Two More Shutdowns: Four Days in February, Then 11 Weeks at Homeland Security
Congress funded almost the entire government before the January 30 deadline and still triggered a lapse, then left a single department dark from mid-February until the end of April.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security reopened at the end of April after a funding lapse that began on February 14, closing out a fiscal year in which the federal government shut down three separate times.
It is a record no one set out to break. The first shutdown, in October and November of 2025, ran 43 days and was the longest in American history. The second lasted four days, from January 31 to February 3, and affected roughly half of all federal departments. The third was narrower and far longer, confined to a single department for about eleven weeks.
How the February lapse happened
The January 30 deadline came from the deal that ended the autumn shutdown, which funded most agencies only through that date.
Congress very nearly met it. On January 30, the Senate passed five of the six remaining appropriations bills, enough to fund nearly the entire government through the fiscal year. It could not reach agreement on the Homeland Security bill and instead passed a short-term extension for that department through February 13.
The package arrived too late in the day to prevent a lapse. Parts of the government closed at midnight and reopened four days later.
Why Homeland Security became the sticking point
The dispute was not primarily about dollars. Senate Democrats withdrew support for the department's funding bill after the killing of a man by Customs and Border Protection agents in late January, seeking policy conditions and oversight provisions in exchange for full-year funding.
Negotiations over those conditions stalled, the short-term extension expired on February 13, and the department entered a shutdown of its own that lasted until April 30.
The economics of a partial shutdown
A single-department shutdown is less damaging in aggregate than a government-wide one and considerably more damaging to the people inside it. Essential personnel — border agents, airport screeners, Coast Guard crews, disaster response staff — work without pay, while contractors are simply not paid at all and rarely receive back pay.
For the wider economy, the fiscal drag is modest and largely reversed once workers are made whole. The lasting cost is institutional: recruitment becomes harder, experienced staff leave, and the agencies most affected are the ones the country calls on during emergencies.
What it means for the fall
Fiscal year 2027 begins on October 1. Congress has spent this year demonstrating that appropriations deadlines are now negotiating leverage rather than commitments — which is the clearest possible signal about what to expect in the autumn.
