In the middle of Thursday night, in a near-empty Senate chamber, an end to the most perplexing conflict of the second Donald Trump term finally came into sight when partial funding for the Department of Homeland Security passed on a voice vote. The measure does not fund immigration enforcement, which doesn’t really matter because ICE and the Border Patrol already have a slush fund of money provided by last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And an end to the 40-day shutdown isn’t an entirely done deal, since the House needs to ratify the Senate measure. The lower chamber’s arcane procedures will likely delay the action until early next week, providing an opportunity for more havoc from either hard-line MAGA conservatives or the White House.

The precipitating event for the late-night collapse of resistance to DHS funding was likely Trump’s announcement that he had found a way to pay TSA officers without legislation, which meant the........

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