Good afternoon and welcome to the Alamade County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, April the 6th, 2026.

May I have a roll call, please?

Supervisor Fortunato Boss.

Present.

Supervisor Town.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

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Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Let's start with the federal legislative update from CJ Lake.

Thank you, Supervisors.

You have John Asini here from CJ Lake.

Starting off with the schedule, the House and the Senate are both out for the Easter recess this week and will return to Washington the week of April 13th.

So next Monday.

Last week, uh President Donald Trump announced that he was firing Attorney General Pam Bondi and replaced her with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is a former uh Trump attorney in the private sector.

It was reported that President Trump grew frustrated with Ms.

Bondi over her slow handling of the Justice Department cases targeting her political rivals.

Her departure also comes amid bipartisan criticism related to her management of files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed Ms.

Bondi to testify on those files, but her exit uh could complicate that effort.

Chair James Comer, who is uh the chair of the Oversight Committee in the House, said that the committee will consult the Department of Justice officials before deciding uh what their next steps are going to be.

Some Republican senators uh have planned to or have planned to urge Mr.

Trump to nominate Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, to serve as the attorney general.

And there's been uh some internal scuttle, but that the uh administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldon, is also on the short list uh to potentially serve as the next attorney general.

Um Bondi is of course the second cabinet official dismissed this year, and yet more may follow.

Many believe that uh the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is also uh potentially next in line to be fired for her position.

Uh the FBI director, Cash Patel is also uh rumored to be removed, as is uh Department of Labor Secretary uh Lori Shaves to Reimer could also be replaced because she has been in hot water over a number of different scandals over the past year.

Though these are all all unconfirmed reports, so um, like many things in the Trump administration, it could uh happen not at all and then all at once at the same time.

Um, outside of the personnel issues that are facing the Trump administration, the Department of Employment Security remains shut down uh for the 51st day.

This is now the longest agency shutdown in U.S.

history.

Additional pressure on Republicans eased slightly after President Trump issued an executive order extending paying to all DHS employees following earlier emergency pay for TSA staff.

So this includes funding uh for FEMA employees, SISA employees, uh, and the Coast Guard.

House Republican leaders plan to wait until next week when they are back in session to act on a Senate pass bill that funds all of DHS except for ICE and CBP.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson are pursuing a complex party-like reconciliation strategy, possibly using several bills to fully reopen the department.

The first reconciliation package, which is being talked about as reconciliation 2.0, would provide multi-year funding for ICE to CBP with Trump demanding passage by June 1st.

The Senate hopes to pass a budget resolution by the end of April with reconciliation instructions for Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, though Chair Rand Paul could pose challenges.

This is very similar to the issue that we had last year when they had to go around Mr.

Paul and had to put uh the Homeland Security provisions through the budget committee, which is chaired by Lindsay Graham.

Um Senator John Thune said today that he plans on bringing a budget resolution to the floor by the end of April, which would initiate the reconciliation process to fund ICBP and other uh immigration-related agencies in order to meet that deadline.

Uh I will say though, that there are a number of obstacles that will uh likely face um before they get to final passage, namely in the House, where Speaker Johnson faces several angry conservatives and a very razor-thin majority.

Many House Republicans refuse to support the Senate bill until they see details from the Republican reconciliation plan, and they oppose separating ICE and CBP from the rest of DHS through the regular appropriations process and want to go through that instead of go through reconciliation.

Leadership intends to argue that the funding doesn't require offsets since it qualifies as standard appropriations, which will uh hopefully for their purposes ease passage of the bill without potential offsets from other parts of the government.

Democrats, of course, largely have been sidelined during this fighting um and have uh otherwise supported the Senate passed measure by opposing Republican efforts to uh fund ICE and CPP through the reconciliation process.

Um, and many uh progressive lawmakers in those competitive districts may vote against both the Senate bill and the reconciliation package, citing the lack of reforms to immigration enforcement agencies.

Uh in addition to the uh action going on at CVP last Friday, uh President Donald Trump released the FY27 budget proposal, which calls for a $2.2 trillion in discretionary spending.

Uh 1.5 of that would be for the defense request alone.

Uh and the budget request also calls for a 10% reduction to domestic programs.

Um this includes 1.1 trillion dollars in base Pentagon funding through the regular appropriations process, and then $350 billion in new mandatory defense spending.

They're also uh eyeing a potential $200 billion supplemental to the war in Iran, and this is separate and distinct from the $1.5 trillion uh defense ask.