The DHS Shutdown Is Over. Democrats Won Big.
Louisiana's governor has suspended the primary elections, RFK Jr. is threatening hospitals that serve Jell-O, and a 10-year-old boy recounts his harrowing experience in immigration court alone
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Congress ended a 76-day DHS shutdown by agreeing to fund everything except the part Republicans actually wanted funded. The Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s Black majority congressional district, so the governor promptly suspended the upcoming primaries. RFK Jr. is threatening hospitals with financial ruin if they serve Jell-O. And a 10-year-old Venezuelan boy was forced to show up alone to immigration court and argue his own deportation case.
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Let’s dive in.
The DHS Shutdown Is Over, and ICE Still Isn’t Funded
Congress has ended the DHS shutdown without funding the part of DHS the shutdown was about. 76 days, 1,000 TSA resignations, and not a dollar for ICE to show for it.
The House on Thursday unanimously approved a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. The bill now heads to Trump’s desk.
Here’s the part you’ll want to read twice: the package includes no money for federal immigration enforcement in a major win for Democrats. The shutdown that Republicans triggered in order to force ICE funding has ended with ICE unfunded.
Mike Johnson spent 76 days insisting he would never pass a bill without money for immigration enforcement. Then he passed the bill without money for immigration enforcement. That “haphazardly drafted” version passed the House floor anyway.
More than 1,000 TSA agents quit their jobs during the shutdown as their pay was withheld. The Coast Guard went unpaid. FEMA went unfunded. The Secret Service worked for free. None of that moved the needle. What finally did move it was Secretary Markwayne Mullin warning that he had “reached all the emergency funds” and had “no place to move at the end of the month.”
Republicans say they’ll get ICE money through a separate budget process in the coming weeks. Democrats said they’d believe it when they see it.
Louisiana Governor Suspends Election After SCOTUS Ruling
The Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s majority Black congressional district Wednesday, and by Thursday morning the governor had suspended the elections to make sure the next map has fewer of them.
Louisiana’s top elected officials say the state’s congressional primaries won’t be going forward as scheduled in May as a result of the ruling. The GOP intends to draw new maps, this time eliminating at least one of the state’s two Democratic-held districts, including the one currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields.
Absentee ballots have already been mailed to voters and early in-person voting was supposed to start this Saturday. There is currently no clarity on the legal mechanism by which the governor can simply call off elections that are actively underway.
Voting rights lawyers noted that a longstanding Supreme Court precedent generally prevents courts from ordering states to make major ballot changes this close to an election, which means Louisiana isn’t actually required to stop the elections at all.
Trump, not one to let a Supreme Court ruling go to waste, posted on Truth Social that Tennessee’s governor is also looking into redrawing his state’s map. It currently contains one Democratic district in Memphis, and therefore apparently one too many.
RFK Jr. Is Going to War Against Jell-O
While the country fights an actual war in Iran, the Health Secretary has located an enemy he feels comfortable defeating: hospital gelatin.
Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services is threatening to withhold millions of dollars from hospitals and nursing homes that serve Jell-O, fruit juice, and other sugary foods or drinks that don’t adhere to new MAHA dietary guidelines. He has also floated withholding Medicaid and Medicare payments from violators.
To enforce the crackdown, HHS is pushing a kind of community surveillance system, encouraging patients and staffers alike to report alleged violators to the federal government.
Take a moment to sit with that. The federal government is asking hospital patients to become informants against the orderly who brought them a small cup of orange Jello at 7 a.m.
Medical experts say it fails to account for patients’ unique dietary needs, such as post-surgery patients who literally cannot eat solid food. Lawyers note that HHS may not have the regulatory authority to enforce its threat without going through a formal rulemaking process.
Kennedy’s own spokesperson has since issued a statement clarifying that the guidance “does not establish new mandates, change Medicare Conditions of Participation, or create any new penalties for hospitals or nursing homes.”
So Kennedy announced a crackdown, his spokesperson walked it back, and somewhere in America hospital administrators are having a very serious meeting about pudding cups.
A 10-Year-Old Boy Was Forced Into Immigration Court Alone
A 10-year-old boy from Venezuela sat across from the DHS in Houston immigration court this week. One of those two did not have representation, and it was not the government.
The boy appeared alone and without an attorney after his mother was detained months ago during a traffic stop. She wasn’t charged with a crime. ICE was called, she was taken, and now her former boss is serving as the boy’s legal guardian because there is no one else. She fears ICE could take her son into custody or place him in detention as well.
The boy and his mother have a pending asylum case, which did not stop the DHS from requesting he be deported anyway. He went to court alone to argue against it, because children in immigration proceedings aren’t entitled to representation.
Unlike criminal court, immigration court is civil, which means the Constitution’s full protections don’t apply, and a fifth-grader can be handed a removal order with no one in his corner and that is entirely legal.
Nationally, only a third of immigrants had an attorney when a removal order was issued against them, including unaccompanied children. This is not an oversight. It’s how the system was built and how it’s being used.
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