Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) took direct aim at Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Sunday, calling him "a problem and a thorn in the side of the Republican Party" after a late-night Senate deal on Department of Homeland Security funding stripped out money for ICE and Border Patrol, and House GOP leadership refused to go along.
The clash between the two chambers, playing out in public over a holiday weekend, has left DHS funding in limbo and exposed a widening rift inside the Republican majority over border enforcement priorities. The Senate broke for a two-week recess after its vote. The House passed its own competing measure. And neither side shows signs of backing down.
Mace made her remarks on CNN's "State of the Union," as reported by The Hill, after the Senate passed a deal early Friday morning via unanimous consent that would fund the bulk of DHS while withholding money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The measure would have immediately funded the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Coast Guard, but required Congress to fund ICE and border enforcement operations at a later date.
The Senate deal passed by voice vote at a moment when only a few senators remained on the floor. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) seized on that detail when he slammed the measure Friday.
Johnson said on Friday:
"This gambit that was done last night is a joke. I'm quite convinced that it can't be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill."
Johnson's objection was blunt: the Senate had passed a deal in the dead of night that carved out the very agencies at the center of the administration's border enforcement agenda. Then senators left town for two weeks.
President Trump reinforced the House position. He told Fox News on Friday that the Senate-backed bill "wasn't appropriate" and called on Republicans in the upper chamber to terminate the filibuster to pass DHS legislation without Democratic support. That framing put Thune squarely in the crosshairs, a Republican majority leader who cut a deal that needed Democratic buy-in, only to see his own party's president and House leadership reject it within hours.
Frustration with Thune's approach has been building among the GOP base for months, as Texas voters recently sent Thune a message he refuses to hear about Republican expectations for Senate leadership.
On Sunday, Mace went further than Johnson. She didn't just question the process. She questioned Thune's role in the party.
"We're not the problem. It's the left that's a problem. And now Senator Thune has become a problem and a thorn in the side of the Republican Party. And it's become a national problem."
That language is unusually pointed for one Republican officeholder to level at another, especially a majority leader. Mace was not hedging. She grouped Thune's conduct with the opposition, drawing a line between House Republicans who stood firm on full DHS funding and a Senate leader who, in her telling, gave ground on ICE and Border Patrol to get a deal through.
Mace also expressed support for Johnson's handling of the standoff. Asked about the Speaker's position, she said, "We're all very supportive."
Later on Friday, the House passed a two-month stopgap measure to fund the entirety of DHS, including the ICE and Border Patrol money the Senate deal had left out. The contrast was deliberate: where the Senate had separated border enforcement funding from the rest of DHS, the House insisted on keeping it whole.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed before the House stopgap passed that it would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate. That sets up a standoff with no obvious resolution while the Senate sits in recess.
The broader pattern of internal Republican reshuffling, including Trump's willingness to endorse former critics in key Senate primaries, suggests the party's center of gravity continues to shift toward figures who align with the administration's enforcement-first posture.
Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, who also appeared on CNN's "State of the Union," blamed House Republicans for the impasse. He pointed to the bipartisan nature of the Senate deal and argued the House was the sole obstacle.
"We didn't get everything we wanted either. That's how compromise works. That's how deals work in Congress. House Republicans are the only thing standing in the way of ending this airport chaos right now."
Mace's response was terse: "That's just not true."
The exchange captured the core disagreement cleanly. Democrats framed the Senate deal as a reasonable compromise. House Republicans framed it as a capitulation, one that would have left ICE and Border Patrol unfunded while every other DHS component got its money, with a vague promise to revisit enforcement funding later.
The Senate measure included funding for Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, FEMA, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Those agencies would have received immediate appropriations. But ICE and Border Patrol, the two agencies most directly responsible for interior enforcement and the physical border, were excluded. Congress would have been required to fund those operations at a later date.
For House Republicans, that sequencing was the problem. Funding TSA and the Coast Guard while leaving ICE without money looked less like a compromise and more like a concession designed to satisfy Democratic objections to enforcement spending. The later-date promise carried no guarantee, no timeline, and no enforcement mechanism.
Johnson's skepticism about whether Senate Republicans even read the bill before the voice vote only deepened the sense that the deal was rushed through without serious deliberation. A unanimous consent vote in a nearly empty chamber, followed by an immediate recess, does not inspire confidence that the upper chamber wrestled with the tradeoffs.
The DHS funding fight is not just a policy dispute. It is a test of whether Senate Republican leadership will align with the administration's priorities or continue to cut deals that require Democratic cooperation at the expense of enforcement funding. Mace's public criticism of Thune reflects a growing impatience among House Republicans and the conservative base with a Senate that moves slowly, compromises early, and leaves enforcement agencies holding the bag.
Trump's call to eliminate the filibuster for DHS legislation signals that the White House sees the current Senate dynamic as an obstacle, not a partner. Whether Thune adjusts course or digs in will shape the next phase of this fight, and possibly his standing within the party.
For now, DHS funding remains unresolved. The Senate is on recess. The House has passed a stopgap that Schumer says will never reach the floor. And the agencies responsible for border security wait.
When a Republican Senate majority passes a funding bill that leaves ICE and Border Patrol out in the cold, the base doesn't need a pundit to explain who the problem is.
