Let’s also recap the SAVE Act. Got popcorn?
Republican Infighting Meltdown
Politico comments ‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal
House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.
Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of all DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and cannot pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.
“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”
The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.
The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”
Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”
A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.
The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.
Jacqui Heinrich – Fox News Senior White House Correspondent
NEWS: President Trump tells me Senate bill that didn’t fund ICE, CBP “not appropriate”
Just got off the phone with POTUS: President Trump says of Senate bill that didn’t fund ICE or CBP.
“Well, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t appropriate. Now what they should do is they should terminate the filibuster, Jacqui, and just vote, but you have three or four Republicans in there that are not doing the right thing”
“You can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund – in my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE. You can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund any form of law enforcement, of which ICE is a big form, and so is Border Patrol.”
Facts of the Matter
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed in July 2025, provides approximately $170.7 billion for ICE and CBP through FY2029, representing a massive expansion of immigration enforcement. This funding includes over $75 billion for ICE (targeting 116,000+ daily detention beds) and $68 billion for CBP, including substantial funding for a border wall.
- ICE Funding Breakdown: The legislation allocates $45 billion for detention centers and roughly $30 billion for personnel and enforcement operations, making ICE one of the highest-funded federal law enforcement agencies.
- CBP Allocation: The bill provides $68 billion, with $46.5 billion directed toward building a border wall and $9 billion for Border Patrol hiring and infrastructure.
- Duration: This funding is structured to last through September 30, 2029, allowing for consistent operations, such as handling a potential partial DHS shutdown, as reported by Rep. Newhouse.
How Many Want Impeachment Hearings?
That is incredibly funny. Please play it.
Dysfunction Paralysis Synopsis
- Thune worked out a deal that House Republicans did not like.
- Now House Republicans are writing a new package that is dead in the Senate.
This is dysfunctional paralysis at its finest.
A Possible Resolution
If Democrats can get 3 House Republicans to go along, they can force a vote on the Senate deal. It only takes three but pressure on the Republicans would be immense.
The bill would then go to Trump where he would either be forced to sign it, veto it, or sit on it until it passes.
Once a bill passes both chambers of Congress and is presented to the President, the President has 10 days (excluding Sundays) to sign or veto it. If the President takes no action within this time, the bill automatically becomes law, unless Congress has adjourned, preventing the return of the bill.
SAVE Act Paralysis
A similar setup is happening with the SAVE Act.
There is no hope of passage because there are not 51 votes to kill the filibuster. Republicans keep looking foolish trying to get it done.
Meanwhile, the House and Trump keep pressing ideas that make it clear the act is voter suppression, not voter ID.
The Save Act Is Dead
On March 15, 2026, I penned The SAVE Act Dies this Week. Get Over It.
I am pleased to report, the SAVE Act Is Dead.
My analysis was correct. It’s truly hopeless. However, the coroner has failed to show up.
Republicans look like fools for trying to pretend a dead man is alive.
One Irony in all this Republican pissing and moaning trying to get the act passed is the bill would not survive a Constitutional showdown.
The Save Act Is Unconstitutional
Here’s Three Reasons the Save Act Is Unconstitutional and it only takes one.
Three liberal justices would vote against it. Add Chief Justice Roberts.
Then find one more. Gorsuch for technical reasons or Barrett for any reason (technical or precedence) and it’s dead.
That is exactly what happened and called in this corner regarding Trump’s tariffs.
In case you missed it, please see Supreme Court Strikes Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs In 6-3 Vote (I Told You So)
Forgive me for bragging, but I got every justice correct.
Don’t think it can’t happen again, because it would.
Second Irony
The second irony in this should now be easy to spot.
To get a bill passed that would not stand much of a chance in the courts, Republicans would have to give up the filibuster.
I assure you the Democrats would use that to full advantage on the border, Medicare for all, and countless other things.
Got popcorn?
“House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.”
That’s right, with Easter and summer vacations coming right up, REPUBLICANS are the ones who are f***king up your travel plans and making you waste hours at the airport. Remember that at the midterms folks. Less than 220 days now.
It’s also REPUBLICANS causing inflation to go up, your family members to die in Iran or whatever other war this nutcase starts.
Remember that at the midterms folks. Less than 220 days now.
Alternatively, a good exit strategy will get you away from the freaks and geeks running the circus.
Do worry, Trump will find a way to make things even worse.™
This is all quite exhausting (everything: markets, economy, war, oil, funding, no-funding, etc)….and I’m not doing anything but sitting on my ass reading about it.
You should be planning your exit strategy, if not for you for anyone that you care about. Trump is just getting started.
Inflation, it is not all about oil prices, fertilizer, food, insurance, healthcare, interest rates and real estate taxes.
M2 money supply climbed to 11% year over year in February. The Feds balance sheet has grown by $122 billion since Dec 9th.
Shivvver me timbers friends! $39 trillion in debt and adding a trillion every 125 daze makes me want to buy more gold mining stocks at these discounted prices.
Don’t know where else to hide liquid assets!
Year over year loss of 689,000 million workers.
Stagnation plus massive spending?
Gives us economic vertigo.
Mish made the Stagflation call, last year.
“Don’t know where else to hide liquid assets!”
You need to diversify outside the US. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Increasing the money supply is mostly bankster created. So by your logic the banksters create inflation? No.
Private debt demand as a percentage of GDP, supply shocks and wage growth, which the latter in the first instance is a reaction to the supply side of the markups, price gouging, and other “warlike” profiteering measures taken during inflationary cycles such as the oil shock in the 70s and the recent Covid shutdown of supply chains by Trump that precipitated the rise of more billionaires, more concentration of wealth at the the top, and undue profiteering by large swaths in the S&P 500 companies. In short, Friedman got it wrong
Well the goal was to make it look like the democrats were responsible for the long TSA lines. That began to crack when Shumer came out and declared they were happy to fund just the TSA. Thune, who is smart enough to know that Republicans look like idiots and are responsible for the airport ridiculousness decided to break with Trump and at least get the TSA funded. Johnson, an evangelical closeted homosexual and dumb as a rock, desperately wants to be a 13 year old girl for Trump, so will do whatever ignorant nonsense Trump wants. As a Republican, my level of embarrassment and humiliation is off the charts.
My solution to the TSA problem is simple: lock the cabin doors on the airlines and disband the TSA. Stop bombing foreigners and making unnecessary enemies. I’ll take liberty and civilized behavior over safety for me while hurting others every day. But then I’m not a Jeebus freak or a gun nut style Republican.
Don’t even need to lock the cabin doors since that’s a waste of time anyway. If control of the plane was seized in the passenger area the pilots would have to open the door the second someone threatened to start killing passengers.
Just arm the crew with tasers along with the flight marshal who is on every flight. After 9/11 Passengers will NEVER EVER sit idly by while a plane is seized anyway. They will fight the take over since its now been established the plane is likely to be crashed so they have to resist any attempt at a takeover.
No, they wouldn’t. The choice is between some dead passengers and ALL dead passengers.
The lawsuits would bankrupt an airline if someone’s kid was killed because the pilot didn’t open the door. You and I both know there would be such a lawsuit and it would be incredibly likely to win.
Anyway as I said, there will never be another successful hijacking of an airliner in the US after 9/11. Prior to that the playbook was be passive and wait for the money demand and it would get paid and the passengers would be alive. After 9/11 EVERYONE knows you are likely be dead via a suicide bomber so it’s in your vested interest as passengers to gang rush the handful of terrorists/hijackers. We’ve seen this play out already.
So by locking the cockpit door, the hijackers are forced to deal with the passengers instead of being able to just kill the pilots and crash the plane.
Has United Airlines gotten another obligatory bailout yet?
“congress – that great, benevolent asylum for the helpless”
― Mark Twain
You aren’t dealing with a bunch of “mental giants.”
impose his own reality = delusional
Late last month, in the run-up to the war, Mr. Trump said General Caine believed that any eventual military action ordered against Iran would be “something easily won.” But that is not what General Caine had told Mr. Trump and other senior advisers.
The disconnect underscores just how much the Iran war is testing Mr. Trump’s usual strategy for dealing with crises: imposing his own reality and disregarding inconvenient truths.
“He thinks everything is transactional, he can deal with the deal one step at a time and see how things unfold, but war is fast, uncontrollable, unpredictable and deadly,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and the editor of a book of essays about Mr. Trump’s first term.
And now he’s “bored” with the war…
He maybe bored with it because he isn’t winning but wars of this size, complexity, geopolitical and geoeconomical significance do not disappear off the front pages even when amnesia prone US citizens are part of the equation.
Why is this so for this particular instance ? Some Americans that have been living off the equity, housing, crypto, credit bubble will soon realize it was all a mirage. Their prior let them eat cake attitude will result in the chickens coming home to roost theory of blowback. With this realization down goes Trump. Down goes the Trumplican Party. Down goes the Zionist state and its lobby. Trump is the new Herbert Hoover at worst and at best the new Jimmy Carter that presaged the neoliberal order on steroids that got this country and nation into the mess it is in both domestically and abroad.
Mike Johnson is the Rick Moranis version of Don Knotts
the perfect bland tool of Constitution deconstruction
PERFECT I’ve never heard him described more accurately.
At least we know that it does not matter which Party controls Government spending. The Public can only argue about which party was better at adding to the Trillions of National Debt? Spending on more Welfare or Weaponization ..you make your choice?
That’s why we call it a Uniparty
But at least we know one party is willing to pay for their spending while the other is happy to let their children drown in debt. There is no moral comparison.
Has anyone else had enough of “our democracy”. How about a smaller more functional government that actually performs essential services? This isn’t a government that does that; it’s a hodge podge of special interests, careerists and bs. Privatization would be step up, TSA is too important for political cronies (congress) to run.
For better or worse, that ship sailed 80 years ago. I’d settle for staying out of foreign entanglements, but apparently that cannot be allowed.
The US has become too big to be effective. Splitting up into at least two separate countries, with citizens able to relocate to the one they like during an interim period, would be a huge improvement.
You’d have to get rid of conservative judges who say that special interest money is free speech. Do Americans really want that? Do you want women to have the freedom to choose to have abortions? You can’t pick just one.
We don’t need the TSA anymore. Haven’t needed it since probably 2008ish or earlier.
Just return to the pre-9/11 basic security checks at airports (this included a simple metal detector scan) and save billions of dollars and countless hours wasted at airports.
This is a government currently run by corporations. It is trying to be fascist govt.
trump and his sycophants are attempting the following.
What fool could deny this?
Agree, this is more obvious today than it ever has been
President Reagan said to the effect the closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program. As much as we need a smaller more affordable government that performs essential services, that just is not likely because every program is someone’s essential service.
It is odd that Reagan didn’t like government programs till ‘64 when the Democrats were passing civil rights legislation? He sure did like Star Wars, increasing defense spending, raising taxes on the middle and working classes, decreasing taxes for the top 1%, and gutting education.
“It is odd that Reagan didn’t like government programs till ‘64 when the Democrats were passing civil rights legislation”
Just so everyone is clear, Republicans were always more supportive of civil rights legislation than Democrats in the 1950s and 60s. Democrats were the party of the KKK and George Wallace. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation in decades, sought to protect the voting rights of black Americans. It was supported in the House and Senate by over 80% of Republicans, with chief opposition from Southern Democrats. The same is true of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which further strengthened voting rights for blacks. Both of these were signed by President Eisenhower.
Finally the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you mention was passed only because LBJ twisted a lot of Democrat arms to go along with the 80%+ Republican support in both the House and Senate.
Deal with Reagan and his racism instead of obfuscation.
And what happened to your Grand ol’ Plutocrats (GOP) in ‘68 and Nixon’s Southern Strategy of divide and conquer. All those God fearing Southern Democrats in large swaths flipped and went Republican, stayed in the KKK, etc and the politicians too went Republican, white sheets and hoods accessorized at Klan meetings only. Those Democrats that voted for civil rights legislation in the South were minuscule due to the carryover of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. The party of LBJ became the party of Lincoln regarding civil rights and voting rights.
And LBJ’s victory and the nation’s in passing civil rights legislation was primarily done by Northerners from both parties after a bitter and long filibuster fight that lasted longer than a hundred days.
And deal with Ronnie Raygun’s over the top and prolifically obtuse defense spending habits, immiserating the working and middle classes, while enriching his real constituents the powerful and the rich at the expense of what he inherited, namely, a creditor nation that he turned into a debtor nation.
Reagan’s cartoonish presidency is worthy of satire and cynicism as it was displayed for all to see if they wanted to see it in the 80s.
The Reagan Administration until Trump II ‘s is fully prosecuted for their crimes while in office remains the most corrupt administration in the history of the US.
I’m not defending the GOP here, just pointing out we have a Uniparty and voting for Democrats is as stupid as voting for Republicans. Your namesake, FDR, should have been tried for war crimes for his Japanese American internment. He also put Hugo Black, a longtime well-known Ku Klux Klan leader on the Supreme Court. No surprise which justice wrote the Korematsu Supreme Court opinion allowing FDR to put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. As you know Harry Truman dropped two nuclear bombs on civilian areas in Japan.
Yes, Reagan also should have been tried for war crimes, including Iran-Contra, was unquestionably a racist, and pivoted the US from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. But (until Trump) no Democrat or Republican Presidents have ever been charged, let alone convicted of these offenses because we have a Uniparty that protects the establishment. Clinton was impeached over perjury (but not convicted) rather than any of the war crimes he committed (such as Sudan or Kosovo).
Every President commits war crimes. Trump is the worst of the bunch, but has actually been convicted of crimes. He is worse than other presidents, but his main offense is openly admitting the graft, corruption, and war crimes he has committed, which prior Presidents typically hid because of shame.
We will see whether even Trump will be prosecuted for any of his war crimes; I see the odds as infinitesimal.
I’ll be more than willing to shrink the size of government, if you’ll agree to shrink billionaires, oligarchs, oligopolies, Big Oil, TBTF banks, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Tech, private equity, Big Insurance, and every other anti Republican group that has gutted or shredded what remains of the US Constitution.
In the above response it should’ve read in the third line of the above comment response by yours truly and where it says, “and every other anti Republican…..” to correctly read anti republican.