public law 119-98 (13. 503)

Concluding a record-breaking agency shutdown of one hundred fifteen days, with lawmakers withholding money from immigration and customs enforcement hoping to pressure the weaponised bureau to reform after the death of two American citizens, congress, by the slimmest of margins along party lines voted to fund ICE and its parent department of Homeland Security. Arguably worse and further reaching than the Democrats securing no concessions to curb the agency’s thuggery and predatory practises, however, is the way the legislation was passed: with negotiations deadlocked, the GOP moved to sideline the Democrats entirely, bypassing the usual funding process of annual appropriations that require department heads to submit their yearly budget request and argue it before the competent congressional committee—a process that guarantees more oversight on the part of lawmakers—and giving DHS a three-year budget package that will last through the end of Trump’s term, seventy-billion dollars, through a process called reconciliation, an expedited parliamentary procedure used primarily safeguard presidential policy priorities, like the Big Beautiful Bill or Biden’s environmental laws or domestic microchip production, but not to fund government programmes out of cycle from being dismantled by the opposition. The Secure America Act was sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham and signed by Trump immediately upon passage. With only a vanishingly small majority in the House and Senate, more departments and activities favoured by Trump—or the next administration—under this precedent could turn to reconciliation to keep budgets unbeholden going forward and nullify the minority’s ability to leverage influence through a lapse of appropriations.