AmericanUnfiltered 🇺🇸

The Chicago Tribune reported Sheridan Gorman’s killer as “a Rogers Park man.” He was a Venezuelan national caught at the border in 2023, released, arrested again, released again, issued a deportation warrant in 2019, and never removed. Same facts. Very different story depending on what you choose to include. That’s not reporting. That’s framing. And framing is how narratives are built while accountability disappears.

Rep. Luna is right. Sheridan’s family said it themselves — this was not random misfortune. It was preventable. Three documented system failures over seven years led to this moment. An 18 year old paid for it.

Elon Musk offering to pay TSA salaries is a generous gesture. No one should question that TSA workers deserve to be paid. But let’s be clear about what’s actually being celebrated here — a billionaire stepping in to do Congress’s job. Federal law prohibits government employees from receiving outside compensation tied to their duties. So beyond the legal questions, there’s a constitutional one: the power of the purse belongs to Congress, not to private citizens, regardless of their net worth or intentions. TSA workers aren’t struggling because no one has the money. They’re struggling because elected officials on both sides chose a political standoff over their paychecks. The solution isn’t a workaround. It’s Congress doing the job it was elected and constitutionally required to do. Applauding a billionaire for filling a gap that 535 members of Congress created isn’t a win. It’s a distraction from the people actually responsible for creating it.

ICE was already funded separately through the reconciliation bill last summer. It doesn’t need this appropriations bill to operate. Democrats’ real demand wasn’t about ICE funding — it was about imposing operational restrictions on how ICE does its job. That’s a policy fight being waged through a spending bill. TSA workers are paying the price for it.

@kbern2018 @maziehirono Dems tried to pass a stand alone bill to fund TSA, Republicans blocked it 7 times. Republicans refuse to remove Ice funding from the bill and just fund everything else, which the dems have agreed to. It's Trump's and the GOP who are blocking the funding.

All those long, long lines you're seeing at the airport are thanks to one man: Donald Trump. He was presented with a deal to fund TSA along with the rest of DHS except ICE, and he said no. This is on him.

The House passed DHS funding twice. Democrats filibustered it in the Senate five times. It never reached Trump’s desk. The Cruz/Kennedy proposal was never a bill. It was a concept presented to Trump in a phone call. It was never drafted, never introduced, never voted on in either chamber. There was no completed deal. Congress did not finish their job. The House did. The Senate didn’t. And Trump shut down an idea before it could become anything. Three separate failures. Not one person’s fault.

@kbern2018 @maziehirono Congress did their job. They overcame all roadblocks and negotiated a deal where a majority of America's representatives could agreed. Trump alone decided to block it. It's his right but to be clear, It's 100% on him as of today.

Close but incomplete. Democrats blocked full DHS funding 8 times — TSA included. Republicans blocked TSA-only funding. Trump killed the Cruz/Kennedy compromise over a voter ID bill. But “holding ICE accountable” through a budget bill is a smokescreen. A funding bill funds agencies — it doesn’t restructure law enforcement. Demanding operational restrictions on ICE as the price of a spending bill isn’t oversight. It’s using TSA workers’ paychecks as leverage for policy they couldn’t pass on their own.

@kbern2018 @TeamKClark Now do how many times have Republicans blocked bills to fund the TSA because the GOP doesn’t want to hold ICE accountable for their actions? Is it 8 times now?

If you're wondering why this is happening: Trump is refusing to fund TSA until Congress passes a nationwide voter suppression bill ahead of the midterms.

Rep. Kevin Mullin and Rep. Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement demanding answers — based on a video. Not a verified incident. Not a confirmed wrongful detainment. A video someone posted of exactly what they wanted you to see. They said ICE has been “killing people in our streets.” No case cited. No conviction. No context. Just a statement attached to a viral clip. The facts are in now. The woman arrested at SFO had a federal deportation order since 2019. Seven years. This wasn’t ICE running loose at airports. It was a planned operation executing a judge’s ruling — confirmed by DHS, SFO, and local police. Mullin and Pelosi didn’t wait for facts. They didn’t ask for facts. The video gave them everything they needed. That’s the playbook. A curated clip creates outrage. Outrage creates a statement. The statement creates a news cycle. And somewhere in that chain, the truth never gets a seat at the table.

Trump rejecting the Cruz/Kennedy proposal is fair criticism. But “on Trump alone” doesn’t hold up. Democrats blocked full DHS funding 8 times. Republicans blocked TSA-only funding. Trump tied it to SAVE America. Three actors, three blockades. That’s not one person’s fault — that’s a system designed to fail citizens.

@kbern2018 @maziehirono They had a deal. Cruz & Kennedy agreed to it but Trump rejected it. This is on Trump alone as of today.

When the Rules Change, They Change for Everyone There’s a principle that doesn’t get talked about enough in American civic life: the legal frameworks a government builds don’t belong to the people who built them. They belong to whoever holds power next. That’s not a political opinion. It’s just how institutional precedent works. And right now, that principle deserves serious attention. Senator Chris Van Hollen recently called for President Trump to face not just domestic courts, but military tribunals and international legal bodies over a military operation conducted on U.S. policy authority. Setting aside where anyone stands on that operation — or on this president — the mechanism being proposed here is worth examining carefully. Military tribunals exist for a specific purpose. They were designed to adjudicate conduct in warfare — war crimes, violations of the laws of armed conflict, actions taken by combatants outside the civilian legal system. International courts carry a similar design logic: they were built to address state-level atrocities, genocide, crimes against humanity. These are serious institutions built for serious purposes. Applying them to domestic political disputes — to decisions made by an elected executive operating within the bounds of his constitutional authority, however controversial — is a significant departure from how American constitutional governance is supposed to work. It isn’t oversight. It’s the routing of a political grievance through a legal architecture that was never designed for it. And here’s where every American, regardless of party, should pay attention. Precedent doesn’t have politics. If it becomes acceptable to invoke military and international legal mechanisms against a sitting or former president over policy decisions, that standard doesn’t expire when the administration changes. It becomes available. It sits on the shelf, waiting for the next person in power to use it — against the next president, the next official, or eventually, the next citizen. The Constitution’s framework for accountability — impeachment, elections, civilian courts, congressional oversight — was not designed to be convenient. It was designed to be durable. The founders understood that the temptation to bypass process in pursuit of a result is strongest precisely when the grievance feels most justified. That’s when the guardrails matter most. Demanding that an opponent face extraordinary legal mechanisms because you believe the cause is righteous is not a new impulse in American history. It has never ended well. The machinery built to punish one person rarely stays pointed in one direction. This isn’t a defense of any particular policy or any particular person. It’s a defense of something more fundamental: the idea that how we hold power accountable matters as much as whether we hold it accountable. Process is not a technicality. It is the thing itself. If we want a republic that protects the rights of citizens — all citizens, across administrations, across generations — then the legal standards we apply in moments of political intensity have to be ones we’re prepared to live under permanently. That’s the question worth asking right now. Not just “is this person guilty?” but “what are we building?”

@rosadelauro “Enhanced.” That one word changes everything. Those weren’t permanent ACA credits — they were COVID emergency additions set to expire. The ACA is still intact. This post is counting on you not knowing the difference.

22 million Americans, including thousands in Connecticut, are struggling to afford health care because Republicans refused to extend enhanced ACA tax credits. We must restore these credits & strengthen the ACA so that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care.

The Powell quote is real. The math in this post is not. Here’s what Powell actually said: Core inflation is running at 3%. Of that 3%, between half and three-quarters of ONE percentage point is attributable to tariffs. That’s roughly 0.5 to 0.75 percentage points — not 50-75% of all inflation. The congressman took ‘half to three-quarters of the overshoot above 2%’ and quietly turned it into ‘half to three-quarters of total inflation.’ That’s not a rounding error. It’s a threefold exaggeration of what the Fed chair actually said. Also missing: Powell said oil prices surging from $72 to over $109 a barrel since the Iran war began are a major compounding inflation factor — one he said he cannot predict or ‘look through.’ Read the transcript. It’s public. The Fed posts it.

Trump’s own hand-picked Fed Director just admitted that 50-75% of the inflation we’re seeing now is due to Trump’s reckless tariffs. Between those tariffs and the Iran War, Trump’s policies are making life completely unaffordable for working families.

Representative DeLauro says Republicans won’t pass her TSA bill because it doesn’t include ‘money for ICE.’ ICE doesn’t need money. Congress already gave ICE $29.9 billion through last year’s reconciliation bill. ICE agents are fully funded and fully operational right now. Republicans aren’t blocking TSA funding to get money for ICE. Democrats aren’t withholding TSA funding over a budget gap that doesn’t exist. What Democrats actually want are policy concessions — warrant requirements, mask bans, conduct rules — attached to a spending bill as the price for paying TSA workers. Calling that a fight over ICE ‘funding’ is the kind of precise misdirection that sounds true, travels fast, and falls apart the moment you check one fact.

I have a bill to fund TSA. Republicans are blocking it because it doesn’t also have money for ICE. They could end the shutdown this week. Instead, we get more political theater.

Senator Durbin says Republicans could fund TSA if Democrats get to carve out ICE. Here’s what he left out: ICE doesn’t need to be funded. ICE received $29.9 billion from last year’s reconciliation bill. It is fully operational. ICE agents are being paid right now. Democrats aren’t holding out to protect a funding gap that doesn’t exist. They’re withholding TSA paychecks to force policy concessions — warrant requirements, mask bans, conduct rules — on an agency that Congress already fully funded. TSA workers aren’t collateral damage in a budget fight. They’re leverage in a policy fight. And Senator Durbin’s post is carefully worded to make sure you never figure that out.

Senate Republicans could fully fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard today. All they have to do is agree to our request to fund these agencies immediately while we negotiate a deal on ICE and Border Patrol.

The $1 trillion Medicaid number is real — CBO confirmed it. That’s worth a serious debate. But here’s what this post won’t tell you: ACA premiums were already up 129% since 2014 — before this law passed. The cost spike didn’t start with Republicans. It started with a law built on temporary subsidies that were always going to expire. You can believe the Medicaid cuts go too far AND acknowledge that Democrats spent 16 years patching a cost problem they never structurally fixed. Both things are true. Only one of them is in your feed today.

Today marks 16 years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law—delivering health coverage to nearly 50 million people and protecting over 120 million people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans slashed over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the ACA kicking millions off insurance and sending costs skyrocketing. We must protect the ACA and lower health care costs for everyone.

Linking TSA funding to the SAVE America Act is bad governing — full stop. Security shouldn’t be a negotiating chip for election legislation, regardless of which party does it. But let’s be accurate: Democrats have also blocked a clean DHS funding bill five times, refusing to fund TSA unless ICE funding is stripped out. So what we actually have is 60,000 essential workers — people legally required to show up and work without pay — caught between two parties who both decided their policy priorities matter more than those workers’ paychecks. That’s the real story.

Trump is creating this chaos on purpose now. Today, Republican leaders begged him to sign a bill that funds TSA and he refused. Instead, he said leave TSA closed and Congress must prioritize the SAVE Act, Trump's bill to rig the fall election.

@SpeakerPelosi “16 years in, premiums are up 129% for ACA plans vs. 39% inflation. Democrats had two full windows of power to fix it. What they gave you instead were temporary subsidies that just expired — and now they’re calling the bill ‘sabotage.’”

Yet, Republicans continue to sabotage this progress—threatening coverage and slashing Medicaid and Medicare in order to give tax breaks to the rich.   Democrats will never stop fighting to protect and strengthen the ACA, because health care is a right, not a privilege.

16 years ago, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law—a landmark achievement that transformed health care in America.   Today, tens of millions of Americans have peace of mind about their health because of the expanded coverage and better benefits of Obamacare.

@SenatorWarnock — Senator, the American people have already answered the question you're pretending doesn't have an answer. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 71 percent of registered voters support the SAVE America Act, including 91 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of independents, and 50 percent of Democrats. FactCheck.org Support for specific provisions is even higher — 75 percent support proof of citizenship to register, 81 percent support voter ID, and 80 percent support removing non-citizens from voter rolls. FactCheck.org That is not a failed agenda. That is majority support across party lines. When a Senator calls a bill that half of his own party's voters support a voter suppression bill, he is not describing reality. He is describing his messaging strategy. Here is what Senator Warnock also will not tell you. The American people want TSA paid and DHS funded. They also want election integrity. These are not mutually exclusive positions held by fringe voters — they are mainstream positions held by a majority of Americans across the political spectrum. Senator Warnock has decided that one of those majorities doesn't count. Calling the President's agenda "failed" when the polling says otherwise isn't a political argument. It's wishful thinking dressed up as conviction. The American people are watching — and Senator Warnock may want to pay closer attention to what they are actually saying.

This is what desperation looks like. President Trump wants Republicans to BLOCK funding for TSA until Congress passes his voter suppression bill. He is terrified that the American people have turned against his failed agenda.

@RepPressley — this post is half true and half missing the most important fact in the entire debate. Democrats have offered proposals to fund TSA without giving more money to ICE. That part is accurate. Republicans have blocked those proposals. That is also accurate. But here is what Representative Pressley does not tell you — and it is the fact that changes everything. ICE does not need more money from this bill. Congress already handed ICE roughly $75 billion through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law last July — reconciliation funding locked in through 2029 that no appropriations fight can touch. ICE is fully funded and fully operational right now while TSA agents miss paychecks. The shutdown cannot defund ICE. It never could. So when Pressley says Democrats won't give another cent to ICE she is describing a fight over money an agency already has. What Democrats are actually doing is refusing to pass a full DHS funding bill — the one that pays TSA agents — until Republicans agree to rewrite ICE's operating rules. That is a policy fight dressed up as a paycheck fight. TSA workers deserve to be paid. That is not a Democratic position or a Republican position — it is the only correct position. But the reason they are not being paid is more complicated than this post suggests. And your elected officials are counting on you not knowing that.

Our TSA workers should be paid. Dems have offered many proposals that would fund TSA workers to do their job with pay—without giving another cent to ICE. Republicans aren't serious & have denied every proposal.