Johnson rejects Senate-passed funding bill

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday blasted the Senate-passed bill to reopen most of the Homeland Security Department, all but ensuring the shutdown will continue to drag on.

"The Republicans are not going to be a party to this," he told reporters. "They have taken hostage the funding processes of government so that they can impose their radical agenda on the American people."

The bill, which the Senate approved early Friday morning by voice vote — meaning no senator raised an objection — would fund the entire department except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

"This gambit that was done last night is a joke," Speaker Johnson said. "It can't be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill."

The speaker said the House will put on the floor a different measure that would fund the entire department through May 22 — something that has virtually no chance of passing in the Senate, which has already left town for its two-week recess.

"We're going to send that over to the Senate, and we hope that they'll accept that," he said. "The reason that we can't accept this ridiculousness is because we're not going to risk not funding the agencies that keep the American people safe."

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