The partisan messaging war over the DHS shutdown took a new twist this week in favor of Democrats, as I explained at New York.
Last month, Democrats refused to supply the votes to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration and congressional Republicans agreed to place new guardrails on ICE and other immigration-enforcement agents. Since then, the GOP has tried to blame Democrats for the inevitable chaos. This has included airport delays, as unpaid TSA employees began to take days off, and jitters about FEMA not being prepared to handle natural disasters.
With Trump’s war of choice in Iran, there are fresh fears about threats to DHS’s core mission of defending the homeland against national security threats. Here’s a typical attack from the White House earlier this week:
“As Radical Left Democrats drag the Department of Homeland Security shutdown into its 24th day, everyday Americans are paying the price. Now, as TSA officers work without paychecks for the third time in nearly six months, crippling staffing shortages and hours-long security lines are gripping airports as millions of families head out for spring break …
“It’s not just airports reeling from the effects of the Democrat Shutdown. Democrats have cut off resources and funding for FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and thousands of federal law enforcement officers — jeopardizing America’s border security, maritime safety, and ability to respond to emergencies.”
In the Senate, however, Democrats have managed to turn the tables. As they have repeatedly done, Republicans offered a bill to fund all of DHS, but Democrats this time around offered an amendment, as The Hill reports:
“Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, asked for unanimous consent for a measure to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies. It would not cover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP).”
Predictably, Republicans blocked the Democratic amendment, but it served to mess up the GOP’s talking points. They could no longer claim Democrats wanted Americans to wait in long airport lines or risk exposure to natural disasters. Murray’s Republican counterpart on the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the funding bill, Katie Britt of Alabama, retreated to a much older attack line that didn’t mention TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, or anything other than the masked agents Democrats have been seeking to get under control all along:
“We have political games being played by our Democratic colleagues instead of putting the people of this nation first,” Britt said. “Mr. President, what we’ve just seen put forth by the senator from Washington would effectively defund our law enforcement officers that are charged with keeping Americans safe.” Then Britt added, “Look, we’re not going back to the era of defund police. We’re not doing it.”
She further suggested that Democrats weren’t willing to negotiate over their immigration enforcement demands. But Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called b.s. on that charge.
“We are constantly in communication with the White House,” Schumer said. “It’s not that there’s a lack of means of communication. We’re sending things back and forth. It’s a substantive problem. The White House will not budge on things Americans want like warrants, like de-masking. Plain and simple.”
Instead of being vulnerable to the charge of holding DHS hostage to its demands regarding ICE, Democrats are arguing that it’s Republicans who are holding DHS hostage to its refusal to restrain ICE, despite abundant opportunities to secure funding for the rest of the department. Some Republicans might have hoped that Donald Trump’s decision to throw Kristi Noem under the bus would be enough to end the dispute. No such luck.
