https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/21-house-dems-open-ice-road-to-voter
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WARNING: Do not read if you were already pissed at them for making DHS funding possible
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The federal government is back up and running today, running roughshod over our backs, thanks to 21 House Democrats who voted Tuesday to fund all but one of the remaining unfunded federal agencies through the end of September and/or the end of civilization as we know it, whichever comes first. Ha ha I are kidding.
The House passed and Pres. Donald Trump signed the Senate bill funding the rest of the same government that Democratic fundraising emails ensure us can be stopped by nothing but electing more of the Democrats who say nothing can stop Trump but more Democrats.
The bill made the Dept. of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) the only agency with a shorter leash than September. Financially, that is; physically, DHS divisions like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are still unleashed, rabid dogs with their cute winter sweaters pulled up to mask their faces.
Without a new funding bill, DHS will shut down on Feb. 14, literally the best Valentine America could give to its remaining principles and salvage their relationship.
But like cheap chocolates uninspected by Trump’s pro-business regulators, this vote has something nastier inside than coconut or marzipan¹.
Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass this funding bill on their own. Twenty-one of them ended up voting against it. Which means either House Democrats could’ve killed it, or the 21 House Democrats who voted for it gave their 21 GOP counterparts the ability to vote no knowing it would pass anyway.
What did these Republican rebels want? And get?
They wanted to attach the SAVE Act to the funding bill. The SAVE Act is, arguably, a vastly greater threat to democracy than Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard skulking around Georgia.
The version that passed the House last year — with four Democratic votes! — would block Americans from voting if they don’t have the right documents to prove their citizenship. What documents? Primarily birth certificate or passport.
According to the Brennan Center, half of the country doesn’t even have a passport. More than 21 million don’t have a paper birth certificate. And millions of women’s birth certificates don’t match their current names because they got married and surrendered their names to the patriarchy and/or patronym!
An estimated 69 million women and four million men have birth certificates that don’t match their names for whatever reason (yes, including gender-affirming name changes).
In short, most of America is undocumented citizens.
And election officials could be punished for registering even legal voters if those legal voters didn’t prove they’re legal. And, yes, of course most disenfranchised voters would be young or nonwhite.
Here’s why I’m talking about this instead of ICE and instead of burying it like most of the corporate media coverage.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) didn’t want to attach the SAVE Act to the funding bill because changing it would require Senate approval, prolonging the shutdown. But also because Senate Democrats could filibuster it.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) had threatened to block the funding bill without SAVE attached. Even though she changed her name to from Mayerhofer to Luna(tic).
She only agreed to let the funding bill get a vote after she spoke with Trump Monday and, she says, got an assurance from the White House that the SAVE Act would get a special vote in the Senate under rules making it much harder to filibuster.
Currently, Democrats can filibuster just by calling it, like “No tag backs.” But according to Luna, Trump agreed that Senate Republicans will agree to enforcing what’s called a standing filibuster.
This would require Democrats to do something more than a few of them struggle with: Standing up. That’s right, they’ll have to do a real filibuster to stop the SAVE Act this time.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) says he’s not so sure about this deal that Trump and Luna agreed that he’d agree to. But Thune already crossed Trump by rejecting Trump’s unconstitutional and unlawful and ungood concept of a plan of a shitshow of a fuckpit to nationalize elections. So Trump’s got every reason to put the screws on Thune for this. And Thune is already sitting down for talks on a standing filibuster.
So, by enabling this deal, these 21 House Democrats may have paved a slippery slope to wholesale voter disenfranchisement with ICE.
And when I say “these” 21 House Democrats, I mean these 21 House Democrats:
Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (GA)
Ed Case (HI)
James E. Clyburn (SC)
Joe Courtney (CT)
Henry Cuellar (TX)
Sharice Davids (KS)
Don Davis (NC)
Rosa DeLauro (CT)
Bill Foster (IL)
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA)
Jared Golden (ME)
Josh Gottheimer (NJ)
Jim Himes (CT)
Steny Hoyer (MD)
Marcy Kaptur (OH)
Rick Larsen (WA)
Scott Peters (CA)
Kim Schrier (WA)
David Scott (GA)
Terri Sewell (AL)
Marc Veasey (TX)
Those names include all four Democrats who helped pass the House SAVE Act bill last year: Case, Cuellar, Gluesenkamp Perez, and Golden.
REMINDER The Democrats’ 21 Club also voted to fund Defense Department Boat-iac killings and State Department hemispheric imperialism and Christian hegemony.
EXCLUSIVE: Gillibrand Attends Antisemitic, Anti-Catholic, Anti-Woman, Anti-LGBTQ+, Anti-Reproductive Rights Senate Bible Study
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) attends a Senate Bible study led by a right-wing evangelical preacher who says and teaches all the stuff I just said in the headline.
I revealed that over on my original-reporting Substack Tuesday night, just four days after reporting that she’ll co-chair Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast (not connected to the Bible study).
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) responded to Gillibrand leading the prayer breakfast by telling me, “I expect this kind of thing from Republicans who have fused extreme Christian nationalism and theocracy into their political identity. But I’m dismayed that some Democrats still choose to play footsie with this scandal-plagued prayer breakfast movement.”
Huffman co-founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus, so wait’ll you see how he responded to the Bible study news (make sure you don’t miss it, by subscribing free to my original-reporting Substack; or paid, if you can afford it, to help me keep pissing people off.)
Gillibrand — a staunch supporter of progressive causes including LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights — revealed her participation in the Bible study in a little-noticed (okay, little-noticed-by-me) article last year that didn’t explain the background of who runs it, which is Ralph Drollinger.
Drollinger’s teachings are so toxic that then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (D-CA) banished Drollinger from Sacramento for crapping on women and sending Catholics to Hell. So woke, Arnie!
As I revealed last year, Drollinger gave a Bible study in June 2025 — to the Senate, House, and White House cabinet members and other officials — helpfully explaining that the Jews killed Jesus. (Which is not true both because I’m an atheist and don’t believe in syncretized fairy tales but also because even if you believe God’s Magic Book of Jesus Stories, he was crucified by the Romans. Sorry, some Romans! #NotAllRomans.)
Reminder: I can report stories like this, without paywalls, instead of flooding social-media with clickbait, because a small handful of you support TFN and/or my original-reporting Substack to make this work exist, free for everyone. Bless you.
So, How Are Those DHS Talks Going, Anyway?
So far, the only thing Democrats seem to have won in their negotiations on reforming ICE and CBP are body cameras so agents can provide Homeland (sic) Security Kristi Noem with all the video she needs for TikTok.
Remember what ICE agent Jonathan Ross was doing while killing Renee Good? Using his phone to record it. Democrats have won the battle to make ICE murders hands-free.
Everything else looks like it’s gonna crash into a tree.
Democrats didn’t use their leverage elsewhere on funding to claw back the $170 billion Republicans gave DHS in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA), meaning ICE and CBP won’t even need new funding until some time after Jesus returns and gets shot trying to cross into America without papers while looking insufficiently Nordic.
So no wonder Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said no on Tuesday to Democratic demands that ICE get actual, real arrest warrants — from judges and everything — instead of the current warrants they get from inside cereal boxes. Here’s Johnson:
“If someone is going to be apprehended and they run behind a closed door and lock the door, what is ICE supposed to do at that point? ‘Oh, gee whiz, a locked door?’”
Of course, that’s a ridiculous scenario. The Constitution clearly explains that at that point ICE can also say, “Fuck a duck, a locked door,” or, in keeping with Johnson’s theocratic hatred of democracy and due process, they could also say, “Ach du lieber, eine verschlossene Tür.”
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who chairs the House Republican Conference that sets party policy and messaging, said Democrats fighting to stop DHS from murdering people in the homeland (sic) are “like a spoiled child that’s not getting what they want and throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store.”
McClain added, “You don’t reward them with giving them a candy bar.”
Because candy bars are for five-year-olds.
Nuke Party, Who Dis?
The 26-year-old nuclear-arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia expires on Thursday.
Called New START², it includes outside arms inspections and limits the number of nuclear bombs and bombers the two countries can deploy. Which means Friday we’re all gonna die. Ha ha I are kidding.
(I would never say a false thing without making it obvious that it’s false. Do I look like Andy Borowitz? And damn you to Hell if you say I do.)
But the U.S. and Russia will be without a nuclear-arms treaty for the first time since before The Arsenio Hall Show.
Which means the U.S. and Russia will likely join China in ramping up their nuclear capabilities.
The good news is, Pres. Donald Trump has been open to a new start for New START. He just wants China to sign on, too. That’s a good thing! Russia wants France and the U.K. on board, too. Also bien and, um … :::looking up British slang for “good”::: — the dog’s bollocks, apparently? Jesus, Brits.
Asked about Trump’s plan for reviving a treaty to keep the planet Earth from blowing up, the White House said Trump “will decide the path forward on nuclear arms control, which he will clarify on his own timeline,” so… whenever he can’t find the remote.
Leave it to a non-thinker to un-unthink the unthinkable.
Republicans Ramp Up Invasion Plans for Children’s Pants
The party that got elected to protect America’s children from adorable drag queens and law-abiding immigrants — some of them also-adorable! — moved forward Tuesday with invasion plans for children’s pants.
GIRLS With The Epstein Files™ revealing allegations — sorry, new allegations — of pre-President Donald Trump and his best friend invading girls’ genitalia, the Republican Party moved forward Tuesday with a bill to expand genitalia invasions of girls wholesale, nationwide.
As sponsor Rep. Greg Stuebe (R-FL) bragged to the pedophiles on Facebook, the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday passed his “Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” which he said would “protect the integrity of women's sports from the trans agenda.”
What it won’t do is protect the integrity of girls’ pants from the GOP’s pedophile agenda. Because, as the Congressional Budget Office reported in 2024, the bill will “require [national sports organizations] to adopt a policy that prohibits a person whose sex is male, as defined in the bill, from participating in an amateur athletic competition that is designated for females, women, or girls.”
How do you prove a female, woman, or girl is that? As defined in the bill, you check their pants to ensure they have no more than zero (0) penises.
Here’s Congressional Equality Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA): “Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee just voted to subject young girls to invasive exams in order to ‘prove’ their gender if they want to participate in sports—it’s sickening.”
Fellow Co-Chair Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said, “Republicans would rather make participation in sports more dangerous for all women in their obsessive, one-sided war on trans people than focus on what is actually impacting families, like rising costs that keep kids from participating in sports at all.”
Remember, this bill won’t just require local randos from national sports organizations to check — somehow — the genitalia of kids they consider trans-possible. It empowers them to check the genitalia of any of women or girls they want. Even Mar-a-Lago Face is no defense.
It’s only a shame Trump didn’t get a real attorney general to enforce this. Like Matt Gaetz.
BOYS After losing to the Houthis, Iran, and Los Angeles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has finally found someone his own size to pick on: Kids.
Hegseth this week declared war on Scouting America — which recently transitioned from its deadname, “the Boy Scouts” — for letting in girls despite their biological ickiness. At this point, I’m just going to assume this will require genitalia checks of boys to make sure they don’t have any vaginas in their pants or on their Swiss Army knives.
The Defense Department funds and partners with Scouting America on lots of shit, including the quadrennial National Jamboree camping summit coming in July. But Monday night, the Pentagon ordered Scouting America to detransition back to their his prehistoric selves or else. “Back to God and country—immediately!” the Pentagon Tweeted—unconstitutionally!
The Pentagon reportedly is already planning to withdraw funding and kick the scouts out of military facilities — which would, of course, fuck over military families.
Two Quickies
Y’know how TFN argued like a radical Commie hippie that funding any Trump department just lets them do whatever they want, no matter what Democrats hoped the money would go for? Well, Politico reported Tuesday night, after it was too late, that the funding some Democrats helped pass for Health and Human Services (HHS) is just gonna get transplanted into whatever organs Secretary Robert Funded Kennedy, Jr., wants. Like studies blaming autism on vaccines.
One of the top political race-raters just shifted the odds of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) surviving this year. The University of Virginia Center for Politics had rated the seat a “toss-up.” Now it’s “leans Democratic.” Why the lean? They’re looking at the last Republican candidate, who was — I swear this is real — Herschel Walker. The Center believes Ossoff’s opponent won’t have Walker’s baggage — like, an airport baggage carousel’s worth — but also won’t have his name recognition. That’s today’s GOP: worse name recognition than Herschel Walker.
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