ICE agents at the Atlanta airport.
Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down since February 14, but many Americans took notice only last week, when we started to see huge delays at major airports as many unpaid Transportation Security Administration employees refused to show up to work.
Heading into the weekend, there were two paths out of the DHS shutdown mess. The first was the negotiations between White House border czar Tom Homan and congressional Democrats, who demanded new restrictions on immigration enforcement after the atrocities in Minneapolis and other cities. The second was Senate Democrats’ offer to fund all DHS operations other than immigration enforcement as negotiations over ICE and Border Patrol “guardrails” continued.
Both paths were showing progress. According to Punchbowl News, on Sunday Senate Majority Leader John Thune told the White House his troops were ready to move forward with a partial DHS funding bill to pay TSA agents and keep FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other non-ICE DHS functions operating. This shift was signaled earlier by GOP senators Ted Cruz and John Kennedy, who were very upset about massive air-travel delays in their own states.
But Donald Trump rejected the DHS deal, making his stance public in a Sunday-night post to Truth Social
I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass “THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.” It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people – UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children. Put it all together, and also, let Leader Thune clearly identify those few “Republicans” that are Voting against AMERICA. They will never be elected again! In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT
As usual with this turbulent president, the post has to be unpacked. The digression about a “Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding” is a reference to one idea for resolving the underlying dispute over ICE, which received tens of billions of dollars in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But the more fundamental point is that Trump isn’t blocking a partial funding bill for DHS over anything having to do with immigration. It’s all about his precious SAVE America Act, which would impose onerous new national voter-ID requirements in the guise of preventing fictional non-citizen voting. As the Truth Social post made clear, the House-passed version of this bill wasn’t enough for Trump. He’s still demanding that it be expanded to include sweeping restrictions on voting by mail and totally non-germane anti-transgender provisions. And because Trump knows Democrats would never support such legislation, he also reiterated his demand to abolish the filibuster, the one gift that Senate Republicans have consistently denied him.
The president’s position (unless he chickens out) has blocked any path to a deal with Democrats that could reopen DHS or reform ICE. So Trump is going ahead with his own work-around to the TSA problem: deploying ICE agents at airports to do some of the work normally done by TSA.
It’s extremely ironic that the source of the problem at DHS is Trump’s temporary solution. But it is just that: temporary. At some point in the very near future, the shortage of TSA agents will outstrip the duties untrained ICE operatives can perform, not to mention interfering with ICE’s own mission. For now, though, Trump is stopping any alternative method of ensuring safe and efficient air travel. He’s also tormenting congressional Republicans with the additional demand that they cancel their planned two-week Easter recess (a holy tradition, particularly during election years) so that the Senate can continue an entirely pointless “debate” over the doomed SAVE America Act, which will only make the GOP look worse as voters begin to understand what it actually does.
This is the “toddler president” in action at his most petulant and juvenile. And it’s terrifying when you realize that when he’s not blowing up the proper functioning of the U.S. government, he’s supervising a destructive war of choice with no clear end in sight.
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