Joining us now from Washington, we have Bloomberg News congressional reporter, Watson. Erik, I appreciate you

getting up. I saw you sending notes very late last night. We did offer to send

you coffee, but you told us shockingly and very impressively that you've never used DoorDash or

Uber Eats. I wanted to focus on that

before we get

to congress

because that's so lovely.

Night. As you can see behind me, I print books, you know, so we make our

own breakfast here. Alright. I do appreciate the offer, Guy.

Alright. We're very grateful nonetheless. Can you walk us through where everything is at? You know,

the the senate passed a version of this with an ICE carve out. It went to

the house, and then it went nowhere. The house has done something that's DOA in the

senate. Just please update us on what's going on between the two chambers.

It's an extraordinary breach between house and senate Republicans. You know, John Fuhn crafted this bill

middle of the night, basically funding the full Department of Homeland Security for the rest of

the fiscal year till October except for border patrol and ICE and immigration enforcement activities. That

passed unanimously on a voice vote. As soon as it got to the house, it was

promptly rejected by the House Freedom Caucus. And speaker Mike Johnson, who's always, you know, trying

to shore up support with different parts of his conference, went along with that Freedom Caucus

demand to reject the senate bill. Instead, they passed an eight week, continuing resolution for the

whole department, but that again funds ICE without any new reforms that Democrats have demanded. And

Chuck Schumer, said that's DOA. So the standoff continues. Importantly, Trump has, signed this memo paying

TSA agents as soon as Monday, so that should alleviate the lines. But it's important to

point out there are other members of the department, whether you're a secret service worker, you

know, human trafficking, people in the secretary's office, you know, people who are doing communications. You

know, there are a lot of people who are not gonna get paid continue to not

get paid. It's gonna become a difficult thing. This is over forty days now, you know,

and they're gonna be held hostage. I don't see the senate and house coming back during

this two week recess. I don't really see a solution anytime soon. The main thing they're

gonna try to do is this budget reconciliation bill and a massive package similar to the

Trump tax bill where they did put some immigration enforcement money, but they need all Republicans

to unite. Everyone wants to throw their things in. I talked to a member of the

New York delegation who wants the salt deduction of all things extended again. So this is

gonna become a massive food fight, and, these workers are gonna be held hostage. Now the

president could try an extraordinary measure to try to potentially illegally pay those other DHS workers

from this, fund for border security, but, you know, I don't see a solution anytime soon

that's really permanent.

You bring up the president, and I wanna play a little bit of sound here of

the president in Miami last night speaking at that FAI conference addressing what's transpired here and

also his relationship with the leadership, in the congress. Let's take a listen.

I understand John Thune, and I understand Mike Johnson. They wanna they wanna be sure that

people aren't coming into our country like they have for the last four years. I I

don't wanna say they've ruined it. They made my job a lot harder.

They made my job a lot harder. The president there on the tarmac traveling to that

conference. Erik Watson, talk a bit about the president's engagement, not with this memo finding a

way to pay these TSA workers, but with this issue more broadly and what that says

about, even more broadly than that, the way that he's been interacting with this congress and

with congressional leadership.

I thought it was an extraordinary comment because it's almost like Trump was playing peacemaker between

feuding, you know, house and senate Republican leaders, which I'm sure a role that he would

enjoy. He's he is still questing after that Nobel Peace Prize after all.

Mhmm.

You know? But he's trying to, I think, that case, smooth over differences. It's it's extraordinary

that that that, you know, speaker doesn't call what Thune did, a joke, a ridiculousness. We

asked him about it. He tried to sort of sidestep it and say that that was

Chuck Schumer who really engineered this, but we're trying to see what kind of long term

consequences of this rift will be. Can they do this new tax and spending bill? Are

they be able to unite in a midterm message? Certainly, the tension between the two chambers

is extraordinary. You know? But the immigration issue was historically one of Trump's strong suits. I

think the American public generally wants stronger borders. But then what happened in Minnesota with the

ICE enforcement and the sort of chaos and the practices sort of weakened his popularity on

that, gave Democrats an opening to demand these changes. That was very interesting last night. There

was a small press conference, barely attended by media, of of Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi,

two members of the problem solvers caucus, and they have a very intriguing idea to sort

of pass some of these reforms. You know, a congress that's more open to compromise would

probably embrace something like that, but it's such a long shot. They're even talking about a

discharge petition, a really long shot petition to try to get this done. But congress is

nowhere near grappling with this. But I think if the public were to be consulted, they

would wanna see some kind of changes to ICE behavior, maybe not having masked agents, you

know, being able to go willy nilly into people's homes.