Another government shutdown deadline is looming, and it looks like Democrats are playing games with the federal budget again - specifically, with the appropriations bill that includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
One of the usual suspects is leading the Democratic resistance.
Congress is racing to advance the last four federal spending bills through the House Rules Committee in time for a floor vote Thursday.
But Democratic opposition to the bill funding Homeland Security for fiscal year 2026 is threatening to stall progress, even as the Jan. 30 government funding deadline looms.
“Without real reforms and accountability, I will not vote to give the Department of Homeland Security another cent,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., posted Wednesday only hours before the committee markup. “Judicial warrants for arrests. Prosecution of officers who violate our constitutional rights. Cooperation with local law enforcement investigations. No more masks.”
Of the 12 annual appropriations bills, three are law, three await the president’s signature, and two more have passed the House.
The remaining four, released Tuesday, fund Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Transportation and Housing and Urban Development; and Homeland Security.
While the demands Democrats are making here are cynical and unreasonable - grandstanding, is what it is - the last item warrants a particular response, which would be along the lines of "Sure, ICE agents will stop wearing masks when leftists stop threatening to kill them and their families."
Because of the hooraw Democrats are raising over this, the DHS funding bill has been released as a stand-alone, while the other bills are being compiled into a minibus.
The Homeland Security appropriations bill keeps funding levels for ICE at $10 billion. It also funds Customs and Border Patrol, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), disaster response agencies and other bipartisan initiatives.
Even though $20 million is set aside to purchase body cameras for federal immigration officers, House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday that members "overwhelmingly" believe the modest accountability measures “aren’t enough.”
It's tempting to point out that this, keeping DHS as a standalone measure, makes it easier in some respects for Democrats to cause trouble by refusing to allow it to pass, partially defunding DHS.
Read More: House Passes New Treasury-State Funding Duo to Dodge Shutdown
The Next Big Spending Bill Is Out, but DHS Funding Is Mysteriously Absent
Feature, or bug? If the DHS funding is not passed when the current funding runs out on January 30th, then DHS can maintain only essential functions. That, very likely, will preclude the kind of mass roundup operations that we've seen in the last year and which, by and large, have been successful despite sometimes riotous and even violent opposition from the left's useful idiots.
House Republicans have a big task ahead of them. The minibus bills, I'm guessing, will pass with little trouble. But this standalone DHS bill? That gives House and, later, Senate Democrats a convenient soapbox, and it's one they will be pushing each other out of the way to climb onto. They will be pulling out all the stops, so House Republicans had better do the same.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned, one and all; the next ten days will tell the tale.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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