Category: Government
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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Pennsylvania Officials Let Unsent Mail Pile Up For A Month, But Promise Mail Voting Is Super Secure
While Gov. Shapiro attacked Trump during the government shutdown, his own administration was failing to deliver critical info on SNAP and other services through the mail.
DOGE program is successfully shrinking the federal workforce, new jobs report suggests
Following some significant delays due to the Democrat-imposed government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has finally released its long-anticipated jobs report for November and October.
On Tuesday, the November jobs report, including partial data from October, was released, showing an unemployment rate at 4.6%, up 0.2 percentage points since September 2025 and up 0.4 percentage points since November of last year.
‘The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term trajectory.’
The labor market reportedly added 64,000 jobs after losing 105,000 jobs in October, according to available data.
Most of the jobs lost came from the federal government as part of DOGE’s buyout program, which went into effect at the end of September. Government employees who opted into the buyout were still listed as employed until their scheduled exit in October.
RELATED: Yuge win! New jobs report exceeds expectations, reversing Biden-era trends | Blaze Media
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
CNN explained that federal employment dropped precipitously in October, with 162,000 jobs lost, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s work. DOGE’s “fork in the road” deferred resignation policy reportedly went into effect on September 30, though it was established earlier in the year.
The new report was originally scheduled to be released on December 5, but the release was delayed due to the 43-day government shutdown which affected data collection for both October and November.
Given the delays and fragmented data, experts have suggested that the November 2025 jobs report will not pull much weight in the Federal Reserve’s decision-making.
Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told Fox News: “Chair [Jerome] Powell commented last week that the report would likely be affected by shutdown-related distortions, making it a less reliable gauge of the labor market’s health than usual. The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term trajectory.”
The jobs report for December is set to be published on January 9.
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Digital tyrants want your face, your ID … and your freedom
Thomas Sowell’s warning fits the digital age with brutal precision: There are no solutions, only trade-offs. When governments regulate technology, they seize your privacy first. Every “safety” mandate becomes an excuse to collect more personal data, and the result is always the same. Bureaucrats claim to protect you while making you more vulnerable.
Age-verification laws illustrate this perfectly. Discord’s recent breach — more than 70,000 stolen government ID photos taken from a third-party vendor — shows how quickly privacy collapses once platforms are forced to gather sensitive data.
Millions of citizens should not be forced to trade away privacy because policymakers refuse to acknowledge the risks.
To comply with the U.K.’s new Online Safety Act, Discord began collecting users’ documentation. That data became a target, and once breached, attackers reportedly demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom and threatened to publish the stolen IDs. Discord failed to monitor its vendor’s security practices, and thousands paid the price.
Age-verification mandates require digital platforms to confirm a user’s age before granting access to specific content or services. That means uploading government IDs or submitting to facial scans. The stated goal is child safety. The actual effect is compulsory data surrender. These laws normalize the idea that governments can force citizens to hand over sensitive information just to use the internet.
Centralized data collection creates a jackpot for cybercriminals. As the Discord breach proves, one compromise exposes thousands — or millions — of users. Criminals can sell this information, reuse it for identity theft, or weaponize it for blackmail. The problem isn’t a one-off failure. It is structural. Age verification mandates require platforms to create consolidated databases of personally identifying information, which become single points of catastrophic failure.
The libertarian Cato Institute captures the problem: “Requiring age verification creates a trove of attractive data for hackers that could put broader information about users, particularly young users, at risk.”
Governments may insist that the Discord breach was an outlier. It wasn’t. Breaches of sensitive information are predictable in systems designed to aggregate it. Even if the motives behind the U.K.’s age-verification regime were noble, undermining privacy to advance those aims is a trade-off free societies should reject. That is why the Online Safety Act triggered an outcry far beyond the U.K.
And, as usual, legislative mandates fail to achieve their stated goals. Days after the OSA took effect, VPN downloads surged as users — including children — bypassed verification systems. Laura Tyrylyte, Nord Security’s head of public relations, told Wired that “whenever a government announces an increase in surveillance, internet restrictions, or other types of constraints, people turn to privacy tools.” Predictably, age-verification laws encourage evasion instead of compliance.
RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.
mikkelwilliam via iStock/Getty Images
The pattern is simple: Age-verification laws degrade privacy, heighten the risk of identity theft, and fail to keep minors off restricted platforms. They make the internet less safe for everyone.
Meanwhile, policymakers remain determined to spread these mandates in the name of protecting children. The U.K. pioneered the model. Many other governments followed. Twenty-five U.S. states have adopted similar laws. The list grows each month.
But governments cannot treat data breaches as acceptable collateral damage. Millions of citizens should not be forced to trade away privacy because policymakers refuse to acknowledge the risks. The result of this approach will be more surveillance, more breaches, more stolen personal data, and a steady erosion of civil liberties.
Privacy is the backbone of liberty in a digital world. Thomas Jefferson’s warning deserves repetition: “The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.”
Age-verification mandates accelerate that progress — and citizens pay the price.
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