Making It Complicated

Today’s notice: Unpacking Trump’s plan to ease airport screening delays. FISA reform cannot get a word in edgewise. Trump dances on Robert Mueller’s grave. We went to D.C.’s most bizarre new pop-up. And: New questions about DHS’s “Worst of the Worst” deportation list.

THE LATEST

ICE to the airport, or: the DHS shutdown gets weird. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will deploy to 14 airports this week, a source familiar with the plan told Jasmine. Passengers at those airports are experiencing the longest lines due to TSA staffing shortages — which are caused by the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which is happening because Democrats are concerned federal immigration enforcement agents have gotten out of control.

Confused yet? You’re not alone. Jasmine’s source said this plan is still subject to change. On CNN, White House border czar Tom Homan explained that ICE agents will not be running airport screening but rather doing other TSA jobs to free up the stretched (and still unpaid) TSA workers to focus on passengers. No one knows if that will actually alleviate the delays.

How this affects shutdown politics is also unknown. Senators were on Capitol Hill this weekend to continue debating the SAVE America Act, as well as to move Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead DHS (he cleared a procedural hurdle with the help of “aye” votes from Democrats John Fetterman and Martin Heinrich, setting up a final vote on his nomination as early as this evening).

In a post last night on Truth Social, the president suggested that Republicans not vote on any future DHS funding agreement at all, unless Democrats help to pass an election security bill first. He said, “It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate.”

Trump’s ICE-to-the-airport announcement was generally not greeted as a magic solution to the ongoing DHS appropriations staredown, either. “On the scale of one to 10, our negotiations are about -17,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy told Samuel in the Senate halls yesterday.

Democrats unified around the shutdown so they could talk about ICE, and this gives them an excuse to talk about it again. “We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself. These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have, for the most part, let alone deploying them in close exposure and highly sensitive situations at airports across the country,” Hakeem Jeffries told CNN.

What comes next: Increasing pressure … on the White House? “What we ought to do is surprise ourselves and do something intelligent: We all accept the Democrats’ offer to open everything up but ICE,” Kennedy told Samuel. Kennedy suggests the GOP caucus then pivots to using reconciliation to fund ICE “within a matter of weeks,” which is not what the administration currently has in mind.

Open tabs: Iran threatens to ‘completely’ close Strait of Hormuz and hit power plants after Trump ultimatum (AP); How Corey Lewandowski Wielded Power Inside D.H.S. (NYT); Growing Frustration With Chuck Schumer Spurs Talk of Replacing Him (WSJ); A low-profile Ohio race becomes a test of Trump allies’ clout (Politico)

From the Hill

FISA, lost in the shuffle. Sarcasm is the salve for the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who want new regulations on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-authorized government surveillance powers but are unlikely to get them, NOTUS’ Helen Huiskes reports. “Fortunately, there’s nothing else going on that would draw our attention,” GOP Sen. Josh Hawley joked.

There are very few legislative days left until the April 20 deadline to renew FISA and a great deal going on. The situation does not favor the reformers: Lawmakers from both parties Helen talked to in recent weeks are still in the early stages of forming their positions. The White House wants a clean extension and so does Speaker Mike Johnson. Democrats are expected to more or less uniformly oppose that, but letting FISA expire with no replacement has few supporters.

From the White House

Defending Trump’s grave dancing: “We should all have a little empathy for what has been done to [Trump] and his family,” Scott Bessent told NBC yesterday when asked about the president’s Truth Social post baldly celebrating the death of federal law enforcement legend Robert Mueller.

It’s a sign of the times that Trump’s post did not come up much on the Sunday shows. Multiple administration officials on multiple shows were not even asked about it, perhaps because the post just sounded like Trump being Trump. But it’s worth remembering last fall, when Trump led MAGA’s international effort to make sure no one got away with posting something stupid or cruel about the death of Charlie Kirk.

Even in today’s D.C., plenty of people were taken aback by the post: “I got no words,” Senate Republican leader John Thune reportedly said.

From the District

A dispatch from Washington’s most bizarre pop-up: One block over from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Polymarket — the terminally online prediction market company — turned a K Street bar into The Situation Room, a physical manifestation of the internet’s ceaseless flow of information.

After a false start on Friday (none of the screens at the bar worked), NOTUS’ Violet Jira and Sam Larreal stopped by on Saturday afternoon to suss out the vibe.

It really was just a bar with lots and lots of screens. Information was certainly there: live coverage of the war with Iran, March Madness and election predictions (85% likelihood that Dems take the House, high confidence in Gavin Newsom and JD Vance being the 2028 nominees). But it’s unclear exactly what Polymarket was hoping to achieve with the stunt, which elicited at best curiosity, and at worst hopelessness, in the people NOTUS spoke to.

It’s also possible this was just a bit. A Polymarket spokesperson told Sam the event was inspired by an X post pitching the internet on a “sports bar but for politics.” (One attendee said the bar reminded them of the ill-fated Political Patties.)

If you didn’t make it this weekend, you may get another chance: The spokesperson said the company is exploring more in-person experiences in D.C. and elsewhere.

THE BIG ONE

Is deporting extradited criminals good politics? The Trump administration seems to think so. Violet reports on obfuscations and confusing language on the Department of Homeland Security’s “Worst of the Worst” list — a tool used to tout the number of dangerous criminals DHS has removed from American communities.

When you look closely, some of those communities turn out to be federal prisons. And some of the criminals on the list are there because the U.S. extradited them from other countries to stand trial. That means their deportation could free them from prison terms won by U.S. prosecutors.

The argument that this is no big deal: “That’s why he’s on the ‘worst of the worst’ list, because when he’s done serving time, he doesn’t have legal status here, and he’s going to be removed,” Mark Morgan, the head of CBP and ICE during the first Trump administration, told Violet.

The argument that this is basically a lie: “If you don’t know the background, you would think that all of those people were, you know, in American communities, when the reality is that most of them were likely not,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

NEW ON NOTUS

Pitching Alan Armstrong: He’s the oil and gas executive Oklahoma Gov. Kevit Stitt, a Republican, wants to appoint to serve out the rest of Mullin’s Senate term if Mullin takes over DHS. Over the weekend, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman scooped that Stitt brought Armstrong to a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, where Armstrong was expected to try and sell himself to the president despite a large 2021 donation he made to then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican on MAGA’s bad-guy list after he voted for Trump’s impeachment.

Reese reports that the meeting went well and an official announcement is expected after Mullin’s confirmation.

NOT US

• From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver, by Steve Scherer for The Nation
  
• The Democratic deer hunter setting his sights on flipping Iowa, by Adam Wren for Politico
  
• The Distant Promise of Iran’s Would-Be King, by Azadeh Moaveni for The New Yorker

WEEK AHEAD

Tuesday

• Expect a lot of killer AI talk at this scheduled hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on defense networks and systems, per NOTUS’ Sam Larreal.
  

Wednesday

• Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is set to face a rare public hearing of the House Ethics Committee over allegations of misuse of public funds.
  
• Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill is among the scheduled witnesses for a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the impact of the ongoing DHS shutdown.
  
• Union leaders from across the country, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler are among the scheduled speakers at the labor-hosted Workers First AI Summit in D.C.
  

Thursday

• Espionage on American college campuses is the subject of a scheduled Senate Education Committee hearing.

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This post has been corrected to reflect that the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on its “worst of the worst” list.