Trump Announces He Will Unilaterally Fund DHS and Dares Democrats to Sue to Stop Him;
Republican Senators Offer Democrats Deal, and Democrat Senators Accept

The "deal" is exactly what you'd expect from Mitch McConnell's prison punk John Thune: Capitulation. When a Ted Cruz demands a government shut-down to advance a conservative goal, the GOPe shrieks that that's not how we do business and caves immediately. But when the Democrats shut the government down, the GOPe also caves.

Update: Commenters disagree with my hot take. I have included their dissent before the jump.

But first, Trump's declaration that he will fund DHS on his own authority, citing powers under the National Emergencies Act.

I don't know if the president is allowed to bypass Congress' chief power over the purse through the Emergencies Act or if it's still beyond his power. But it's only beyond his power if a judge rules it so after Democrats bring lawsuit to stop him, and I don't know if they'd have the balls to be so open about wanting to keep TSA agents unpaid as well as DHS counter-terrorism agents during a war with the terror state of Iran.

Fox:

President Trump announced on Thursday he will sign an emergency order to pay TSA agents and hopefully relieve congestion at the nation's largest airports.

In a lengthy Truth Social post where he savaged Democrats for their role in refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security, Trump said he would see that the agents are paid.

"Because the Democrats have recklessly created a true National Crisis, I am using my authorities under the Law to protect our Great Country, as I always will do!" Trump said.

"I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports. It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!," he wrote.

His announcement came as Republicans and Democrats struggle to fund the department and as Transportation Security Administration employees faced a second month without a paycheck.

Under the National Emergency Act, the president could order unspent government funds to be used to temporarily pay TSA employees -- a move that would bypass Congress.

Republicans have the majority in the Senate but lack the 60 votes needed to advance DHS funding in the legislative process.

Rather than letting this play out, GOPe Senators caved and gave the Democrats what they wanted -- the TSA would be funded, but the parts of DHS that Democrats want to defund, ICE and the Border Patrol, will be defunded, just as the Democrats wanted.

This is a deal? Give them everything they want?

DHS shutdown breakthrough comes at cost for Republicans as funding fights nears end
Senate Republicans are eying reconciliation as a long-term solution for ICE and CBP funding

Again, Thune is pushing the idea that he'll concede everything on the vote but he'll "make it up during budget reconciliation."

But budget reconciliation requires cuts to the budget. How exactly is spending the money for CBP and ICE a budget cut? The Democrats are actually cutting the budget by defunding two agencies.

Congress is one step closer to ending the Homeland Security shutdown after the Senate advanced a new, last-minute deal, but it came at the price of Republicans ceding ground, temporarily, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Senate unanimously advanced a deal to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the wee hours of Friday morning, 42 days into the shutdown that was spurred by the Trump administration's immigration operations in Minnesota.

It was an agreement that largely gave Schumer and Senate Democrats what they wanted -- no funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But it lacked the stringent reforms they desired, like requiring judicial warrants or requiring agents to unmask.

While the deal mirrors previous attempts by Democrats to pass similar legislation that carved out immigration funding, Thune argued that Democrats are still walking away empty-handed in the policy fight over immigration enforcement.

"We've been trying for weeks to fund the whole thing," Thune said. "And, I mean, in the end, this is what they were willing to agree to. But again, it's different that it has zero reforms in it. I mean, they got no reforms on DHS, which they could have had if they had been willing to work with us a little bit on that."

Schumer said that if Republicans hadn't blocked their initial attempts, "this could have been done three weeks ago."

"This is exactly what we wanted," Schumer said. "This is what we asked for, and I'm very proud of my caucus. My caucus held the line."

Now it goes to the House -- and I'm sure House conservatives aren't happy about this.

But what Thune has done is make it politically costly for conservatives to veto the deal. Now, Democrats will be able to say "It's the MAGA Republican shut-down!"

Also, Thune has given up all leverage. The Democrats want to defund ICE and CBP. They want a wide-open border. You can only force them to fund those agencies by tying that funding to something that it is costly for them to refuse to fund -- like TSA and DHS counter-terrorism operations.

But now, they have the funding for the stuff they want, and can refuse to fund the stuff they don't want with no penalty whatsoever.

And Republican Senators are already warning us: BTW, this whole "reconcilliation" thing is Failure Theater Bullshit so don't expect the funding to actually pass.

And some Republicans are already couching expectations on what can and can't be accomplished in the party-line process, given that anything in the bill has to pass muster with strict rules in the Senate.

"I think we have to set our sights a little bit lower on this reconciliation bill," Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital. "It's got to be targeted to fund ICE for 10 years, I think that's the number one thing to us."

Or possibly he's saying "I know we told you we'd pass the SAVE Act by reconciliation, which was also Failure Theater Bullshit, but now that we've got this new Failure Theater Bullshit production going, you have to accept we've got to "set our sights a little lower" and just do the ICE and CBP funding as our first-priority Failure Theater Bullshit.

It's almost as if the GOPe exists to pretend to oppose the Democrats while giving the communists everything they want, and then turning to the public and saying, "All of this was done constitutionally, because the 'opposition' party did in fact agree to all of the communists' demands."

Brilliant, Thune, you Gollum to Mitch McConnell's Sauron.

Update: Commenters disagree.

They played a big bluff...and had to fold it with losses, since they are now on record as giving in as a full group...

Posted by: Nova Local

If the bill doesn't include a bar on face masks, ID requirements, and a ban on ICE going into "sensitive" locations, then it's not a GOP cave, it's a Democrat cave.

Those things were what Democrats wanted. They said so many times.

They didn't get those things.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison

Ace, I see this differently: it was the Democunts who caved, assuming this deal goes through. You can tell by how desperately they moved the goalposts. Cuck Schemer is now cheering that ... he got TSA funded at airports.

The shutdown wasn't about incremental funding for ICE and BP, as ICE and BP are already funded through 2028. The shutdown was about unmasking agents, identification requirements, limits on where ICE could go, and basically making their lives hell.

Dums got none of that. So they are now pretending it was always about funding TSA at airports. (Huh? They shut down the gov't over TSA?) Since TSA funding was restored -- something Trump and the GOP wanted too -- the Dums are claiming they won.

This is a win for the GOP -- albeit not a 100% complete one -- and a cave for the Dums. Not the other way around.

Posted by: Elric The Blade

The Dems didn't get anything they wanted.

Why do we have to repeat what the left media says?

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:10 PM

| Access Comments