Republican divisions, Trump’s detachment stymie GOP efforts to reopen DHS

House and Senate Republicans scrambling to end the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history keep running into themselves. 

Within the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team haven’t found a formula for containing their rebellious conservative wing. Between the chambers, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) have been at odds over both substance and strategy. And from the White House, President Trump’s mixed messages have thwarted progress at crucial moments when a breakthrough appeared at hand. 

The combination has complicated any path to a quick fix for reopening the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) amid a historic shutdown that’s frozen paychecks for tens of thousands of agency workers. It’s also highlighted divisions within the Republican ranks — and a deep distrust between the chambers — just as party leaders are fighting to showcase a united front heading into a tough midterm cycle in November.

GOP leaders in both chambers have downplayed any evidence of internal strife. They’re putting the blame for the DHS stalemate squarely on the shoulders of Democrats, who have refused to support any new funding for immigration enforcement unless it’s accompanied by tougher rules governing the conduct of DHS’s policing arms: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“We have the Democrats who are holding the appropriations process hostage,” Thune told reporters Thursday in the Capitol. “Their anti-law enforcement, open borders, defund-the-police wing is the ascendant wing. And I think everybody’s afraid of them.”

Yet Republicans control all levers of power in Washington: the House, Senate and White House. And they have potent tools at their disposal to fund the entirety of DHS, including the enforcement operations at the center of the partisan controversy — if they can rally their party behind a plan.

So far, they’ve failed to do so.

Indeed, Thune and Senate Republicans thought they’d threaded the needle last week with a two-step plan to divorce immigration enforcement funding from........

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