We had Democrats capitulate again... it is agonizingly disappointing.... if their votes really would help the US then why aren't all Democrats voting for it... I'm not going for it. They all should have stuck together, Jeffries should have whipped his caucus and make r's the only votes to pass it. Pathetic, again, in my view.
Agreed. I fail to understand why our House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic Whip Katherine Clark failed to whip the vote for this. I hope someone with insight can explain.
Do you have a link? I can read Bluesky posts – except in the many annoying instances where the author limits access to e.g. only registered Bluesky users.
(I have never been on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Threads or any other social media. Unless of course you consider Hopium or Substack messaging to be social media...)
glass half or fully empty? did you read Simon's discussion of the process and promise to go into ICE component more fully? [seems to validate my whole point about dem leadership btw]
I was curious because Simon writes about bipartisan work to claw back congress's power. after commenting I wondered if the ICE appropriation can be changed in the Senate then reconciled
I suppose anything is possible. I don't know what the answer is but I believe, we can have debates, discussions and questions about what is going on behind the scenes. I also believe we can agree to disagree on solutions and reasons for why Leadership does it what it does. It's all opinion but most of us mostly want the same thing - an end to the terrible nightmare.
Kudos to the House Democrats who voted AGAINST additional funding for ICE in the DHS appropriations bill because it contained no meaningful restrictions or accountability measures to rein in ICE and Border Patrol.
Very disappointed in the 7 Democrats who voted FOR this bill.
A Senate vote on the DHS funding bill is expected next week. The Senate bill needs 60 votes to pass, which means Democrats have real leverage here. But Chuck Schumer is not publicly whipping Senate Democrats to unify in opposition. That means it's up to us to pressure our Senators!!
In my opinion, we can't wait until AFTER the DHS appropriations bill is passed. What leverage will Democrats have then? The power of the purse is the only leverage I see. We need Senate Democrats to act NOW to rein in violence by ICE agents.
I'd like to ask all democratic Senators, including it's leader, How can you vote for DHS funding without unmasking ICE, and requiring judicial warrants before capture as spelled out in the 4th amendment against illegal search and seizure?.
To do otherwise is a betrayal of your oath and the American public.
We've had 33 new members join our Indivisible local this week so far. Although not as many as last week, this still represents a 5x or 6x increase over what we've been experiencing. We'll keep calling them as they come in.
I called my members of Congress.
Tomorrow is the Whatcom Dems monthly meeting. I've prepared possible questions for Rep. Larsen, who's supposed to attend with an update (about what?).
Just a reminder…..what part of this do they not understand?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Perhaps the budget deals are a good thing from a broader perspective. I'm not sure, but of this I am sure:
In my 52 years as a Democratic voter and 20+ years as a Democratic activist, I have never referred to one of our reps as a DINO (Democrat In Name Only), but I have to call out both Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen now over their votes to fund ICE, especially at this stage of our country’s crisis, and which is hardly the only things these two have done this past year to betray our Democratic ideals and country. Truly shameful. Cowards. Squishes. Simon, I know how much you implore us not to speak negatively about fellow Democrats, but I mention these two now in particular, since the Hopium community and I have specifically supported them with money, postcards, and in other ways. I’m just saying this now for future reference: there are plenty of Democrats currently in Congress and plenty of others planning to run this year that we can and should fully support to the best of our abilities. I’m strongly suggesting that the names Suozzi and Gillen should never be considered again on Hopium. (And they’re both rated LEAN DEMOCRATIC by Cook, with Gillen just being upgraded from TOSS-UP.)
I’m not sure if Suozzi or Gillen is your rep. I’m in the same county and next door to her district, where I’m 100% represented by Republicans at the local and House levels. It’s as purple as can be here. I wish they didn’t appear so wishy washy on their votes but for their districts, it kind of makes sense.
I'm in neither, but I follow them nationally and through Hopium. Generally, the farther east you go on the island the more Republican. I strongly disagree. In their districts this vote is still an abomination. I'm not suggesting that they be primaried because of this, but I suspect that they will be. My main point to this group is that Hopium should stay far away from this season.
You didn’t mention Canada and our amazing Prime Minister’s speech at Davos. It was a model for clarity and unflinching honesty. EU leaders are looking to Canada now for leadership.
Hi all - I certainly agree with Simon that we cannot and will not wait until we have Congressional control next January to reign ICE Barbie and her thugs in. What has been happening in the cities they terrorize is on the escalation, and our Congress must stop it. That's my message to Senators Durbin and Duckworth today. Glad to hear Dems were present and active in appropriations activities. I was also happy to see Jack Smith strongly comporting himself and his professional activity yesterday. Creating a record. SO important. Thanks colleagues and Simon for the community. Kent
This essay’s presentation on the appropriations process was clarifying. If Democrats vote against the DHS appropriations bill, will the government shut down again? Everything DHS is doing now is appalling. But I wonder whether a shutdown now might be a mistake. I honestly don’t know.
Thanks for sharing this. I, too, am disappointed that the DHS budget approved with the votes of 7 Ds did not go far enough to rein in ICE. There is an urgency to this, but it won't be the last fight over ICE. Just as ending the government shutdown last fall wasn't the last fight over the ACA subsidies. IMO, there were reasonable (though hard to stomach) arguments to vote for the DHS funding bill. 1) shutting down the government again on this issue may do more harm than good as it gives Trump/Vaught/DHS even freer rein. They're already sitting on a pot of money from last summer's Big Ugly, so it's not as if voting down the appropriation bill would "defund" them. 2) There are other important components to the DHS funding bill that should be maintained--FEMA, TSA, Coast Guard, for example. 3 )Some MODEST guardrails were part of the bill (body cameras for ICE agents; more training). Of course we can't rely on Noem to use these funds as intended, but it's not as if Ds just rolled over and got nothing.
So. . . we can all feel various degrees of nausea over passage of this bill in the House. But it just means we have to redouble our efforts--more battles; more battlefields; more persuasion; more expansion of our coalition. It's one unsatisfactory battle. We move forward to the next one.
Yes, we must choose freedom and I would like to offer these articles below to that end. I have said here on the forum that defeating this tyranny will require law breaking. I realize that many will immediately associate law breaking with violence, which is not what I am talking about. The law I'm focused on is the federal supremacy clause. If Congress won't pass the laws we need, some states anyway have the power to take action.
The articles concern two specific things: one is withholding taxes from the federal government by state action, the other is unmasking ICE and subjecting them to arrest and prosecution by state legislation.
The immediate response to these sort of things from many quarters is : they will send troops, declare the insurrection act etc.
I learned something very important this week that I did not know, thanks to the admirable country of Denmark that provides its people with free healthcare, higher education, home care assistance for elderly, one year of paid parental leave, as well as 5 weeks paid vacation by law. Yes, they sent troops to Greenland, but they did something more powerful - they sold US Treasury bonds. Denmark, a country of 6 million people has a strong enough economy, especially with EU allies, to tank the US economy.
What do you think would happen to the bond market, for example, if the State of New York declared federal taxes would not be sent to Washington because of various retaliation against us by Trump? We are one of the states that send more money than we receive, so if we held back the money we'd have plenty to fund whatever the feds now fund. So, Trump is going to send the military to invade us to force us to pay taxes? Or do some other thing? If the foreign buyers of bonds already thought the behavior of Trump re: Greenland created risk of instability, what would they think of that?
I do not mean to suggest that these things are simple or easy. The fight for freedom never is. I am not aware of any situation where it has not involved sacrifice of some kind by the freedom fighters. Yet they do it, because freedom is priceless, and tyranny is intolerable.
One thing that one can always count on from "investors" - they will put their pecuniary interests above all else. Their greed is largely, as I see it, the boot on the neck of the general welfare. But it can also be their Achilles' heel. Trump has brought them in line through threats of use of powers. We too have powers if we are organized.
I am here this AM to TESTIFY to the Way Of Simon. Intellectually, this calling Congress strategy always made sense to me, but when you see it actually work...well, it's different, isn't it?
Earlier this week, my Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, chief negotiator for the Dems in the House, publicly said she was going to vote for the DHS budget. I called her, got someone on the phone, spoke to them from the perspective of someone whose family lived under the Nazis and who, himself, lived under an authoritarian regime for four years, told her I find ICE increasingly indistinguishable from the Brownshirts and the SS, how & why they're an existential threat to democracy (can't you just see them pulling Black and brown people out of line [thanks, Judge Kavanaugh] while they're waiting to vote?), how toothless the reforms are, "business as usual, nothing but horsetrading at the margins" "NOTHING Trump has done has surprised me. Nothing. What has is the complete lack of resistance on the part of people with a lot more power to stop them than I do." Etc. She agreed with everything I said.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who called, probably not even the only Hopium who did, but whatever: yesterday she voted AGAINST it!!! Maybe this was just because she saw Johnson had his act together for once, but why be cynical? We take the wins where we can get them, right Simon? On to the Senate (two sets: CT & WI, no mortgage fraud), then a thank you call to Rosa DL :)
Hi all - What a beautiful essay, Simon - thank you!
Fantastic, inspiring Indivisible call yesterday. And FWIW they are still saying vote NO in Senate bc:
-The bill increases funding for ICE - ICE will receive $400 million more for detention and $370 million more for its enforcement budget compared to last year.
-The reforms included in the bill are completely inadequate.
-Actual restrictions on ICE were left out.
I called Sens. Booker & Kim and urged them to vote no. And I did read that Jeffries was whipping Dems. Not sure the inner machinations, or what actually happened, and I don't think we should speculate until we know the whole story, which I'm sure Simon will report. In the meantime, I really don't want to hear about disappointment in a couple House Dems. We have much bigger fights ahead of us.
I just got off of a 2 hour shift with VoteRiders, and your time/assistance is more needed than ever, helping voters get ID, or sending texts or letters. Even an hour makes a HUGE difference. They are already warning us about referenda in CA and other states- more voter restriction coming down the pike. Sign up to volunteer here: https://www.voteriders.org/volunteer/
Gov. Sherrill has hit the ground running & has frozen energy costs & declared state of emergency on that, as well as the crazy weather we're about to get. I am very excited to work with her and her team on gun safety in the coming year, and Moms is setting up a meeting w new AG Jennifer Davenport!
Looking forward to Dr. Ben-Ghiat's weekly call today at 1 - y'all, Lucid Substack is essential reading (and I hope to see Simon on her call one of these weeks!)
I'm good and pissed, and I'm making my calls! Keep going! And don't forget to check out the new Indivisible podcast!
Yes, yes, yes...also make sure you are registered to vote. Check periodically. Encourage others to check their registration.
https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/
Well said, Simon!
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen about ICE and Gaza/Venezuela. I'm writing postcards to NC voters today.
Hope everyone in the path of this snowstorm is tucked in safe and warm.
We had Democrats capitulate again... it is agonizingly disappointing.... if their votes really would help the US then why aren't all Democrats voting for it... I'm not going for it. They all should have stuck together, Jeffries should have whipped his caucus and make r's the only votes to pass it. Pathetic, again, in my view.
Agreed. I fail to understand why our House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic Whip Katherine Clark failed to whip the vote for this. I hope someone with insight can explain.
I don't know. If you are on Bluesky, I suggest you read Ezra Levin's take on why this happened. (Ezra Levin - Co-Exec Director of Indivisible)
Do you have a link? I can read Bluesky posts – except in the many annoying instances where the author limits access to e.g. only registered Bluesky users.
(I have never been on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Threads or any other social media. Unless of course you consider Hopium or Substack messaging to be social media...)
I will send you the link.
Let me know if you can't access it. I am only on Substack and Bluesky. I guess I am also on Threads but I never go there.
glass half or fully empty? did you read Simon's discussion of the process and promise to go into ICE component more fully? [seems to validate my whole point about dem leadership btw]
I did read Simon's discussion of the process and was also on the Zoom Wednesday.
I was curious because Simon writes about bipartisan work to claw back congress's power. after commenting I wondered if the ICE appropriation can be changed in the Senate then reconciled
I suppose anything is possible. I don't know what the answer is but I believe, we can have debates, discussions and questions about what is going on behind the scenes. I also believe we can agree to disagree on solutions and reasons for why Leadership does it what it does. It's all opinion but most of us mostly want the same thing - an end to the terrible nightmare.
yes, we all want the same good for the future.
Jeffries did whip the caucus, per what I read.
Where did you read this? It's contrary to what I've been reading.
Kudos to the House Democrats who voted AGAINST additional funding for ICE in the DHS appropriations bill because it contained no meaningful restrictions or accountability measures to rein in ICE and Border Patrol.
Very disappointed in the 7 Democrats who voted FOR this bill.
A Senate vote on the DHS funding bill is expected next week. The Senate bill needs 60 votes to pass, which means Democrats have real leverage here. But Chuck Schumer is not publicly whipping Senate Democrats to unify in opposition. That means it's up to us to pressure our Senators!!
In my opinion, we can't wait until AFTER the DHS appropriations bill is passed. What leverage will Democrats have then? The power of the purse is the only leverage I see. We need Senate Democrats to act NOW to rein in violence by ICE agents.
I'd like to ask all democratic Senators, including it's leader, How can you vote for DHS funding without unmasking ICE, and requiring judicial warrants before capture as spelled out in the 4th amendment against illegal search and seizure?.
To do otherwise is a betrayal of your oath and the American public.
So true and you put it so well -- and succinctly. Why don't Dems use this message to justify voting against the DHS appropriations bill???
I'm going to contact my senators again, and this time, I'm going to use your words. Thank you!
Self-report:
We've had 33 new members join our Indivisible local this week so far. Although not as many as last week, this still represents a 5x or 6x increase over what we've been experiencing. We'll keep calling them as they come in.
I called my members of Congress.
Tomorrow is the Whatcom Dems monthly meeting. I've prepared possible questions for Rep. Larsen, who's supposed to attend with an update (about what?).
Just a reminder…..what part of this do they not understand?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Thanks Simon.
Thanlk for posting this passage, Stu.
Your welcome, pass it on!
Indivisible has a good backgrounder on the DHS/ICE appropriations bill that is now in the Senate:
https://indivisible.org/campaigns/how-rein-ice-now/?akid=123562.3965538.ZBehgk&rd=1&t=12&utm_medium=_20260123&utm_source=email
Helpful, thank you.
Perhaps the budget deals are a good thing from a broader perspective. I'm not sure, but of this I am sure:
In my 52 years as a Democratic voter and 20+ years as a Democratic activist, I have never referred to one of our reps as a DINO (Democrat In Name Only), but I have to call out both Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen now over their votes to fund ICE, especially at this stage of our country’s crisis, and which is hardly the only things these two have done this past year to betray our Democratic ideals and country. Truly shameful. Cowards. Squishes. Simon, I know how much you implore us not to speak negatively about fellow Democrats, but I mention these two now in particular, since the Hopium community and I have specifically supported them with money, postcards, and in other ways. I’m just saying this now for future reference: there are plenty of Democrats currently in Congress and plenty of others planning to run this year that we can and should fully support to the best of our abilities. I’m strongly suggesting that the names Suozzi and Gillen should never be considered again on Hopium. (And they’re both rated LEAN DEMOCRATIC by Cook, with Gillen just being upgraded from TOSS-UP.)
I’m not sure if Suozzi or Gillen is your rep. I’m in the same county and next door to her district, where I’m 100% represented by Republicans at the local and House levels. It’s as purple as can be here. I wish they didn’t appear so wishy washy on their votes but for their districts, it kind of makes sense.
I'm in neither, but I follow them nationally and through Hopium. Generally, the farther east you go on the island the more Republican. I strongly disagree. In their districts this vote is still an abomination. I'm not suggesting that they be primaried because of this, but I suspect that they will be. My main point to this group is that Hopium should stay far away from this season.
You didn’t mention Canada and our amazing Prime Minister’s speech at Davos. It was a model for clarity and unflinching honesty. EU leaders are looking to Canada now for leadership.
Featured it on Wed and discussed it in my post and commentary yesterday
Yes, a great post – and comments about it.
Great! I will definitely read it. I really enjoy your writing.
Yes, and I also would like to point out that you can sign up for email updates from NATO. Highly recommend doing so.
Fabulous speech, raw in its candor and clear-eyed in its assessment. I believe it will be studied in the years to come.
Hi all - I certainly agree with Simon that we cannot and will not wait until we have Congressional control next January to reign ICE Barbie and her thugs in. What has been happening in the cities they terrorize is on the escalation, and our Congress must stop it. That's my message to Senators Durbin and Duckworth today. Glad to hear Dems were present and active in appropriations activities. I was also happy to see Jack Smith strongly comporting himself and his professional activity yesterday. Creating a record. SO important. Thanks colleagues and Simon for the community. Kent
Jack Smith is THE MAN.
I have such a thing for him.
For the many, he risked losing the war of attention yesterday because he is so devoid of histrionics and takes no bait.
I found him to be utterly fascinating and inspiring.
May he and his family be safe.
This essay’s presentation on the appropriations process was clarifying. If Democrats vote against the DHS appropriations bill, will the government shut down again? Everything DHS is doing now is appalling. But I wonder whether a shutdown now might be a mistake. I honestly don’t know.
This article helped me understand the House vote:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/22/house-approves-homeland-security-funding-amid-ice-uproar-00742402
Thanks for sharing this. I, too, am disappointed that the DHS budget approved with the votes of 7 Ds did not go far enough to rein in ICE. There is an urgency to this, but it won't be the last fight over ICE. Just as ending the government shutdown last fall wasn't the last fight over the ACA subsidies. IMO, there were reasonable (though hard to stomach) arguments to vote for the DHS funding bill. 1) shutting down the government again on this issue may do more harm than good as it gives Trump/Vaught/DHS even freer rein. They're already sitting on a pot of money from last summer's Big Ugly, so it's not as if voting down the appropriation bill would "defund" them. 2) There are other important components to the DHS funding bill that should be maintained--FEMA, TSA, Coast Guard, for example. 3 )Some MODEST guardrails were part of the bill (body cameras for ICE agents; more training). Of course we can't rely on Noem to use these funds as intended, but it's not as if Ds just rolled over and got nothing.
So. . . we can all feel various degrees of nausea over passage of this bill in the House. But it just means we have to redouble our efforts--more battles; more battlefields; more persuasion; more expansion of our coalition. It's one unsatisfactory battle. We move forward to the next one.
Love the reminders of who we most want to be, the wins, and the must-wins. Elbows up!
Yes, we must choose freedom and I would like to offer these articles below to that end. I have said here on the forum that defeating this tyranny will require law breaking. I realize that many will immediately associate law breaking with violence, which is not what I am talking about. The law I'm focused on is the federal supremacy clause. If Congress won't pass the laws we need, some states anyway have the power to take action.
https://open.substack.com/pub/aaronrupar/p/minnesota-tax-strike-ice-trump?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/defiance/p/ice-or-snowflakes-state-and-local?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
The articles concern two specific things: one is withholding taxes from the federal government by state action, the other is unmasking ICE and subjecting them to arrest and prosecution by state legislation.
The immediate response to these sort of things from many quarters is : they will send troops, declare the insurrection act etc.
I learned something very important this week that I did not know, thanks to the admirable country of Denmark that provides its people with free healthcare, higher education, home care assistance for elderly, one year of paid parental leave, as well as 5 weeks paid vacation by law. Yes, they sent troops to Greenland, but they did something more powerful - they sold US Treasury bonds. Denmark, a country of 6 million people has a strong enough economy, especially with EU allies, to tank the US economy.
What do you think would happen to the bond market, for example, if the State of New York declared federal taxes would not be sent to Washington because of various retaliation against us by Trump? We are one of the states that send more money than we receive, so if we held back the money we'd have plenty to fund whatever the feds now fund. So, Trump is going to send the military to invade us to force us to pay taxes? Or do some other thing? If the foreign buyers of bonds already thought the behavior of Trump re: Greenland created risk of instability, what would they think of that?
I do not mean to suggest that these things are simple or easy. The fight for freedom never is. I am not aware of any situation where it has not involved sacrifice of some kind by the freedom fighters. Yet they do it, because freedom is priceless, and tyranny is intolerable.
One thing that one can always count on from "investors" - they will put their pecuniary interests above all else. Their greed is largely, as I see it, the boot on the neck of the general welfare. But it can also be their Achilles' heel. Trump has brought them in line through threats of use of powers. We too have powers if we are organized.
I am here this AM to TESTIFY to the Way Of Simon. Intellectually, this calling Congress strategy always made sense to me, but when you see it actually work...well, it's different, isn't it?
Earlier this week, my Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, chief negotiator for the Dems in the House, publicly said she was going to vote for the DHS budget. I called her, got someone on the phone, spoke to them from the perspective of someone whose family lived under the Nazis and who, himself, lived under an authoritarian regime for four years, told her I find ICE increasingly indistinguishable from the Brownshirts and the SS, how & why they're an existential threat to democracy (can't you just see them pulling Black and brown people out of line [thanks, Judge Kavanaugh] while they're waiting to vote?), how toothless the reforms are, "business as usual, nothing but horsetrading at the margins" "NOTHING Trump has done has surprised me. Nothing. What has is the complete lack of resistance on the part of people with a lot more power to stop them than I do." Etc. She agreed with everything I said.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who called, probably not even the only Hopium who did, but whatever: yesterday she voted AGAINST it!!! Maybe this was just because she saw Johnson had his act together for once, but why be cynical? We take the wins where we can get them, right Simon? On to the Senate (two sets: CT & WI, no mortgage fraud), then a thank you call to Rosa DL :)
Hi all - What a beautiful essay, Simon - thank you!
Fantastic, inspiring Indivisible call yesterday. And FWIW they are still saying vote NO in Senate bc:
-The bill increases funding for ICE - ICE will receive $400 million more for detention and $370 million more for its enforcement budget compared to last year.
-The reforms included in the bill are completely inadequate.
-Actual restrictions on ICE were left out.
I called Sens. Booker & Kim and urged them to vote no. And I did read that Jeffries was whipping Dems. Not sure the inner machinations, or what actually happened, and I don't think we should speculate until we know the whole story, which I'm sure Simon will report. In the meantime, I really don't want to hear about disappointment in a couple House Dems. We have much bigger fights ahead of us.
I just got off of a 2 hour shift with VoteRiders, and your time/assistance is more needed than ever, helping voters get ID, or sending texts or letters. Even an hour makes a HUGE difference. They are already warning us about referenda in CA and other states- more voter restriction coming down the pike. Sign up to volunteer here: https://www.voteriders.org/volunteer/
Gov. Sherrill has hit the ground running & has frozen energy costs & declared state of emergency on that, as well as the crazy weather we're about to get. I am very excited to work with her and her team on gun safety in the coming year, and Moms is setting up a meeting w new AG Jennifer Davenport!
Looking forward to Dr. Ben-Ghiat's weekly call today at 1 - y'all, Lucid Substack is essential reading (and I hope to see Simon on her call one of these weeks!)
I'm good and pissed, and I'm making my calls! Keep going! And don't forget to check out the new Indivisible podcast!
This is helpful. The Indivisible page just says oppose the DHS bill but doesn’t include these details.
they sent out an email this morning. :)
Senator Chris Murphy knows that Senate Dems need to block the DHS appropriations bill. Read his latest post:
My Trip to Texas Confirmed We Can’t Fund this Version of ICE https://www.chrismurphyct.com/p/my-trip-to-texas-confirmed-we-cant