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President Donald Trump is urging lawmakers to return to Washington to resolve the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding standoff, as the shutdown continues with no clear end.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the president wants Congress to act to fully fund and reopen the agency.
“The president is also encouraging Congress to come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely,” Leavitt said during a briefing.
President Trump recently signed an executive order to provide pay to Transportation Security Administration workers, who had gone without paychecks since the shutdown began in mid-February. Leavitt said such measures are not a long-term solution.
“The president just can’t keep signing presidential memorandums and proclamations every time Congress fails to do its job,” she said.
“Democrats are ‘holding our entire country hostage’ by ‘picking and choosing which programs and agencies they want to fund just because they don’t like this administration’s policies,'” Leavitt added. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”
The shutdown has disrupted airport operations and affected tens of thousands of federal workers. Over the weekend, House Republicans rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal that would have temporarily funded DHS and instead passed their own measure to fund the department in full for eight weeks.
The House bill passed 213-203 after Republicans declined to take up the Senate plan, which excluded funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the House proposal.
“A funding measure ‘that locks in the status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it,” Schumer said. “Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson also rejected the earlier Senate compromise, calling it a “joke” because it did not include funding for agencies central to the administration’s immigration policies. The Senate has since recessed for two weeks, leaving negotiations unresolved as the funding impasse continues.