Trump, his cronies, and his allies in the courts keep undercutting the likelihood of a budget deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security when temporary authority expires at the end of this week. The administration’s threat to use ICE agents at polling places to promote voter suppression only intensifies Democrats’ determination to rein in ICE. The larger context is Trump’s delusion that he lost in 2020 only because of illegal voting by noncitizens.
The proposed SAVE America Act, promoted by far-right Republicans in Congress as their price for agreeing to a DHS funding deal, is part of the same grand delusion. It would require government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Trump’s post on his Truth Social account depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as apes is part of the same syndrome. He can’t accept that Obama won big and he didn’t.
The openly racist post incensed House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who went before the cameras in this clip to declare: “Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an unhinged bottom-feeder.” He called on GOP leaders to “denounce this serial fraudster who’s sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue pretending to be the president.”
On Sunday, Jeffries said on CNN’s State of the Union that he is not willing to compromise on Democrats’ full list of demands and that he had not heard from the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson, or Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
On Tap This story first appeared in the On Tap newsletter, a weekday email featuring commentary on the daily news from Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson.
In one more action that makes a DHS budget deal vanishingly unlikely, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals late Friday overturned at least 3,000 lower-court rulings by some 360 judges and approved the Trump administration’s rule denying detained immigrants the right to release on bond. The administration has embarked on a crash program to build concentration camp–style detention centers. There are now at least 224 such facilities, more than double the number when Trump took office, holding at least 70,000 immigrants in violation of basic due process rights.
The rush to find and convert facilities, in turn, has led to citizen protests in unlikely places. According to The New York Times, in a heavily Republican part of New York’s Hudson Valley, administration officials wanted to convert a former Pep Boys distribution center into a detention facility that could confine as many as 1,500 migrants.
The community rose up in opposition. The Times quotes Steven M. Neuhaus, the local Republican Orange County executive: “Everywhere that this has happened has been kind of a real dumpster fire … it’s not something that we want in this sleepy county.”
ICE has become toxic. In Oklahoma City, the Republican mayor, David Holt, commended the owners of a property for withdrawing from a deal with ICE.
All of this leaves the DHS funding deal on hold and Republicans defending tactics that are being repudiated by more and more Americans. One possibility, according to Democratic sources, is an interim agreement to fund the rest of DHS, but not ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
If anything, Democrats are now likely to go beyond their original list of demands to insist that the administration drop its illegal detention scheme, and keep ICE far away from polling places. All Senate Democrats are now on record in support of the Bernie Sanders amendment to claw back $75 billion in previously appropriated ICE funds and reprogram the money to Medicaid.
“Abolish ICE” has gone from a fringe demand to a logical imperative. The more Republicans cling to ICE, the more public support they will lose.
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