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Miranda Devine: Cowardly GOP senators run home

There is nothing more infuriating to a frustrated air traveler delayed for hours by the Democrat shutdown than to see senators strolling smugly by with VIP escorts.

The worst offender last week was Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who hightailed it out of DC on Friday morning, hours after stitching up a duplicitous 2 a.m. deal to end the shutdown by caving to Democrat demands to defund ICE and border enforcement, at least for the time being.

Elements of the Department of Homeland Security were funded in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, but Thune’s deal freezes out immigration enforcement and border security functions that are all-important as we go to war against the world’s largest sponsor of Islamic terrorism. He knew this would be unacceptable to the Republican base.

In one fell swoop, Thune ceded the moral high ground to Democrats who now can blame Republican intransigence for their shutdowns.

Breezing past the queues at Reagan National Airport with a grin for the cameras Friday, the glib Marlboro man lookalike couldn’t have been more pleased with himself.

He controls the Senate, and it was his amendment that cut immigration enforcement funding in the dead of night, while most of his conference was asleep.

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“I don’t know what the House will do,” he claimed, before jetting home to South Dakota for two weeks.

It didn’t take long to find out.

House Speaker Mike Johnson soon held a furious press conference denouncing Thune’s deal with the devil.

“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” he said.

“I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” he said. “House Republicans will have no part in reopening the border and stopping illegal immigration enforcement.”

One House Republican described Thune’s........

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