Senate Democrats are Breaking All the Wrong Records
Washington, D.C. – The Democrat-led shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has now surpassed any shutdown in history. Since February, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus have directed DHS personnel to work without guaranteed paychecks, wreaked havoc at airports across the nation, and purposely limited resources to protect the homeland.
And to add insult to injury, as the crisis they created drags on, they’ve headed out of town for a two-week recess.
This is a complete abdication of the Article I authority of Congress – and of the responsibility owed to the American people.
With this current record-breaking shutdown – added to last fall’s previously historic lapse – DHS employees have been forced to spend more than 50% of Fiscal Year 2026 in a shutdown.
What if your workplace forced you to work without pay for even a month – let alone half a year? What if parts of your workforce were furloughed for weeks at a time without warning? What if your business shut its doors, left bills unpaid, and stuck shareholders with mounting interest costs just to reopen? What if billions in economic losses were allowed – all because a minority of decision-makers chose dysfunction over doing their job? And what if a company tried to pass a budget that deliberately excludes critical parts of its operations?
Well, if you are a federal government or DHS employee, you don’t have to imagine it. That is exactly what Senate Democrats have done.
It has been a total of 93 days since last year that Democrats have forced our national security workers to protect our nation without an ensured paycheck.
- The entire government was shut down from October 1, 2025, through November 12, 2025 – 43 days
- DHS was shut down from January 31, 2026, through February 3, 2026 – 4 days
- DHS has been shut down since February 14, 2026, through today – 46 days
6 months into FY26, the only month that has not seen a full or partial government shutdown is December.
This is not leadership or responsibility. Senate Democrats may be happy to waste American taxpayer dollars, but House Republicans have long completed the work to fund the government – in full – with bipartisan, bicameral negotiated deals.
After agreeing on a plan to fund the government in January with three packages of bills that all received bipartisan majorities in the House, Senate Democrats reneged on the deal at the last possible minute – forcing DHS to operate on limited resources to protect our national security and withholding paychecks from hundreds of thousands of active and furloughed workers.
Why? The same Democrats who championed “defund the police” are now working to gut border security operations and immigration enforcement. After the Biden Administration – backed by far-left Democrats – released millions of unvetted illegal immigrants into our communities, including an estimated 2 million known “gotaways,” they now want to zero out the very tools needed to enforce the law and remove criminals and dangerous individuals. Nearly 400 people on the terror watch list were caught attempting to enter the United States – and those are just the ones we know about. Violent gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, along with other bad actors, are now inside our country because of these policies. Just this month, an 18-year-old student in Chicago was killed by an illegal immigrant who had already been arrested and released once before.
The Trump Administration is working to remove violent criminal aliens – but Democrats are trying to stop that effort and keep these threats in our communities. Part of their strategy is shutting down DHS and treating homeland security like an à la carte menu – picking and choosing which parts of keeping Americans safe they’re willing to support based on progressive polling.
Homeland security is not optional. You fund the comprehensive mission – or you own the consequences.
Our nation's critical national security agencies continue to protect Americans from terrorism, violence, cyber threats, natural disasters, and more, but they're doing it without guaranteed paychecks or full resources behind them. For more than six weeks, workers in high-stress roles have had the added concern of putting food on the table and paying their rents or mortgages with $0 paychecks.
This chaos has real consequences – for our security, our economy, and the men and women on the front lines.
These hostage-taking tactics cannot continue. It's time for Democrats to do the right thing – fund DHS in its entirety and pay the workers who continue to keep us safe.
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