Guardrail Grind
What, if any limits, will Congress apply to ICE?
Sticking closely to the organizing metaphor of this newsletter, the congressional forecast this week is unsettled. Democratic leaders have presented their list of “guardrails” they require to approve the full DHS funding bill. Parts of the proposal would significantly impact ICE actions and its mass deportation objectives as Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke of the need for “dramatic” reform to the agency last week. Republicans have rejected even modest items like requiring officers to unmask and wear identification, making a resolution by Friday questionable at best.
Senate Democrats, however, are talking about tossing in their hand by separating out immigration enforcement funding from the rest of the DHS package even though ICE and Customs and Border Protection would continue operating through funds in the reconciliation package. Without the shutdown of other DHS agencies like TSA and FEMA, this would seem to reduce pressure on the White House to cut a deal by going around its own House majority. Perhaps the plan is to take areas where consensus can be reached - like body-worn cameras for agents - off the board and extend the time frame for more difficult items on Democrats’ list. If so, this showdown would be short.
A decision to try again later in the calendar on proposals like ending racial profiling, demanding judicial warrants, prohibiting enforcement at core civic locations like hospitals and schools, and requiring state and local sign-off on large-scale operations seems like a misread of the current political situation and public mood surrounding ICE. It also would be an underestimation of the risk posed by what is effectively a state secret police force being deployed against nonwhites and increasingly against administration critics.
Congressional Democrats who have been most concerned with this agency’s poisonous threat to democratic civil society can hold together and try to thwart any deal leadership makes that they don’t think goes far enough. They would have the backing of public opinion: ICE conduct has been so brutal that nearly two-thirds of voters disapprove of it and a narrow majority favor slashing its budget. Most of what Democrats are asking for, G. Elliot Morris has found, is resonating with public opinion.
Chronically unable to back down, the administration’s response to growing disfavor has been to start bundling resistance to ICE with acts of domestic terrorism. Situated within DHS, ICE has all the state surveillance resources it needs to extend its targets to anyone expressing dissent as its lawyers posit it can disregard inconvenient parts of the Bill of Rights. Steve Bannon may be blowing smoke when he said that ICE could be deployed to polling stations this fall, but the administration could easily turn the state capacity of the War on Terror against domestic dissent with ICE at the tip of the spear. Accordingly, striking a deal on face coverings and body cameras feels light for the moment.
State surveillance and suppression of dissent aren’t merely concerns of those on the political left. It’s worth asking when congressional Republicans start to act in an area where they, too, object to administration conduct. Many members didn’t hold back on criticism of Trump’s posting of a racist video on his social media account last week, which is a sign the muscle memory is still there. House Homeland Security Committee members will have the first opportunity during Tuesday’s oversight hearing of ICE, CBP, and USCIS.
The DHS spending showdown is taking place just as the next appropriations cycle is starting up. The White House was supposed to submit its FY2027 budget proposal on the first of the month by law (presidents habitually blow the deadline) and appropriations subcommittees soon will start their work.
Given how late the House was in starting appropriations work last year and the political headwinds of an election year, it’s likely the process won’t be complete by October. How will Republicans respond if it seems that they will lose their governing trifecta in November? A CR through the start of the next Congress? The fiscal year? Will there be more shutdown drama on the horizon?
TRANSPARENCY
The Architect of the Capitol has released its FY 2025 performance and accountability report, which shows it met 13 of its 16 key performance indicators. Its biggest miss was a 72 percent satisfaction rate in a tenant survey, 18 points off its target goal. After a capital improvement project surge in 2023 during which it spent $620 million, AOC is continuing a drawdown. It spent just over $200 million in capital improvement in FY 2025.
Data gaps. NOTUS’s Shifra Dayak and Anna Kramer take a lengthy survey of the depth to which federal agencies either have stopped gathering data or have removed it from public view during the second Trump Administration. Many suspended collection projects, like the Department of Agriculture’s reporting on food insecurity and Department of Justice federal law enforcement officer misconduct database, cover policy areas the administration either does not prioritize or could demonstrate negative trends. Researchers have cataloged 3,400 datasets being removed from data.gov alone. Data collection quality, the authors note, also is affected by large numbers of layoffs at various federal agencies.
Secrecy has become standard practice, meanwhile, at the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, the New York Times reports, has required court employees to sign nondisclosure contracts beginning in November 2024. This policy followed soon after reporting about Roberts’ push to grant President Trump immunity from criminal prosecution that cited confidential memos. Justices’ papers already have restrictions to access that often last well beyond their deaths.
OMB data. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington won another lawsuit against The Office of Management and Budget for failing to include all spending plans in a public database. At least 131 of nearly 2,250 apportionment documents posted by OMB included undisclosed spending plans referenced in footnotes. A U.S. district judge ordered those plans be made public.
CREW successfully sued in August to restore all apportionment data that OMB had taken down back in March.
OVERSIGHT
What’s in the vault? Congress has yet to see a complaint by a whistleblowing intelligence officer made in May against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. It remains locked in a safe at the DNI’s inspector general’s office because of the highly-classified information it contains. The complaint, according to the Guardian, claims that Gabbard chose to share a National Security Agency notice that someone close to President Trump had a phone conversation with foreign intelligence officials to Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles rather than distribute it within American intelligence circles.
The whistleblower informed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of the complaint’s existence in November after failing to hear from DNI’s inspector general whether any determinations about it had been reached.
Gabbard fired the acting IG overseeing 18 intelligence agencies in June and replaced her with aide Dennis Kirk, a move Senators complained at the time was illegal. That decision followed shortly after defense and intelligence officials mistakenly included a journalist on a Signal chat during a military strike in Yemen. The Senate confirmed another of Gabbard’s aides, Christopher Fox, as the permanent IG in October.
On the topic of IGs, The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) reported federal IGs combined to save $65.6 billion through audits and investigations in FY2025, highlighted by a $14.6 billion case of health care fraud uncovered by Health and Human Services OIG. CIGIE members secured nearly 4,000 criminal prosecutions last fiscal year, according to its annual report.
The House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds also recently released its annual report for the last calendar year. The office continues to draw significant use in the chamber, as two-thirds of member offices utilized at least one of its four core services in 2025 and 83 percent of offices engaged in some way. The office engaged in an average of five consultations a week. More than half of member offices participated in its trainings.
Future oversight. House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Robert Garcia told Politico he would focus on Trump family corruption and agency corruption if he becomes chair of the committee after the midterms. He also noted that the minority will hold a field hearing in Fairfax to discuss the findings of a report on DOGE it will release on Thursday.
ODDS AND ENDS
Horn tooting. We at AGI have posted our 2025 accomplishments retrospective on our website, highlighted by successful (if temporary) defense of GAO and the Library of Congress’ funding and autonomy and nearly two dozen requests included in the FY 2026 legislative branch appropriations bill. This newsletter grew by more than 1,000 subscribers over the past year. Thank you!
CAO search. The House officially has opened applications for its next Chief Administrative Officer, who will lead an organization of about 800 people. The deadline for applying is March 6. It’s worth looking at just for the job description of this essential position in the legislative branch.
Diminished dissenters. Gabe Fleisher investigates the extent to which President Trump has remade the Republican congressional delegation. Since his first inauguration, only 40 GOP members who broke with him on one of eight core positions are left in Congress. By next year, he finds that as few as 22 who have ever broken with him on those votes could be left, whereas the number who have done it more than once may be down to three.
Don’t bet on it. As prediction markets start to take up minutiae of policy and even the content of White House press briefings, Rep. Ritchie Torres has introduced a bill to forbid congressional staffers and federal employees from using nonpublic information to buy positions. Former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, meanwhile, has been named the industry’s new head lobbyist.
State capital pressures. Younger lawmakers in statehouses are finding the threat environment, low pay, and poor professional support to be major impediments in staying in public service, according to a study by Future Caucus. Because state legislatures are such an important talent and experience pipeline into Congress, these trends are worrisome – if not consistent with many of the things driving members out of office themselves.
Seating symbolism. Rep. Sarah Jacobs explains the political posing and cliquemaking that goes into deciding where to sit on the House floor, which sounds like a high school cafeteria.
100 years of taxes. On the occasion of its centennial, the Joint Committee on Taxation will host a panel discussion on its policy role February 26.