GOP-controlled Senate scrambles to tie Democrats’ hands before midterms

Writes Heather Cox Richardson, Senate Republican leaders are pushing through funding of ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three years using budget reconciliation, a process which does not require any Democratic votes. This would end chances to reform rules for agents’ behavior, and leave in place authorization for them to continue to wear masks and to break into someone’s home without a judge-signed warrant.

She also reports that Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has teed up a vote on a bill to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 for the next three years. “Both Democrats and Republicans are concerned that the system for collecting information on foreigners who appear to pose a threat to the U.S. can also sweep in U.S. citizens, enabling the government to surveil citizens without a judicial warrant.”

Included in Richardson’s letter are two other developments:

On Tuesday Secretary of the Navy John Phelan spent the day briefing lawmakers on the hill, only to be interrupted by a phone call from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking him to resign. Unconvinced he headed to the White House to confirm, but was barred from meeting with the President.

On Wednesday Jacqueline Smith, the independent ombudsman of the U.S. armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes, reported that she had been fired. In a farewell column she publicly criticized Hegseth’s crackdown on press freedom, saying “[n]o one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence.”

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