House Republicans reject Senate DHS funding bill, Trump signs memo to pay TSA workers

(WASHINGTON) -- House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday flatly rejected the Senate's bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection.

Johnson said House Republicans will instead plow ahead with an alternative proposal: a short-term bill to fund the entire department for 60 days, until May 22.

"This gambit that was done last night is a joke," Johnson told reporters in a news conference.

Johnson said the House would vote on the stop-gap proposal "as soon as possible." Lawmakers were notified that votes are expected on Friday night, though the exact timing remains unclear.

If the House succeeds, the measure will head back to the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed that it is "dead on arrival."

All this means the partial government shutdown, now in its 42nd day, is likely to continue.

Amid the gridlock on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a presidential memorandum directing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to pay TSA employees. DHS said that workers will start seeing paychecks on Monday.

President Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News on Friday afternoon, said the Senate deal on DHS "wasn't good" and "wasn't appropriate."

The Senate, at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, approved a funding bill that included TSA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The package did not include money for ICE or parts of CBP, though those agencies continue to receive funds due to an influx of cash provided in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last summer.

Also absent from the Senate bill are any of the reforms to ICE's operating procedures that Democrats have been repeatedly demanding following the fatal shootings of two American citizens in Minneapolis by federal agents earlier this year.

Still, Schumer said he was proud of Democrats who "held the line" on their objection to funding ICE and CBP without reforms.

"Democrats held firm in our position that Donald Trump's rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms and we will continue to fight for those reforms," he said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune lambasted Democrats on the floor for what he framed as their refusal to negotiate in good faith. He said Democrats could have secured some of their desired reforms if they hadn't complicated negotiations.

"We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if the Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement. But they didn't, because it's now clear to everyone, Democrats didn't actually want a solution, they wanted an issue, politics over policy, self-interest over reform, pandering to their base over actually solving a problem," Thune said.

Senate Republicans vowed to work on a package later this year to approve even more funding for ICE and CBP, saying they aim to do it using reconciliation -- a budget tool that, if successful, would allow them to sidestep Democratic objection and pass the bill without any Democratic support.

Republicans are already warning that that bill will be a much harsher and Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., vowed it would "supercharge deportations."

ABC News' Allison Pecorin and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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