House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on Wednesday that he would reject a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year over concerns that it did not sufficiently curb Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
The announcement came in a closed-door meeting with Democratic caucus members, following continued ICE violence in Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge.
“We’ve heard our members speak loudly that ICE isn’t doing enough, these reforms aren’t doing enough. This lawlessness has to stop,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) told reporters after the meeting on Wednesday. “They are only doing this because they can. They are only doing this because the president of the United States wants to use them to terrorize communities, to terrorize U.S. citizens.”
But, according to NBC News, Democratic leaders did not state they would whip a vote to push all members to follow their “no” vote. This leaves the door open for Democrats, many of whom are facing close elections this year, to vote in favor of the appropriation bill.
Idk, I do give Nancy Pelosi some credit for reigning Trump in before he could do as much damage as he had planned during his first term (because a lot of the shit we’re seeing now was actually quietly set into place long before Project 2025). I genuinely wouldn’t define her as a conservative, but I guess it depends on how you define conservative.
There are a lot of shadowy industry people who dump money into both sides of politics to promote the policies that will make them more money, and hinder the policies that stand in their way, but they don’t really hold any sort of left/right political bias. It’s just about serving their immediate self interest. But the people I consider true conservatives aren’t just selfish. They truly see themselves as a dominant masterclass meant to keep their very strict heirarchies in place.
I definitely don’t think Pelosi is above helping a conservative policy advance if she’s instructed to do so by her wealthy donors, but this is because she has an incentive to gain from it in the short term. The willingness to always chase the short term incentive being dangled in front of them while ignoring the cliff they’re walking towards, is exactly what has allowed conservative policies to gain such a strong foothold in America. But, I don’t think Pelosi or (even most Republicans) would really want to live in a conservative society.where their identity means their position in that society has been predetermined in the “natural” heirarchy.
Conservatives like to publicly focus on identity politics, but the truth behind their love of heirarchies, is the fundamental conservative belief that some people (all women, people of color, non-WASPs, and the entire working class) were born to be oppressed and exploited in a society dominated by elites. They use the state to enforce these rules, and protect them from competition, but they honestly believe they everybody has been pre-ordained with a “natural” place within the heirarchy.
Not to dismiss the long list of very atrocious things people like Pelosi and Republican voters have been willing to look the other way on, but I do honestly think many have been intentionally misled about identity politics, the “war on woke,” or police militarization and how it actually relates to their own self interest and place in the heirarchy. I also know there will always be a handful of people who are so stubbornly contrarian and narcissistic, they will literally cut off their nose to spite their face then offer it to the leopards to save them the trouble.
However, if you really forced the Edmund Burke and Heritage Foundation elite conservatives to candidly explain to America and the blue collar voters they pander to, how they view themselves and their role in society vs how they view those blue collar Republican voters, I honestly suspect a much smaller percentage would be willingly supporting their own exploitation, or agreeing to help create a society where any chance of social mobility for themselves or their children has been completely eliminated. Especially when you really acknowledge what they hope to achieve by combining traditional anti-egalitarian conservative ideals with the dystopian Palantir tech fantasy.
Not only is your data your destiny, your destiny starts being collected and analyzed before you’re even born. Did your mom smoke when she was pregnant or work in a factory around dangerous chemicals? That’s probably why you did X instead of Y when you were 4, and now as an adult you’re ineligible for Z. You’re born poor because you’re meant to die poor. If that seems unfair it’s because that’s the fucking point.
If you could force these conservative “anti-elitists” to publicly acknowledge the kinds of things they discuss in their private societies and their annual conferences, I think more Americans would be suspicious when the same “anti-elitist” elites, with their ivy league degrees, discourage Americans from obtaining an education for themselves.
There’s a reason they don’t really expand on what they mean when they say “democracy” is incompatible with freedom, and a reason they code their attacks on equality with buzzwords like multiculturalism and DEI. The quiet parts are the things they don’t say out loud until they know it’s safe to do so. There’s also a reason Alex Karp recently referred to the “woke left and right,” when it comes to people’s views on Palantir.
Tldr: Whether they realize it or not, traditional conservativism and the heirarchies it depends on precludes the majority by default, but they are very open minded when it comes to who can be exploited.