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lindsey graham
Senate GOP Blasted for Trying to Give Trump's ICE and Border Patrol Another $140 Billion
"They want to give $140 billion for ICE and Border Patrol without reforms, but $0 to lower Americans’ costs," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Apr 21, 2026
Congressional Democrats and advocacy groups on Tuesday slammed Senate Republicans' proposed budget resolution, which authorizes up to $140 billion in new deficit spending for Department of Homeland Security agencies responsible for President Donald Trump's deadly immigration crackdown.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced the fiscal year 2026 budget resolution, which the senator's office described as "the blueprint that unlocks the pathway for a targeted reconciliation bill that will provide funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)" for at least the remainder of Trump's term.
"The resolution includes reconciliation instructions allowing for up to $70 billion of deficit increases each for the Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees," explained the advocacy group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
ICE is already flush with a $75 billion funding boost thanks to Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed last July 4.
“The threats to our homeland from radical Islam are only getting more intense," Graham said, despite there being no significant attack by such forces on US soil in a decade. "Now is not the time to defund Border Patrol, and now is certainly not the time to put ICE out of business."
"These men and women have been dealing with the consequences of the over 11 million illegal immigrants that came to the United States during the Biden administration," the senator added.
There is no evidence that anywhere near that number of undocumented migrants entered the US during former President Joe Biden's tenure.
Responding to Graham's proposal, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said: "Earlier today, we caught our first glimpse of the Senate Republicans’ budget resolution. Forget being on the same page, Republicans aren’t even on the same planet as the American people."
"They want to give $140 billion for ICE and Border Patrol without reforms, but $0 to lower Americans’ costs," he continued. "Let me say that again: $140 billion for ICE and Border Patrol—no reforms, no accountability, no strings attached; $0 to lower Americans’ costs."
"That’s their priority. That’s why they are dragging the Senate through the arduous, convoluted reconciliation process: to put money in the coffers of Trump’s rogue agencies, rather than in Americans’ pockets," Schumer said.
"Democrats want to lower Americans’ grocery, gas, healthcare, and housing costs. Senate Republicans want to appease Donald Trump... by giving ICE and Border Patrol tens of billions of dollars to continue spreading violence in our streets," he added.
Center for American Progress (CAP) senior director of federal budget policy Bobby Kogan called the GOP budget proposal "a missed opportunity to help Americans."
"In addition to doing nothing to rein in DHS, many civil and human rights abuses, congressional Republicans’ reconciliation plan misses an opportunity to do affirmative good for struggling households," he said.
Kogan continued:
While there was broad agreement in Congress on the funding levels for the agencies within DHS itself, congressional Democratic leadership asked for a handful of reforms to try to prevent more killings of citizens and noncitizens and avoid another wave of other civil rights violations from being undertaken by the department. Congressional Republican leadership has rejected calls for legislative reforms to ICE and Border Patrol operations and is now instead using this process to provide funding with no oversight.
The Republican proposal comes as immigrant deaths in ICE custody have soared, with at least 17 people dying since January. DHS officers have also killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during the Operation Metro Surge blitz in Minneapolis.
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Iran Accuses Trump Allies of 'Fascist Mindset' Akin to Hitler for Invoking Ancient Empires to Justify Aggression
"Even though the US has no ancient empire, it now claims to represent the 'West' and uses European history to justify its brutal military aggression on the Iranian nation," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 01, 2026
As President Donald Trump and his allies invoke the conquests of ancient empires to justify waging war across the Middle East, a leading Iranian diplomat says they have adopted a "fascist mindset."
"Even though the US has no ancient empire, it now claims to represent the 'West' and uses European history to justify its brutal military aggression on the Iranian nation," wrote Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a post to social media Tuesday.
The regional war launched at the end of February by the US and Israel has entailed numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, residential areas, and water and energy facilities in Iran and Lebanon.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said on Tuesday that at least 1,598 civilians have been killed in Iran, including 244 children. The Lebanese Health Ministry said on Wednesday that at least 1,318 people had been killed since Israel began its assault on Lebanon, including 125 children.
As Baqaei pointed out, multiple figures in Trump's orbit have justified the carnage by portraying the war as an existential conflict of civilizations.
He referenced a comment made by former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is now one of MAGA World's most popular podcasters.
In a recent episode of Bannon's War Room show, he called for "total war" against Iran and said the US was "gonna go back and redo what Alexander the Great did 2,300 years ago."
STEVE BANNON: If we're gonna go to war, let's go to total war. And what I mean by total war, let's shut down everybody trading with them. Let's go to UAE and say, hey, you’ve got like two hours to go to Dubai and shut it all down. The Pirate Cove in Dubai. Gotta stop. We gotta… pic.twitter.com/t4xDqSmCS5
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) March 28, 2026
Bannon was referring to the Macedonian general's famous invasion of Persia in 330 BCE. Alexander's conquest, which led to the absorption of Persia, was carried out with historic brutality—from the mass killing, displacement, and enslavement of countless people to the razing of entire cities like Persepolis and Tyre.
Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), perhaps the most vocal proponent of a full-scale invasion of Iran, asserted on Fox News Sunday that with overwhelming military might, the US could end a “2,000-year-long conflict,” as if to imply that the modern hostilities between the West and Iran are ancient and intractable when they are actually less than 50 years old.
"Such distorted historical references are revealingly similar to Nazi and fascist thinking," Baqaei said, pointing to the German and Italian dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
"Adolf Hitler justified invading other countries by invoking 'Lebensraum' and praising the Roman Empire," he said. "Mussolini used the glory of the Roman Empire to excuse his aggressions in North Africa."
Baqaei's comments also come as Israel has launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, which it has suggested will result in an indefinite occupation. Defense Minister Israel Katz has described plans to fully demolish Lebanese villages adjacent to Israel's border without allowing displaced residents to return.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Israeli officials are also privately discussing plans to press Lebanon's Christian and Druse communities to "force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns.”
Some figures in Israel's growingly influential far-right have described the conquest of Lebanon as part of a broader project to establish "Greater Israel," which would expand the nation's territory to neighboring states across the Middle East and clear out local populations to be colonized by Jewish settlers.
The expansionist vision, and the accelerating violent displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, has been described by critics as an eerie parallel to the Nazi goal of creating "Lebensraum" by pushing out or killing ethnic groups viewed as racially inferior, particularly Jews, in order to create "living space" for Germans.
Portrayals of the war in Iran as a civilizational clash are omnipresent among Trump's closest allies. Some, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, portray it as part of a holy "crusade" by Christendom against the Muslim world. Others like White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt have described it as a war to defend "Western civilization" from "brutal terrorists" who want to destroy it.
Baqaei said, however, that comments lionizing the war as a renewal of bloody old-world conquest are "reviving" a "dangerous pre-World War II fascist mindset—torpedoing the very modern values of human rights and international law the West claims to stand for."
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'We're Gonna Make a Ton of Money': Unhinged Lindsey Graham Hails Profit Potential of Iran War
"We're going to blow the hell out of these people," declared the Republican senator.
Mar 09, 2026
US Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the most fanatical cheerleaders of the Iran war in Congress, on Sunday hailed the profit potential of the ongoing military assault, which has plunged the region and entire global economy into chaos.
"When this regime goes down, we're gonna have a new Mideast," Graham (R-SC) said in a Fox News appearance. "We're gonna make a ton of money. Nobody will threaten the Straits of Hormuz again."
Graham went on to respond dismissively to estimates of the massive financial costs of the war so far—roughly $1 billion per day, according to a preliminary Pentagon assessment—and warn of even more devastation in the weeks ahead. More than 1,200 Iranians have been killed by the US-Israeli onslaught so far.
"You just wait to see what comes in the next two weeks," said Graham, who has characterized the assault on Iran as a "religious war" that "will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years."
"We're going to blow the hell out of these people," the Republican senator said on Sunday.
The illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, which is now in its 10th day with no end in sight, has been a boon for American weapons contractors and liquefied natural gas giants, which stand to make tens of billions in windfall profits if the conflict and its reverberating impacts on global energy markets continue.
The Trump White House has repeatedly declined to provide a clear objective or timeline for the war. On Sunday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president has not ruled out a ground invasion of Iran.
A classified report assembled by the US National Intelligence Council found that "even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust" the country's "entrenched military and clerical establishment," the Washington Post reported.
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