Democrat Politics

Sunday’s focus of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” was the (big) business of our immigration detention systems. The terror unleashed by President Donald Trump and his Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparatus has made an already problematic immigration system even worse, as people who are dependent on our broken immigration laws find themselves dragged into detention.

Oliver breaks down the main reason why the unjust system has continued to thrive: the big business of private prisons, which houses more than 90% of ICE’s undocumented detentions. Private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic have watched their stocks soar since Trump won the election.

“I’ve worked at CoreCivic for 32 years,” CEO Damon Hininger boasts in one clip. “And this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career with the company.”

“Look, as a general rule, if something happens that causes a private prison company to get really excited, that thing was bad,” Oliver remarks. “If you ever come home and your spouse tells you, honey, I did something today and the Geo Group is super excited about it, you are in for a relationship-altering conversation.”

ICE’s website points out that detention is supposed to be “non-punitive,” a claim Oliver jokes is like saying, “that the ocean is not wet or that the ‘Wicked’ movie wasn’t 30 minutes too long. It is a bold assertion, sharply undercut by empirical evidence.”

The GEO Group is fighting in court to avoid paying minimum wage to the detainees being forced to work under threat of solitary confinement or the withholding of food. Oliver plays audio of an exchange between a GEO Group lawyer and the judge, where the judge characterized the private prison’s argument about detainees as the same as slavery.

“When a judge is likening your client’s practices to slavery, that’s generally a pretty bad sign for your case,” Oliver says. “There really shouldn’t even be a verdict at that point. A trapdoor should just open up beneath you while they pull the next case in.”

And who is being considered for detention is also problematic. At one of her first White House briefings, press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a grotesquely wrong-headed statement that has subsequently been parroted by ICE Barbie herself, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem: any undocumented person is a criminal. “I know the last administration didn’t see it that way, so it’s a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that’s exactly what they are,” Leavitt  said.

“Simply being undocumented is a civil violation, not a criminal one,” Oliver points out of Leavitt. “That is an important distinction that her boss should frankly understand, given that he has committed both.”

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett.

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To no one’s surprise, House Republicans can’t seem to get their priorities in line. 

While some far-right Republicans are directing their attention to further punishing Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas—who was ejected from the chamber after dissenting during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress—the GOP caucus should really turn its attention toward preventing a federal government shutdown.

But leave it to the House Freedom Caucus to be too bogged down with scheming ways to show their fealty to Trump to work on averting a shutdown, which could furlough thousands of federal workers.

Both chambers of Congress only have until midnight Friday to pass a funding bill, and House Republicans only released their 99-page measure to avert a shutdown this past Saturday. The bill, which would fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, would increase defense spending and cut non-defense discretionary spending.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will bring the bill to the floor for a vote this week, likely on Tuesday, but we don’t know whether it will pass. Trump is publicly pressuring Republicans into voting for it, but Democrats will likely oppose it. 

At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already said he’d oppose the bill. And given the Republican’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson can’t afford to lose another GOP vote. Given this, one might think that Republicans would be working to whip up votes for the bill, but some of the more hardline caucus members have other priorities.

Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas, dissents during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.

According to Punchbowl News, Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a member of the far-right House Freedom Conference, authored a bogus resolution calling Green’s actions “a breach of decorum” and suggesting that he “be removed from his committee assignments.”

Removal from committee assignments is usually a punishment reserved for the worst of the worst. In 2021, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has a reputation for sharing baseless conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, was stripped of her committee assignments after the discovery of her past statements endorsing the execution of Democrats, among other heinous things. 

Later that year, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who made appearances at white nationalist events, also lost his assignments after he shared a violent animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

In comparison, this form of punishment is often used as petty retribution against Democrats. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Rep. Adam Schiff, both of California, were booted from the House Intelligence Committee in 2023 as punishment for voting to eject Greene and Gosar from their committees and for their roles in the impeachment of Trump.

Green’s worst offense is waving his cane in the air and declaring that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, which he and other Republicans are pursuing to help pay for tax cuts for the rich. 

That’s not much different—or worse—than what happened in 2022 when Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado relentlessly heckled former President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address. 

While Republicans certainly have a reputation for pettiness, there’s a sense that this new measure against Green won’t go anywhere. Johnson, for his part, reportedly thinks “that this measure should go away.”

That’s probably because he’s more focused on appeasing Trump and avoiding a shutdown. It’d be a bad look for Johnson, Trump, and the GOP at large if the government shut down less than two months into his second term.

The resolution against Green hasn’t formally been filed, but Republicans already feel like they won since they successfully censured him last week with the help of some traitorous Democrats.

In any sense, the move to further punish Green and pass a bill through the chamber at breakneck speed shows how far Republicans will go to ensure that Dear Leader gets what he wants. 

But if anything, these moves don’t signify the GOP’s fealty to Trump so much as how truly terrified they are of him.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio and multibillionaire Elon Musk are making public displays of support for each other after an embarrassing report documented a contentious argument between the two men.

Musk was involved in an online dispute with Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski after Sikorski implied that Musk, who owns the Starlink satellite communications company, was threatening to cut off service to Ukraine. Sikorski said his nation, which pays roughly $50 million per year for Ukraine’s access to the network, might be forced to find another supplier.

That’s when Rubio interjected: “Just making things up. No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink.”

In another bid to bolster Musk, Rubio thanked the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency in a post announcing that 83% of the contracts for the U.S. Agency for International Development would be canceled. Despite—or because of—its vital role in providing help to struggling populations around the world, USAID has been one of the primary targets of DOGE’s attacks on federal agencies.

In response to Rubio’s post, Musk posted on X, “Good working with you.”

Their public support for each other is not happening in a vacuum. On Friday, The New York Times published a report revealing that Rubio and Musk had been involved in a shouting match with each other during a White House meeting with Trump.

According to the Times, Musk accused Rubio of not firing anyone working at the State Department. Rubio reportedly complained that Musk was lying, and Musk retorted that Rubio was merely “good on TV.”

The story was widely circulated, opening up both Trump underlings to mocking and ridicule. The fracas broke out of the world of politics and was lampooned in the cold open of this past weekend’s episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

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“You need to start acting like mature adults,” comedian James Austin Johnson said, portraying Trump and attempting to negotiate a truce between the two.

The administration has been trying to spin the bad report.

“ELON AND MARCO HAVE A GREAT RELATIONSHIP. ANY STATEMENT OTHER THAN THAT IS FAKE NEWS!!!” Trump wrote the day the Times story was published.

The White House later disclosed that Trump hosted Rubio and Musk at Mar-a-Lago for dinner on Saturday night, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News to reassure viewers that everything was fine between the two.

But while the Musk-Rubio rift was being exposed, the real-world impact of their partnership is devastating. The decision to kill USAID is leading to unnecessary death as innocent children are deprived of medicine, and concerns are rising that a lack of USAID support could lead to a newly virulent strain of tuberculosis.

Regardless of what the true story is about the on-and-off Trump/Musk/Rubio bromance, their actions are hurting many—and many more to come.

House Republicans on Saturday released a plan to fund the government that, if passed, would make massive cuts to social safety net programs, infrastructure projects, and even veterans’ health care programs.

Democrats tried to work for months with Republicans to come up with a bill to fund the government. However, the House Republican bill left Democrats out and is a partisan plan that increases funding for President Donald Trump’s deportation plans while largely axing funding for infrastructure projects, a fund to help veterans exposed to toxic chemicals, and disaster-mitigation efforts, among other things.

For example, Politico reported that the legislation did not renew $40 million in funding for over 70 programs to benefit children and families, including $5 million for homeless shelters in Alaska.

From the Politico report:

Also forgone are $890 million in grants for health care facilities and equipment. Again, the fiscal 2024 funding had been distributed on a bipartisan basis: GOP Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Roger Wicker of Mississippi were among those who requested funding for clinics and hospitals in their states.
 
Bipartisan emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation projects funded through $293 million of earmarked FEMA dollars are also not renewed, as well as $116 million in Small Business Administration funding and $107 million in workforce development projects. Clean water projects, law enforcement grants and tribal assistance are also targeted in the bill.

House Democrats say the funding bill does not include $22.8 billion for the Toxic Exposures Fund, which provides assistance to help veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances during their service. They also said it cuts rent subsidies by more than $700 million, which Democrats said would allow landlords to “evict more than 32,000 households including veterans, survivors of domestic violence, seniors, and families with disabilities.”

Also missing is $20 million in funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which, according to the Department of Agriculture, “helps supplement the diets of people with low income by providing them with emergency food assistance at no cost.” Cuts to that program come as Trump’s tariffs are expected to raise the cost of food even higher.

And the funding bill would also lead to $1 billion in cuts to the District of Columbia, which city officials told The Washington Post could lead to cuts to the police force, teaching staff, and more.

House Democrats appear united in opposition to the funding bill.

“House Democrats would enthusiastically support a bill that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans health and Medicaid, but Republicans have chosen to put them on the chopping block to pay for billionaire tax cuts,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter on Friday. “We cannot back a measure that rips away life-sustaining healthcare and retirement benefits from everyday Americans as part of the Republican scheme to pay for massive tax cuts for their wealthy donors like Elon Musk. Medicaid is our redline.”

Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a news release that the Republican funding bill also does not rein in Trump co-President Elon Musk from making unilateral cuts to the government that has caused chaos across the country.

Elon Musk

“This continuing resolution is a blank check for Elon Musk and creates more flexibility for him to steal from the middle class, seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses, and farmers to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” DeLauro said. “Veterans will suffer with higher housing costs, poorer quality of health care at the VA, and no advance funding for treatment from exposure to toxic chemicals. It makes the cost of living worse for so many hardworking people. It raises rents for many low-income families. With reduced staff and closure of Social Security offices, seniors will struggle. This bill also cuts Army Corps of Engineers construction projects by more than 40%, while Elon Musk’s SpaceX program gets special treatment across the government.”

Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, echoed DeLauro’s sentiments.

“Instead of working with Democrats to invest in working families and communities all across America, Speaker Johnson has rolled out a slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending—and more power to pick winners and losers, which threatens families in blue and red states alike,” Murray said in a news release.

House Republicans plan to vote on the legislation on Thursday—one day before the government is set to shut down. 

Republicans apparently hope that if they pass the bill and leave town, it will cause voters to blame Democrats if the Senate doesn’t pass the legislation. In the Senate, the bill needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, meaning that even though Republicans control the chamber, Democrats are needed for passage.

However, that is a gamble.

That would require House Republicans to keep nearly their entire conference together in voting for the funding bill since they have a razor-thin majority in the chamber. Republicans currently have a 218-214 majority. That means if every member of Congress is present for the vote, Republicans could lose just two votes. (A tie results in the failure of the bill.)

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky

In December, the last time the House voted for a funding bill, 34 Republicans voted against it—a number that is more than enough to tank the new legislation.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky appears to be a firm no. And Politico reported that three other GOP lawmakers—Reps. Tony Gonzales, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Cory Mills—are on the fence.

Trump told Republicans to vote for the spending bill, which could get the House GOP onboard as they often blindly do whatever he wants.

“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (‘CR’)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order.”

T-minus four days until shutdown.
 

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