Shutdown ahead?

The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have put Trump and his congressional enablers on the back foot.  Senate Democrats may refuse to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and it is not even clear that the other appropriations bills will pass.  Prediction markets now put the odds of a shutdown this week at 80% or higher. 

Of course there are no guarantees.  Trump could overturn the chessboard by backing down.  And there is a risk that Senate Democrats will blink.  Republicans only need a few Democratic defections to push their legislation over the goal line.  This would be a mistake.  The Dems are in a good position to really rein in ICE, which is a threat to the midterm elections as well as to people in Minneapolis and other cities.  The devil will be in the details; any limits on ICE need to be enforceable without cooperation from the executive branch.  I do not have a ton of confidence that congressional Democrats will hang tough in negotiations, or even that they have the staff talent to design effective restrictions on ICE.  But as I emphasized in my previous post, the Democrats won the last shutdown in the court of public opinion, and with videos of ICE abuses circulating widely there is every reason to think they will win this time as well – if they stick together. 

There is no question that a shutdown will hurt innocent people.  But that horse has left the barn, as the events in Minnesota show so clearly.  ICE is murdering people, not just Good and Pretti, but anonymous people in their detention camps.  And they are terrorizing many more, including children.  They need to be stopped, and Trump needs to be exposed as the unpopular bully he is.