House Democratic leaders teed off on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday for rejecting a bipartisan Senate bill to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They stated that GOP leaders are voluntarily prolonging the partial shutdown to appease their most conservative wing.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) declared that Republican priorities have nothing to do with making citizens' lives better, but everything to do with jamming their extreme right-wing ideology. Jeffries emphasized that House Republicans are rejecting a bipartisan bill supported by 53 Republican senators, which would end chaos at airports and pay the TSA, avoiding inconvenience to millions of Americans.

Democrats, led by Jeffries, urged Johnson to hold an immediate vote on the Senate bill, which was unanimously passed in the upper chamber on Friday morning. They argued this is the surest way to end a partial shutdown that is among the longest in history.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, accused Republicans of holding airport security funding, disaster assistance, and Coast Guard response hostage because of their desire for an out-of-control ICE. This agency, according to Aguilar, brutalizes communities, detains children, and kills U.S. citizens.

Short of a vote on the Senate bill, Democrats are urging moderate Republicans to endorse their discharge petition, which would force a vote on similar legislation to fund most of DHS, including Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and FEMA workers, but not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, confirmed that the discharge petition is active and ongoing.

The Senate bill funds most of DHS, but to win Democratic support, it withholds funding for ICE and Border Patrol. Democrats demanded the exclusion after federal immigration officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier in the year.

Johnson stunned Washington on Friday by rejecting the Senate-passed proposal and instead vowed to move an eight-week stopgap bill to fund the entirety of DHS, including ICE and CBP, at current levels. Johnson blamed Senate Democrats for “engineering” the bill, despite the fact that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) controls the floor.

The Speaker also took a shot at Senate Republicans for backing the package. Johnson stated that this gambit was a joke and that he doubted that every Republican senator had read the language of the bill.

Democrats panned that description, noting that the Senate bill would have paid TSA and every other DHS sub-agency, but not the immigration enforcement operations at the center of controversy in Washington. Aguilar stated that Johnson is calling this bipartisan agreement a joke simply because it doesn’t give more money to Trump’s out-of-control ICE agency.

The House is expected to vote on the eight-week stopgap bill on Friday night. But even if it passes, they’ll be sending it to an empty Senate, which left Washington the same day for a long two-week break for the spring holidays. This development ensures that the DHS shutdown will become the longest in history, something Democrats attribute to a deliberate design by Republicans.