Number of Democrats say they won’t vote for DHS funding amid alarm over ICE tactics
Multiple democrats say they will not vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, hours after the Appropriations Committees released the text of the Homeland Security funding bill.
“The proposed Appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security released today puts no meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE, and increases funding for detention over the last Appropriations bill passed in 2024,” said Connecticut senator Chris Murphy. “Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that not only funds the dystopian scenes we are seeing in Minneapolis but will allow DHS to replicate that playbook of brutality in cities all over this country.”
“I am a hard no on funding this out-of-control agency. The American people demand accountability,” said New Mexico congresswoman Melanie Stansbury.
“Congress is voting on a bipartisan bill to triple ICE funding. I’m leading the opposition,” said California congressman Ro Khanna.
“I will not vote to give ICE a single cent,” said Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “No more blank checks for a rogue agency that operates above the law, escalates violence, and erodes our most basic freedoms.”
In a statement following the release of the funding bill, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut said:
“I understand that many of my Democratic colleagues may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE. I share their frustration with the out-of-control agency,” she said. “The Homeland Security funding bill is more than just ICE. If we allow a lapse in funding, TSA agents will be forced to work without pay, FEMA assistance could be delayed, and the U.S. Coast Guard will be adversely affected. All while ICE continues functioning without any change in their operations due to $75 billion it received in the One Big Beautiful Bill. A continuing resolution will jettison the guardrails we have secured while ceding authority to President Trump, Stephen Miller, and Secretary Noem.”
Key events
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado spoke with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during her second trip to Capitol Hill this week.
“We want the Venezuelan people that were forced to leave to come back home,” she told reporters in response to a question about Venezuelans who have had their temporary legal status terminated in the United States. “And that’s going to happen once we have democracy in Venezuela.”
Reflecting on Donald Trump’s two-hour press briefing earlier today, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the presser “bizarre even for him”.
In a social media post, Grisham wrote, “It’s all the usual rambling, off-topic tales, half-truths, lies, “I’ve fixed everything – no one has ever seen anything like it” stuff…but it’s low-energy & feels like he’s…mentally slipping. Congress-plz wake up.” She added the hashtag #EmperorHasNoClothes.
The California Republican Party has asked the state supreme court to block a redistricting measure voters approved in November that would flip up to five House seats in Democrats’ favor.
In an emergency filing, the party asked Justice Elena Kagan, who is assigned to the Ninth Circuit, to issue an injunction before 9 February, the beginning of California’s candidate filing period for the June 2026 primaries.
“California cannot create districts by race, and the state should not be allowed to lock in districts that break federal law,” said California Republican Party chairwoman Corrin Rankin. “Our emergency application asks the Supreme Court to put the brakes on Prop. 50 now, before the Democrats try to run out the clock and force candidates and voters to live with unconstitutional congressional districts.”
A California-based firm, the Dhillon Law Group, filed the emergency application on behalf of the California Republican Party. The firm was founded by Harmeet Dhillon, now the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, a former vice chair of the California Republican Party.
Donald Trump signed an executive order today aimed at “stopping Wall Street from competing with Main Street homebuyers” following recent social media posts from the president regarding the affordability of housing.
The action orders government agencies to define “large institutional investor” and “single-family home” within 30 days of the order, and then issue guidance to prevent the “acquisition by a large institutional investor of a single-family home that could otherwise be purchased by an individual owner-occupant” within 60 days.
House prices soared to record levels in the US during the pandemic, before slipping back. The median sale price stood at $410,800 last year, according to the US Census Bureau.
Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires have released an open letter calling on global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, as leaders meet for the World Economic Forum in Davos.
My colleague Graeme Wearden has more on the letter, “signed by luminaries including the actor and film-maker Mark Ruffalo, the musician Brian Eno and the film producer and philanthropist Abigail Disney, says extreme wealth is polluting politics, driving social exclusion and fuelling the climate emergency.”
Congressman Ro Khanna denounced Donald Trump’s desire to buy or invade Greenland in an apperance on CNN tonight, calling it “a mockery of those American principles” that “freed the world from Nazism and Communism”.
“The America I believe in, engaged in wars of liberation, not wars of conquest,” he said.
Khanna is one of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have introduced legislation “affirming the United States’ partnership with Denmark and Greenland and recognizing our responsibility to comply with treaty obligations and solve any disputes peacefully”.
Maryland Democrats have designed a concept map that would give Democrats all of the state’s eight congressional seats if approved by the state legislature, the political news outlet Punchbowl News reports.
The concept map was created by the Maryland Redistricting Advisory Commission, which was formed by Democratic governor Wes Moore. Moore convened the commission in response to Republican-led states’ efforts to redistrict their congressional maps following Donald Trump’s plea to do so in order to keep Republicans in power in the House of Representatives following this year’s midterm elections.
JD Vance and his wife Usha are expecting their fourth child, a boy, in July, the vice president’s wife shared in a statement on social media.
“During this exciting and hectic time, we are particularly grateful for the military doctors who take excellent care of our family and for the staff members who do so much to ensure that we can serve the country while enjoying a wonderful life with our children,” the Vances said.
My colleage Lauren Gambino reports:
Throughout his political career, the vice-president has repeatedly raised concerns about declining birth rates in the US, and in a speech at the anti-abortion March for Life rally last year, declared: “ I want more babies in the United States of America.”
In an interview last year with conservative commentator Meghan McCain, Usha Vance had said her husband “thinks he might like to have a fourth”. She laughed then, and added: “We’ll see where that leads.”
While this pregnancy marks the first second lady to have a baby while in office, two first ladies have given birth during their husbands’ White House term. Frances Cleveland, wife of former president Grover Cleveland and the youngest first lady in history at 21 years of age, gave birth to daughter Esther in 1893. Esther was the Cleveland’s second child and was born in a bedroom on the second floor of the White House.
Number of Democrats say they won’t vote for DHS funding amid alarm over ICE tactics
Multiple democrats say they will not vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, hours after the Appropriations Committees released the text of the Homeland Security funding bill.
“The proposed Appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security released today puts no meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE, and increases funding for detention over the last Appropriations bill passed in 2024,” said Connecticut senator Chris Murphy. “Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that not only funds the dystopian scenes we are seeing in Minneapolis but will allow DHS to replicate that playbook of brutality in cities all over this country.”
“I am a hard no on funding this out-of-control agency. The American people demand accountability,” said New Mexico congresswoman Melanie Stansbury.
“Congress is voting on a bipartisan bill to triple ICE funding. I’m leading the opposition,” said California congressman Ro Khanna.
“I will not vote to give ICE a single cent,” said Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “No more blank checks for a rogue agency that operates above the law, escalates violence, and erodes our most basic freedoms.”
In a statement following the release of the funding bill, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut said:
“I understand that many of my Democratic colleagues may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE. I share their frustration with the out-of-control agency,” she said. “The Homeland Security funding bill is more than just ICE. If we allow a lapse in funding, TSA agents will be forced to work without pay, FEMA assistance could be delayed, and the U.S. Coast Guard will be adversely affected. All while ICE continues functioning without any change in their operations due to $75 billion it received in the One Big Beautiful Bill. A continuing resolution will jettison the guardrails we have secured while ceding authority to President Trump, Stephen Miller, and Secretary Noem.”
House Oversight chair James Comer has rejected an offer to interview former president Bill Clinton about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, teeing up contempt proceedings to begin this week.
“I have rejected the Clintons’ ridiculous offer,” Comer wrote in a social media post, describing an offer the Clintons’ lawyer made to interview Bill Clinton alone, and not his wife Hillary, in New York without the recording of an official transcript. “Contempt proceedings begin tomorrow.”
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, was denied entry to an immigration detention center in Texas today, the senator shared on social media.
“I flew down to south Texas today to do my job – investigate why people are dying in ICE detention centers. I was just illegally denied entry to Dilley Detention Center. Because they have something to hide,” he wrote.
In a linked video, Murphy explained that he had given the facility 24 hours notice, but was still denied entry by officials who said the center only received funding from the Big Beautiful Bill.
As you may recall, my colleage Yohannes Lowe reported earlier today that:
A federal judge has refused to temporarily block the Trump administration from enforcing a new policy requiring a week’s notice before members of Congress can visit – and thereby inspect – immigration detention facilities.
Judge Jia M. Cobb of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn’t violate an earlier court order when it reimposed a seven-day notice requirement for congressional oversight visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities (you can read her judgment here).
Judge Cobb, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, had blocked a virtually identical policy by the DHS last month, citing a clause in the appropriations law that funds the department and requires facilities to be open to congressional scrutiny.
However, ICE reestablished the visitation policy on 8 January 2026, with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, ordering the DHS to re-impose the seven-day notice requirement – but “exclusively with money appropriated by the (One Big Beautiful Bill Act),” not regular appropriations, effectively bypassing the previous court order.
“That is patently illegal,” Murphy said in the video. “I’m not going to stop, I’m going to go to another facility down the road.”
Here’s more on the recent history of lawmakers being blocked from inspecting ICE facilities:
A Minneapolis area police chief said multiple officers have been pulled over by ICE agents while off duty, and noted that all were people of color.
During a press conference of Twin Cities police chiefs today, Brooklyn Park police chief Mark Bruley described an incident where one of his officers was “boxed in” by ICE agents who “demanded her paperwork”. Because the officer was a US citizen, she did not have any paperwork with her. When she tried to film the interaction, Bruley said, her phone was knocked out of her hands. The officer observed that ICE agents had their guns drawn throughout the incident.
“I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers,” Bruley said. “If this is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”
The Department of Homeland Security said it “will FLOOD THE ZONE in Minnesota to arrest the worst of the worst,” in a social media post, linking to a Fox News clip of Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino speaking at a Minneapolis press conference today.
“Our operations are lawful, they are targeted, and they are focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community. They are not random and they are not political,” Bovino said at the press conference.
The US military has seized a seventh sanctioned oil tanker transporting Venezuelan crude oil, as the Trump administration aims to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry.
US Southern Command announced the seizure of the Motor Vessel Sagitta in a social media post. “The apprehension of another tanker operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean demonstrates our resolve to ensure that the only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully,” it wrote.
With Donald Trump slated to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos tomorrow, his proxies have already arrived.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met with Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos today. Kushner told reporters after that “more and more people realize the correctness of Russia’s position.”
Dmitriev has led Russia’s efforts to draft a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine that would impose draconian terms on Ukraine.
Here, my colleague Pjotr Sauer, shares more about Dmitriev:
The S&P 500 fell 2.1% today, the first day of trading on Wall Street since Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries over their opposition to his desire to buy or invade Greenland.
Here’s a look at the economic situation that my colleagues Lauren Almeida, Heather Stewart and Graeme Wearden shared from Davos earlier today:
Sam Levine
The justice department subpoenaed several top officials in Minnesota on Tuesday as part of its investigation into whether Minneapolis officials have conspired to impede federal immigration efforts there.
A copy of a subpoena to the office of the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, obtained by the Guardian, requests guidance and policies related to immigration enforcement in Minnesota since last year. It also requests communication regarding those policies with other state agencies, as well as documents related to “hindering, doxxing, identifying, or surveilling immigration officers”.
The offices of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, the state attorney general, Keith Ellison, the Hennepin county attorney, Mary Moriarty, and St Paul’s mayor, Kaohly Her, all Democrats, also received subpoenas, the New York Times reported.
“When the federal government weaponizes its power to try to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs, every American should be concerned. We shouldn’t have to live in a country where people fear that federal law enforcement will be used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with,” Frey said in a statement. “In Minneapolis, we won’t be afraid. We know the difference between right and wrong, and, as mayor, I’ll continue doing the job I was elected to do: keeping our community safe and standing up for our values.”
The justice department is investigating the officials, claiming that they conspired to impede federal immigration agents. Legal experts have said the claim is flimsy.
Trump says he will ‘have to use something else’ to tax allies who disapprove of plans to annex Greenland if supreme court says sweeping tariffs are illegal
When a reporter asked Trump about what would happen to the tariffs he has slapped on allies (in response to their disapproval over his plans to annex Greenland) should the supreme court rule that his use of duties without congressional approval is illegal, the president said that he would “have to use something else”.
He added: “I mean we have other alternatives, but what we’re doing now is the best, the strongest, the fastest, the easiest, the least complicated.”
