Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is seeking creative ways to staff her agency with sycophants of Donald Trump, Bloomberg Government reported Wednesday.

At the first-ever meeting of Trump’s revamped Homeland Security Advisory Council Wednesday, Noem outright asked the members “how to fire people that don’t like us.”

Noem complained that she was “surrounded by bureaucrats,” and wanted to root out employees who “don’t support what we’re doing.”

Under the leadership of Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the DHS has enacted brutal immigration reform that pushes the boundaries of U.S. law. Their efforts have involved making absurd changes to Customs and Border Control policies, stripping immigrants of their lawful immigration status, and conducting widespread paramilitary raids that target average civilians, not criminals.

In April, Trump announced that he had “revamped” his Homeland Security Advisory Council by once again fishing from the Fox News talent pool, recruiting host Mark Levin and former Fox News contributor Bo Dietl.

The council also included Trump’s disgraced former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and Florida state Senator Joseph Gruters, who serves on the Republican National Committee and is a close ally of Trump’s.

Opposition to the president’s “big, beautiful bill” is growing in the House of Representatives.

The House Freedom Caucus released a three-page memo Wednesday heavily criticizing the Senate’s version of Donald Trump’s exorbitantly expensive tax cut, flaming the Senate draft for adding pork where the House had proposed cuts. The caucus’s three chief complaints include that the bill actually increases the deficit, “waters down” cuts to proposed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding, and “fails to ensure illegals are fully removed from Medicaid rolls.” (Undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for federally funded Medicaid.)

The invite-only Freedom Caucus, which unlike other groups on Capitol Hill does not publicize its roster, is estimated to have at least 49 members or lawmakers affiliated with its agenda, Pew Research calculated in 2023. That’s far more than enough to torpedo the bill—House Speaker Mike Johnson can afford to lose just three votes to keep the bill alive.

But the hard-line fiscal conservatives aren’t the only party members opposing the bill: Moderates are worried about the high cost the legislation will have on safety-net programs, including some $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and swing-district Republicans are worried about political backlash in their Democrat-led states.

Any of these groups have the muster to keep the bill from passing. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said Tuesday that there’s no chance Republicans will be able to pass the bill through the House, deriding the situation on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast as a “shit show” in which Republicans simply don’t have the votes.

Beyond that, Johnson is concerned about simply having enough of his caucus in attendance to advance the vote. Several lawmakers have already posted on social media that their flights back to Washington have been delayed or canceled in light of severe thunderstorm warnings, fueling concerns that the inclement weather could push back the vote into Wednesday night or even Thursday.

“I am worried about flights,” Johnson told Politico Wednesday morning. “We don’t know if we have a full House. So that’s what we’re working on.”

The no tax on tips provision of Donald Trump’s budget cannot be the pro-labor gift that the president has made it out to be while the rest of the bill slashes health care and other social programs for lower-income people. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shed some light as to why that’s the case.

“On this point of tax on tips, as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips, I wanna tell you a little bit about the scam of that text, a little bit of the fine print there,” she said on Wednesday. “The cap on that is $25,000—while you’re jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,00 across the United States while taking away their SNAP, while taking away their Medicaid, while kicking them off of the ACA and their health care extensions.

“So if you’re at home and you’re living off tips, you do the math. Is that worth it to you? Losing all your health care? Not able to feed your babies? Not being able to put a diaper on their bottom, in exchange for what? This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt, it militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away health care and basic dignity of the American people for what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the greedy taking of our nation? We cannot stand for it, and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”........

© New Republic