So Republicans in Congress have been trying to hold the Department of Homeland Security hostage in order to pass a provision to block the President’s executive actions to shield certain illegal immigrants from deportation. They attached the block to a bill funding DHS and dared the Dems to not pass it. Now we’re three days away from a DHS shutdown, and yesterday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blinked, offering a “clean” funding bill separate from the immigration bill.

Naturally McConnell is being slammed from the Right for caving on immigration, like the little matter of shutting down Homeland Security is just an afterthought. There’s no ongoing terrorist threat or anything, you know.

Some of the crazier elements in the Senate (Cruz and Sessions) are still talking about blocking the bill, but what I’m picking up from most reporting is that Senate Republicans are pretty much resigned that they’ve lost this one. A number of polls show that most Americans would blame the GOP for a DHS shutdown. Polls also show that people think a DHS shutdown would actually be a big deal. Republicans think otherwise, possibly not understanding that DHS actually has a lot to do with border security and monitoring terrorist threats and stuff like that. Government is so confusing.

What the House will do is anybody’s guess.