This analysis came out earlier this month, and it’s the mother of all wake-up calls. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would appropriate $200 billion to ICE, which the Cato Institute has called an “unimaginable sum.” Some relevant quotes:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill will direct an astounding $168 billion of the budget to immigration and border law enforcement, and there is even more for agencies that indirectly support immigration law enforcement.
The $168 billion is, by itself, an unimaginable sum. Without H.R. 1, Congress had already appropriated twice as much money to America’s border police as all other federal law enforcement combined. In FY 2025, immigration and border enforcement accounted for at least two-thirds of all federal law enforcement.
In FY 2025—again, before H.R. 1—Congress allocated nearly $34 billion to immigration and border enforcement agencies. That’s 36 times more than what is provided for tax and financial crimes enforcement (IRS-Treasury), 21 times more than funding for firearms enforcement (ATF), 13 times more than drug enforcement (DEA), and 8 times more than the FBI budget to enforce effectively everything else. The level of border police spending is already so extreme that it has swamped nearly all other criminal law enforcement priorities for the federal government.
The House plans to distort this wildly out-of-whack law enforcement system beyond recognition. H.R. 1 appropriates $168 billion to agencies whose primary purpose is immigration enforcement. It adds $1.2 billion to all other law enforcement for the Secret Service. This sum comes on top of the $33 billion, meaning that if this bill passes, about $200 billion will be made available for immigration enforcement starting in FY 2025.
$200 billion dollars is equivalent to 1/5th of our entire military budget ($960 billion). It’s more than Russia’s entire military spending in 2024 ($149 billion). To say that Trump would be creating a 7th branch of the military operating on US soil would be neither an overstatement nor a conspiracy theory.
For context, this article was published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank originally founded by Charles Koch (among others). The fact that these guys are ringing the alarm bell should be a warning unto itself. You can read the full text of the bill (H.R. 1) here.
The Democrats are already drafting up a cutting, sternly worded letter.
I bet Susan Collins will be concerned about it (but still vote 100% for everything)
What does this have to do with the Democrats? Or did you just want to shoehorn them in?
They helped pass budget bills for Trump before.
They attack politicians who want to do something tangible about Fascism like Mamdani and Sanders, instead of fighting fascism.
They could filibuster the bill and shut down the government, which would be an objectively better outcome than allowing the gestapo to sweep through the nation. They won’t though.
It is not possible to filibusterer this. Republicans are specifically using techniques to avoid having to deal with the filibuster under Senate rules. The whole thing is DOA if they do.