end of it, Thune and Republicans all but admitted that they would have to pass additional ICE funding in budget reconciliation, which would allow them to sidestep a filibuster.
Thune and Republicans ultimately relented and realized Democrats were never going to give up. But now, he has Johnson saying that Thune is not really in control of the Senate, House conservatives angry at him and Trump breathing down his back to terminate the filibuster, with no solution to the shutdown in sight.
Chuck Schumer
When CBP officers in Minneapolis killed Pretti, Schumer saw it as a moment of leverage and said immediately that Democrats would not vote to fund ICE.
In fairness to Schumer, he did a decent job this shutdown compared to the last shutdown in keeping his caucus together with almost no defections.
But the fact remains that even amid a DHS shutdown, ICE would still have money given that Republicans had pre-funded the agency to the tune of $75 billion in 2025 under the One Big, Beautiful Bill without DHS being funded.
Schumer risked putting his most vulnerable incumbent, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, at risk as lines wrapped around at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Schumer has had a target on his back for being inept from both progressives and even some moderates. He held tough this go-around, but without much to show for it.
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