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    1 day ago

    In a remarkable 24 hours in Washington, House Republicans snubbed a bipartisan funding deal cut by their own Senate GOP counterparts and instead approved an entirely different plan — prolonging the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

    Then, they left town.

    Now, there’s no end in sight for the 42-day shutdown that has hobbled airports across the country with TSA shortages. With the House GOP’s plan going nowhere in the Senate, even Republicans acknowledge it’s not clear how to end the standoff until there’s a breakthrough with at least some Democrats.

    Both chambers of Congress are now out on a two-week recess. In a 213-203 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson and his House Republicans voted Friday night to effectively jam the Senate with their plan, fully funding DHS for eight weeks – including with border and immigration money that the prior deal left out. Three Democrats crossed party lines to vote in favor of the bill. In the meantime, Republicans say the Senate should return from its recess to approve the plan, while President Donald Trump makes his own unilateral attempt to fund TSA without Congress’s help.

    It’s a surprisingly aggressive move for the House speaker, who is directly challenging his Senate Republican counterpart, even as he sought to blame Democrats for what he called an “unconscionable” bill. Instead of the House voting on Friday to send a bill to the president’s desk, House GOP lawmakers escalated an intra-Congress feud that scrambles any chance of reopening the department anytime soon. It’s an act of defiance by House GOP leaders, who insist they didn’t agree to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s middle-of-the-night agreement that withheld funding for border patrol or immigration enforcement.