Second Shameless Schumer Shutdown Nearing the End
Chuck Schumer’s burgers aren’t cooked all the way through, but he’s calling “dinner time” anyway after the DHS funding bill passed.
Chuck Schumer’s second shutdown is nearly over, as the Senate agreed early this morning to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security. The House still must pass the bill before President Donald Trump can sign it. Left out? Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection. Because Democrats care more about illegal aliens than American citizens.
ICE and CBP were funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, so they’re running just fine, and by using reconciliation, Republicans can now allocate even more money to the two agencies. Democrats shut down the rest of DHS for 42 days and got zero “reform” concessions, either.
Schumer, the New York Democrat who keeps leading Democrats into these box canyons, declared victory anyway. “Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms,” he said of ICE, “and we will continue to fight for those.”
What broke the logjam?
In the immediate term, it might have been Trump’s announcement that he was working on an executive order to “immediately” pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers, who have gone without a paycheck for over a month. Massive numbers of callouts and resignations caused long lines at airports.
“I want to thank our hardworking TSA Agents and also, ICE, for the incredible help they have given us at the Airports,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I will not allow the Radical Left Democrats to hold our Country hostage any longer.”
Democrats tried their darndest to blame Republicans for airport lines, but most people understood which party was blocking funding and deliberately inflicting pain on the American people. Democrats also vilified ICE agents whom Trump sent to airports to help the understaffed TSA, but that backfired — ICE agents were kind and helpful, greatly reducing wait times in many airports and even saving the life of a one-year-old boy.
Schumer would rather slander ICE agents.
“In the wake of the murder of Alex Pretti and Renee Good,” he falsely stated, “Democrats made it clear, no blank check for ICE and Border Patrol.” No agents have or should be charged, must less convicted, of murder in either case. The outcomes were tragic, but both Good and Pretti initiated the circumstances that led to their untimely deaths.
I’m still waiting for Schumer to say anything publicly about the actual murder of Sheridan Gorman by an illegal alien in Chicago this month. He also hasn’t mentioned 83-year-old Air Force veteran Richard Williams, who was shoved onto subway tracks by an illegal in Manhattan — in Schumer’s own state. Ten days later, Williams died of his injuries.
ICE exists to remove such aliens from our country, stopping these entirely preventable crimes. Schumer and the Democrats are angry at ICE for it.
Of Trump’s move to pay TSA agents, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it lifted “the immediate pressure” to reach a deal. That’s a polite way of saying it took away all of the Democrats’ leverage.
Partial funding is somewhat of a victory for Democrats, who didn’t cave. Yet they certainly didn’t win anything. Thune added, “We could be standing here now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms, if Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement. But they didn’t.” As for those “reforms,” Thune thinks “that ship has sailed, and they kind of kissed that opportunity goodbye by … failing to provide funding for those agencies.”
Schumer and the Democrats used to care about border security, supporting a border wall and deportation. Barack Obama was once called the deporter-in-chief. Yet Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their 2021-2025 open border policy changed all that, leaving today’s Democrats as nothing more than an angry mob supporting illegals at the expense of American citizens. That should be shut down, not DHS.
