Bills Introduced – 3-17-26
Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session, there were 53 bills introduced. One of those bills will receive additional coverage in this blog:
S 4127 A bill making continuing appropriations for essential Transportation Security Administration pay and operations during the lapse in appropriations beginning on February 14, 2026, and for other purposes. Rosen, Jacky [Sen.-D-NV]
Spending Bills
I cannot find any legislation in the 118th Congress that would appear to be similar to S 4127. It would, however, seem to be similar to S 4073 that was introduced by Rosen last week. Again, this is a political statement bill rather than a serious attempt to pass legislation. Having said that, Republicans might be able to gain some political leverage by allowing the passage of this bill. Since ICE and CBP are already essentially funded by the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, passage of TSA, FEMA, CISA, and Coast Guard spending bills would relieve the political pressure of failing to pass HR 7147, the full DHS spending bill. That kind of political gaming theory may be beyond the current Republican leadership.
MIP Legislation
I would like to mention in passing one bill that will not receive additional coverage in this blog:
HR 7958 To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deem specified activities in support of terrorism as renunciation of United States nationality. Harrigan, Pat [Rep.-R-NC-10]
I can find no legislation in the 118th Congress that would appear to be similar to HR 7958.
First, a note of literary caution, these bill descriptions are not the legislation, and not even necessarily a map to the legislation. Congresscritters frequently write these descriptions to arouse knee-jerk political support for a much more nuanced piece of legislation.
That term ‘United States Nationality’ is kind of odd. Paragraphs (21) and (22) of §101 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (8 USC 1101) provide the foundation of the term ‘national of the United States’. For the vast majority of people, ‘national’ and ‘citizen’ mean the same thing (see the discussion at Travel.State.gov), so one would presume (not yet seeing the text of the bill) that the crafters of HR 7958 are effectively talking about rescinding citizenship.
The other key term in this bill description is ‘in support of terrorism’. As we have seen with many statements made by officials in this administration just about any action contrary to the government’s policy can be deemed to be ‘in support of terrorism’. Presumably, the bill will specify which sorts of acts would officially be ‘in support of terrorism’. Hopefully, there would be lots of debate about the scope of that terminology.
Finally, in my mind the most important terminology missing from this description (but hopefully would be appearing in language of the bill) would be the verbiage ‘convicted of’ preceding the words ‘specified activities’ so that the random ravings of political official would not be sufficient to remove someone’s citizenship.