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Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Tasos Katopodis\/Getty Images, checha\/Getty Images Plus, and Oleksandr Malai\/Getty Images Plus.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Surge<\/a>, the newsletter that covers the most important political nonsense of the week, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.<\/p>\n Welcome to this week\u2019s edition of the Surge. Due to short staffing, the Surge has brought on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to help complete the newsletter. It\u2019s a work in progress; they keep pulling their guns on the computer when they get spell-checked.<\/p>\n The big story of the week was long airport lines, which finally forced Congress to act to end the lengthy Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Which is not to say that they successfully acted to end it. We check on in ye olde Iran war, which is either almost over or en route to a ground invasion. The House may soon expel a member, and the dollar is about to go MAGA.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s begin with a three-entry run on an exceedingly messy battle in Congress.<\/p>\n \n 1.\n <\/p>\n Mike Johnson<\/p>\n Will this wretched DHS shutdown ever end?<\/p>\n Early Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill to fund all of DHS except for ICE and Border Patrol\u2014which already have heaps of cash from last year\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to draw from\u2014by unanimous consent. Senators then all flew home, assured that the House would briskly pass their product and end the six-week DHS shutdown by the weekend.<\/p>\n But House Republicans are refusing to behave like good little boys and swallow the Senate bill. Speaker Mike Johnson called the Senate bill a \u201cjoke\u201d on Friday, and said that the House would vote on a bill to fund all of DHS, including the immigration enforcement agencies, for 60 days. Then what? It\u2019s unclear. Not only is the Senate out of town and uninterested in returning for the next couple of weeks, but this bill would not\u2014at all\u2014be able to get 60 votes in the Senate. Now President Donald Trump may be able to issue a (likely illegal, but whatever) executive order declaring an emergency to pay TSA agents until a funding bill finally passes. At the going pace, though, that could be a million more years.<\/p>\n \n 2.\n <\/p>\n Chuck Schumer<\/p>\n How airport lines forced the Senate\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n Set aside the House\u2019s meltdown for a moment. How was the Senate, at least, able to do its part? The chamber finally reached a resolution on funding DHS for two simple reasons. First, the pain of the shutdown was finally being felt by the public in the form of interminable airport lines, as unpaid TSA agents either quit or called in sick. Second, senators badly wanted to go home for their two-week Easter recess. There was much intra-Senate grousing and griping and bickering in the days preceding Friday morning\u2019s vote. It is not worth recapping. The bottom line is that they had to do something in order to go home, and so they did.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take stock of this lengthy Senate battle. Democrats, following the Minnesota shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, demanded reforms to ICE and Border Patrol in exchange for their votes to fund DHS. After weeks of talks with the White House, that all fell apart, and Democrats ultimately secured no reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. Then again, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put up a long fight, kept his caucus together, and successfully kept Democrats from ever blessing the toxic immigration enforcement agencies\u2014all while dragging Trump\u2019s approval rating<\/a> further down. As for Senate Republicans? We\u2019re going to need more space for this \u2026<\/p>\n \n 3.\n <\/p>\n John Thune<\/p>\n FAFO.<\/p>\n Senate Republicans\u2019 argument is that they successfully blocked Democrats from securing any immigration enforcement reforms. \u201cThat ship has sailed,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Friday.\u00a0\u201cThey kissed that opportunity goodbye by failing to provide funding for those agencies.\u201d\u00a0Now, Senate Republicans said, they would have an opportunity to fund ICE and Border Patrol as they see fit, without the need for Democratic votes, through a reconciliation bill that isn\u2019t subject to the filibuster. \u201cWhat\u2019s coming next will supercharge deportations and it only requires a simple majority,\u201d Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt posted<\/a> Friday morning. \u201cFAFO<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The main downside for Republicans having to do a reconciliation bill, though, is that they would have to do a reconciliation bill. In order to get Trump\u2019s support for the DHS funding bill, Thune promised<\/a> that he\u2019d pair immigration enforcement funding with provisions of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation. Doing that is almost impossible, given the strict rules of the budget reconciliation process. Good luck explaining that failure to Trump down the road. Beyond that, it would be hard to contain the scope of reconciliation, as every faction of the party is going to want something\u2014Iran war funding, spending cuts, you name it\u2014before the midterms arrive and the music stops.<\/p>\n \n 4.\n <\/p>\n Donald Trump<\/p>\n Is the war over, or just beginning?<\/p>\n The Iran war is done, according to the president. \u201cThe war essentially ended a few days after we went in,\u201d Trump said Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve won this war. This war has been won,\u201d he said Tuesday. Iran is done, destroyed, obliterated and \u201cbegging for a deal.\u201d No doubt about it: Much bombing has been done, many Iranian targets destroyed, many top Iranian officials killed (along with many civilians).<\/p>\n And yet, consider what other developments are taking place: Two units of thousands of Marines are already headed to the region, and now a couple thousand paratroopers<\/a> from the 82nd Airborne are on the way. So at the same time the war is \u201cessentially ended,\u201d ground troops are being readied for some options\u2014either to take Kharg Island or other vital posts in the Strait of Hormuz, or to seize Iran\u2019s existing stocks of enriched uranium, or something else. We don\u2019t know. Members of Congress, including a number of frustrated Republicans who don\u2019t feel as if they\u2019re given any information, also don\u2019t know<\/a>. Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s War both has ended and will be coming soon. We wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Trump announces a ground invasion to assembled children at the White House Easter Egg Roll.<\/p>\n \n 5.\n <\/p>\n Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick<\/p>\n A House expulsion may be on the horizon. We witnessed a rarity in the House this week: A public \u201ctrial\u201d before the usually hush-hush House Ethics Committee. After a yearslong investigation, Florida Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick sat before the committee for hours on Thursday as it considered 27 ethics violations against her. The core of the allegations\u2014for which Cherfilus-McCormick is also under federal indictment<\/a>\u2014is that the congresswoman routed much of a $5 million FEMA overpayment her company received to her congressional campaign, including through the use of straw donors. This is frowned upon by the law. It was the first such public \u201ctrial\u201d before the Ethics Committee since 2010, and on Friday morning, the committee announced<\/a> that it had found her guilty on 25 of the 27 counts.<\/p>\n The committee will next meet after the Easter recess to determine an appropriate sanction to recommend to the full House. But this may well be headed to an expulsion vote, unless Cherfilus-McCormick resigns first. Democratic leaders have so far dodged<\/a> weighing in on the merits of the case by pointing to her right to due process. That due process is quite nearly over, though, and the findings don\u2019t look good.<\/p>\n \n 6.\n <\/p>\n Emily Gregory<\/p>\n A special election that has Florida Republicans spooked.<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019 hot streak in special legislative elections continued this week when Democrat Emily Gregory flipped a Florida state House seat that a Republican had won by 19 percentage points in 2024<\/a>. This result earned special attention, as one of Gregory\u2019s constituents will be none other than Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago home is within the district. \u201cI would love to have a conversation\u201d with Trump, Gregory told the Associated Press<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s welcome to call me, as I am his new state representative.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s more to this outcome than Resistance-pleasing symbolism, though. The result comes shortly before the Florida Legislature begins a special session to gerrymander its congressional maps in the ongoing midcycle redistricting wars. GOP leaders have been eyeing an ambitious plan to secure the GOP a fresh five seats. But given the poor environment and the GOP\u2019s hasty collapse among Hispanic voters, there\u2019s growing concern<\/a> among Florida Republicans that such a maximal gerrymander could spread the party too thin in the midterms and put incumbent seats at risk. Maybe they\u2019ll narrow their ambitions in the special session and squeeze out a modest two or three more seats. But what fun would that be?<\/p>\n \n 7.\n <\/p>\n Brandon Beach<\/p>\n Bumped from the dollar.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of the Most Famous Trials in U.S. History Disproves Trump\u2019s Birthright Citizenship Case <\/p>\n Bondi\u2019s Ouster Tells Us Something Important About Trump <\/p>\n Former Attorney General Pam Bondi Was Memed Out of a Job Brandon Beach is the treasurer of the United States, a job that is cool in one respect, which is that your signature appears on America\u2019s paper currency. He got the job not because he\u2019s particularly knowledgeable about the minting process, but because as a state senator in Georgia, he worked hard<\/a> on Trump\u2019s behalf to overturn the 2020 election. In any event, the job is no longer cool for Treasurer Beach, because his signature will no longer appear on paper currency. He\u2019s been bumped on the line in favor of Donald Trump, who will become the first sitting president to have his signature appear on the dollar. \u201cThe President\u2019s mark on history as the architect of America\u2019s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable,\u201d Beach said<\/a> in the official Treasury announcement. \u201cPrinting his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.\u201d Really, when you think about it, it is divinely inspired by the Lord.<\/p>\n
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