Dems Dance Around the Truth of Trump’s Ballroom

It’s a funny word, “reconciliation.” In any other situation, it would mean restoring peace and harmony.

In Congress, the process means anything but. Yet, here we are, back on the precipice of another budget battle — the second after the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year. And if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has anything to do with it, this showdown will be as bruising as ever.

After a brief hiatus from Washington, Senate Republicans dropped their much-anticipated reconciliation draft last week, a $72 billion solution to Democrats’ months-long shutdown of Homeland Security. While the two sides finally agreed to fund DHS, its immigration arms — ICE and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol (CBP) — were stripped from the deal to get Schumer’s party on board. The tradeoff for reopening and paying employees of TSA, the Coast Guard, cybersecurity offices, FEMA, and Secret Service was pivoting to a bill that