Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. We cannot fund a
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security that is murdering American citizens.
Speaker 2: The credibility of ICE and DHS is going to be
Speaker 2: called in a question.
Speaker 3: With a government funding deadline Friday night. US senators are
Speaker 3: actively debating a spending package that allocates billions to the
Speaker 3: Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Speaker 3: and Customs and Border Protection. The package passed the House
Speaker 3: last week, but that was before border patrol agents in
Speaker 3: Minnesota shot and killed Alex Pretty and ICE You Nurse.
Speaker 3: An ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good on January seventh.
Speaker 3: As negotiations over the spending bill continue, Senate Democrats like
Speaker 3: Amy Klobashar, who's now running from Minnesota governor, and Chris
Speaker 3: Murphy of Connecticut are saying they'll oppose the package until
Speaker 3: more safeguards on dh CPB and ICE are in place.
Speaker 4: I am strongly opposed to more funding for ICE. Minneapolis
Speaker 4: is fundamentally less safe because ICE and CBP are there,
Speaker 4: and that's the point they are there to cause a conflict.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Republicans like Senators Lisa Murkowski and Bill Cassidy have
Speaker 3: started to scrutinize DHS leadership and ICE's actions on the ground.
Speaker 5: Being mettersis leadership.
Speaker 2: I think what you're seeing is President Trump focusing upon
Speaker 2: those events and deciding that he needs to guard that legacy.
Speaker 4: Tom Tellis's telling reporters this is an issue they should own.
Speaker 4: That their strong suit was border security and immigration.
Speaker 3: Something that got the president elected.
Speaker 5: They have destroyed it through their incompetence.
Speaker 4: That's one of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected,
Speaker 4: and now it's at risk of turning into a political liability.
Speaker 3: Stephen Dennis covers Congress for Bloomberg, and along with Bloomberg's
Speaker 3: The Least Ideas has been tracking the spending fight.
Speaker 1: It's been remarkable to see especially Republicans, albeit it's mostly
Speaker 1: Republicans who we've already seen speak out against the president,
Speaker 1: still a very small group, but start to be vocal
Speaker 1: in saying that someone needs to own this, and it
Speaker 1: is going to be someone within the administration.
Speaker 3: The White House has started to move closer to democrats
Speaker 3: demands in the hopes of avoiding a government shutdown.
Speaker 5: Well, ye're hopefully we won't have a shutdown, and we're
Speaker 5: working on that right now. I think we're getting close
Speaker 5: to Democrats I don't believe want to see it either,
Speaker 5: So we'll work in a very bipartisan way. I believe
Speaker 5: not to have a shutdown. We don't want to shut down.
Speaker 3: But with billions of dollars already approved for ice from
Speaker 3: Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, how much
Speaker 3: leverage does Congress have over an emboldened DHS and what
Speaker 3: options are on the table now?
Speaker 4: A lot of Democrats who voted to end the previous shutdown,
Speaker 4: even though they're very upset about healthcare. These Democrats whoss
Speaker 4: the line and said, Okay, we need to end this shutdown.
Speaker 4: Their conscience was shocked and they need to see something real.
Speaker 4: And so this could go on a long time because
Speaker 4: this is no longer about how many dollars somebody gets.
Speaker 4: This is about the kind of country we are.
Speaker 3: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 3: Bloomberg News today on the show inside the fight over
Speaker 3: ice funding playing out in Washington as tensions continue to
Speaker 3: flare in Minnesota. I'm wondering how you would describe this
Speaker 3: moment for Congress specifically.
Speaker 4: It has definitely been, as John Thune said, an inflection
Speaker 4: point for reevaluating the tactics, the procedures, how they're going
Speaker 4: about these raids. First, there was sort of a tsunami
Speaker 4: in the hours after the shooting, after the videos came out,
Speaker 4: after the White House and especially Stephen Miller and Christy
Speaker 4: Nome called Alex pretty a domestic terrorist and an assassin
Speaker 4: on social media with no evidence. And then I think
Speaker 4: it took Republicans another day or so to really realize
Speaker 4: that this was becoming a huge political liability for them
Speaker 4: heading into the midterm elections.
Speaker 3: And Alicie, what role does Congress really have when it
Speaker 3: comes to an agency like ICE and its oversight, What
Speaker 3: power do they have over the situation?
Speaker 1: The biggest thing is, as we're saying this week, is
Speaker 1: through spending and through appropriations, and so they can coalesce
Speaker 1: and dictate how much money is going to detention beds,
Speaker 1: how much money is going to body cameras. And so Democrats,
Speaker 1: of course, being in the minority, are really trying to
Speaker 1: grasp onto this moment as this is where we can
Speaker 1: can leverage a little glimpse of power and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of make our issues known. And if that means
Speaker 1: a partial shutdown of the government of course it'll look
Speaker 1: very different than what we saw months ago. With a
Speaker 1: full shutdown of the government, then that is what it
Speaker 1: may take.
Speaker 3: So just last year, Congress allocated tens of billions of
Speaker 3: additional dollars to ICE through Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,
Speaker 3: and all of the support for that passage came from
Speaker 3: Republicans who control the Senate and they have a slim
Speaker 3: majority in the House. So Steve, let's start with what's
Speaker 3: happening in the Republican party right now. What are you
Speaker 3: hearing from Republican members of Congress, but how their views
Speaker 3: on ICE have shifted since approving that bill as the
Speaker 3: agency has escalated its presence in cities like Minneapolis.
Speaker 4: I have talked to a fair number of Republicans since
Speaker 4: the shooting who are still extremely supportive of the mission.
Speaker 4: What they are worried about is the tactics. You're starting
Speaker 4: to see complaints from Rand Paul, who did not vote
Speaker 4: for that package. For example, he's the Homeland Security Chairman
Speaker 4: who has called for a hearing on February twelfth. He's
Speaker 4: somebody who has long had concerns about the Fourth Amendment,
Speaker 4: the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, all of those are
Speaker 4: implicated in the shooting of Alex Pretty. He was protesting,
Speaker 4: he was filming, and he was exercising his right to
Speaker 4: bear arms, which is legal in Minnesota in the United States,
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 5: Don't think it's on this to say he brandished a weapon.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's honest to say he assaulted officer.
Speaker 4: And then you also have the situation that is bothering
Speaker 4: some Republicans where they are asserting that they can just
Speaker 4: barge into people's houses, smash people's windows, and take them
Speaker 4: out of cars without a judicial warrant, and that's led
Speaker 4: to a lot of really bad images and videos that
Speaker 4: don't necessarily play well with swing voters and are absolutely
Speaker 4: firing up the Democratic Party base. So if you have
Speaker 4: sixty to sixty five percent of the public who are
Speaker 4: unhappy with ICE tactics, that still means there might be
Speaker 4: two thirds of the Republican base that supports ICE tactics,
Speaker 4: or even eighty percent. And so I think a lot
Speaker 4: of Republicans are trying to avoid angering their base, many
Speaker 4: of whom do not seem to have any problem with
Speaker 4: these With these shootings.
Speaker 3: And Alicia, one of the things that really demonstrates just
Speaker 3: how fast this conversation is moving. Is that just last
Speaker 3: week the House approved a spending bill that includes billions
Speaker 3: in spending on the Department of Homeland Security and ICE,
Speaker 3: and that was also approved by a Republican majority. I'm
Speaker 3: wondering how significant it is to hear this more public
Speaker 3: criticism just a week after that vote, and whether you
Speaker 3: think we'll see more opposition within Trump's party.
Speaker 1: This is the first time we're really seeing Republicans sandwiching
Speaker 1: in even a request for oversight or a full investigation
Speaker 1: to figure out what exactly happened here. And of course,
Speaker 1: going to Steve's point earlier, this is Trump's. This is
Speaker 1: something that has been pretty popular for him up until
Speaker 1: this front, especially among Republican voters. So to see the
Speaker 1: tide kind of turn against him doesn't bode well necessarily,
Speaker 1: and especially as more details are released. I think that
Speaker 1: we will continue to see what exactly went wrong here
Speaker 1: and that will either push Republicans to tap it down
Speaker 1: or build a broader coalition against ICE in general.
Speaker 3: We also saw Chris Maddele, one of the leading Republican
Speaker 3: candidates in Minnesota's gubernatorial race, who also provided legal assistance
Speaker 3: to the agent who shot Renee Good drop out of
Speaker 3: the race on Tuesday.
Speaker 2: I cannot support the National Republican stated retribution on the
Speaker 2: citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a
Speaker 2: member of a party that would do so.
Speaker 3: How has that been received by the party at large.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a signal that there is a growing sense
Speaker 1: of discontent in what is going on in Minneapolis, and
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to the significance of the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, also it looks at like the politics of it.
Speaker 4: One of the things he said in his ten minute
Speaker 4: statement is that Republicans aren't going to win in this
Speaker 4: environment in Minnesota, that this is basically destroying their brand.
Speaker 4: And he said if he had millions of dollars to
Speaker 4: run as an independent, he would, but he doesn't. And
Speaker 4: so I think that there's just a lot of frustration
Speaker 4: that they should be winning on this issue and they're
Speaker 4: kind of flubbing it.
Speaker 3: I want to turn my attention to the Democrats now.
Speaker 3: There were seven Democratic House representatives who voted for the
Speaker 3: DHS spending bill alongside Republicans last week. One of them,
Speaker 3: New York House Representative Tom Swazi, has since come out
Speaker 3: and said he regretted it. Alicia how did those Democratic
Speaker 3: representatives justify their initial vote to approve DHS funding and
Speaker 3: what's changed for someone like Swazi.
Speaker 1: It's notable that all seven who voted for the DHS
Speaker 1: funding bill are in these very vulnerable positions. They're either
Speaker 1: in a red region kind of holding the swingy district position,
Speaker 1: some are in areas that voted for Trump, and yet they,
Speaker 1: based on their namesake or based on reputation, have been
Speaker 1: able to continue leadership despite the sort of split throughout
Speaker 1: the ballot. And so I think, leaning into the fact
Speaker 1: that immigration has been one of Trump's more popular policy fronts,
Speaker 1: especially among Republicans, that was sort of their justification. And
Speaker 1: of course we've seen in recent weeks that this can
Speaker 1: really come back on them. I guess time wills hell
Speaker 1: if this decision kind of comes to bite them come
Speaker 1: election time.
Speaker 3: After the break, where the debate in Washington could go
Speaker 3: from here and what it could mean on the ground
Speaker 3: in Minnesota. Congress could decide to spin out DHS funding
Speaker 3: from the larger spending package so that it can be
Speaker 3: considered on its own. But if Congress doesn't reach a
Speaker 3: deal on the spending package by Friday, the US government
Speaker 3: would be headed towards a partial shutdown, and Bloomberg's Alicia
Speaker 3: Diaz says that wouldn't necessarily mean federal agents would have
Speaker 3: to stop their operations in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: ICE will more or less continue to operate as normal.
Speaker 1: Many of those ages will continue to get paid, many
Speaker 1: of them will be deemed essential workers. So in practical purposes,
Speaker 1: it will not have any kind of short term impact
Speaker 1: to these on the ground raids or presences that we're
Speaker 1: seeing in cities across the country.
Speaker 4: I think the thing is is that a lot of
Speaker 4: Democrats right now want to claw back some of that
Speaker 4: many tens of billions of dollars that they spent on
Speaker 4: border security, that is funding what's going on now.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Stephen Dennis again, you know.
Speaker 4: Huge recruitment drives, huge bonuses for signing up quickie training programs,
Speaker 4: massive privately run for profit prison operations. You know, talk
Speaker 4: of bonuses the more people they can detain. So there's
Speaker 4: this bigger issue here, which is they got this huge
Speaker 4: funding increase that was intended to go for four years
Speaker 4: that the Democrats call it a big slush fund because
Speaker 4: they could spend that money whether the government is shut
Speaker 4: down or not. And the broader package. You have to
Speaker 4: put it in context of everything that's happened over the
Speaker 4: last year. This broader package actually rolls back a lot
Speaker 4: of the DOGE cuts. It restores funding for the Department
Speaker 4: of Education, for a lot of NIH research grants. It
Speaker 4: deals with all sorts of things all across the government.
Speaker 4: It's actually most of the government agencies, including healthcare and defense.
Speaker 4: There are so many things, thousands and thousands of little
Speaker 4: provisions in here that Democrats want, that they negotiated, and
Speaker 4: they were willing up until Saturday night when Chuck Schumer
Speaker 4: first put out a statement saying we're going to block
Speaker 4: this thing that we negotiated. They still want to pass
Speaker 4: most of that bill. I mean, Schumer told me as
Speaker 4: he was leaving the building and I was walking him
Speaker 4: out the door, I asked him sort of, well, what
Speaker 4: you know, is there a way out here? And he
Speaker 4: said that, you know, the first thing that has to
Speaker 4: happen is the Republicans have to agree to split off
Speaker 4: the DHS funding and we'll set that aside and pass
Speaker 4: everything else.
Speaker 1: Republicans know that if the DHS spills spun off, they
Speaker 1: sort of lose their leverage for getting any compromise through
Speaker 1: the door, So from the Republican point of view, it
Speaker 1: is less likely to have that bill spin off. They
Speaker 1: want it to be this bigger, more encompassing package of
Speaker 1: spending bills that would essentially fund about half of the
Speaker 1: government and bring those all together through the door come Friday.
Speaker 3: And I want to talk about some of those accountability
Speaker 3: measures that could be baked into a Senate version of
Speaker 3: this bill. Right and the House approved version of the
Speaker 3: spending bill, There's twenty million four body cameras for ICE agents.
Speaker 3: There's twenty million towards some more oversight of DHS facilities.
Speaker 3: So other than the hard money numbers that are being
Speaker 3: debated here, are there other provisions Congress is talking about
Speaker 3: working into this spending bill or strengthening that could in
Speaker 3: ice Alicia.
Speaker 1: Several Democrats have called for specific more so like human
Speaker 1: rights provisions. ICE agents can't wear masks. ICE agents can't
Speaker 1: racially profile or enter a place of worship like a
Speaker 1: synagogue or a church and use that as kind of
Speaker 1: a ground for targeting people who are here undocumented. So
Speaker 1: there are less funding specific provisions that Democrats are really
Speaker 1: fighting to get into this built.
Speaker 4: I talked to Tina Smith, she's a Senator from Minnesota,
Speaker 4: and I asked her about what the Republicans are pushing
Speaker 4: for John Thune, Susan Collins, et cetera. And there are
Speaker 4: these talks going on with the administration on some kind
Speaker 4: of executive action that the president could take now he's
Speaker 4: taken some small actions. But Tina Smith told me that
Speaker 4: on the ground in Minnesota, things haven't really changed. They're
Speaker 4: still continuing to do what they're doing, taking people off
Speaker 4: the street, set brading families, all the rest. And she
Speaker 4: said she is not going to be satisfied with what
Speaker 4: she called a pinky promise from this administration. There is
Speaker 4: no trust and if there's no trust, you can't just
Speaker 4: satisfy people with some kind of sort of half measure
Speaker 4: changing of the who's in charge. With Tom Homan going
Speaker 4: to Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: As things stand, I think one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: to watch will be whether this specific DHS bill will
Speaker 1: be spun off or not.
Speaker 3: And if there are substantive changes made to the bill,
Speaker 3: the House would need to approve them when they're back
Speaker 3: in session, and that happens next week.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct, So the household return next week. They then
Speaker 1: will have to go and approve the changes. And we've
Speaker 1: had a better sense of how the Senate is feeling
Speaker 1: about the tragedies that occurred to Minneapolis because they've been
Speaker 1: here this week and they've been in the hallways. They've
Speaker 1: been tweeting, Some members of the House have taken their
Speaker 1: point of view to social media, but they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to face questions from porters in the hallway. So
Speaker 1: when they returned to Washington, we'll get a better sense
Speaker 1: of if there is some kind of a compromise, is
Speaker 1: the House going to play ball with it?
Speaker 3: And my last question is just about where the President
Speaker 3: stands on all of this, because the funding bill, changed
Speaker 3: or unchanged, spun off or intact, will end up on
Speaker 3: the president's desk eventually. I'm interested in how you're tracking
Speaker 3: Trump's rhetorical changes here. He gave a speech in Iowa
Speaker 3: on Tuesday night where he said he was going to
Speaker 3: de escalate a little bit when it comes to the
Speaker 3: approach to immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, but he also described
Speaker 3: the people arrested by ICE in Minnesota as hardened, vicious criminals.
Speaker 3: According to The New York Times, most of the people
Speaker 3: who've been arrested by ICE in its most high profile rates,
Speaker 3: like the ones in LA and Chicago have no criminal record.
Speaker 3: So I'm wondering, Alicia, what does Trump's shift in rhetoric
Speaker 3: and tone around this issue signal and what doesn't it signal.
Speaker 1: I think it's very telling. Of course, we have seen
Speaker 1: the president swing back and forth on a variety of issues.
Speaker 1: What comes to mind is tariffs, so again we've sort
Speaker 1: of seen that. Seesaw happening with the actions in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: He has this blunt rhetoric, calling folks on the grounds criminals,
Speaker 1: pointing to the fact that Alex Preddy had a gun,
Speaker 1: while of course we knew that it was something that
Speaker 1: he was legally able to conceal and carry. Time will
Speaker 1: tell how he will respond to changes in a government
Speaker 1: funding bill, but he seems as of now open to
Speaker 1: some sort of reining in, even if it's not by
Speaker 1: his own actions, because we've seen the American people respond
Speaker 1: to this, and this is one of his most popular
Speaker 1: policies and it doesn't vote well for anyone if his
Speaker 1: voters and constituents start to turn the tides on that.
Speaker 3: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah
Speaker 3: Holder to get more from the Big Take and unlimited
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