Matt Davies :: @MatttDavies

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 27, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 28, 2026

The ongoing battle over funding Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at U.S. airports gives a detailed view of Republican governance in this era.

Republicans hold a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also hold the White House. On paper, this control makes it look as if Republicans should be able to put anything they want into law. But the reality is that the extremism of President Donald J. Trump and the MAGA Republicans is so unpopular that those clinging to it are making it impossible for the Republicans to govern.

The fight over TSA funding is a case study of this dynamic. When Congress passed the appropriations bills necessary to fund the U.S. government for 2026, Republicans in the House passed funding for the Department of Homeland Security with a simple majority vote and sent the measure off to the Senate.

But in the Senate, the minority can stop a measure from coming up for a vote unless sixty members agree to move it forward. With this leverage, provided by the so-called filibuster, Democrats refused to give more money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency for Border Patrol. Border Patrol is the law enforcement agency of CBP that has been in the news as its agents assault undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.

Back in July 2025, when they passed the budget reconciliation law they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans provided $170.7 billion in additional funding for immigration and border enforcement activities by DHS, as well as for the presence of soldiers with the Defense Department on the border. That money included $29.9 billion for ICE, with funding for an additional 10,000 officers. The law gave ICE a lot of leeway in spending that money. The law also included $7.8 billion for CBP with funds to hire 3,000 new Border Patrol agents.

With White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller directing immigration policy, alongside then–Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and her associate Corey Lewandowski, ICE and Border Patrol agents terrorized people in American cities. Their regime eventually led to the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Daniel Lippman of Politico reported today that the stress of his job—including dealing with Miller’s tirades—has led the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, to be hospitalized at least twice in the past seven months.

As the White House pushed ever-increasing numbers of arrests and as videos circulated of ICE and Border Patrol agents beating individuals up, Americans turned against Trump’s handling of immigration. A survey out yesterday from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization researching popular opinion on topics that touch the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, showed that just 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, while 61% disapprove. An even lower number—33%—hold favorable views of ICE officers, while 67% like their local police officers.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans think sending ICE officers to places like Minnesota is making those places less safe, while only 38% disagree. And only 36% of Americans want Congress to give ICE more money, although 76% of Republicans favor increased funding for ICE.

Public opposition to more funding for ICE and Border Patrol without significant changes to their behavior has put Democratic senators on solid ground to oppose funding all of DHS without a promise of those changes. “In the wake of the murder of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Democrats made it clear, no blank check for ICE and Border Patrol,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained. Senate Democrats repeatedly tried to pass a measure to fund all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol, which were already funded with that huge pot of money under the budget reconciliation bill of last July.

But Republicans, under pressure from Trump, repeatedly voted down the Democrats’ attempt to fund the rest of DHS, including TSA, without funding for ICE and CBP, instead demanding Democrats pass the package the House had, the one with full funding for DHS, including for ICE and CBP.

Then, on Sunday, Trump demanded the Senate add to the funding plan the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, a bill that would require people to show not just ID but also proof of citizenship to register to vote and to vote and would severely restrict mail-in voting. It would also require states to hand over their voting lists to the federal government for processing through a government database used to screen for noncitizens applying for federal programs—confusingly also called the SAVE system, although it stands for “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements”—even though that procedure has a rate of false positives as high as 14%. The Brennan Center estimates that the SAVE America Act would kick at least 21 million Americans off voting lists.

To that legislation, Trump has also added provisions targeting transgender Americans, apparently to appeal to his faltering base and pressure Republican senators to vote in favor of the measure.

In order to get his wish list, Trump has called for Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) to get rid of the filibuster, enabling Senate Republicans to push through whatever they want without any Democratic votes, as the Republican majority in the House can do. Yesterday, Trump posted: “When is “enough, enough” for our Republican Senators. There comes a time when you must do what should have been done a long time ago, and something which the Lunatic Democrats will do on day one, if they ever get the chance. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and get our airports, and everything else, moving again. Also, add the complete, all five items, SAVE AMERICA ACT items. Go for the Gold!!! President DJT”

Meanwhile, some TSA agents, unpaid for over a month, began to quit. Others called in sick. And lines in airports began to grow longer and slower. So, apparently on a whim designed to pressure Democrats, Trump sent ICE agents into fourteen airports in eleven cities, where without training to do security checks, they did little to relieve congestion. The contrast of ICE agents standing around collecting paychecks while TSA agents were working without them ended up pressuring Trump, rather than the Democrats.

Then, yesterday, Trump suddenly announced he would sign an emergency order to pay TSA agents, suggesting he could have done so all along, although it is not clear where the money will be coming from or whether moving money in the way he suggests is even legal.

As soon as Trump said it would be okay to pay TSA agents, Senate Republicans agreed to pass the measure that was essentially what the Democrats called for (remember, only 36% of Americans want Congress to give ICE more money). At 2:00 this morning, they unanimously passed a measure that funds every part of DHS, including TSA agents, but does not give more money to ICE and Border Patrol until Democrats and Republicans agree on reforms, although Thune vowed that he would see to it that Democrats don’t get the reforms they want.

The Senate passed the measure and left for a two-week break, sending their bill to the House, which could have passed it and then gone home.

But…

As Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) explained, members of the far-right Freedom Caucus took a stand against the bill, apparently because they want more money for ICE and Border Patrol, want the SAVE Act, and want Trump’s approval. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could ignore them and pass the measure with the votes of all the Democrats and most Republicans. But Johnson depends on the far right to maintain his speakership, so he says he will refuse to pass the Senate’s measure and instead get the House to pass a 60-day continuing resolution to fund DHS at its current levels.

But the Senate fight has shown that Thune does not have the votes to fund ICE and Border Patrol without reforms. Schumer has said a continuing resolution would be dead on arrival, and right now the Senate is on break, meaning TSA agents are facing two more weeks without paychecks. Olivia Beavers of the Wall Street Journal reported that when a representative asked Johnson if the Senate had agreed to come back to deal with a new measure from the House, Johnson answered: “The Senate went dark and did not communicate with us.”

“It’s so maddening,” Casten wrote on social media. “Government workers should be paid. You shouldn’t have to wait on lines in airports, or worry about Coast Guard preparedness, or whether FEMA can handle the next disaster. But you do because of the utter lack of character in [Republican] leadership.”

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) asked Republicans on the floor of the House. Everyone knows the bill could pass with a large majority if Johnson would bring it to a vote, he said. Freedom Caucus members “don’t care about governing,” he said. “They only care about writing another blank check for ICE…or getting a shout-out on some batsh*t crazy right-wing podcast.”

And so, TSA agents will not get paid unless Trump’s executive order goes into effect, taking the power to appropriate funds, a power that the U.S. Constitution gives to Congress alone, and handing it to the president.

For years, the far right has insisted that it and only it knows how to govern because its ideology is the only legitimate way to look at the world. The fight over funding for TSA illustrates on a micro level how lawmakers who ignore the real world to cleave to an ideology strengthen authoritarianism.

But these days, the dangers of clinging to the far-right ideology are around us at the macro level as well. We are almost four weeks into a war with Iran, started without input from Congress by a president who is now contemplating sending soldiers to fight in a conflict he is eager to put into the rear-view mirror. Trump “is getting a little bored with Iran,” a senior White House official told Jake Traylor of MS NOW. “Not that he regrets it or something—he’s just bored and wants to move on.”

As the strangling of the Strait of Hormuz sends oil prices skyrocketing, though, the global economy is not moving on. Today another dramatic drop in the stock market put the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 10% since February and the Nasdaq 100 down more than 10%, while the S&P 500 is shaping up to have its worst month since 2022.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

On this day in 1787, thirty-nine brave men signed the proposed U.S. Constitution, recognizing all who are born in the United States or by naturalization, have become citizens

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 17, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 18, 2024

In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written. 

“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

The framers of the new constitution hoped it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in lawmakers’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government. 

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the 13 new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” 

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection. 

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….” 

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” 

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States,” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such,” Franklin said after a weary four months spent hashing it out, “because I think a general Government necessary for us,” and, he said, it “astonishes me…to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our…States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.” 

“On the whole,” he said to his colleagues, “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

On September 17, 1787, they did. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Exploring ‘A More Or Less Perfect Union’

By Walter E. Williams ~

The three-part documentary TV series “A More or Less Perfect Union,” produced by Free to Choose Network, will air on various PBS stations across the nation this month.

The documentary is a personal exploration of the U.S. Constitution by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is now a senior justice on that court.

A…

Bundy Family, Sovereign Citizen Loons Have Special Constitution That Says They Can Steal All Our Sh*t

Oh, what a grand way to start an election year! With a bunch of militia loons holed up in a federally owned building, in defense of convicted criminals, demanding to start a new American Revolution against federal tyranny! It’s this winter’s second-biggest sequel, starring three of Welfare Cheat Rancher Cliven Bundy’s sons, who along with an unknown number of armed supporters have occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near the town of Burns in eastern Oregon.