Democrats’ Senate filibuster risks domestic disaster

I tend to begin my mornings with a game of Wordle. A quick word game is a decent way to get the mind working and, hopefully, to exercise and extend cognitive abilities. There are no stakes involved other than a few minutes of my time and perhaps a few minutes of self-loathing when I fail to guess the right answer.

Other word games have much higher stakes. We’re a nation clearly at war. Congress hasn’t officially declared war since WWII, but we’ve had quite a few peacekeeping missions and police actions since then. The graves of our soldiers from the conflicts of the past 80 years look remarkably the same as to those who died in our declared wars.

We’re now even playing word games over the name of the entity that manages and funds our armed forces. What was once the Department of War was renamed by Congress the kinder, gentler Department of Defense. President Trump has reverted to calling it the Department of War. Congress, as they so often do, has made some speeches and issued some press releases, but has officially shrugged off the change.

Over this time, our language for public discourse has devolved in parallel with Congress’s sense of urgency.  We’ve moved from “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” to “(Expletive) ICE”.  

The latter is supposed to be cool and relatable to the young kids.  We know this because it’s almost exclusively used by baby boomers, including those who have been in Congress since we were mopping up from the Vietnam…police action.

Congress appropriated billions in multi-year funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and its cousin agency, Customs and Border Patrol, in the One Big Beautiful Bill. The rest of the Department of Homeland Security has gone without funding since the agency was stripped from the last set of this year’s appropriations bills, which were passed and signed in mid-February.  

The stated goal in this word game is to gain concessions on procedures used by ICE to detain and deport people who are in this country illegally.  The TL;DR version is “(Expletive) ICE.”

But ICE is already fully funded, and the Democrats who refuse to vote for the bill didn’t want to shut down the entire federal government.  They are now just using the non-ICE/CBP federal employees as “leverage”.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is fond of that word, noting that a shutdown is “the only lever (Democrats) have.”

Physics students know that a lever works when a fixed rod is placed against a fixed pivot point, or fulcrum, to move the object of choice. It’s the fulcrum that was otherwise minding its own business that must absorb all the pressure and force for the lever to work.

The pressure points in this government shutdown are the employees of the TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, Secret Service, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. About 90% of the employees in these agencies are considered “essential” and thus are still expected to work to retain their positions. They missed their first full paychecks last week.

These aren’t desk jockey paper pushers.  And as a reminder, word games or not, we are at war. The country we’re at war with is the world’s largest sponsor of terror groups. They are known to incubate and activate sleeper cells worldwide. And we’re not paying the folks who screen our airports, coasts, or work against cyber threats.

The last administration let 20 million undocumented people enter our country without any sense of vetting. This was done while the Biden Administration pretended Congress needed to act to stop it.

Now the second Trump Administration has virtually halted illegal entries into the country, but the minority party in Congress is using its only levers to stop not just ICE practices and policies, but also refusing to cede to the validity of any deportation order issued anywhere.

Think that’s an extreme or overarching statement?  Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to meet with a “Maryland man” who has had a longstanding deportation order, and is an MS-13 gang member and known human trafficker.

Who are the folks bearing the cost of this shutdown?  A TSA agent in Atlanta has a starting salary of about $38,000, or about $18 an hour plus benefits.  An agent with 3 to 5 years of experience makes about $50,000.  

These are salaries that are usually associated with people living paycheck to paycheck. And now the Democrats in Congress believe withholding their paychecks is the best way for them to change the administration’s deportation arc.

We can see the results in airport security lines. We can’t see as closely what is happening in the minds of other officials dedicated to securing our country at a time of war, who are trying to figure out how to pay mortgages, car payments, or even buy groceries.

Those blocking a final Senate vote to fund agencies designed to protect Americans at home are enjoying their word games. They risk raising the stakes to the point of a domestic disaster.