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WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

Democrats Pick a Shutdown Fight, as the ICE Surge Ends in Minneapolis

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Wall Street Journal

News, Society & Culture

4.22.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Congress skips town without funding the Department of Homeland Security, as a partial shutdown nears for the TSA and more, while border czar Tom Homan winds down immigration raids in Minnesota. Plus, does President Trump see his vulnerability, with voters now telling pollsters that Joe Biden did a better job? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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It challenges all sorts of traditional orthodoxies around how organizations execute the work at hand.

0:11.2

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0:25.6

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. After Democrats vote down a bill to fund

0:34.3

the Department of Homeland Security, including immigration enforcement. Congress

0:38.7

leaves town, setting up another partial government shutdown. Meantime, President Trump's

0:44.0

borders are Tom Homan, says the surge in Minneapolis is coming to an end. Welcome, I'm Kyle

0:50.4

Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by columnist Kim Strassel and editorial board member Colin Levy.

0:58.0

The deadline to fund the federal government is officially Friday at midnight, but Congress scedaddled on Thursday, including to the Munich Security Conference, after Democrats blocked a funding bill that didn't include their desired changes to immigration

1:12.2

and customs enforcement or ICE. And resignation about shutdown seems to be in the air, but for how long,

1:19.5

who knows? Let's start with Senate Majority Leader Republican John Thune explaining his view of

1:25.4

these negotiations. Tom Holman, again, announced this morning that

1:28.7

they're pulling all of the ICE agents out of Minnesota. So that was something the Democrats had

1:32.9

requested. But then the bill they voted against today, which was negotiated, negotiated with them,

1:38.2

it was a bipartisan bill, had reforms in it. It had body cameras in it, had de-escalation

1:42.7

training in it. It had more oversight of ICE activities in it.

1:47.0

These were reforms that the Democrats had requested, agreed to, and then walked away from.

1:52.0

They said, we need more. We need more and we need more in legislative text.

1:55.0

We just don't need commitments from the administration.

1:57.0

So the White House has sat down with them over the past several days. And, you know, they wanted a two-week extension, continuing resolution, to fund the government to allow for these negotiations. We said at the time it's going to take a lot longer. Let's do four, six weeks. They insisted on two. Took them 10 days to even produce their first proposal. The White House countered that in 48 hours, but we're up against the two-week

2:18.6

deadline and they didn't want to extend it. So again, I think they want the political issue here,

...

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