Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) was in a good mood when I sat down with him for an hour on Wednesday to talk about his priorities for the next two years. (In true Amodei fashion, an undisclosed number of minutes were spent on a story about his experience meeting an Italian prime minister in Stillwater, Nevada, before his congressional career.)
With Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Amodei will be the most influential Nevadan in the Capitol. And his mission goes beyond his Nevada priorities — his position as chair of the Homeland Security subcommittee in the Appropriations Committee will be more important, and scrutinized, than ever, as he’s tasked with funding the agencies that President-elect Donald Trump plans to deploy toward his mass deportation campaign.
We talked about that role, his lands bills and why Republicans shouldn’t be overly confident that they can achieve all of their priorities, trifecta notwithstanding.
The News of the Week: Mass deportation challenges
Fresh off another double-digit electoral victory, Amodei, like every other House Republican, will be critical to Trump’s ambitions in a chamber where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has virtually no margin for error.
Having served since 2011 — including as part of the last Republican trifecta from 2017 to 2019 — Amodei’s view is not as rosy as some of his colleagues’ about what might get done.
Currently, the Republican plan is to pass two bills via budget reconciliation, a complex legislative tool that allows Senate Republicans to bypass a Democratic filibuster, but only for items that are budgetary in nature. The goal is to do an initial bill, focused on energy and the border, in Trump’s first 100 days, and a tax bill later in the year.
But, Amodei noted, Congress has yet to pass a stopgap spending bill for funding expiring at the end of the year, or budgets for fiscal years 2025 and 2026.
“You’re on a 24-month clock in the House,” Amodei said. “This is always a fluid situation.”
As the Homeland Security cardinal, he’ll be in charge of appropriating funds for the Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies — Immigration and Customs Enforcement especially — that Trump will task with carrying out his mass deportation agenda.
He plans to meet with incoming Deputy Chief of Policy Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan in the next week to begin budgetary conversations.
“I expect us to have more money in Homeland, but it’s not like you’ve got an open checkbook, right?” Amodei said. “You’ve got to provide great value.”
Having managed the appropriations process for Homeland Security this year, Amodei has an informed opinion of the department’s capacity to carry out such a program. He said whether a mass deportation is possible depends on the administration’s definition of “mass.”
Amodei estimated that about a million people are in the U.S. illegally and have either committed a crime or already had their asylum application denied.
To increase deportations of that group beyond the 250,000 or so per year under President Joe Biden’s administration, Amodei said the number of flights back to home countries and detention beds would need to be doubled, and the number of immigration lawyers needs to be increased.
Even with more funding, he said it would take time to build the hard and soft infrastructure needed to house people awaiting deportation, beyond the current use of temporary soft-sided shelters. He estimated that the infrastructure build alone would take three to five years — not to mention the diplomatic challenges with countries such as China, which refuse to take back deportees.
“I think ramping up is going to take a while,” he said. “As it evolves, I think the criteria will evolve.”
Amodei has never been a hardliner on immigration, and said those brought to the U.S. as children, who now have careers, deserve legislative solutions and to be treated with nuance within the new immigration regime.
He suspected that given the challenges with mass deportation, longtime undocumented immigrants will not face any immediate threat.
“[If] you’re a convicted felon, a gang member, or somebody who’s been through your hearing and didn’t get granted asylum, then I would expect that [those] folks ought to start making arrangements to transition back,” he said.
Another undiscussed element of mass deportation? The price tag.
“The national debt is not irrelevant,” Amodei said. “Is it going to cost more money? Yes. Should we find ways to provide the money that it takes without running up the debt? Yeah. So that’s the challenge.”
The Nevada Angle: Other priorities
Amodei’s Nevada priorities for his next term are largely the same — passing his Northern Nevada lands bill and trying to get Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-NV) Clark County lands bill passed. On that front, he’s working to establish a relationship with the staff of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the incoming chair of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, and hoping that the existing Republican energy staffers that he knows in the Senate will retain their influence.
But much like Republican policy hopes, he’s not expecting the change in partisan control to make the lands bill process any easier.
“After Harry Reid left, it’s been a pretty hard road,” he said.
And, as the only Nevada Republican in Congress, he’s hoping to influence the Trump administration on at least one appointment — the U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada, currently held by Biden appointee Jason Frierson. Amodei said his team is huddling with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s team next week to discuss who they might recommend.
Amodei might also face tough votes if House Republicans try to rescind the Inflation Reduction Act — which has delivered billions to Northern Nevada in clean energy funding — wholesale. Energy policy wonks think such a move is unlikely, because there are too many Republicans, such as Amodei, who have seen massive investment come to their districts because of the different energy tax credits that Democrats passed in 2022.
Amodei was one of 30 House Republicans to sign a letter to Johnson defending energy tax credits and urging leadership to avoid harming businesses when discussing any repeals.
“If … we can’t unwind it in a way without killing a company or something, then we need to take a look at that,” he said.
The Impact
Between House Republicans losing a seat in the election and several members departing for the Trump administration, Johnson will need every House Republican to be on board with each bill, at least in the first few months. That makes Amodei enormously influential, if he has any concerns.
Around the Capitol
⚖️Pardon me? — Should Biden have given a blanket pardon to his son Hunter, who was facing tax and gun charges? Cortez Masto and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) told me they disagreed with the president’s decision — Cortez Masto actually has a bill dating back to the first Trump era giving Congress oversight over pardons involving family members.
Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) didn’t weigh in on whether that particular pardon was appropriate, but said he’s “pushing for more Americans to be included in that process.” (Biden has offered far fewer pardons and commutations than either Trump or President Barack Obama.)
And Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) had a different take. “Political pardons suck,” she tweeted. “It doesn’t matter the person or the party.”
✉️CCM to Biden: Protect immigrants — Leading a letter on behalf of herself and the two other Hispanic Senate Democrats, Cortez Masto asked the Biden administration to use the lame duck period to protect vulnerable immigrant groups.
Firstly, she wants Biden to redesignate or extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ecuador, Nicaragua and El Salvador, so that nationals from those countries in the U.S. with TPS can continue to live here. Secondly, she wants the administration to speed up its processing of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewals and parole requests while Biden is still in office.
🖊️Two bill intros for Horsford — Horsford co-sponsored two bills this week. One is a regulatory fix to ensure that disabled veterans’ disability and pension payments don’t count as income for affordable housing qualification purposes. The other, also for veterans, would allow military service members and their families who get health care through TRICARE Prime to seek OB-GYN care without a referral in order to address delays.
What I’m Reading
NPR: Some rural Nevadans want Trump to stop the state’s solar energy boom
Here comes the solar sunset?
The Nevada Independent: Nevada Democrats restart push to be nation’s first presidential primary in 2028
Is it already first in the nation time again?
Las Vegas Review-Journal: Experts urge caution in taking Colorado River negotiations to Supreme Court
Unmentioned: SCOTUS has Upper Basin representation, but no justices from the Lower Basin.
Notable and Quotable
“By the way, it’s not doje. It’s doggie. What the hell? This isn’t France.”
— Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV), on how to pronounce DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Vote of the Week
H.Res.1608 — On Motion to Refer: Raising a Question of the Privileges of the House?
Should the House compel the Ethics Committee to release its report on resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the former nominee for attorney general? Democrats say yes; all but one Republican say no. (The vote looks flipped below because this was a motion to refer the issue back to committee.)
AMODEI: Yes
HORSFORD: No
LEE: No
TITUS: No
