Trump to Pay TSA Despite Congress
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
So, this happened last evening:
Critics might note that this is an unconstitutional use of presidential power, but he did this selectively during the historically long shutdown this past fall and got away with it. (To say nothing of launching a major war against Iran without Congressional authorization.)
One might wonder why he didn’t pay our hardworking TSA Agents during that last shutdown. Or earlier in this one. But those are really just details.
It may be academic, anyway, because it appears that the impasse may end, anyway.
NBC News (“Senate agrees to fund DHS, except ICE and Border Patrol, in bid to end 40-day shutdown“):
The Senate agreed unanimously early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a 40-day shutdown, but without funding for immigration enforcement and deportation operations.
Senators approved the package at 2:20 a.m by voice vote following a marathon session, hours after President Donald Trump announced that he would sign an order to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration officers.
The deal followed arduous bipartisan negotiations that occurred in fits and starts over the last six weeks. It is expected to have Trump’s support but faces an uncertain future in the House.
It would fund all of DHS except ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations and parts of Customs and Border Protection, which Democrats have refused to vote for without significant reforms to enforcement practices.
Referring to the possibility of the House considering the package later Friday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D) said “hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there.” He said he texted with Speaker Mike Johnson tonight.
One suspects this will pass the House. Trump had previously indicated that he wouldn’t sign a bill that didn’t include the so-called SAVE Act, but presumably he’s changed his mind, or else Senate Republicans wouldn’t have signed on to this.
Given that ICE and the Border Patrol are already funded through the so-called Big Beautiful Bill passed last year, it’s not at all clear what Democrats got from all of this pain and suffering.
Given that ICE and the Border Patrol are already funded through the so-called Big Beautiful Bill passed last year, it’s not at all clear what Democrats got from all of this pain and suffering.
Since the funding from last year is guaranteed, shouldn’t you ask what the Republicans got out of it? I mean, if ICE funding was guaranteed, it didn’t matter if the GOP voted to only fund the rest of DHS, right? ICE money would still flow? And Dems introduced a bunch of these restricted funding bills, but Republicans kept voting them down until the optics got really really bad because they wanted to show Trump that they’re still all-in on his extremely unpopular policies.
As a bonus, they voted against restrictions on complicated issues of ICE abuse like “get judicial warrants like the Constitution requires”.
Not sure the Democrats are the ones who need to account for this.
(ETA: This comment feels like a classic of the genre “Only Democrats have agency.”)
At a minimum, the Dems will not have to vote to fund ICE and will have brought further attention to the administration’s general lack of competence.
The ICE maneuver in the airports didn’t impress anyone.
And if Trump signs the legislation (or allows it to become law without his signature, which may be his loophole), then add another TACO to the dataset.
What @ptfe and @Steven L. Taylor said.
This is Trumpism, brought to you by the supplicant Republicans, in a nutshell. I’d really like us all to resist normalizing this blatant authoritarianism. If the Democrats did nothing more than stand against that, it was worth it.