Washington Politics

Susan Estrich
Wed, 01 Apr 2026 23:00:00 -0700
Opinion

It's business as usual — almost — in the midst of a war abroad and an affordability crisis at home and the longest partial government shutdown in history.

I say almost because last Friday, the Senate actually did something different. They did something extraordinary. Every Republican voted with every Democrat to fund the Department of Homeland Security, except for the controversial activities of ICE and the Border Patrol. The Senate did, in short, what people overwhelmingly want them to do: end the shutdown in a bipartisan fashion and get the lines moving at the airports.

What happened? Absolutely nothing. House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to even take up the bill, terming it "a joke." And then everyone went home on vacation.
Updated: Thu Apr 02, 2026

It's business as usual — almost — in the midst of a war abroad and an affordability crisis at home and the longest partial government shutdown in history.

I say almost because last Friday, the Senate actually did something different. They did something extraordinary. Every Republican voted with every Democrat to fund the Department of Homeland Security, except for the controversial activities of ICE and the Border Patrol. The Senate did, in short, what people overwhelmingly want them to do: end the shutdown in a bipartisan fashion and get the lines moving at the airports.

What happened? Absolutely nothing. House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to even take up the bill, terming it "a joke." And then everyone went home on vacation.

This is our government at its worst.

Last time I checked, President Donald Trump and his party controlled both Houses of Congress, as well as the White House and the Supreme Court. You can't blame this shutdown on the Democrats. That dog don't hunt. This is Trump's shutdown — and it is a testament to his lack of leadership in this situation that you have the House and Senate heading in opposite directions, and him doing nothing to bring them together.

Rep. Randy Fine, who is an outspoken Florida Republican, attacked his fellow Republicans on X: "It's insane that Senate Republicans didn't even introduce our bill to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security. They didn't even try. End the vacations and junkets and get your asses back to D.C. Now."

But it's no more insane than the House refusal to put the unanimous Senate bill to a vote. House Republicans didn't even try.

And where is Donald Trump? He said it was a "shame" that Republicans went home without passing a bill that they cannot pass without abolishing the filibuster, something Senate Republicans have made clear for a year that they will not do.

"They should terminate the filibuster and they should vote. That's what I think," Trump told reporters. "I think the Senate is playing it too soft."

Too soft? Because they are unwilling to change the rules the Senate lives by to suit the whims of an inconsistent man?

As with the war in Iran, the president's biggest and most immediate problem is not with the Democrats, who are doing what the opposition does. It is with the Republicans, his own party, who are deeply divided, and making him look weak and inconsistent and unable to unite his own Party.

Hopefully, with the TSA now being paid out of funds that were there all along (and why were they not being used?), the lines will get shorter. Travelers will stop coming hours earlier. Nothing has been resolved, but it's voters in those lines, so making do will have to do for now.

In the meantime, the oversized White House ballroom is now a drone-proof bomb shelter, where POTUS can host the neighbors, and Pete Hegseth has reversed the Army and called off the investigation of the helicopter pilots who did a fly-by at Kid Rock's house after six unauthorized fly-overs at a No King's demonstration. Even Trump thought they had done something wrong and shouldn't be "playing games" up there. But not Prince Pete, the Kid Rock of the Cabinet, who took to social media to call off the investigation.

Trump went to the Supreme Court to call attention to what will be his next big loss in the Court: his effort to strip citizenship from a group that disproportionately includes Asian babies. His presence there does not seem to have changed the minds of a skeptical Court. The president is no doubt steaming over his disloyal Justices and the activist judges who are stopping him from shredding the Constitution before our very eyes. It is Washington politics, all of it.