Sean CastenHouse procedure is normally a snoozefest that only insiders care about. But this one is just such a perfect distillation of the incompetence in the GOP, failure of Trump as a leader and weakness of Mike Johnson. Let's roll the video tape:
1. First, DHS hasn't been funded because of the illegal, immoral, murderous behavior by ICE. No members of conscience were willing to fund that agency, especially since they already had 3x their usual budget through the OBBB.
2. "Members of Conscience" = Democrats. Republicans of course have the majority in the House and Senate but passing this bill requires a 60 vote supermajority in the Senate. So they passed an immoral spending bill in the House and stalled in the Senate. Predictably.
3. Dems, led by Rosa DeLauro countered with bill to fund all of DHS except ICE (Coast Guard, FEMA, TSA). Note this would have left ICE with 3x normal funding because of the OBBB. Rs could have taken that as a win. They blocked it.
4. TSA lines got longer, Trump sent ICE goons into airports which predictably became politically toxic so he finally said he'd use $10B slush fund from OBBB to fund TSA. He had that power all along. But because he's an ass, he didn't use it. https://apnews.com/live/tsa-government-shutdown-ice-trump-03-26-2026
Flaming Cheeto@SeanCasten Didn't Kathleen Sebelius get in trouble once due moving funds within HHS when the congressionally approved appropriation had the line items amount for different programs?
@PizzaDemon Yes and that would be illegal. In this case, it is a $10B line item in the OBBB that was worded to afford Presidential discretion. So it's not infinite discretion across all accounts - just from that line item.