Category: Shut down
Democrats threaten to shut down government over ICE funding: ‘We are not powerless’
Democrats have worked energetically in recent months to demonize and delegitimize the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — those whom Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz branded as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”
This messaging campaign helped set the stage for deadly confrontations such as those that led to Renee Good’s death on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti’s death on Saturday.
‘I won’t vote to fund murder.’
Now Democratic lawmakers — who wouldn’t dream of letting a crisis go to waste — are threatening to shut down the government in order to starve the Department of Homeland Security of funds.
“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” said Democrat U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. “Democrats sought common-sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”
Schumer noted further that Senate Democrats “will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar echoed Schumer and signaled opposition to the so-called “ICE funding bill” as well — and numerous other anti-ICE Democrats followed suit.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, for example, vowed to “do everything” he can to prevent the deployment of federal law enforcement in American cities, noting “that starts with voting no on DHS’s budget this week.”
Ruben Gallego, another Democratic U.S. senator from Arizona, put it bluntly: “I won’t vote to fund murder in the name of law enforcement.”
Democrat U.S. Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, “I’m not voting to fund this lawless violence. Trump’s abuse of power is tearing us apart.”
“The Senate should not vote to keep funding this rampage,” wrote U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.). “We are not powerless.”
The House of Representatives passed a three-bill minibus appropriations package in a 341-88 vote Thursday, which would fund the Departments of War, Labor, Transportation, Health and Human services, Education, and related agencies. In a separate vote of 220-207, the House reportedly also passed a funding bill for the DHS, which would allocate $64.4 billion to the department, including $10 billion for ICE.
‘The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again.’
The four spending bills were combined with a pair of measures previously passed in the House then sent to the Senate for approval ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated that the DHS funding measure would not be decoupled from the others, reported NBC News.
While the Senate was expected to vote on the funding package Monday evening, Thune spokesperson Ryan Wrasse indicated the vote would be postponed until Tuesday “due to the impending weather event that is expected to impact a significant portion of the country.”
In order to avoid a filibuster and pass the spending package, Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate where they have only 53 members — including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has a habit of voting against spending bills.
As of Sunday, the likelihood of another U.S. government shutdown by Jan. 31 was 76%, according to Polymarket.
Just days before Pretti’s fatal shooting by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer, President Donald Trump told Fox Business, “I think we have a problem because I think we’re going to probably end up in another Democrat shutdown.”
“The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again. That’s my feeling,” continued the president. “We’ll see what happens.”
The most recent government shutdown was the longest in the nation’s history, lasting from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025 — a total of 43 days.
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Trump uses tariff revenue to protect poor mothers and kids hurt by Democrats’ shutdown
Using the revenue of some of the tariffs that liberal critics have fought vigorously, President Donald Trump has helped vulnerable American mothers and, in the process, neutralized some of Democrats’ supposed “leverage” in what is nearly the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) recently admitted that while the Democrat-induced government shutdown has been painful for families across the country, it is somehow necessary because “it is one of the few leverage times [Democrats] have.”
In their quest for leverage, Democrats have jeopardized critical food assistance and health care for the nearly seven million poor American pregnant mothers, breastfeeding mothers, infants, and at-risk children who rely on the special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program known as WIC.
‘American families deserve certainty from their government.’
The WIC program, which received roughly $7 billion in fiscal year 2024, is federally funded through the annual appropriations process. The National WIC Association warned last month that unless additional funding was injected into the program, millions of families would lose their benefits as of Nov. 1.
“NWA is calling on the White House to make additional emergency funds available to avoid a short-term crisis for the millions of American families who count on WIC while Congress negotiates full-year funding for FY 2026,” Georgia Machell, president of the NWA, said in an Oct. 21 statement.
“WIC is a lifeline for nearly 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children. Even short-term disruption to WIC’s healthy food benefits, lactation support, nutrition education, screenings, and referrals can have long-term negative impacts on families,” added Machell.
On Friday, the Trump administration tapped a fund of unused Section 232 tariff revenue in order to make $450 million available for the WIC program, reported Reuters.
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Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Federal funding records reportedly show that the money was transferred to the WIC program on Friday from the tariff revenue fund, which was made available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commodity disaster assistance. The USDA drew $300 million from the same fund last month to keep the WIC program liquid.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated last month, “The Trump White House will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry because of the Democrats’ political games.”
Machell noted in the wake of the White House’s rescue of the program that “this additional funding is a welcome relief, but it is a stopgap, not a solution,” stressing the need for an end to the shutdown.
“American families deserve certainty from their government, not the constant anxiety of short-term fixes, especially when their children’s health is at stake,” said Machell.
While the administration swooped in to bolster the WIC program, it did not similarly drain its pool of tariff revenues to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, having indicated that it lacks the authority to use emergency funds for SNAP.
Not only did the transfer temporarily deprive Democrats of the ability to use American pain as political leverage, it served as yet another point in favor of Trump’s tariffs.
House Democrats prophesied in April that Trump’s tariff policy would lead to economic collapse. Even though such calamity has yet to manifest, Senate Democrats passed resolutions last week to eliminate some of the president’s global and country-specific tariffs, namely those imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
According to an Oct. 31 report from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank focused on tax policy, “Trump’s imposed tariffs will raise $2.4 trillion in revenue over the next decade on a conventional basis” and had raised $174 billion in revenue between January and September of this year.
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