With their support for continuing the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security during a time of war against a leading sponsor of global terrorism, are Donald Trump and Mike Johnson making you feel safer?
The United States Senate, in a 100-0 unanimous consent procedure, passed a measure to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and fund all its departments except ICE and Customs and Border Patrol.
To remind readers, this was done because Senate Democrats are rightly demanding reforms to both ICE and Customs and Border Enforcement because some of their agents, under guidance from Mr. Trump’s white nationalist minions like Stephen Miller and Tom Hohman, have run amok, displaying Gestapo-type behavior on America’s streets that have resulted in the injuries and deaths of innocent people, including American Citizens.
Readers should also be reminded that ICE and Customs and Border Enforcement personnel, unlike other people on the DHS payroll, like TSA agents at the nation’s airports, are still getting paid due to provisions passed in the Big Billionaires White Nationalist First Bill, giving them $75 billion.
So when Mike Johnson and his MAGA allies in the House go before the American People, at the behest of Donald Trump and repeat discredited assertions about the border during the Biden/Harris years, what the Senate passed in a 100 to 0 vote, would open up the borders and compromise public safety and security; they are lying to them.
Trump has issued an Executive Order to pay the TSA agents starting on Monday.
About f—ing time.
Hope the order includes paying for the Coast Guard who are supposed to patrol the nation’s coastlines to stop threats to the country from entering.
Or FEMA, whose people help provide disaster relief.
The House, in a 213 to 203 vote, passed a two-month continuing resolution to fund all of DHS and kicked it back up to the Senate, where it is undoubtedly dead on arrival.
Arizona’s House Democrats did not mince words, blasting Johnson and MAGA Republicans for their blind obedience to Trump and his authoritarian agenda.
Calling Mike Johnson “pathetic” and a “joke” in two separate posts, Representative Yassamin Ansari released two additional videos online.
In the first one before the House vote, she said:
“Hey guys, so I should be in the sky right now heading back to Phoenix to go to the No King’s Rally tomorrow, but as always, Republicans led by Mike Johnson are so incompetent and so unwilling to do their jobs that we are trapped here with no real indication of when we’re getting out. And here’s what’s going on. So 41 days ago, we found ourselves in yet another Republican partial government shutdown, this time because of DHS.
We refused to spend another dollar funding ICE until significant changes are made, and this came after the murders of Alex Pretty and Renee Nicole Goode. So for 41 days, we’ve had this shutdown, but DHS isn’t just ICE, right? So it includes FEMA, it includes TSA, includes the Coast Guard, and other critical agencies that keep Americans safe. So TSA agents, for example, missed their first paycheck recently, which is devastating.
Right at the beginning of this shutdown, Democrats put forward a bill that would separate ICE out and ensure that everybody else gets paid so that we can move forward and that these hardworking Americans don’t have to feel the stress of not getting their paychecks. Republicans refused to do anything about that. So not only were they refusing to negotiate on ICE specifically, they were also refusing to separate ICE to make sure the rest of these people get paid.
Then suddenly a few days ago, Donald Trump said, actually, I’m going to go ahead and make sure TSA gets paid, which I guess he could have done all along but chose not to because he wanted to be cruel. And last night, Senate Democrats were successful in separating ICE finally from everything else and voting to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. Great news.
So we should right now be voting on that. But instead, the Republican Party is in complete disarray. The Freedom Caucus members are furious because of course they want to keep paying ICE so that ICE can keep terrorizing people and murdering American citizens.
Mike Johnson cannot control his caucus. So we’ll likely have votes late tonight. They’ve said we could also have votes tomorrow.
We don’t know. I will keep you posted, but I’m really hoping we can get these votes done. We can get TSA paid. And tomorrow I will be hopefully on a plane back to Phoenix to be with our community and fight back against no kings in this country, no ICE, and no war.”
Just before the vote, she released her second video, laced with colorful metaphors, criticizing Johnson for licking Trump’s authoritarian boots in proceeding with the DHS shutdown, saying:
“I’m walking to go vote right now and just mulling over how sad this whole situation is that on a Friday night at 11 p.m we are voting on some bullshit continuing resolution that Mike Johnson has put forward that is entirely different than what the senate passed last night. The Senate passed a funding bill 100 to 0 so every single senator voted for it to fund TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard so all of the unfunded parts of DHS not including ICE and CBP which is great after 41 days of a partial government shutdown they passed this late into the night we could have taken it on today and passed the exact same thing to make sure that people who are just trying to make a living and keeping our airport safe can get paid but for whatever reason I mean we know the reason it’s because Donald Trump told Mike Johnson not to do it and Mike Johnson is a shitty leader who is pretty much held hostage by the freedom caucus the most extremist people in the Republican caucus and also only does what Donald Trump wants so what he’s doing now is trying to pass a 60-day continuing resolution including funding for ICE and CBP with no reforms and no guardrails even after ICE has been terrorizing communities across this country assaulting people murdering U.S. citizens and I could go on so it’s just uh just really a sad sad sad sad state of affairs that we are in and especially on the House side Mike Johnson has been such a disappointment he’s such a pathetic leader who does not care about people at all and throughout this entire second Trump administration all he does is listen to Donald Trump so there’s essentially no Congress like we’ve given up all of our power because of so those are the two votes we’re taking at 11 p.m on a Friday night which means that you know the senate has gone gone home they’re not in session so what we’re doing is punting back this resolution to them um I mean I’m not voting for it democrats aren’t voting for it but it’ll pass unless some Republicans decide to grow a spine and that’s it that’s where we’re at folks so we gotta go to No Kings tomorrow we gotta speak up we gotta be very loud because we have an authoritarian in the White House who is destroying this country”
Before the vote, Representative Adelita Grijalva issued a statement that read:
“Republicans cannot get their act together, and every day people are paying the price. After weeks of holding TSA employees hostage, Senate Republicans finally came to their senses and joined Democrats in passing a clean DHS funding bill that does not include additional funding for ICE. Unfortunately, MAGA House Republicans are rejecting this bill, choosing to withhold pay from federal employees and wreak havoc at our airports because they demand that ICE – an agency that has murdered U.S. citizens in cold blood – be given a blank check. Republicans own this shut down, plain and simple.”
Like Ansari, she also released a video on social media, offering:
“Yep, that’s 10 o’clock. Yep, that’s Leader Jeffries and I’m here in DC waiting to vote on the DHS funding bill. So the Senate passed a funding bill that Democrats could support, basically funding all of TSA, Coast Guard, all of the other departments except for ICE and CPP.
Now it’s not perfect, but it’ll give us an opportunity to really negotiate what Democrats need and what we need in our community, which is to rein in ICE. But House Republicans and Mike Johnson have opted instead to put forward a continuing resolution, a CR, which basically continues to extend funding for everything for 60 days. And if that passes, what will happen is right around Memorial Day and a lot of summer travel, we’ll be dealing with this same situation all over again, because Republicans cannot govern.
So what we are dealing with here is the reality that nothing that we do today is going to fix what’s happening in TSA. And we just heard that Trump signed an executive order to pay TSA tomorrow, starting Monday. Well, if he could do that, why didn’t he do that the last 41 days? So I just think you have to ask yourself, when the narrative flips that this is the Democrats’ fault, let’s remember Democrats have been working very clearly on what we need in order to vote in favor of extending the DHS funding for everything else.
Republicans are the ones that are doing these shady deals at this time of night and pushing forward something that the Senate has already voted down multiple times. So this won’t fix the problem. The Democrats are here working and I’ll stay here until the votes are done.”
Representative Greg Stanton spoke on the House floor before the vote, stating:
“We should have voted today. We should have voted yesterday, last week, last month to fund every department for Homeland Security, but not more money for ICE without changes. That’s what House Democrats are fighting for. This morning, the Senate passed a bill unanimously to do just that. Every single Senator, Democrat and Republican. Speaker Johnson called that Senate bill ‘a joke.’ Let me tell you what’s not a joke. Cybersecurity experts going without pay on the same day Iran hacked the Director of the F.B.I. FEMA being dismantled in real time. TSA agents launching GoFundMe accounts to pay for gas and groceries. Instead of taking up the Senate bill, House Republicans are choosing to give even more money to Trump’s mass deportation machine beyond the $75 billion slush fund they gave ICE last summer. No accountability. No oversight. No limits. Let’s be clear about what’s happening. DHS is shut down because Republicans are refusing to listen to the vast majority of the American People who want to see changes to ICE. I urge my colleagues to vote no.”
Earlier, Stanton released the below statement from the New Democrat Coalition blaming Mike Johnson for the continuation of the DHS shutdown.
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