The Senate unanimously approved legislation to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security after weeks of bickering and fruitless negotiations, but House Republicans refused to take up the bill and Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home for a two-week Easter recess. The result left the government’s third-largest department unfunded indefinitely.
Public anger was rising fast, and it was aimed squarely at members of Congress who had gone home while federal workers waited for paychecks. TMZ began hounding lawmakers and urging readers to send in photos and video of representatives leaving Washington and living it up, a spectacle that put fresh pressure on Republicans already facing tight reelection fights.
David Schweikert, one of the few House Republicans in those races who would answer interview requests, said, “It’s a failure of everyone,” after his office was contacted along with more than a dozen others. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin was spotted by TMZ on a trip to Scotland with several colleagues, while Mariannette Miller-Meeks called for Congress to return to the Capitol and “resolve this impasse.” Her spokesperson said she would be busy if Congress stayed out of session and had several exciting events planned.
The standoff mattered because the House could have ended it quickly by acting on the Senate bill, but Johnson denounced the bipartisan compromise instead and kept the chamber away. That left DHS without funding while missed paychecks thinned the ranks of on-duty TSA agents and wait times at airport-security checkpoints stretched to hours across the country.
Trump then said he would go around Congress to pay TSA agents, and the snaking lines at airport-security checkpoints began to shrink. That move did not solve the larger fight, but it did show how quickly the pressure was building on Republicans to come back, vote, and stop the shutdown from spreading further.