{"id":554428,"date":"2026-03-30T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554428\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:46:10","slug":"tsa-agents-to-get-emergency-pay-as-dhs-shutdown-drags-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554428\/","title":{"rendered":"TSA agents to get emergency pay as DHS shutdown drags on"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Homeland Security<\/a> (DHS) funding drama will return to the Senate Monday morning after the House approved a two-month stopgap spending plan for all of DHS late Friday night.<\/p>\n

The Senate meets today at 10:30 am in what was supposed to be a brief \u201cpro forma\u201d session where the body simply gavels in and gavels out with a skeleton crew on hand.<\/p>\n

But that might not be what happens Monday. As soon as the Senate gets through the prayer a pledge, it\u2019s possible that a Republican senator seeks recognition from the chair.<\/p>\n

If that happens, we anticipate the GOP senator to ask unanimous consent, meaning all 100 senators would agree to take up the DHS bill passed by the House on Friday, that it be \u201cread a third time\u201d and passed.<\/p>\n

The chair will then ask if there is an objection.<\/p>\n

If any senator \u2014 be they a Democrat or Republican<\/a> \u2014 objects, the House bill is dead. That means that the House and Senate continue to be out of alignment on the DHS funding question. For instance, the House didn\u2019t even consider the bill cleared by all 100 senators and passed by the Senate at 2:19 am Friday. The House simply wrote their own two-month interim bill, passed it Friday night and skipped town.<\/p>\n

If there is no objection, the House and Senate are aligned and will have passed the same bill. That means they are on the same page.<\/p>\n

Approval of the House bill by the Senate would end the DHS shutdown.<\/p>\n

But if there\u2019s an objection, everything remains frozen.<\/p>\n

This is both the parliamentary magic \u2014 and dark underbelly of \u201cunanimous consent\u201d in the Senate. You could have 99 senators in favor of something. But all it takes is a solitary objection to foil a bill under \u201cunanimous consent\u201d or \u201cUC\u201d as it\u2019s often called in the Senate.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s also a possibility that Democrats could then offer their own DHS funding bill and ask the Senate to approve that by unanimous consent. It\u2019s likely that whatever Republican senator is on duty tomorrow would object, thus blocking the Democratic request.<\/p>\n

If the Senate blocks the House bill, it\u2019s doubtful there\u2019s any way to end the DHS shutdown until after both bodies return in mid-April following the Easter\/Passover recess.<\/p>\n

Republicans truly want to fund DHS. But a Democratic objection presents the GOP with a political opportunity. They can then point to that objection as the reason DHS remains shuttered, arguing that Democrats blocked the House approved bill.<\/p>\n

Republicans believe this helps them in the midterms. They ran on border security and won in 2024. Republicans want to point to a Democratic objection as evidence that they don\u2019t want to fund ICE.<\/p>\n

But by the same token, Democrats could argue that Republicans are partly responsible for the shutdown and the long TSA lines if they object to the Democratic unanimous consent request.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., says Senate Democrats will not accept anything other than the bill to fund most of DHS agreed to by all 100 senators early Friday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding drama will return to the Senate Monday morning after the House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,4,27304,829,2413,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,965],"class_list":["post-554428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-breaking-news","tag-current-news","tag-latest-news","tag-national-news","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}