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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:30]
B
Hey everybody, Tim O from the Bulwark here with our friend Andrew Egger, who writes a Morning Shots newsletters. You can sign up for the Bulwark.com and this morning's newsletter was really tickling my pickle. And let me explain why the headline is don't look now, but Dems are Winning the DHS Funding Fight. And a big reason why I was interested in his take on this is because there's mostly complaints about the Democratic leadership. That's mostly all you hear from conservatives don't like them. Liberals don't like them. Socialists don't like them. Nobody likes them. Nobody thinks that. And I've got my complaints, you know. But you hear mostly complaints about the Democratic leadership. How feckless they are. And yet the first shutdown effort, I was the rare voice in the wilderness saying, seemed like a strategic victory. You know, we didn't save the country from fascism or give everybody the perfect health care. But just as a kind of a minor strategic win, it was a minor strategic Win. And now we have another one coming up here and some people are upset. They end up kicking the can two weeks on DHS funding while funding the rest of the government. But inside that deal was a lot of W's. And since people don't hear that, I would like for them to hear your pitch on this. Andrew, why are there a lot of W's in this deal?
- [02:48]
C
So there's a couple of things here. One, before we talk about the DHS stuff, there is actually some stuff in this package that Democrats are happy about. They've sort of reinstated some spending on HIV programs, on K through 12 school spending, things like this that they were unhappy with, like doge related slashing to last year. There's some clawbacks of that sort of stuff. But the main event here is what's going on with ICE funding and DHS in general. There have been some progressives who have basically characterized any ongoing money to the Department of Homeland Security or to ICE at all going forward. Given how badly they're all behaving, behaving as sort of capitulation on the part of the Democrats. That has not been my read of it certainly. I think that what we have seen last week was we saw Democrats make a pretty big stink about reauthorizing DHS money. So much so that they kind of ground, you know, normal appropriations process to a halt. They were, the Republicans wanted to pass a tranche of six different appropriations bills altogether that was going to be for the Department of Defense, for the, for treasury, for State, for the Department of Labor, for Health and Human Services. I think one other that I'm forgetting off the top of my head and maybe the 6 was just DHS. They wanted DHS in there as well. They were not able to pass that. That died in the Senate because Democrats opposed it and some Republicans crossed over and opposed it as well. So basically what we have seen instead is that we had a couple of days of, of partial government shutdown which are now set to end because Congress is, is agreeing to fund all of that stuff except for dhs, except for dhs. DHS is going to have two weeks of funding after which point it expires again. So, so instead of this being a situation like the last government shutdown, which where Democrats have to be willing to stand firm and hang together and shut down basically the entire government in order to get this policy priority that they want, instead they're going to get the fight that they actually want to get here, which is everything else is staying funded at one level or another. And we are actually going to hash out what to do about ICE before specifically the Department of Homeland Security gets funded over the next couple of weeks.
- [05:06]
B
Yeah. And I'll just say before we get into kind of what the contours of this debate are. I've said this a million times in the pod, but it's just worth restating. I don't think that the problems inherent in ICE and CBP are going to be resolved without clawing back the funding they've already received. There are things that you can do around the edges to protect people's rights, and I think Democrats should try to do that. I think there's a long term fight about what to do about ICE and CBP and whether that is, you know, using the catchphrase, abolish ice, or whether it is dramatically, you know, scaling back its scope, you know, and its budget and limiting it to actual southern border work. You know, and there's a lot of, like, debate ahead. None of that is going to happen like this. The other stuff has been allocated. Like, they already. They already budgeted enough money for ice, you know, so that they have more money than the US Marine Corps. So, like, that is. That can be an opening negotiating point here. But, like, that stuff's not gonna be called back. The question is like, what now for going forward and what Schumer. What now for going forward in the short term while Republicans still control everything, which is basically this year, and Schumer has put forth some specific things they want. So why don't you go through that?
- [06:25]
C
Yeah, so there's a few things. Basically what's happening here is that Democrats are realizing that in this specific case, that there is actually a certain amount of, like, real Republican squeamishness about the way that ICE has been behaving and Border Patrol has been behaving and in particular with this Minneapolis stuff. So. So what Schumer and the Democrats have put forward as sort of their starting negotiating position is if you want to get DHS refunded with votes from us, you need to. You need to claw back some of the obscene, insane stuff that's happening. You need to no longer let ICE go about masked and anonymous and badgeless. You need them to be wearing body cameras. You need to put some systems in place that ensure to our satisfaction that any misconduct is investigated by an independent, impartial investigator, that there are rules of professional conduct that we all know and can see that they will be held to. And then perhaps the most important thing, that ICE will agree to end or DHS will be compelled to end by law these sorts of broad sweeps of the sort that we saw in Minneapolis, where it was not just targeted enforcement against known aliens, but just sort of stop and frisk for any brown people you see for your papers in the streets of Minneapolis. An end to that kind of broad sweep enforcement and an end to ICE's new insane policy of. Of entering homes and vehicles without judicial warrants. So that's. I mean, if you wanted to kind of go down the list of, like, the worst constitutional outrages that the body has been engaging in this year, you know, set aside the, like, normal immigration policy concerns about whether it's, like, a good thing to try to get, you know, undocumented immigrants who don't have criminal records, who have been here for decades. You know, they're embedded in their communities. Set all that stuff aside and just talk about the stuff that is like, offenses against sort of like, the constitutional order and against sort of like good government policing and accountability for these people. That's the kind of stuff that they're targeting right now in this fight in a way that I think is pretty helpful.
- [08:32]
B
Now, you mentioned there's some Republican squeamishness, and there is. And so I think, look, I think this is good turf for the Democrats to fight on. I'm glad they're finally on offense on the immigration issue. It's been something I've been wanting for a year. I think the American people are, like, broadly with them on the stuff that you just laid out, like, maybe if they're against them on some other elements of immigration policy, particularly around the border or even some other parts of deportation policy. But, like, when it comes to, like, the manner in which ICE is acting and their overreach, you know, these are winning issues for the Democrats. There are still going to be a lot of Republicans to be squeamish. I mean, there are 47 Democrats, and one of them is Mark John Fetterman. So, you know, you need 14, 13 or 14 Republicans to vote for these reforms. I'm not sure how hard Stephen Miller and J.D. vance are going to fight it, you know, in the Senate. And I think that is a big question here. You know, you saw the White House fold on Epstein. The White House has folded a few times before and just not felt like it was worth it to fight on the Hill, though. This is a pretty central issue to them and to their agenda. I don't know. I think that it's a good political turf for Democrats to fight on, regardless where they actually get the reforms. You seem slightly more bullish than I am that they're actually going to get the reforms.
- [09:50]
C
Well, I don't think anybody really knows how far they will be able to push this. I mean, I think that is the thing that we're going to find out over the next couple of weeks. Right. Is how much juice can they squeeze out of this issue. I think that they are right to think that. That DHS has not yet been pushed, or the right to think that Republicans have not yet been pushed as far as they can be pushed on this thing, if only because Republicans themselves are kind of in retreat. They're kind of backtracking. You've already seen the White House swap out the kind of, like, cartoonishly evil Minneapolis leadership for people who at least suggest that they will be operating in a more sane way. You've already seen Kristi Noem agree that going forward, DHS Border Patrol ICE will be wearing body cameras as they're doing enforcement. So obviously they are already scrambling. They are already on the back foot. And I think the idea here is to. Is to get to as sort of narrow a pressure point as you can, where, again, this, I think, is to the Democrats benefit that they're not shutting down the whole government to do this. They're just saying, if you want money for DHS specifically, this is what you need to do to earn our votes. And maybe they won't get every one of those things. Maybe they will get some of those things. Maybe, maybe they will even decide to keep DHS in particular shut down for a while. But, I mean, they have so many more levers here and so many more kind of like procedural maneuvers to work with than I thought they would get. I didn't. I did not think they were going to succeed in carving out this one thing and being able to stake the fight. I honestly thought that the Republican strategy was going to be basically the same as it was during the first shutdown, which was maximize the number of things that get shut down and maximize the amount of different pain points and then continue to say, can you believe that food stamps are still being implicated by the fact that Democrats won't just get with the ball, get with the program and fund the government. We're not gonna see that kind of thing here. And we also don't know how much wiggle room there's just gonna be among Republicans here. So I think that even though we don't know the outcome here, I think that we know enough by this point to say that this was a smart place for Democrats to pick this Fight and we'll see what happens.
- [11:54]
B
Yeah, okay. The last thing is there will be folks on the Democratic side who take a maximalist position on this that, you know, at some level I'm going to be sympathetic to. Right. At least at a rhetorical level, which is I can't provide my vote for anything that funds any of this at all. And so, you know, even if they do make some changes, you know, what's the old, like the old meme that you see on leftist Twitter? It's like Republicans want to do war crimes. Like Democrats, you know, want more lawyers to monitor the war crimes. Like, you know, there's that sort of evidence, right. Like this thing of like just putting body cams on these guys, like really achieve anything, you know, if the funding is still there for dhs, I think that there's something to be said for that. I think there's something to be said to take a strong position on this. And I think that that strong position is why they need to extract like real concessions, like not simply the body camps, but, but many of the other things you mentioned, maybe not every single thing on that list, but real concessions if they're going to support this. And then I think they put themselves in kind of a win win position where either Republicans continue to advance these noxious, unpopular policies that even their own members realize is hurting them, or like there are some tangible changes on the streets that we all can notice and see and feel where it's not perfect, it's not what we want. But you know, at least mass goons aren't banging down the door of people's houses and saying their boss gave them a warrant to do it. Yeah, yeah.
- [13:26]
C
I mean, just, just to give my personal opinion on this stuff, I really do think that, that some of that sort of progressive talk, like, it's all worthless unless we get like the whole enchilada here. And like anything short of abolishing ICE is not sufficient for our purposes, it really does undersell the degree to which some actual policy changes, if implemented, would make things better in the immediate term. You know, you are not going to abolish ICE under, under Republican controlled House, Senate and presidency. Sorry, it's just not gonna happen. Even fully starved, even just fully refusing to advance a DHS funding bill from the fact that it's called a DHS funding bill. You might think that if you just refuse to pass this thing, ICE can't keep operating under any auspices, but that's not really true. There's a lot of money in the big beautiful bill from last year that is already appropriated for ICE and for DHS to do a lot of different things. It's not like you shut them down by just refusing to pass this bill. So I think that, that like incremental. Incremental. Incremental progress is a good thing, right? I mean, it is actually good to be able to like force the other side to give you policy wins it by. By using these different procedural levers. And I just don't really. I just don't really. It's a difference of opinion, I guess it's a difference of opinion. But if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're in there to legislate, I think you should use your legislative powers to try to make things better for the people who are around you. Even if. Even if the only thing you actually have the ability to do is do that in small ways for now and hope you get more power later and can do it in a bigger way later. But if ICE is an agency that is tasked with enforcing current immigration law, I would prefer for them to enforce current immigration law in a way that's legal and accountable and with some oversight, rather than what they have been doing in the past. I would see that as a significant step in the right direction, regardless of what fight is going to come next about whether the body is going to exist in the future in any.
- [15:24]
B
Wow. Corporate centrist sellout cuck Andrew Egger just wants things to get a little better for people. You just want things to get better. God. All right, well, it's one man's opinion. That's one man's opinion. I appreciate it though. It's good, I think, to get out in the ether the perspective that some progress is being made because there's plenty of catastrophizing happening on this YouTube channel.
- [15:47]
C
And if people want to be mad, they could still fuck it up and it could still happen, right?
- [15:51]
B
We.
- [15:51]
C
In two weeks we could be furious by the way all this has gone, but I do think there's a real opportunity here that shouldn't be discounted. That's all.
- [15:57]
B
If you are watching this and you're saying, fuck that redhead ginger dictatorship is inevitable and all we need to do is use maximum pain back at them. The podcast I did with Bob Kagan is a podcast for you, so you go check that out. Bob Kagan is, boy. I mean, he's alarmist. He's the alarmism that you might need in your veins right now. So go check that out. Andrew, I appreciate you. It's a great newsletter, everybody. Go check it out. We'll be talking to y' all soon. Subscribe to the feed. Hi, everybody. It's Andy and James here from your next favorite podcast. No such thing as a fish. That's right. We do fun facts. Yes, we do. James, give me a fact. Did you know that there is an extinct bandicoot whose official scientific name is. Is Crash Bandicoot? Lovely. I didn't know that. Did you know, James, that Upper Egypt is technically below Lower Egypt? Incredible. Absolutely amazing. I would love to hear more about that. Well, all you have to do is go and listen to no such thing as a fish. Where will I find it? Oh, all over. Okay, bye. Bye.