It’s okay to disagree on tactics. So I want to let you know where I’m at without you thinking I’m condemning you if you’re still where I was, um, just last week.

Funding for the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) runs out at midnight Friday (they have a lot in the piggy bank, though). Without a new funding bill, the DHS, America’s lead agency for (doing) domestic terrorism, will ostensibly get no more cash as of Valentine’s Day, a token of love for justice.

Republicans need at least seven votes from the Senate Democratic caucus to pass new DHS funding.

The Democratic plan right now is to oppose funding without changes to DHS. The congressional Republican plan right now is to wait for Democrats to blink. This tends to work when you’re facing a party that closely resembles Mr. Magoo.

For now, most of the reporting suggests that Democrats aren’t budging, if only because no one’s talking. Sen. John “no relation” Kennedy (R-LA) said Sunday, “I don’t think most Democrats would vote for the bill because the Karen wing of the party would punish them.”

First of all, TFN would like to welcome the unfairly maligned name “Karen” back to polite society. It’s good to have you back on the side of good, Karen. No, you may not speak to my manager. But at this point, yes, the Karen wing should punish Democrats for funding DHS.

Last week I laid out the Democratic list of demands. And I understand believing that those victories are worth funding DHS, because that’s what I believed.

Thanks in large part to corporate journalism, I’ve learned more and thought more about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans for human warehouses. Prisons are already an obscenity and national shame. No mas.

In some cases, ICE concentration camps are worse than prisons. Every day brings a new horror story. And since today’s a new day, here’s a new horror story: Attorneys say ICE is storing humans in a Burlington, MA, field office. (h/t)

Some are being held 50 to a cell, including both men and women and apparently no one’s even figured out how to exclude transgender people.

On Friday, a federal court ruled that the government can detain non-citizens, here for decades, with no criminal record, without bond, forever. (h/t) This ruling cost tens of thousands of people their chance at going free.

It was that story that made me write a note to myself on Saturday: “I’ve seen enough. No compromise. Just vote no.”

In story after story, we’re seeing Americans stand up against inhumane human warehousing. People who said they weren’t interested in politics are learning the real meaning of “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” and they’re getting vigilant now, standing up against their hometown concentration camps.

But also, congressional Republicans have diminished the value of what Democrats are pursuing. Because the Democratic demands depend on the government and Republican oversight fulfilling them. Even if Democrats win everything to the letter, the spirit is lacking. Democratic victories won’t be implemented by DHS and Congress won’t hold DHS accountable for that.

But more also, the Democratic demands are aimed at symptoms, the optional features on this administration’s self-driving autocracy. The demands address the results of our collective failure to prevent autocracy, instead of ending autocracy.

Look at how Newtonian politics work in the case of one demand: Masks.

Republicans are balking at taking masks away from the literal secret police of ICE and Customs and Border (sic) Protection (CBP). They don’t want agents getting doxxed. That’s understandable, but why is doxxing an issue?

Because there is no other mechanism for accountability.

When prosecutors tried to start collecting evidence in Renee Good’s murder — including documenting the pattern in which her blood sprayed throughout her SUV — the New York Times reports, FBI Director Kash Patel and other officials ordered them to stop, which is a nice, New York Times-y way of saying Patel and other officials covered up the murder.

Of course, only the amoral morons of Team Trump would try to cover up a murder already viewed by more people than Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, even the part apparently paying tribute to five-year-old ICE kidnapping victim Liam Ramos.

Only the Team Trump twits would block blood-spatter analysis that could give some idea where ICE agent Jonathan Ross was when he fired … after we all saw exactly where he was when he fired.

When government officials lie about what their agents are doing and abandon oversight, of course the people will seek accountability however they can.

And the reason the government’s not prosecuting is that Republicans prioritize order over law. But Republicans didn’t get there by themselves. Democrats for decades have abetted fear-mongering about crime and terrorism, slavish devotion to never-enough policing and ubiquitous surveillance.

See something, say something? How about fuck you?

Order enjoys such vast impunity that doxxing is literally the only valve through which to squeeze any accountability. I mean, what if Democrats win on masks? Then what?

We already know who killed Good and Alex Pretti! It hasn’t led to accountability. So who gives a shit about masks?

We don’t need Democrats to take DHS masks off. We need Democrats to put on their armor and take a stand against fear. Fear of crime when it’s at historic lows. Fear of terrorism when the real terrorists get presidential pardons. Fear of immigrants who make us safer and more prosperous.

Until Democrats start dismantling the Play-Doh Fear Factory they helped build, it’s pointless to squabble over which shape of goo to extrude.

And, no, it’s no excuse to say, but we have to keep funding DHS or else it’ll shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Secret Service (um, SS1) and the Coast Guard (SOS). (Although, honestly, hasn’t the Secret Service earned a well-deserved break? What’s the worst that could happen?)

As I’ve been saying, and the New York Times finally mentioned (at the article’s bottom) on Sunday, Democrats can write a separate bill funding just the less-tyrannical parts of DHS. This is literally the last paragraph:

Some Democrats have suggested funding those agencies separately while they continue to negotiate limits on federal immigration agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Some Democrats. And this here Newsfucker.

WHAT DEMOCRATS WOULD DEFUND What does America’s military-industrial-concentration-camp complex do with all the taxpayer money it gets from ICE to provide and misrun its concentration camps? The profits these companies make don’t just go to their reprehensible owners and executives.

The Intercept reports that these companies are also using our money to lobby our elected representatives to vote against our wishes. Specifically, they’re lobbying Congress to ban banks from refusing to lend to them. Luckily, banks are lobbying against this, because they don’t want to be boycotted over helping to finance concentration camps.

Still, it’d be nice if we the people weren’t bystanders in this legislative pissing match. The people should be directing the stream.

MATH IS HARD In case any congressional Democrats need visual aids to understand why we don’t need to fund DHS, here’s the Cato Institute’s pie chart of federal spending for the 2025 fiscal year on law enforcement. The blue chunk is just part of DHS. The rest of DHS funding is labeled, um, DHS.

Posted with permission of The Fucking News