After Dem win on ICE, Rs work around new ICE funding...and ballroom security, too
5-5 UPDATE: Dems held out for reform...and won, and TSA and Coast Guard are funded, but not ICE. Yet. And Rs find another way to fund ICE.
UPDATE 5/5: Republicans plan new billion dollar ICE funding to also include “security” funding for Trump’s new ballroom, although so far not for the ballroom itself. Read more here.
UPDATE 5/3 : Dems win. After 75 days of holding out on ICE reforms, Trump finally leaned on the Johnson’s incalcitrant House to pass the bill the Senate had passed twice to fund all of Homeland Security (yes, including TSA) but not ice. Trump signed the bill immediately. Next step: House Republican leaders ultimately clawed together support by promising to facilitate yet another reconciliation bill later this year that could incorporate hard-liners’ policy wishlist — the third this Congress, counting the massive tax-and-spending megabill the GOP enacted last summer. See info on record ICE funding from the OBBB last July below.
UPDATE 4/30: With the WH putting pressure on Johnson and his intransigents, House Republicans stayed late last night to work on a compromise with a possible vote today.
Thought that was solved, right? Wrong. Whatever slush fund Trump et al found is about gone, and this time it’s the House that isn’t budging after two Senate-approved bills. Here’s the recap:
Feb 14: Dems fund all of government except DHS, holding out for policy reforms to ICE, including accountability, uniforms and ID; banning racial profiling, requiring judicial warrants before entering private property. See the list of demands here.
That started a partial government shutdown affecting DHS only. (Keep in mind the July 2025 OBBB provided $75B in new funding for ICE over four years, bumping the ICE budget from around $10 billion to over $28B. However, FEMA, CISA, and Coast Guard were left unfunded as well as TSA in this partial shutdown.)
Mid-March: TSA employees missed their first paycheck. The average TSA salary is $50K—about $25/hour. These are not people with disposable income and lots of savings, and by then we had historic airport wait times as sick calls and resignations hit. (As of now, TSA has lost over 1,100 employees—and that’s before whatever hits this time around. Oh, and the 2027 budget will cut another 10K TSA positions to save $1.5B—undoubtedly another major morale booster for TSA employees.)
March 26: With negotiations stalled in Congress (but Congressional travel getting impacted), Trump declared an “unprecedented emergency situation," signing an order to pay TSA agents out of DHS funds while the Senate—where all this started—continued to negotiate.
April 24: Markwayne Mullin (DHS) told FOX News that DHS has used all the available emergency funds and would run out of TSA funding options in early May.
In the meantime, the sometimes-adults in the Senate passed not one but two bipartisan funding approaches as they tried to corral the House. Both fully funded DHS—first still leaving ICE out, but with a later path to do that, too, leaving room for negotiations on Dem demands, which continue to play well in polls. (And perhaps hoping Mullins will come up with enough moderation to take off the heat). The hold-up now is completely in the House, where a rapidly-losing control Mike Johnson appears unable to get his members to agree on anything. Even the WH is leaning on him in rare display of displeasure with the speaker.
So—stay tuned, particularly if you’re traveling. The only good news is that June starts FIFA World Cup travel to several U.S. host cities, with as many as 7 million visitors expected. That should finally get things moving; you would think even Johnson’s intransigents can’t fight soccer fans.