Damian Paletta

So the origins of the shutdown go back to Minneapolis and the two protesters who were killed.

And that's when Democrats felt like they had a lot of leverage over the White House.

Now we have Mark Wayne Mullen, the new DHS nominee, Kristi Noem is out.

And so Democrats, I think, feel like they're making some progress there in terms of getting the White House to change their approach to immigration.

So the question is, do Democrats need to keep pressuring the White House here, or do they feel like they've already made enough strides to pass this spending bill because the White House is clearly not going to use the same approach to deportations that they were using a few months ago?

Yes, there's a good prospect of it, in part because the White House is heading into the midterm elections in November.

They're really not in a position where they can keep, quite frankly, antagonizing some of these communities because it wasn't playing well.

And so they obviously are very still committed to deporting people who are here illegally.

But in such a public spectacle, I think that's what they want to avoid now.

Obviously, this is a huge agency.

And Mark Wynn Mullen doesn't have a lot of experience running an agency this big.

But he definitely does not seem like he wants to have the same adversarial approach that Kristi Noem used there.

And so maybe that'll help a little bit with the White House's messaging.

Or maybe it won't.

When you have a crisis every five minutes, people start tuning it out because they have to live their lives.

We're just a few weeks into this year, and already we've seen so many events that were either precipitated by the White House or involved Washington in some way.

And I think it's setting the tone for a really hectic and possibly quite confusing year ahead of the midterms.

But one of the reasons this is important is Americans like certainty.

Americans like stability.

There's a sense this could become a liability for the White House and Republicans.