Natalie Andrews

Mike Johnson has one of the narrowest House majorities in the history of the House of Representatives.

No one is envious of his job and what he has to do in order to get things passed on partisan lines.

And the tricky part of that is the House of Representatives is a group that is not young.

They are not all healthy.

You have one person go down with a cold and you're in a risky spot.

Democrats want things like they don't want ICE officers to wear masks.

They'd like ICE officers to have their name on their uniform, like other members of law enforcement, right?

A local police force, if you will.

They want them to be marked.

They want to see a de-escalation in force instead of doing checks on people, feeling like they can ask people if they're citizens or not.

They'd like to see something that's more targeted.

Republicans would say, you know, Democrats shouldn't hold this bill up because ICE is already funded and the DHS bill funds the Coast Guard and FEMA and several swaths of the country are currently burying in ice and snow and may need FEMA funding.

So it does give a tension point.

It gives a place where you can negotiate and you can say, hey, we need this to be effective immediately.

And we need these restrictions on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement before they can spend their money.

The White House folks around Donald Trump, they feel like they've had a great year.

So they're coming off of the first year and then looking forward to concerns that voters are having about affordability and how they confront that.

Yeah, the party that is in power, voters tend to blame them for anything they feel is wrong.

And so as costs rise, the Democrats will ramp up the noise on pointing to Donald Trump's policies and saying, hey, he imposed tariffs that resulted in prices going up.

Or they'll point to health care costs that may go up.