DHS Shutdown
As expected, the parties in the Senate could not come to an agreement on DHS funding and now the agency will be shut down. Sort of.
So much money was appropriated for DHS, and ICE and CBP specifically, in last year's reconciliation bill, that DHS could continue to operate with little or no interruption. Other parts of DHS like FEMA and the TSA might face operational cuts or shutdowns.
You might think that only ICE and CBP could operate without interruption, but as this Wall Street Journal article notes, DHS Secretary Noem has a pretty freewheeling approach to how to spend the agency's money.
The article also notes Noem's antipathy towards FEMA which suggests that that sub-agency of DHS would receive no special help while new funding is unavailable.
Could Congress appropriate funds for FY2026 all of DHS except for ICE & CBP? Sure. Rep. DeLauro (D-CT3) proposed exactly that this week. But so far her proposal has not garnered any interest.
If Congress took that route, ICE and CBP would still have, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), 750% more money than they had before the reconciliation bill passed.
Both chambers of Congress are out next week so no movement is expected until the week of February 23 at the absolute earliest.
Tariffs
Last year, Speaker Johnson (R-LA4) used a Rules Committee rule to block any votes in the House that would object to the President's use of tariffs. Well, that rule ended this week. When Johnson tried the maneuver again this week it failed 214-217. And that opened the door to the first of probably many successful votes against the President's vast new tariff structure.
Because the Senate would also have to agree to the resolution to end the tariffs and then the President would have to sign it, it's extremely unlikely that this vote will lead to an end to any tariffs. But it is one of the very few instances of the Republican majority not squashing an objection to something the President really wants and is thus notable.
DOJ Spying on Lawmakers Reviewing Epstein Files
Speaker Johnson has become something of a broken record whenever he's asked about some administration overstep into Congressional authority: he says he doesn't know anything about it and/or that it's probably fine. So it was a bit of a surprise this week when he had heard the news that the Department of Justice was spying on legislators' search histories during their reviews of Epstein files and said it was "inappropriate". Not exactly a robust defense of Congressional power, but a notable departure from his usual pattern.
House Passed a Few Other Bills
None of these bills are anywhere near becoming a law. They first have to pass the Senate.
- H.R. 1531: PROTECT Taiwan Act, which would make it the policy of the United States to prevent China from participating in certain international organizations if the President determines that Taiwan or the interests of the United States are being threatened, passed 395-2.
- H.R. 6644: Housing for the 21st Century Act, passed 390-9. This is a large bill with lots of parts, but the Bipartisan Policy Center has an explainer.
- H.R. 2189: Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, which would would amend the definition of firearm in the Gun Control Act of 1968 to exclude certain nonlethal projectile devices, passed 233-185.
- H.R. 3617: Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply Act, which would direct the Department of Energy to assess vulnerabilities in critical energy resource supply chains, including critical minerals and rare earth elements, and develop strategies to address disruptions and over-reliance on adversarial nations (sponsor press release), passed 223-206.
- S. 1383: Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would enact a host of new requirements to register to vote, passed 218-213. This bill, despite originating in the Senate, still has to go back to the Senate for another vote because originally S. 1383 was about something totally different. The House substituted in new text about voting registrations, changed the bill name and now it has to go back to the Senate.
- H.R. 261: Undersea Cable Protection Act of 2025, which would prohibit the Secretary of Commerce from prohibiting, or requiring any permit or other authorization for, the installation, continued presence, operation, maintenance, repair, or recovery of undersea fiber optic cables in a national marine sanctuary if such activities have been authorized by a Federal or State agency, passed 218-212.
One New Law
- H.J.Res. 142: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, which prohibits Washington, D.C. from opting out of tax cuts passed last year, passed 49-47. It goes next to the President for signing.
Amy West is the GovTrack research and communications manager.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.