Background Briefing: February 3, 2026
Today’s House Votes to Fund the Government With Only 2 Weeks of Funding For DHS During Which Democrats Will Work to Reign in ICE
We begin with the passage in the House today of a spending bill to fund the government by a vote of 217 to 214 that gives DHS two weeks of funding during which new rules for ICE, CBP and DHS will be debated and worked out as Democrats are standing firm on reigning in ICE with much of the country behind them while Trump is on the defensive. Joining us is Robert Kuttner, the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and the Ida and Meyer Kirstein Chair at Brandeis University. He was formerly an assistant to the legendary I.F. Stone, a chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee, and for 20 years wrote a column at Business Week. His books include Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? and Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy, and he has an article at The American Prospect we discuss, “No Time to Compromise on ICE.”
We are Funding the Warehousing of Immigrants in a Form of Torture To Make Them So Miserable They’ll Waive Their Rights and be Deported
Then we examine further the abuses of ICE and DHS with a spending spree underway to buy warehouses to hold more that 73,000 immigrants now in detention and an additional 76,500 by warehousing them to make their lives so miserable they will agree to waive their rights and be deported, in a form of torture which we the taxpayers are funding. Joining us is Emma Winger, a Staff Attorney with the American Immigration Council, where she works to protect the rights of noncitizens through affirmative litigation, amicus briefs, and practice advisories for immigration attorneys. She has an article at The American Immigration Council, “ICE’s Secret Policy to Forcibly Enter Homes Without a Judicial Warrant Threatens All Americans.”
The Victimhood Behind Trump’s Backlash Presidency
Then finally we speak with Julia Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University. She is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate and the editor of The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party. Her latest book is Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History which documents how reactionary racist backlashes of white victimhood had Andrew Johnson following reformer Abe Lincoln, Richard Nixon following LBJ and Trump following Obama.