One thing I’ve been learning as a new mom is the importance of accepting the reality of a situation as it is. You can’t cling to what the situation was like in the past, or what it could or should be.

For example, my son just came down with his first cold. He was up every three hours in the night and was much harder to soothe back to sleep than usual. I desperately wish this wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening last week. And according to all the pediatric literature, Sonny should be capable of sleeping five hours in a row at this age.

And yet, he’s waking up and screaming. Ignoring him would only make the problem worse. I simply have to accept the fact that he’s up, he’s hungry and snuffly, and I have to take care of it.

Too many congressional Democrats, particularly in the Senate, have yet to accept the reality of today’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reality is: ICE is being used as a masked, unaccountable police force that is being used specifically to punish places that did not vote for President Trump in the last presidential election.

It is being used to commit acts of racist violence against any non-white person they happen to see walking around, and acts of regular violence against any white people who protest or fail to act deferentially enough (see: the poet Renee Good being shot in the face in front of her wife and then being called a name I’m not allowed to put in print).

If ICE was really all about immigration enforcement, our government’s own statistics have the states with the most undocumented immigrants as California, Texas and Florida. Why is ICE in Minnesota — which doesn’t even make the top 10 — instead of Texas and Florida, if they’re actually trying to catch undocumented immigrants? Not to mention here in Maine, the whitest state in the country?

Because it’s not about immigration. It’s not about protecting citizens. It’s about punishing people and places that Donald Trump doesn’t like. Maybe that wasn’t the original intention of ICE. Maybe it’s not what it used to do. But it’s what is happening, and Senate Democrats need to accept that. They need to accept that this is not a regular government, and they should not be voting to give money to a private army that’s being used to harass, assault and murder their constituents.

Sen. Susan Collins is, of course, utterly useless in this situation. Collins will do whatever the Republican Party leadership tells her to. (You ever notice that when she votes against whatever Trump wants it’s always when Republicans have enough votes to pass it without her? No? Just me?)

But I expect more from Sen. Angus King. When asked by CNN a few weeks ago about the push to force a funding showdown over ICE, he said: “I never like shutdowns.”

Well, duh, Angus. Nobody likes government shutdowns. But Americans also don’t like masked secret police snatching people of color randomly off the street and beating them. I never like when my son is awake and screaming at 2 a.m. but I have to recognize the reality and deal with the matter at hand.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, another proud New England moderate type, said “there are other ways to deal with ICE” than shutting down the government to deny the agency funding. Stephen Miller, the president’s primary toady, said (also to CNN), “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

So no, I don’t see any other way to deal with ICE than by shutting it down, and the way you do that is by taking away its money.

The Trump administration is not a normal government operating in good faith and it should not be treated like one. Lord knows I had issues with the Bush administration, but at least they weren’t cutting federal funding specifically from states that didn’t vote for him. (By the way, in case anyone still cares about the Constitution, the power of the purse lies solely with Congress).

Angus King should know better. I don’t know why he acts as if this is a normal presidency that you can negotiate with, an administration that will keep its word on deals.

How many times do you need to have the football yanked away from you, Charlie Brown? Mainers of color are literally scared to leave their homes right now. Is this the country you are so proud to serve? Is it an age thing? Why are you still voting to confirm Trump-nominated judges when he is sending his masked agents to harass your constituents?

I know King grew up in a different political era. Where is his ability to recognize a changed landscape? Does Jeanne Shaheen still tell tourists to go see The Old Man of the Mountain? Do they not know any better? Or do they simply just not care what’s happening in their streets?