The partial break in the Department of Homeland Security shutdown has paradoxically worsened Trump's negotiating position. By paying airport screeners, the administration eliminated the crisis that was supposed to force Democrats to capitulate — and now neither party sees reason to move.
According to Politico, both Democrats and Republicans have dug in with such conviction that neither side believes they have to concede anything. The result: a shutdown that's now expected to drag deep into summer with no resolution in sight.
The House and Senate have adjourned for two weeks. Despite urgent White House calls for early return, neither chamber is seriously considering it. Instead, House and Senate Republicans are locked in a public blame game while Democrats stand firm against funding immigration enforcement agencies without GOP-backed safeguards.
"The House has their process, we have ours and this happens periodically," Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told reporters Monday — a bland acknowledgment that the party is fractured.
An administration official described the grim reality inside the White House: "People are thinking this will go into the summer."
"Morale is low. The TSA getting paid while the rest of us suffer[sic] is not playing well inside the building," the official added.
Bipartisan negotiations on immigration enforcement changes have produced almost nothing. Trump is making little effort to unite Republicans behind a unified position, let alone push them toward a Democratic compromise.
The fatal mistake was paying the TSA. A DHS official explained that Trump's executive action funding airport screeners, combined with the Senate's passage of a GOP plan to fund most of the department, stripped Republicans of their primary leverage: airport chaos.
"Remember in the last shutdown, it was airport chaos that forced the seven Democrats to switch sides and fund the government," the official said.
That pressure is now gone. While approximately 50,000 airport security officers are now receiving paychecks, thousands of other critical workers remain furloughed or unpaid. This includes more than 2,000 cybersecurity agency employees, more than 4,000 FEMA workers, and more than 1,000 Coast Guard civilians.
Some Republicans are embracing the stalemate as permanent. "We're not going through this again with the Dems," Hoeven told reporters Monday. "We're taking this off the table."
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) argued Republicans should accept a hard truth: Democrats will never fund immigration enforcement agencies without conditions. The agencies became politically radioactive after federal agents killed two people in Minneapolis in January.