Category: The Hill
Senate bill would give nearly $6 billion to refugee programs despite record-low intake numbers
An appropriations bill could allocate billions in funding to refugee programs after temporary government funding expires.
Congress passed a clean funding extension in November 2025 that expires on January 30, 2026, when new funding allocation could take place.
‘These programs provide a variety of benefits and services to refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants.’
This possibility has conservatives pointing out issues with legislation like a Senate appropriations bill, first proposed in July, for fiscal year 2026.
The bill, which allocates funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and “related agencies,” has garnered significant attention from online researchers regarding its allocation of funds to refugee programs.
“Hey guys, all those insane ‘refugee assistance’ grants I’m always tweeting? The [GOP] is about to supercharge the funds,” wrote Oilfield Rando, an X account with more than 235,000 followers.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Particularly, conservatives online have taken issue with the bill’s recommendations for “Refugee and Entrant Assistance,” for which the committee recommends $5.691 billion.
“These programs provide a variety of benefits and services to refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, immigrants arriving on Special Immigrant Visas [SIV], trafficking victims, and torture victims,” the bill reads.
A whopping $564 million of those funds is recommended for “Transitional and Medical Services,” while providing grants to states and “nonprofit organizations to provide cash and medical assistance to arriving refugees, as well as foster care services to unaccompanied minors.”
More than $300 million is recommended for “Refugee Support Services.”
The Senate committee argued in the document that HHS needs to ensure funding for resettlement agencies so that they can maintain their infrastructure and capacity at a level to continue to serve “new refugees, previously arrived refugees,” and others who are eligible for “integration services.”
Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
According to the Baker Institute, the Trump administration set the refugee cap at 7,500 for fiscal year 2026, the lowest in U.S. history. This is reportedly a 94% reduction from the 125,000 cap that the Biden administration set for FY 2025.
President Trump famously admitted 59 South African refugees into the United States in May; however, there have been no other major intakes by the administration over the course of 2025.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations is majority Republican, with 15 Republicans and 14 Democrats.
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Forget ‘Die Hard’ — ‘Brazil’ is the ultimate Christmas movie
The cultural powers that be determined long ago that a film needn’t deal directly with the Nativity of our Lord and Savior to qualify as a “Christmas movie.”
Many films apparently qualify simply by virtue of their plot events’ proximity to December 25, their festive backdrops, and their occasional visual reference to Coca-Cola Claus, starred pines, and/or the birth of God.
In a way, the Christmas imagery does visually what the movie’s eponymous theme song does sonically: tease at something lovely and wonderful beyond the nightmare.
Rest assured as the bare-footed cop wastes German terrorists at his estranged wife’s office party; as the two burglars repeatedly fall prey to an abandoned adolescent’s mutilatory traps; and as the inventor’s son unwittingly turns his Chinatown-sourced present into a demon infestation — these are indeed Christmas movies.
Given the genre’s flexible criteria, Terry Gilliam’s 1985 masterpiece “Brazil” also qualifies.
State Santa
In truth, the Python alumnus’ film about a bureaucrat’s maddening investigation of his totalitarian government’s execution of the wrong man is a far stronger entry than “Die Hard,” “Home Alone,” “Gremlins,” and other such flicks.
Not only is there Christmastime imagery throughout, but such visuals are also of great importance, providing insights both into the treachery of the film’s principal antagonist — the state — as well as into what appears missing in Gilliam’s dystopian world.
In the opening scene, a man pushes a cart full of wrapped presents past a storefront window framed by tinsel and crowded with “Merry Christmas” signage, television sets, and baubles.
Next we enter an apartment where a mother reads “A Christmas Carol” to her daughter, a father wraps a present, and a boy plays at the foot of a well-dressed evergreen.
After numerous scenes featuring gift exchanges, mutterings of “Happy Christmas,” and Christmas trees, we meet a kindly faced man dressed as Santa.
Jingle hells
This is, however, no feel-good Christmas movie.
The storefront window is firebombed.
Armored police storm into the family’s apartment, jab a rifle in the father’s gut, and take him away in a bag while his wife screams in horror.
The gifts exchanged and piling up throughout the film — besides the offers of job promotions and plastic surgery — appear to all be versions of the same novelty device, a meaningless “executive decision-maker.”
The kindly faced man dressed as Santa is a propaganda-spewing government official who rolls into the protagonist Sam Lowry’s padded cell on a wheelchair to inform Lowry — played by Jonathan Pryce — that his fugitive lover is dead.
With exception to the heart-warming domestic scene interrupted by the totalitarian bureaucracy’s jackboots at the beginning of the film, the Christmas imagery rings hollow and for good reason.
Extra to dehumanizing workplaces, purposefully meaningless work, bureaucratic red tape, and paperwork that’s so bad it ends up killing Robert DeNiro’s character — at least by the tortured protagonist’s account — the regime’s population-control scheme relies on consumerism.
The regime has, accordingly, done its apparent best to empty Christmas of the holy day’s real significance and meaning, donning it as a costume to sell and control.
RELATED: Santa Claus: Innocent Christmas fun or counterfeit Jesus?
Beyond the nightmare
“Brazil” is not, however, an anti-Christmas film.
The emptiness of the costume prompts reflection about its proper filling — a reflection that should invariably lead one to Christ.
In a way, the Christmas imagery does visually what the movie’s eponymous theme song does sonically: tease at something lovely and wonderful beyond the nightmare Gilliam once dubbed “Nineteen Eighty-Four-and-a-Half.”
“I had this vision of a radio playing exotic music on a beach covered in coal dust, inspired by a visit to the steel town of Port Talbot. Originally the song I had in mind was Ry Cooder’s ‘Maria Elena,’ but later I changed it to ‘Aquarela do Brasil’ by Ary Barroso,” Gilliam told the Guardian.
“The idea of someone in an ugly, despairing place dreaming of something hopeful led to Sam Lowry, trapped in his bureaucratic world, escaping into fantasy.”
Whereas the recurrent theme from the samba references a fantasy the regime can crush, the various indirect reminders that Christmas is about more than presents and half-hearted niceties reference a hidden truth and source of eternal hope: that God was born in Bethlehem.
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ROOKE: Democrats Willing To Chase Political Pipe Dream Straight Off A Cliff
The opportunity cost for Democrats is staggering
