We’re now 40-plus days into the shutdown, and what looked like a possible framework has stalled. Democrats initially said: fund everything but ICE. Republicans moved in that direction. And now Democrats want policy concessions on how ICE operates.
From the GOP side, the frustration is obvious: we already agreed to your structure, and now you’re changing the terms.
But strategically, I get why Democrats are doing it. They think they’ve got leverage, and they’re squeezing. And the reason they have that leverage, in my view, is because Republicans made the mistake of carving out ICE in the first place. That’s not something Democratic leadership would’ve allowed if the roles were reversed.
What we’re seeing here is a flipped script.
