Homeland Security shutdown breaks GOP divisions in Congress wide open

WASHINGTON – Some GOP members of the House of Representatives are starting to sound a lot more like Democrats.

Or, perhaps more precisely, they're routinely finding a common enemy: Senate Republicans.

The escalating tensions came into sharp focus March 27, when animosity between GOP lawmakers in the two chambers of Congress burst dramatically into view. House Republicans woke up to find that their Senate counterparts had, in the dead of night, unanimously passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for immigration enforcement. They then sent the legislation to the other side of the Capitol and left town for a scheduled two-week recess.

Congressional mayhem ensued.

"This gambit that was done last night is a joke," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said.

In the words of Rep. Austin Scott, R-Georgia: "Senate Republicans absolutely capitulated."

North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, the powerful Republican chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, called what her Senate colleagues had done "unconditional surrender" to Democrats.

While frustration in both parties between the House and Senate is endemic to the institution of Congress, resentment within the GOP felt almost palpable on March 27.

It was the latest culmination of an increasingly undeniable, and politically consequential, dynamic on Capitol Hill, where more moderate members of the less-raucous Senate are often finding themselves at bitter odds with their hardline-conservative colleagues in the House, where the majority is razor-thin and legislative outcomes are often not as predictable.

On a range of big issues — including mail-in balloting, President Donald Trump's tariffs, ending the filibuster and allowing senators to win big payouts in government lawsuits — Republicans in the upper and lower chamber have been at each other's throats as of late. The president's hands-off approach to managing Congress, along with his penchant for letting people jockey for his approval, hasn't been a particularly unifying force, either.

Yet big events on the horizon will require as much unity as the GOP can muster. In a looming legislative battle over a second so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill," Johnson can barely afford a single defection in his ranks. Neither can Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota. Fighting to pass another reconciliation bill, which only takes a simple majority vote in the two chambers, may be the only way Congress can approve cash to support the war in Iran. Both Republican-controlled sides of the Capitol will have to coordinate in tandem to do it.

Then there's the issue of the midterms. In order to stave off potentially bruising losses in November, Republicans of all persuasions are working to get on the same messaging page to pitch voters on why their party should stay fully in power over the next few years. Intensifying intraparty friction isn't likely to help with that effort.

The GOP divisions are, however, already helping Democrats, who typically struggle more with eating their own politically. During a congressional hearing held after the Senate's DHS funding deal fell apart, Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse was one of several House Democrats who used the shutdown dysfunction as an opportunity to criticize how Washington works under total Republican rule.

"My Republican colleagues are very much living in a fantasyland and somehow trying to make the case to the American people that Democrats control the United States Senate," he said. "It's absurd."

Zachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.