Trump’s Agenda Depends On This & All Illegals Are Criminals – Top 3 Takeaways – February 27th, 2025
- A big, beautiful bill. When you think of something that’s big and beautiful... What comes to mind? The ocean? Our country? Your wife (kidding...)? Even if politics comes to mind the closest analogy that might apply perhaps would be Mar-a-Lago. When you think of things that are big and beautiful you’re almost certainly not thinking about congress or anything that takes place within it. Or if you are...that is with one exception. You’ve likely heard that President Trump’s “A” plan for enacting his agenda is to do so with “a big, beautiful bill”. One big piece of legislation that would pull together all of the president’s border, energy, defense and tax priorities. With Republicans having a congressional majority in both chambers, a united Republican Party would be able to deliver on these presidential priorities. However, unity with any large body of people can be challenging, and the House and Senate majorities for Republicans literally currently consist of only a few in each – meaning that there needs to be nearly literal unity to pass legislation...and as it pertains to passing President Trump’s agenda, that’s precisely what we’ve seen. Nearly literal unity...with one big divide that is. The big divide is how each chamber is choosing to go about addressing it. Last Friday, at about 4:40 in the morning, the Senate passed the first phase of what would be a two-phased approach to enact the Trump agenda. By a 52-48 vote (with all Democrats voting against it and one Republican, Rand Paul also voting against it), the budget blueprint for Trump’s border/immigration, energy and defense priorities passed the senate clearing the way for a budget reconciliation process with the House to take place (meaning that the legislation can pass with a simple senate majority as opposed to a 60-vote filibuster proof majority). However, the House wasn’t having it, as they forged ahead with what Trump said he wanted – the one bill approach that’s said to be ascetically appealing. Tuesday night the House delivered. Much like in the senate all Democrats were opposed as was one Republican – Thomas Massie, which is all Republicans could lose in order to pass the 45-page budget resolution that paved the path for budget reconciliation. While President Trump was said to be tepidly supportive of what the senate was doing last week (seemingly because they were at least doing something),
- President Trump made it clear which of the budget approaches he prefers when he had this to say: “The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!“, so, there it is. And here’s the thing. That's an especially big thing that surely isn’t lost on President Trump his second time around. Splitting the process into two bills doesn’t just create two separate reconciliation processes which would mean two sets of votes. History suggests that politically, few attempts are more challenging to achieve. The last time two reconciliation bills were signed into law in the same year was 2006, and it’s only happened four times in American history – with half of those coming during President Reagan’s administration. And speaking of President Reagan, and budget reconciliation history... Reagan is the only president to ever pass two budget reconciliation bills in the same year – which is what the senate’s approach would attempt to achieve. Is it possible that Trump could help usher through an approach that only Reagan previously has been able to achieve? Yes, it’s certainly possible. Is it advisable? Clearly not. History suggests this consideration is more than just a bit of a political game and the House approach is the right approach and the senate, as President Trump has suggested, needs to get onboard. The President’s entire agenda – including what happens with your taxes could depend on it. Speaking of defining things related to the budget deal...
- Preparing for phase 2. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has activated the Immigration and Nationality Act first used in 1952. Under the Act, those 14 and older currently in the country illegally have an opportunity to register with the federal government and leave the country without penalty. Doing so would enable them to potentially legally immigrate to the US, or at a minimum legally reenter the US at a later date. However, any illegal immigrant who doesn’t register with the government and is apprehended, will be charged with criminal penalties for choosing to remain here illegally. This is a critically important distinction. To date, there’s been a focus on what have commonly been referred to as “criminal illegal immigrants”, or those who’ve been convicted of crimes committed in this country aside from the crime of having been here illegally. Notably, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first presser she made news when she was asked how many of the illegal immigrants that had been arrested and tagged for deportation had criminal records. Her response was “all of them because they illegally broke our nation’s laws”. Conceptionally that was true at the time, but like any law – it comes down to enforcement. With the activation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, what Noem is saying is that every illegal immigrant 14 years of age and older has one last chance to course correct and do the right thing – or they will in fact “all have criminal records” because Noem and the DOJ will see to it that charges are brought against them. With hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants, with existing records, still estimated to be in the country, there’s a lot of work to be done before phase one is complete. But what this is setting up is the much bigger operation that’s part of phase 2 – after the Trump budget is passed and he has the resources to do all of the deportations that his administration has said that they will do. Last week an executive order called for ending government assistance programs for illegal immigrants within 30 days. Now there’s notice that those who remain will have rap sheets if they continue to choose not to do the right thing. It’s about to become that much less comfortable for illegal immigrants to continue to remain in this country illegally.