Schumer gambit fails as DHS shutdown hits 36 days and airport lines grow

Senate Republicans blocked an attempt by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to only pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers as the Homeland Security shutdown drags on.

Despite being in the minority and not controlling the Senate floor, Schumer used an arcane tactic to force a procedural vote to allow the Senate to get onto the bill in Democrats’ move to shift the narrative of the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.

“It is unacceptable for workers and travelers and entire airports to get taken hostage in political games,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “But that’s what the Republicans are doing. It is unacceptable to say we will only pay TSA workers if it is attached to a bill that funds ICE with no reforms, but that’s what the Republicans have been doing.”

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The shutdown entered its 36th day on Saturday as the ongoing partial closure hurtles toward matching the record-breaking full government shutdown from last year. Schumer’s failed gambit follows increasingly long wait times at airports as thousands of TSA agents go without pay.

Senate Democrats have dug in deep in their demands for stringent reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and have so far refused to reopen the agency or temporarily extend funding to end the closure until they get what they want.

Senate Republicans and the White House made a new compromise offer to Democrats on Friday night after an open letter from the administration on several reforms to immigration operations was revealed earlier this week. The letter spurred two back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill with Republicans, Democrats and administration officials.

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Whether they accept that offer or counter remains in the air for now. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who was in the meeting, said that she hoped there would be another soon.

“That will be up to them, but I hope so,” Britt said.

Still, Republicans tried and failed for a fifth time to fully reopen the agency on Friday. In the background, there have been several attempts by Senate Democrats to move forward with standalone funding bills — like Schumer’s gambit — to open parts of DHS, save for immigration enforcement.

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Time is also running out for lawmakers to find middle ground on reopening the agency, given that they are set to leave Washington, D.C., for a two-week break at the end of next week.

At a press conference earlier Saturday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that it’d be “very, very hard to explain if we leave town this next week without having funded the Department of Homeland Security.”

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“At some point the Democrats are going to be held accountable for this,” Thune said.

“I know they think it’s, as has been described by one of their leaders, ‘very serene, very serene’ with their position,” he continued. “Well, I’m telling you something, the people who are sitting in those lines at the airports right now don’t see it as very serene. This needs to be resolved.”