John Thune’s Flopsweat about Funding Stephen Miller’s Gulag
Amid all the warmongering last week, there was an interesting head fake in the Senate.
On Tuesday, JD Vance went to a Senate lunch (rather than the Situation Room meeting on Iran) at which he told them the deadline for passing was the August recess — starting August 4.
On Wednesday, Susie Wiles went for a very short visit to the Senate to order them to get the whole thing done by July 4.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is encouraging Congress to get the “big, beautiful bill” to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
Wiles told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch that the Independence Day deadline still holds as far as Trump is concerned, according to a person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.
I started to write a long post (piggybacking on this one) about how the various timelines — the legal responses to Trump’s abuses and the economic impact of his disastrous policy choices — might make it harder to codify key parts of his abuses in law with the Big Ugly reconciliation bill. I was going to lay out how recent developments (this was so long ago I surmised that Trump’s Iran warmongering might cause him some political headaches and now … here we are, Trump talking regime change in the wake of an inconclusive illegal strike) might exacerbate the way his legislative agenda might be Overtaken By Events.
That post got Overtaken By Events.
The punch line of my original post was going to be an argument that Wiles was pushing the Senate to hurry up not because impending financial doom might make passing the Big Ugly harder, nor because the debt ceiling is approaching.
Rather, Kristi Noem is burning through cash.
President Trump’s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.
Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billionover budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.
- Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
- That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
- It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.
Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.
This creates the possibility for a slew of legal challenges to Stephen Miller’s dragnet, both from those targeted in it challenging the legality of spending money to target them in the first place, but also from opponents who can start suing Trump for breaking the law by spending money that was not appropriated.
The dragnet is at somewhat-imminent risk of becoming an illegal use of funds.
And that comes as a few Republicans — most loudly, Rand Paul, who was bypassed as Chair for the Senate language on homeland security funding — start raising questions about why we need to blow so much money if Miller has already shut down the border.
Sen. Rand Paul is a frequent thorn in GOP leadership’s side. But his recent break over border security funding in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has top Republicans pushing the bounds of institutional norms to rein him in.
Senior Republicans have sidelined the Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in their talks with the White House over policies under the panel’s purview.
Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO he has taken over as the lead negotiator around how to shepherd through tens of billions of dollars for border wall construction and related infrastructure in the GOP megabill. Meanwhile, a Senate Republican aide said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — who heads the relevant Homeland Security subcommittee — will be the point person for negotiating the bill’s government affairs provisions.
With every other committee chair helping manage negotiations for their panels’ portions of the massive tax and spending package, cutting Paul out is unprecedented. But Paul proposed funding border security at a fraction of what the administration requested and the House passed in its bill.
I’ve long been tracking conflict among Republicans over the financial parts of the Big Ugly. But even as Trump’s polling turns south on Miller’s gulag, the huge funding package for it is creating some headaches for the must-pass reconciliation bill.
In an op-ed in Fox News today (accompanied by live Fox News pressure), John Thune gives up the game.
He argues that Republicans have to get the bill done by July 4 — Susie Wiles’ deadline, not JD’s. And his argument focuses primarily on the immigration funding (but also Golden Dome, which Mark Kelly recently exposed as an impossible boondoggle).
In large part, this bill is the culmination of President Trump’s campaign promises and the promises that Republican senators have made to our voters. Chief among them is keeping the American people safe through strong border security and a military strong enough to deter threats and conflicts around the world before they begin.
President Trump has achieved remarkable success in ending the Biden border crisis and removing the criminal illegal aliens that President Biden let walk into our country – but it hasn’t been cheap, and the administration has told us that resources are running out. This bill will fully fund the border wall and President Trump’s successful policies for the entirety of his presidency, removing any possibility that Democrats will hold those resources hostage to try to increase other government spending.
This same principle also applies to defense funding. Recent conflicts around the world should make clear the need to have a modern and lethal fighting force that can keep the American people safe. This means smart, generational investments like President Trump’s Golden Dome for America to defend against advanced drones, missiles, and hypersonics, as well as prioritizing building new ships and unmanned vehicles.
A nation cannot prosper unless it is secure, and with our borders and defense capabilities bolstered, the next key pillar of this bill is creating prosperity in America.
[snip]
Senators have worked to develop this bill for well over a year now. Now it is time to act. Border resources are drying up. National security needs have never been more apparent. And with each passing day, we move closer to reaching both our nation’s debt limit and the largest-ever tax increase on the American people.
Senators return to Washington today and we will remain here until this bill is passed. We know that Democrats will fearmonger and misrepresent our efforts, and we expect them to drag this debate long into the night with unrelated issues. However, I am confident we will get this bill across the finish line. [my emphasis]
It may not be just the burn rate of Noem’s spending spree.
That is, Noem is blowing through cash and the result of it is horrible images of American citizens being assaulted by masked goons. Noem is blowing through cash and businessmen in all sorts of industries are discovering that their businesses will suffer. Noem is blowing through cash and everyone is talking about how terrible the consequences of Miller’s demand for 3,000 bodies a day is.
Noem is blowing through cash and the issue of immigration is becoming a liability, not Trump’s biggest advantage.
And so Thune will attempt to do Susie Wiles’ bidding to get the dragnet funded before it’s too late.
It was high spending on detention that led Nazi Germany to their Final Solution.
Stephen Miller has a plan, I’m sure.
Too simplistic, unless you left off the snark tag (/d).
Martin Gilbert (Holocaust) and David Cesarini (Final Solution) offer good one volume surveys, and Christopher Browning (Origins of the Final Solution) focusses on the emergence of the actual policy and associated mechanisms between 1939-42.
Just as for Miller, the policy was baked into the ideology.
Do the federal costs of calling up the CA National Guard and deploying the Marines to LA fall under the DOD, or are they DHS expenses as their work is tied to supporting DHS/ICE/HSI?
I’d follow the chain of command but I’d bet this is under DoD, not DHS. It’s easier to bury the bones.
I also wonder what Thune will do about the parliamentarian ruling that many government affairs (AKA DOGE engineering) parts of the BUB because the reconciliation process being used for ramming this through also is subject to the Byrd Rule for allowed topics.
I fully expect Convict-1 / Krasnov / TACO and his minions will play the exigent circumstances cards (after all, DHS needs money to counteract Iranian reprisals) to wear down enough GOP critics as well as provide a sovereign immunity defense for litigation. They can only lose three (plus one for Fetterman) since I fully expect VP Vance will break any tie.
If I understood the very competent acting Comptroller (seems to be a former Mike Rogers-AL staffer) the money — $142M –comes from DOD discretionary funds.
Even for a cold-blooded swamp creature like Thune, articles like this might give pause:
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their baby [AP]
https://apnews.com/article/ice-detains-marine-veteran-wife-clouatre-802305fe0a364ef86a7cb61805129ee1
” … Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show. …”
How’s that going to play in Pierre?
How’s that going to play in red areas where the military is the big way out of poverty?
They also beat the shit out of a guy whose three sons are Marines.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-22/father-of-3-marines-violently-detained-federal-agents
I read that the Marine in question voted for Trump. FAFO, I guess.
But few people realize (unless you’ve breastfed) just how detrimental it is to break apart the mother/infant dyad of a breastfeeding pair. The mother’s milk constantly readjusts to perfectly match the child’s needs, the skin to skin contact improves bonding, and nursing also helps the mother’s body to repair and recover from pregnancy and childbirth. It is violence to sunder this connection.
Totally OT.
Got my four month teeth cleaning today. New tech. I am chatty – and forgiving to a point – and so learned the is from Columbia and has lived in the USA for 24 years. Did not ask if she was legal – I suspect she is, but…
She did volunteer that she voted for Trump. She also agreed that she wishes she had not along with many of her associations -family and otherwise. She inflicted no pain on my mouth.
If you wish in one hand and…you know the rest.
On the other hand it is a small victory.
Side note…my NC first cousin (female) who also voted for Trump because the black woman slept her way to the top – we have had very deep discussion on that BS – is wavering. I sent along Pope Leo’s recent “thoughts? on Trump’s BS – immigration and war – to her as she is (still) a devout Catholic. Me…not so much for a long time.
In a normal Senate, Susie Wiles’s “ordering” the Senate to do anything by July 4th would be laughed at. Even more so when she’s talking about passing the most destructive budget bill in history, on a timeline that directly contradicts a deadline suggested by the President of the Senate a short while earlier.
Dick Cheney quite possibly would have taken Wiles out behind the woodshed and she’d never reappear. I suppose things are different, when a Trinitarian Godhead rules the USG, having incorporated all three branches of govt unto Himself.
Vance has really just been on a humiliation conga line recently hasn’t he. Who would have thought that could happen to an educated but creepy Trump VP?
Vance has his eyes on the prize, he knows exactly what his job is, and he’s doing it as well as possible.
Two separate ideas. Of course, Vance wants the Presidency. Trump’s age, weight, activity and stress levels, and eating habits argue against his being in office through 2028.
That JD Vance is doing it “as well as possible” – for him – is debatable.
Does anyone other than Vance think he really has a shot at the nomination?