Congress plunges into "no pressure" government shutdown
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Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer leaves the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 29, 2025, ahead of last fall's record-breaking government shutdown. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Congress is sliding toward a "no-pressure" shutdown, with both parties content to claim political wins as a department backfilled with billions of dollars experiences a funding lapse.
Why it matters: The lack of urgency to try to prevent the Department of Homeland Security shutdown at day's end Friday underscores how routine funding interruptions have become.
- It also reveals the lowered political stakes both sides see in allowing the latest one to take hold.
- Lawmakers left Washington on Thursday for international trips and a weeklong recess, despite circumstances that in a previous era would have precluded them from taking a break without fear of political consequences.
Now, each side sees an upside to letting DHS shut down.
- For Democrats, refusing to vote for DHS funding without significant GOP concessions on ICE reforms plays well to a base that is demanding its party to do more to oppose President Trump (especially with polling showing even independents have soured on ICE's tactics).
- And Republicans have the comfort of knowing ICE and CBP are funded because the GOP gave the agencies $75 billion through the massive reconciliation package last year.
Driving the news: Before lawmakers skipped town Thursday (with many headed to the Munich Security Conference in Germany), the sides were not anywhere close to a deal.
- Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's Democrats on Thursday rejected multiple attempts from GOP leaders to pass a short-term DHS funding measure. Before that, Democrats spent the morning meeting about the Trump administration's attempted indictments of multiple Democratic lawmakers, not government funding.
- Senate Democrats also reviewed the legislative text of a counteroffer from the White House on ICE reforms, sources told Axios. The proposal was panned as insufficient.
- Congress isn't expected back in Washington until the week of Feb. 23. The shutdown would be 10 days deep by then.
The big picture: It would be the third shutdown of President Trump's second term, with Democrats again seizing on government funding as one of their only points of leverage to confront the White House over its mass deportation program.
- The standoff over funding for DHS intensified dramatically after a string of federal law enforcement shootings in U.S. cities this year, particularly the killing of two American citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Reality check: There are still pressure points pushing Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D) toward a deal.
- The DHS shutdown may impact airport travel, disaster response and cyber monitoring starting as soon as Friday, Axios' Herb Scribner writes.
- And as lawmakers found out during the record-breaking government shutdown last year, the longer a shutdown drags on, the more it affects essential government services — and the shorter the public's patience can become.
