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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge. Due to short staffing, the Surge has brought on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to help complete the newsletter. It’s a work in progress; they keep pulling their guns on the computer when they get spell-checked.

The big story of the week was long airport lines, which finally forced Congress to act to end the lengthy Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Which is not to say that they successfully acted to end it. We check on in ye olde Iran war, which is either almost over or en route to a ground invasion. The House may soon expel a member, and the dollar is about to go MAGA.

Let’s begin with a three-entry run on an exceedingly messy battle in Congress.

Will this wretched DHS shutdown ever end?

Early Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill to fund all of DHS except for ICE and Border Patrol—which already have heaps of cash from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to draw from—by unanimous consent. Senators then all flew home, assured that the House would briskly pass their product and end the six-week DHS shutdown by the weekend.

But House Republicans are refusing to behave like good little boys and swallow the Senate bill. Speaker Mike Johnson called the Senate bill a “joke” on Friday, and said that the House would vote on a bill to fund all of DHS, including the immigration enforcement agencies, for 60 days. Then what? It’s unclear. Not only is the Senate out of town and uninterested in returning for the next couple of weeks, but this bill would not—at all—be able to get 60 votes in the Senate. Now, President Donald Trump may be able to issue a (likely illegal, but whatever) executive order declaring an emergency to pay TSA agents until a funding bill finally passes. At the going pace, though, that could be a million more years.

How airport lines forced the Senate’s hand.

Set aside the House’s meltdown for a moment. How was the Senate, at least, able to do its part? The chamber finally reached its resolution on funding DHS for two simple reasons. First, the pain of the shutdown was finally being felt by the public in the form of interminable airport lines, as unpaid TSA agents either quit or called in sick. Second, senators badly wanted to go home for their two-week Easter recess. There was much intra-Senate grousing and griping and bickering in the days........

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