Why a Shutdown Wouldn’t Impact ICE
Plus: Questions on impeachment and the SCOTUS tariff ruling.
Good morning! It’s Friday, January 30, 2026. It has been quite a month in American politics: it started out with the U.S. invading Venezuela (January 3), which already feels like a lifetime ago. Then, the killing of Renée Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis (January 7), followed by the news of a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair (January 11). We then had a brief frenzy around President Trump placing tariffs on European allies until they gave him Greenland (January 17), before he quickly dropped them (January 21).1 And finally the killing of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent (January 24), setting off another round of controversy around Trump’s immigration policies.
Thank you for following along with all of it here in Wake Up To Politics, and for sharing your feedback, and sharing the newsletter with your friends. We’ll see together what February brings.
A few headlines for your awareness this morning before we dive in:
President Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Warsh previously served on the Fed board from 2006 to 2011 as an appointee of George W. Bush. His confirmation is expected to be complicated by the criminal probe into Powell.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been arrested by federal agents. A grand jury approved charges against Lemon accusing him of disrupting a church service in Minnesota as part of an immigration protest. A magistrate judge previously rejected the charges, which will set up a high-profile fight over the line between participating in a protest and covering one as an independent journalist.
FBI agents executed a search warrant at an election center in Georgia this week. The agents seized original 2020 voting records, apparently as part of an investigation — led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — into the results of that year’s presidential election, which Trump has falsely claimed he won.
Trump sued his own Treasury Department and IRS yesterday. The president, suing in his personal capacity, is seeking $10 billion in damages for the 2020 leak of his tax returns by an IRS contractor.
Meanwhile, funding for the vast majority of government agencies is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. tonight. The White House and Senate Democrats struck a deal yesterday to pass bipartisan spending bills funding most of the government — and a two-week stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security, while negotiations over potential ICE restrictions continue.
The plan was for the Senate to vote on that deal last night, but advancing to a vote that quickly was going to need unanimous consent: all 100 senators allowing the vote to be held. (Welcome to the Senate, folks.) Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) soon emerged as the main obstacle, objecting to the fact that the package would repeal a provision he passed last year allowing senators to receive cash payouts if they had their phone records seized by former Special Counsel Jack Smith. And, yes, Graham was one of those senators, in case you were wondering.
So, things are currently at a standstill as lawmakers try to find a way forward. Anything that gets passed by the Senate will have to go back to the House for approval — so government funding will definitely lapse at least for this weekend. But it’s possible that a deal will pass the Senate today, and then the House on Monday, avoiding a full-on government shutdown.
And that brings us to this week’s Q&A column! I want to start off with several questions that I received about ICE funding and how the agency would (or wouldn’t) be impacted by a potential shutdown (either if things don’t go according to plan in the next few days, or if no deal is reached after the two-week stopgap runs out).
I’m guessing a lot of you know that ICE was funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill — but I want to go a bit deeper than that, and walk you through the differences between the funding from that package and the funding on the line now. If ICE funding comes up in conversations with your friends and family, you’ll be able to dazzle them with your knowledge of the exact mechanics of what’s at stake (and what isn’t) in a potential shutdown.
After that, we’ll also tackle questions on how impeachment resolutions come to a vote and when to expect the Supreme Court tariff ruling. Let’s dive in!
ICE funding
Q: Is it true that if the government shuts down, funding for Homeland Security and ICE will continue thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill passed in 2025?
Q: Can you help us understand how much of ICE is funded under the Big Beautiful Bill and what is paid for under our annual budget?
Q: The “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act in 2025 increased ICE and CBP funding dramatically without the formal budget process. Now Congress is voting on DHS funding in the formal budget process. Does the 2026 budget need to match those 2025 ICE/CBP budget expansions in order for the money to be spent as planned?
OK, let’s start here. For the last few years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has generally received about $10 billion annually through the appropriations process each year.
Then, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) pumped almost $75 billion into the agency in one fell swoop last year.
Appropriations bills are usually very specific about how an agency should use its funding. The OBBBA was not. Here are the two relevant provisions:
Beneath the paywall, we’ll look at what that funding is actually being used for, how much of it’s left, how it’s different than the funding at stake in the current shutdown battle, and the guardrails that the new funding deal could add…