House Dems Vote To Continue DHS Shutdown As Senate Blocks Funding Again
House Democrats largely voted Thursday to allow the Department of Homeland Security shutdown to continue, rejecting renewed Republican pressure to pass a funding bill amid heightened tensions with Iran and domestic security concerns.
The House approved a bipartisan DHS funding measure in a 221–209 vote, but all but four Democrats opposed it. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez of Washington, and Don Davis of North Carolina broke with their party to support the legislation.
The bill would fund DHS through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. It previously passed the House in January following bipartisan negotiations that ended a 43-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. GOP leaders brought the measure back to the floor this week, arguing that the evolving national security situation demanded immediate action.
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The vote came just hours after President Donald Trump announced he was removing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and appointing Sen. Markwayne Mullin as her replacement — a move that shocked Capitol Hill but did not shift Democratic opposition.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dismissed the leadership change as irrelevant to the negotiations.
“It’s not like Kristi Noem was the one who was involved in negotiating anything. She was a corrupt lackey. So we were dealing with the White House before, and we’re going to continue to deal with the White House at this point,” Jeffries said.
The funding bill would fully restore DHS operations and includes provisions originally demanded by Democrats, such as requiring body-worn cameras for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and mandating additional training on public engagement and de-escalation.
Despite those concessions, Democratic leadership has held firm, demanding further restrictions on ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations following fallout from Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents during anti-ICE demonstrations. That operation has since concluded.
Republicans argue that maintaining a shutdown at DHS — the agency responsible for border security, counterterrorism coordination, cybersecurity, FEMA, and the Coast Guard — is reckless given rising global instability tied to U.S.-Israeli operations targeting Iranian military and leadership assets.
Speaker Mike Johnson said the shutdown creates unnecessary vulnerability.
“Now is the time to be vigilant at home and to ensure that all of our doors are locked, so to speak,” Johnson said. “And yet, as all this is happening, we have Democrats running around here playing political games in Congress. It’s infuriating. They’ve shut down the very agency that is responsible for securing the homeland.”
Jeffries countered that Republicans are using foreign conflict as leverage.
“Donald Trump launches an unauthorized war in the Middle East,” Jeffries said earlier this week. “He decides that he wants to spend billions of dollars to bomb Iran, rather than spend taxpayer dollars to lower the grocery bills that are crushing the American people, and then wants to use his unauthorized war as an excuse to continue spending taxpayer dollars to brutalize or kill American citizens by continuing to unleash ICE without restriction on the American people? I think it’s ridiculous.”
The real leverage, however, lies in the Senate. Later Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked the same DHS funding bill, voting 51–45 in favor — short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Every Democrat except Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against the measure.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated negotiations between the White House and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer remain stalled.
“It’s never enough, and I think the reason it’s never enough is because they just really don’t want a deal,” Thune said. “I think they see this as politically advantageous to them.”
The shutdown now stretches into a fourth week, with little sign of a breakthrough. Democrats continue to push for tighter warrant standards, unmasking requirements for ICE and CBP agents, and additional operational constraints.
Meanwhile, Republicans warn that prolonged dysfunction at DHS could leave the nation exposed at a time of elevated threat levels.
“At some point, something bad is going to happen,” Thune said.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him. For a few seconds, I honestly thought I was looking at the wrong table, because my name card had vanished and Melissa’s was sitting exactly where mine had been on every seating chart. She wore a pale blue silk dress, lifted her champagne as if she belonged there, and avoided my eyes when I stopped beside the chair. David stood up, pointed to an empty seat at the next table, and quietly said, “For tonight, why don’t you sit over there?”
I had spent fourteen months helping our daughter, Emily, plan that wedding, from dress fittings and florist meetings to late-night calls over napkins and seating charts. That morning, while I fastened the pearl buttons on her gown, she made me promise I would enjoy the day and not let anything between her father and me touch it. I meant that promise, because whatever was left of my marriage, I would not make my daughter’s wedding the battlefield where it died. But David had apparently made a different plan, and he expected me to cooperate with it in silence.
When I asked what Melissa was doing there, David’s face showed guilt for only a second before he hid it behind irritation. He acted as though I were creating the problem simply by noticing that his mistress was seated at the family table in the place reserved for the bride’s mother. Then Melissa looked at me and said, “Honey, today really isn’t the day to make Emily uncomfortable.” I almost laughed, because the woman who had been sleeping with my husband for nearly a year was now warning me not to embarrass my own daughter.
I could feel people settling into nearby seats, laughing and talking, unaware that my marriage was being quietly rearranged in front of them. David kept his voice low and told me we should not “do this here,” as if the humiliation belonged to me because I refused to disappear politely. I looked at the empty chair he had chosen for me between a cousin and someone from the groom’s side, and I realized something colder than anger. This was not spontaneous; he had thought about where Melissa would sit, and he had assumed I would move.
For twenty-eight years, I had been the woman who adjusted, explained, forgave, and made excuses when David forgot anniversaries, missed dinners, or put work ahead of family. When he became distant, I learned to expect less instead of asking for more, and somewhere along the way he mistook that patience for permission. Even now, part of me considered taking the other chair, smiling for photographs, swallowing the humiliation, and telling myself it was all for Emily. I actually reached for the chair because protecting my daughter still mattered more to me than winning a public fight.
Then I heard one word behind me: “Mom?” Emily was walking toward us in her wedding dress, still glowing from the ceremony, and at first she looked confused rather than angry. Her eyes moved from me, to the empty chair, to Melissa, then back to the family table where she had personally placed me months ago. David quickly stepped in and announced that he had “rearranged a few things,” as if changing the bride’s seating chart without permission were no more serious than moving a centerpiece.
Emily asked why I was not sitting in my seat, and David casually pointed to the neighboring table and said I would be sitting “right there.” Her smile disappeared, and her eyes dropped to the place card in front of Melissa. I watched my daughter’s expression go completely still as she picked up that card and turned it over in her hand. In that instant, I understood the worst part: Emily had not approved this, and David had brought his mistress into our daughter’s wedding believing he could force everyone to accept what he wanted once it was already done.
What Emily did not know was that six months earlier, I had discovered David’s affair through a message that appeared on his phone while he was in the shower. Melissa had written, “I hate pretending I don’t miss you when she’s around,” followed by another message asking whether Friday was still theirs. When I confronted him, David spent eleven minutes calling me paranoid, insecure, dramatic, suspicious, and unfair before I repeated Melissa’s words exactly. The silence that followed ended our marriage long before either of us ever said the word divorce.
We had kept the details quiet because Emily was planning her wedding, and I refused to turn her happiest season into a crisis about us. David told me he was “confused,” that what he had with Melissa was “more complicated than an affair,” and that he needed time before making decisions. I agreed only that Emily’s wedding came first, so we slept in separate rooms, spoke carefully, and tried to appear functional while our marriage quietly collapsed. I believed David understood that one day required restraint, but he had apparently used that silence to prepare something else.
Three weeks before the wedding, he had casually asked whether Emily had finalized the family table and whether every seat had been assigned. At the time, I thought it was harmless conversation, but standing there with Melissa’s card in my daughter’s hand, I finally understood why he had asked. He had been checking whether there would be room, and when there was not, he simply removed me. Emily looked up at her father and asked, very quietly, “Where is Mom’s place card?”—and for the first time that night, David had no easy answer.
…FULL STORY IN THE COMMENT 👇👇👇"" "
