Homeland Security shutdown breaks GOP divisions in Congress wide open

Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY Sat, March 28, 2026 at 1:40 AM UTC

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) stands next to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he speaks during a press conference on October 3, 2025.

WASHINGTON – Some GOP members of the House of Representatives are starting to sound a lot more like Democrats.

Or, perhaps more precisely, they're routinely finding a common enemy: Senate Republicans.

The escalating tensions came into sharp focus March 27, when animosity between GOP lawmakers in the two chambers of Congress burst dramatically into view. House Republicans woke up to find that their Senate counterparts had, in the dead of night, unanimously passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for immigration enforcement. They then sent the legislation to the other side of the Capitol and left town for a scheduled two-week recess.

Congressional mayhem ensued.

"This gambit that was done last night is a joke," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said.

1 / 0ICE agents appear at airports as TSA delays snarl check-in

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents patrol at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, March 23, 2026. Hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were ordered to deploy to airports to help fill TSA staffing gaps across the country.

In the words of Rep. Austin Scott, R-Georgia: "Senate Republicans absolutely capitulated."

North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, the powerful Republican chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, called what her Senate colleagues had done "unconditional surrender" to Democrats.

While frustration in both parties between the House and Senate is endemic to the institution of Congress, resentment within the GOP felt almost palpable on March 27.

It was the latest culmination of an increasingly undeniable, and politically consequential, dynamic on Capitol Hill, where more moderate members of the less-raucous Senate are often finding themselves at bitter odds with their hardline-conservative colleagues in the House, where the majority is razor-thin and legislative outcomes are often not as predictable.

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (R) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) hold a press conference on the Republican budget bill at the U.S. Capitol on April 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Republican leaders spoke on the reconciliation process and said they would find $1.5 trillion in cuts as the House prepares to vote on President Trump's budget outline for his tax and spending plan after Republican holdouts refused to vote without deeper cuts.

Read more: Trump signs order to pay TSA workers with no DHS shutdown end in sight

On a range of big issues — including mail-in balloting, President Donald Trump's tariffs, ending the filibuster and allowing senators to win big payouts in government lawsuits — Republicans in the upper and lower chamber have been at each other's throats as of late. The president's hands-off approach to managing Congress, along with his penchant for letting people jockey for his approval, hasn't been a particularly unifying force, either.

Yet big events on the horizon will require as much unity as the GOP can muster. In a looming legislative battle over a second so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill," Johnson can barely afford a single defection in his ranks. Fighting to pass another reconciliation bill, which only takes a simple majority vote in both chambers, may be the only way Congress can approve cash to support the war in Iran.

Read more: Another 'Big, Beautiful Bill' may be coming to pay for the Iran war

Then there's the issue of the midterms. In order to stave off potentially bruising losses in November, Republicans of all persuasions are working to get on the same messaging page to pitch voters on why their party should stay fully in power over the next few years. Intensifying intraparty friction isn't likely to help with that effort.

Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colorado, lambasted Republican disunity during a congressional hearing about DHS funding on Friday, March 27.

The GOP divisions are, however, already helping Democrats, who typically struggle more with eating their own politically. During a congressional hearing held after the Senate's DHS funding deal fell apart, Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse was one of several House Democrats who used the shutdown dysfunction as an opportunity to criticize how Washington works under total Republican rule.

"My Republican colleagues are very much living in a fantasyland and somehow trying to make the case to the American people that Democrats control the United States Senate," he said. "It's absurd."

Zachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DHS shutdown impasse leaves House, Senate Republicans openly at odds

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