<....He said there’s “almost unanimous agreement in our conference on the policy” of the SAVE America Act but warned “the idea that we would have to guarantee its passage in order to open up the government” is “not a realistic outcome.”

Senate Republicans are feeling immense pressure to end the Homeland Security funding stalemate as hours-long security lines are causing chaos at major airports in Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis and other cities.

“Millions of Americans right now are facing two-, three-, four-hour waits at airports. They’re missing their planes for spring break because the Democrats refuse to pay TSA,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was one of the first Republicans to propose breaking up the Homeland Security funding bill.

Some Senate Democrats said they were encouraged by what they heard from their Republican colleagues about the meeting at the White House.

Democrats earlier this month proposed passing the Homeland Security funding bill but setting aside the portion of the bill funding ICE until they reach a deal with the White House and GOP leaders in Congress to reform immigration enforcement operations.

“I really like the direction we’re heading,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

“We got to get this resolved,” he said of the five-week partial government shutdown.

He said Democrats major problems with “the ICE practices but we really want to open TSA and we want to open FEMA.”

“The FACT that there is progress is very encouraging,” he said. “This is significant movement.

“We have a dispute about ICE practices. We don’t have a dispute about funding TSA, we don’t have a dispute about funding Coast Guard or FEMA,” he added. “The real issue is the ICE and the ICE practices. They were lawless and what happened in Minneapolis is shocking and should never happen again.”

The DHS shutdown began in February, after Democrats said they could not fund ICE following the killings in January, in separate incidents, of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by DHS personnel.

Graham told The Hill on Friday that he’s open to moving another reconciliation bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security or to fund military operations against Iran.

“I’m open to use the reconciliation process to make America safer and break this long jam,” he said.

He said he hoped that House Republicans would unify behind a reconciliation package to help Trump carry out his efforts on nationwide immigration enforcement and border security operations.

“Hopefully our guys will rally around the idea we need to get the money to secure our borders,” he said.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had suggested earlier this month trying to pass the SAVE America Act under budget reconciliation to avoid a Democratic filibuster but some Republicans had raised serious doubts about doing so because many of the reforms in the bill are policy-related and not chiefly of a budgetary nature.

“To me, the easiest way to get the SAVE Act passed, the most efficient way, is to try to do it through reconciliation,” Kennedy said on March 9.

“And I know some people say you can’t possibly survive a Byrd Bath,” he added, referring to the procedural test for passing legislation under the budget reconciliation process. “I’ve seen things survive a Byrd Bath that I thought had no chance. … We’ve got some clever wordsmiths. You don’t know what’s gonna survive a Byrd Bath until you can argue your case in front of the parliamentarian.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leading proponent of passing the SAVE America Act, said earlier this month that it was not drafted with the intention of passing it under budget reconciliation.

“The way it’s written, it’s nowhere near something that can be done through reconciliation. If John Kennedy or anybody else is aware of a means by which we can do it through reconciliation, obviously I’d love to review that. The bill is not written as a reconciliation bill,” Lee said at the time.

Thune also poured water on the idea of passing the SAVE America Act through budget reconciliation on March 10.

“We’ve looked at that. That’s also very, very difficult. I mean we have tried to see if there’s a way we could thread the needle and use reconciliation and you kind of come back to the same place. Reconciliation obviously is about spending and revenue. And there are ways in which you could do pieces [of the SAVE America Act] but they’d be getting money to the states but then the states could decide whether or not to actually implement the policies,” Thune explained. “We’ve looked at it. There are no easy ways to do this. Believe me.”>

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.11"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Alexopoulos, Georgios"]
[Black "Schwartz, Mordecai"]
[ECO "B07"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "2076"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 c5 3.e3 d5 4.Nc3 c4 5.h3 Qb6 6.Nge2 Qxb2 7.Rb1 Qa3 8.Bc7 a6 9.g4 e6 10.g5 Nh5 11.Bh2 b5 12.Bg2 Bb7 13.O-O h6 14.e4 hxg5 15.exd5 Bd6 16.Bxd6 Qxd6 17.Ne4 Qa3 18.c3 Bxd5 19.Qd2 Nd7 20.Rb4 Ndf6 21.f3 Nf4 22.Nxf4 gxf4 23.Qe1 Ke7 24.Rf2 Bc6 25.Nc5 Nd5 26.Re2 Rh6 27.Rbb2 Qxc3 28.Rbd2 Ne3 29.Ne4 Qa5 30.Rxe3 fxe3 31.Qxe3 Bxe4 32.Qxe4 Qxd2 33.Qxa8 Rg6 34.f4 Qxg2+ 35.Qxg2 Rxg2+ 36.Kxg2 Kd6 37.Kf3 Kd5 38.Ke3 b4 39.h4 g6 40.Ke2 b3 41.axb3 cxb3 42.Kd2 Kxd4 43.Kc1 Kc3 44.Kb1 a5 45.Ka1 a4 46.f5 Kc2 47.fxg6 b2+ 48.Ka2 b1=Q+ 49.Ka3 Qb3# 0-1>

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.15"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "9"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Abbasi, Nasser M"]
[Black "Benjamin, Dan"]
[ECO "B30"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.07"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Adamson, Robby"]
[Black "Condon, F E"]
[ECO "C02"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "1850"]

<Isolation Raise To Larger Amounts

This is the largest hack you can use versus calling stations.

If you think about it, they’re actually using a very good strategy versus you. If they took you on one at a time, you’d beat them heads-up. You’re the type of person who reads poker articles and studies. They likely are playing casually. They don’t want to meet you head-on.

However, if they all decide to call you at the same time, they suddenly get an advantage. The pot is huge now and it’s likely one of them is going to outdraw you. They can wait for their turn to hit something big and then try to get a ton out of money out of your premium that doesn’t want to fold.

How do you beat this strategy? Get meaner. Play your good hands, hard. Raise to two times the size of the pot. Raise more than that. If they all fold to you, so what? Eventually, they’ll get irritated about how they never get to see their precious flops anymore.

If they still keep folding, taunt them. Isolation raise with 7-4s one time to a huge amount. After they all fold, show them the hand and say, “let’s get the money in boys.” Then, go back to playing a tight range.

If you have less than 50 big blinds, you can raise to slightly less than two times the size of the pot if there’s no short-stacks behind you, but you should still stay on the gas.

If an isolation raise would be more than 35% of your chips, strongly consider an all-in.

Squeeze To Larger Amounts

In the same vein, you can’t let these flop-loving donkeys call every one of your three-bets easily. If you have 100 big blinds to start the tournament, consider squeezing to two times the size of the pot, especially if you’re out of position. If they’re going to play trash and try to take down your solid ranges, they can pay for the privilege. Let’s see how brave they are when they can’t screw around with their precious drawing hands.

If they start commenting on how stupid your raise sizes are, then you’ll know you’re succeeding. If you were making a huge mistake, they wouldn’t say anything. You’re making them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do.

Calling stations are not winning players. Do you really want their advice?

If you have around 50 big blinds, you don’t have go to two times the size of the pot, but you still want to make it larger, say around 1.5X the pot. You don’t want your raise sizes to be too small versus these recreational players who want to gang up on you.

Play Two Pair Or Better Poker Against Calling Stations

If you do raise from early position, you’re likely going to get multiple callers. That means hands like A-Qo are trash now, because those hands only make weak top pairs that go down in flames in multi-way pots.

The hands that will go up in value are suited connectors, suited Aces, pocket pairs, and suited Broadways. Those hands draw to the nuts, which is important. In multi-way pots the average winning hand when the pot gets larger is two pair, or better.

Don’t get married to a single pair. That’s what they’re hoping you will do. They want to bust you once you get infatuated with a top pair or over-pair.

Bet Huge In Multi-Way Pots When You Have It

If you do raise in early position and get called by half the table, don’t blink when you hit the flop. If you flop middle set when there a flush draw hits the board bet 75% of the pot. These calling stations can’t fold a top pair or flush draw, regardless of how much you put out there. Why would you balance versus people who are on their phone half the time and aren’t paying attention?

They’ll come up with some justification for why they have to call you. Then, they’ll be stuck in a large pot on the turn and river. You’ll get much bigger value bets at this point....>

<....Don’t Call When They Raise You On Turn Or River

Listen, I’ve done more private poker lessons than anyone else on Earth. Let me tell you how all these calling stations play.

They try to make the nuts.

They wait until the turn or river.

Then they raise.

That’s their entire strategy. Call every raise or three-bet. See every flop. Make the nuts or near the nuts. Raise on the turn or river to get someone to pay off big. These players are called nut peddlers. They don’t deserve your money.

It is rare to run into a player who even knows what they can bluff with on the turn or river. Don’t give them credit for bluffs they don’t have.

The only time you should be suspicious is when they cap their range. If they check back on the turn when there are draws out there, that’s suspicious. They’d likely play fast with a set, two pair, or top pair when potential draws could beat them. If they suddenly raise on the river after doing that, see if there are any missed draws they might be playing. If there are several then consider a call.

Conclusion:

<Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been deployed by the Trump administration to airports around the country, and the idea appears to have started during call-in segments on right-wing radio shows.

This is no exaggeration.

Journalists Ben Smith of Semafor and Brian Stelter of CNN traced the ICE-in-airports idea to “Linda from Arizona,” who called into a D-list conservative radio show hosted by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton on March 20. Both Linda and the hosts were blunt that the goal was not actually helping the Transportation Security Administration run more efficient checkpoints but to trigger the liberals.

“I think it would set their hair on fire,” Linda said, full of glee at the idea.

“Democrats would go absolutely insane,” agreed one of the hosts.

Trump’s Cabinet retreats behind military gates

It’s unclear why Linda and Clay-and-Buck thought that annoying Democrats would pressure or persuade them to drop their opposition to funding the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE operations. DHS has been shut down since Feb. 14, when the GOP refused to meet Democrats’ demands for significant reforms following the fatal shootings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents. Although Linda and Clay-and-Buck did try to argue that ICE agents would help TSA with security, their proposal makes little sense in practice. Shorter lines would actually relieve pressure to get a funding deal done by taking away a major pain point.

Liberals hate ICE, the logic went, so why not inflict ICE on liberals and make them squeal? But the MAGA coalition has not been known for its logic, and it’s clear from the conversation that no one involved was really thinking this through. Instead, the scheme was rooted in a childish — and sadistic — impulse to bully.

Donald Trump often seems composed of little more than sadistic impulses, and he has only gotten angrier with age. After the idea percolated up from Linda to Clay-and-Buck and then to Fox News, Trump thought it was a stroke of genius. Since he couldn’t admit that he got the idea from a random woman in Green Valley, Arizona, he took credit for it on Monday, comparing himself to the man who invented the paperclip in the process.

What is remarkable is that everyone involved — all of them, from Linda to Trump himself — are so consumed with the desire to trigger the liberals that no one stopped to wonder if the plan to put ICE in airports would backfire, as it appears to be doing.

Early reports show ICE is doing nothing to speed up security lines, many of which have hours-long waits due to Republicans’ refusal to pass a Democratic proposal to fund the TSA directly while still withholding DHS funding. The presence of ICE is instead ratcheting up tensions at the already stress-laden airports. Federal immigration officers can’t do the real work of screening passengers, but they can harass and manhandle people suspected of being immigrants.

Despite credulous media reports perpetuating the belief that ICE has been deployed to help TSA agents, every indication is that Trump’s goal is to make already-miserable traveling experiences even worse. His posts on Truth Social are obviously threats, not offers of help. “‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” read one. Another said, “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country,” the president would “look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports.”

There was little mention of faster lines, but lots of joy at imagining people, especially those perceived to be immigrants, suffering from this.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, went so far to suggest on Monday’s episode of his “War Room” podcast that the president’s deployment of immigration agents is a “test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” Whatever hand-waving Bannon might do to deny the implication — that ICE would intimidate voters into casting their ballots for Republicans or, more likely, staying away from the polls altogether — it’s clear to both his audience and critics. The goal is not to make life easier for anyone, but to make everyday actions like voting or traveling a terrible, if not terrifying, idea.

For all his persona as a businessman, the president has never been a talented negotiator. He has failed time and again in his belief that inflicting widespread pain on communities — from Minneapolis to Iran — will automatically result in immediate compliance from his opponents....>

<....The message seems to be that if Democrats don’t immediately cave to the GOP, Trump will make airline travel even more miserable for everyone. For all his persona as a businessman, the president has never been a talented negotiator. He has failed time and again in his belief that inflicting widespread pain on communities — from Minneapolis to Iran — will automatically result in immediate compliance from his opponents. No matter how often his actions only cause people to fight back even harder, Trump’s evident love of making other people suffer overrules the empirical evidence that it just does not work.

It’s especially silly in this case, because it’s not like the only people whose travel plans are being ruined are Democratic voters. Trump is inflicting harm on plenty of his own voters, and at a time when he’s already losing support from large chunks of the electorate that took a chance on him in 2024. Republicans are already expecting heavy losses in November’s midterm elections, and having a president who is actively making air travel hellish will likely only make it worse. This seems obvious, and yet Trump seems pleased with Linda’s whole “make airports suck for everyone” plan.

The “everyone” aspect of airports is likely part of the psychological dynamic here. For MAGA voters hostile to American diversity, there are all sorts of tricks for cordoning themselves off so they can minimize exposure to people who don’t look and talk exactly like them. But even for those who live in the whitest of suburbs, if they have to travel, that means going to an airport, usually in a city, where they get a full eyeball of the broad spectrum of people that constitute how Americans actually look: people of different races and ethnicities, queer people and the purple-haired feminists much discussed but rarely spotted in person in MAGA-land.

(I may be a middle-aged white lady, but being a tattooed hipster flavor means that even I get a taste of how some conservatives loathe having to be among the hoi polloi when I’m at the airport in certain parts of the country. Last time I was in Midland, Texas, I passed the time waiting for my flight by counting the number of dirty looks I got from conservative-looking white people in the lobby. As I nursed my Starbucks and played games on my iPhone, I felt like a real antifa super solider.)

It must also be noted that TSA is incredibly diverse as an agency. Over half of agents are racial minorities, and 41% are women. ICE, on the other hand, has been overt in marketing itself as a very white, very male agency. The image then, is of Trump sending a bunch of thuggish white men to lord over working-class women and people of color that make up the ranks of TSA screeners.

This is not a fantasy of ICE offering help to overworked TSA agents who are not being paid due to the shutdown. It’s an idea made manifest: ICE as a punishment the Trump administration can inflict on classes of people whose claims to equality anger them.

But it’s also a symptom of how Trump is alienating large swaths of Americans that had been, during the 2024 election, persuaded that he isn’t as bad as the liberals were saying. Hard as it may be to believe, a lot of Trump voters in 2024 weren’t fanatical red-hats. They were people who don’t follow politics closely and were easily duped by claims that liberals who warned Trump is a fascist were merely hysterical.

The president has already seen his approval numbers plummet with those voters, especially young men and Latinos. Siccing a bunch of ICE agents on airports for the obvious purpose of making an already-fraught situation worse may be fun for Trump and his most fanatically right-wing followers. For everyone else, it’s further proof that the so-called hysterical liberals were in fact right all along.>

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.12"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "6"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Aguilar, Omar"]
[Black "Terrie, Henry L"]
[ECO "C63"]
[WhiteElo "2078"]
[BlackElo "?"]