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Politics
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March 24, 2026
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p class=”is-style-dropcap”>Because the US Senate seeks to finish the Division of Homeland Safety funding shutdown by discovering a workable compromise on reforms to the unconstitutional and murderous Immigration and Customs Enforcement putsch in American cities, it discovered time to verify a brand new head of the DHS who is sort of definitely going to develop ICE’s reign of terror. The legislative chamber that likes to name itself the “world’s biggest deliberative physique” principally phoned within the affirmation of Oklahoma GOP Senator Markwayne Mullin as new DHS edgelord. Probably the most nettlesome sticking level in his affirmation hearings was Mullin’s feedback {that a} neighbor’s rib-breaking assault on his convention colleague Homeland Safety and Authorities Affairs chair Rand Paul of Kentucky was most likely justified.
Mullin, true to type, refused to apologize and accused Paul of conducting “character assassination” from his committee chairman’s perch—a traditional Trumpian plaint changing a delusional bout of aggression into fodder for grievance. Given Mullin’s earlier violent threats within the Senate—he infamously challenged Teamster president Sean O’Brien to a fistfight over a string of derisive tweets in a 2023 committee listening to—Paul’s opening problem to Mullin ought to have prompted a looking out inquiry into the nominee’s character. As a substitute, the committee shrugged it off, along with Mullin’s troubling stance as an election denier at a second when President Donald Trump is threatening to deploy ICE thugs to election precincts as a part of the GOP’s authoritarian crackdown on poll entry.
After the Trump administration ditched former DHS Director Kristi Noem for her clueless sanctioning of deadly ICE assaults on peaceable protesters and detainees (compounded by the unforgivable MAGA thoughtcrime of implicating Trump himself in ICE’s brownshirt assaults), senators have been insisting that her successor provoke an across-the-board coverage reset in an company that’s concentrating on immigrant communities and elementary First Modification safety underneath the bogus guise of detaining and deporting violent criminals and harmful predators. But the Senate did what it’s finished all through the second Trump time period: inertly rubber-stamp the administration’s wildly unqualified and ideologically vindictive senior appointees after some desultory airing of objections earlier than C-SPAN cameras.
It is a rank perversion of the “advise and consent” powers relegated to the Senate as a coequal department of presidency within the Structure. The Senate apparently discovered nothing after it royally fucked up the affirmation of the plainly inept xenophobic demogogue Noem. Now it’s confirming Mullin as a buffer and extra rhetorically belligerent entry in the identical administrative product line. The case for turning down Mullin ought to have been clear after the nominee pointedly refused to rule out dispatching ICE brokers to voting precincts this November, and for good measure didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory as he defended the DHS’s baseless investigation of 2020 election ends in Arizona. But Mullin cruised into affirmation on a 54–45 vote; Democrats Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and John Fetterman voted with the Republican majority, whereas Ruben Gallego of Arizona abstained, whilst Mullin endorsed DHS’s duplicitous assault on voting rights in his house state. Unsurprisingly, Paul was the one Republican to interrupt ranks and vote towards Mullin’s affirmation.
This travesty of oversight is par for the course within the US Senate. Through the Trump White Home’s run of wicked and sycophantic cupboard nominees, principally drawn from the Fox Information lineup, the nominal leaders of the Senate opposition couldn’t be bothered to withhold unanimous consent—the physique’s somnolent routine of suspending the foundations of debate to expedite votes—in an effort to shed correct and sustained public consideration to the gallery of rogues, grifters, and MAGA sycophants now entrusted with making and administering coverage in each sphere of public life. Other than a failed and half-hearted effort to forestall the affirmation of supreme MAGA ghoul Russell Vought as head of the Workplace of Administration and Funds, Senate Democrats politely connived in creating the impression, through the vital formative days of the second Trump administration, that this might be a kind of abnormal White Home working on the identical protocols of Senate complaisance that each one prior presidencies had loved.
This do-nothing posture yielded the insane 100–0 affirmation of Marco Rubio as secretary of state, setting American overseas coverage on its fateful course of rudderless unconstitutional intervention for no coherent purpose or goal, all propped up by Rubio’s vile and deadly lying. In lieu of continuous to stick to the hoary and delusive “biggest deliberative physique” tagline, the Senate ought to heretofore take to calling itself “the legislature that checked out Marc Rubio and shrugged.” As a substitute of heeding Mission 2025’s dictum that “personnel is coverage,” Senate leaders ensured that the inspiration of the second-term Trump agenda was laid with out interruption; no Democratic senator holding forth at a No Kings rally ought to be allowed to neglect that when the mandate to disrupt regular order was most pressing, the get together’s convention’s de facto mantra was, “What subsequent, my liege?”
Now that Mullin’s nomination has sailed by way of, the Trump White Home is resuming its full-court press to safe the Senate’s passage of the White Home’s pet voter-suppression invoice, the SAVE America Act. Even some Senate Republicans are withholding assist for the measure, because it might disenfranchise many key MAGA constituencies. So in a Hail Mary maneuver, GOP leaders try to dealer a deal to finish the DHS shutdown in trade for an inconceivable bid to power a SAVE America vote underneath finances reconciliation protocols that may allow it to bypass the filibuster and move on a straight-majority vote. In fact, there’s no sane interpretation of finances politics that may deliver voting-rights crackdowns underneath its domains. However that’s the decision of the Senate parliamentarian—with the seemingly connivance of Senate majority chief John Thune, who’s been loath to interrupt any type of protocol for a SAVE Act vote. Or to place issues one other manner: Senate Democrats are leaving essentially the most elementary train of political company in our formal democracy to recondite rule-making choices wherein they play no significant half. Simply enterprise as common on the planet’s most nugatory deliberative physique.
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<span type=”"font-weight:” 400;”=””>Even earlier than February 28, the explanations for Donald Trump’s imploding approval ranking have been abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and private enrichment to the tune of billions of {dollars} throughout an affordability disaster, a overseas coverage guided solely by his personal derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous marketing campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
<span type=”"font-weight:” 400;”=””>Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional struggle of aggression towards Iran has unfold like wildfire by way of the area and into Europe. A brand new “ceaselessly struggle”—with an ever-increasing chance of American troops on the bottom—could very properly be upon us.
<span type=”"font-weight:” 400;”=””>As we’ve seen again and again, this administration makes use of lies, misdirection, and makes an attempt to flood the zone to justify its abuses of energy at house and overseas. Simply as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth supply erratic and contradictory rationales for the assaults on Iran, the administration can be spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are underneath risk from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they turn into the idea for additional authoritarian encroachment and struggle.
In these darkish occasions, unbiased journalism is uniquely in a position to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians world wide—and shine a shiny gentle on the reality.<span type=”"font-weight:” 400;”=””>
The Nation’s skilled group of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the dimensions of what we’re up towards and the urgency with which we’ve to behave. That’s why we’re publishing vital reporting and evaluation of the struggle on Iran, ICE violence at house, new types of voter suppression rising within the courts, and far more.
<span type=”"font-weight:” 400;”=””>However this journalism is feasible solely together with your assist.
This March, The Nation wants to lift $50,000 to make sure that we’ve the assets for reporting and evaluation that units the document straight and empowers individuals of conscience to arrange. Will you donate at the moment?
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Chris Lehmann
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Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for <em>The Nation</em> and a contributing editor at <em>The Baffler.</em> He was previously editor of <em>The</em> <em>Baffler </em>and <em>The New Republic</em>, and is the writer, most not too long ago, of <em>The Cash Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream</em> (Melville Home, 2016).
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