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.
UPDATE: Welp, I was wrong on House Republicans.
AP (“House Republicans reject DHS funding bill from Senate, risking an even longer shutdown“):
House Republicans are rejecting a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, a revolt that risks delaying a resolution to the funding impasse now in its 42nd day that has created long lines at many of the nation’s airports.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday.
Johnson said that instead House Republicans would seek to pass a bill that would fund the entire department at current levels until May 22. He also said that he had spoken with President Donald Trump about the House Republican plan and the president “supports it.”
House Republicans are angry that the bill passed early Friday by the Senate does not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Democrats refused to fund those departments without changes to immigration enforcement practices.
“We’re going to do something different,” Johnson said, challenging the Senate to take up the House’s continuing resolution on Monday, assuming it does pass the House, which is uncertain.
Senators have already left town after acting in the early morning hours to end the partial shutdown, so it would take time for them to return if the House ends up passing a different measure. And Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a social media post that the 60-day stopgap measure being considered in the House would be “dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it.”
Brilliant. This seems like a rather obvious own-goal.
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.
I suspect via Trump’s internal process (calculus?) which at most times seems to resemble a steel ball in a vintage pachinko machine, he “pings” between: 1) his concerns over garnering political consensus, 2) his impulse to exercise raw power, 3) sheer cruelty to inflict harm, 4) ego driven self aggrandizement, 5) counter-punching retaliation, 6) face saving, and 7) conspiratorial delusions du jour— all of these vectors come from different places in his grey matter. At any given time, as the “steel ball” pings between these “pegs,” the final outcome depends on whatever passes as his “executive function” in his brain — which for the most part is — pachinko!
Having said that, in this situation of TSA salaries, his bouncing “steel ball” may get extra nudges from both having been blunted in Iran, and having asserted very public blustery commitment to SAVE, thereby propelling him into all out obstruction of any “deals” NOT made by HIM. He is the “deal maker par excellence” after all.
vintage pachinko machine
@Steven L. Taylor:
My understanding is the Senate is scheduled to recess, not sure about the house, that would allow trump the option of a pocket veto. Though thinking about it, it seems that the senate hasn’t officially recessed for several years to keep trump and biden from using the recess appointment option.
Has Trump actually *signed* this EO yet? I can’t seem to find any news sources that can confirm this has been done (vs. him saying he’s *going* to do it).
I’m sure all are aware by now that the House refuses to pass the Senate version of the DHS funding bill, so it’s sort of now up to Trump to pay these folks.
It looks to me like grandstanding from Trump. The Senate reaches an agreement, which is expected to pass the House, and when that happens the money will flow, but meanwhile Trump announces that HE is going to break the rules and pay TSA for the good of the country. What a hero!
I think he’s also counting on people not hearing about what Congress does, because they are a bunch of losers who don’t know how to advance their brand.