DHS shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight and delays at airports
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
There was no breakthrough in talk to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday as the shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight.
Democratic lawmakers demanded new restrictions on federal agents carrying out the president’s deportation crackdown. But Republicans rejected the proposal, offering instead to remove money for immigration enforcement from the homeland security spending bill.
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months.
But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.
The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday that nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since what she called “the Democrat shutdown” began.
“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.
The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.
Meanwhile, Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.
“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
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The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Wednesday that airports across the country are experiencing the “highest wait times in TSA history”, as the partial shutdown of the DHS enters its sixth week. At a House homeland security committee hearing, Ha Nguyen McNeill said her agency has been shut down for 50% of the fiscal year so far – a stretch that includes last year’s record-breaking 43‑day lapse in federal funding. She told lawmakers that by Friday, TSA employees will have missed $1bn in paychecks as a result of the closures. More here.
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The US has launched another strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the US Southern Command said. The command, which oversees combatant operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that it had conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”. More here.
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Progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters. The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. More here.
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The Trump administration’s federal housing director Bill Pulte is asking prosecutors to investigate New York attorney general Letitia James for insurance fraud, according to criminal referrals reported by MS Now and CBS News. The referrals to prosecutors in Florida and Illinois allege that James may have committed mortgage insurance fraud. The allegations center on applications made to Universal Property Insurance company, which is based in Florida, and Allstate in Illinois. More here.
Key events
The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is again scheduled to appear in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday for his “narco-terrorism” case after his capture by US military forces earlier this year, the Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis and Tom Phillips write.
US special forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on 3 January in a controversial pre-dawn raid during an assault on Caracas that reportedly killed 100 people.
Charging papers allege that Maduro spearheaded a “corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking”.
You can read the full story here.
We are awaiting the start of Donald Trump’s latest cabinet meeting, which was due to start at 10am eastern time. This will be the 11th such session Trump has staged since re-entering the White House in January last year. Previous meetings have been open and freewheeling – as well as newsworthy.
The Pentagon is preparing plans for a “final blow” in the war with Iran that could include deploying ground troops and a massive bombing campaign, Axios reports, citing four sources – including two US officials.
The potential action is presented variously as a huge show of force that could allow the Trump administration extra leverage in peace negotiations with surviving regime officials in Tehran, or alternatively, could be presented as something that Trump could point to and declare victory.
Axios’s report presents four major “final blow” options being discussed: invade or blockade Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil export hub; invade Larak, an island that helps Iran solidify its control over the strait of Hormuz; seize the strategically important island of Abu Musa and two smaller islands; block or sieze ships that are exporting Iranian oil in the eastern side of the strait of Hormuz.
Bill Maher, who has been a frequent thorn in Donald Trump’s side, is to be awarded a prestigious prize for comedy by the Kennedy Center – an institution the president has gone to great lengths to take over.
Despite earlier White House denials, Maher will he awarded the center’s Mark Twain humor prize, Politico confirms.
The confirmation comes just days after Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, and Steven Cheung, the communications director, dismissed initial reports of the award in the Atlantic as “fake news.”
Now it turns out that Maher is indeed to be the recipient of the award in a ceremony broadcast by Netflix that is scheduled to be one of the last public events hosted by the Kennedy Center before it shuts down for a two-year renovation.
A Kennedy Center spokesperson told Politico that the Atlantic story had been published before “conversations were finalized.”
Previous recipients include David Letterman, Adam Sandler and Conan O’Brien.
In response, Maher said: “I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
Trump last year hosted Maher to dinner at the White House but more recently denounced him as “a highly overrated lightweight” and a “jerk.”
Trump attacks Chuck Schumer over voter ID act standoff
Donald Trump has been “truthing” on his Truth Social platform early today, urging Republicans to terminate the Senate filibuster in his quest to have the Save America Act mandating tough voter ID enacted into law.
Two posts contain a barely veiled warning to Republicans against compromising with the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, over funding the Department of Homeland Security, which has been partially shuttered in a dispute over immigration patrols – leading to disrupted security services and delays at airports.
Schumer has signalled in recent days that Democrats are open to a deal but Trump has said he will be unhappy with any compromise.
Instead, he wants Republicans to press ahead and abolish the filibuster, which decrees a 60-vote threshold for any new legislation.
“When is ‘enough, enough’ for our Republican Senators,” he wrote in a screed posted at 6.51am ET. “There comes a time when you must do what should have been done a long time ago, and something which the Lunatic Democrats will do on day one, if they ever get the chance. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and get our airports, and everything else, moving again.
Also, add the complete, all five items, SAVE AMERICA ACT items. Go for the Gold!!! President DJT”
In a second post, barely half an hour later, he writes in withering terms about Schumer – an opponent he has frequently lampooned -saying he has lost control of his party and that he “will make a deal now because he thinks that if he doesn’t, Republicans will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, something which they should do whether he makes a deal or not!!!”
Gaya Gupta
As travelers continue to face sprawling security lines across the US, one company is thriving amid the ongoing chaos.
Clear Secure, a biometric firm that allows travelers to bypass Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines at more than 60 airports in the US, has reportedly seen a jump in new sign-ups this month amid the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.
Clear’s app saw 625% more downloads this Sunday compared with its daily average across January and February, according to the analytics firm Appfigures Intelligence. The company’s stock is also up 57% for the year, its highest value since it went public in 2021.
US-Iran indirect talks ‘taking place’, says Pakistan, as Israel says it killed Iran naval chief
Taz Ali
The US and Iran are engaged in “indirect talks”, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, has said, confirming his country has been relaying messages.
According to Dar, Iran has been “deliberating” on the proposal, although no Iranian official has publicly confirmed this.
In a post on X, Dar wrote:
There has been unnecessary speculation in the media regarding peace talks to end ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In reality, US-Iran indirect talks are taking place through messages being relayed by Pakistan. In this context, the United States has shared 15 points, being deliberated upon by Iran.
This latest news comes as Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said the Iranian naval commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Alireza Tangsiri, has been killed along with other “senior officers of the naval command” in a strike overnight.
You can follow the latest updates on the US-Israel war on Iran in our dedicated live blog:
Anna Betts
After casting her vote for Donald Trump in 2024 in hopes that he would bring transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein case, Epstein survivor Jena Lisa Jones said in an interview this week that she now fears “we’re not going to get justice in all of this”.
“I wanted my day in court,” said Jones, who has said she was abused by Epstein when she was 14, in an interview on the Shadow Sessions podcast that aired on Thursday morning. “I didn’t get that, and we were so close to it, it really got ripped from us, and then after [Epstein] passed, everything just went into a circus show.”
Jones said she backed Trump in the 2024 election because of his promises to release the files related to Epstein – who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors – and his network.
“Trump ran his whole freakin’ election on the release of these freakin’ files,” she said. “And it sparked it back all up again, gave us hope, gave me hope at least.
“He runs his campaign on this, and he runs it really, really hard to the point that a lot of us voted for him,” she added.
However, after the election, Jones said that she felt a shift.
“As soon as he gets in, we started pushing for the release of the files, and now it’s a ‘Democratic hoax’,” she said, referring to remarks Trump made in the fall in which he dismissed some calls to the release additional Epstein files as a Democratic “hoax”.
Trump to hold first cabinet meeting since start of Iran war at 10am ET
Donald Trump will hold a cabinet meeting later today, his first since the US started its war with Iran.
It is due to be held at 10am ET, with the president and defense secretary Pete Hegseth expected to give a rosy view of the US military campaign.
Venezuela’s Maduro due back in US court in dispute over legal fees
Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro returns to a Manhattan court on Thursday where he will argue that drug trafficking charges against him should be thrown out more than two months after he and his wife were captured in a surprise US military raid in Caracas.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been embroiled in a dispute over US sanctions that prevent the Venezuelan government from paying for the couple’s legal defense, Reuters reported.
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have each pleaded not guilty to charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and are jailed in Brooklyn pending trial.
They have asked US district judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the charges, saying their inability to rely on Venezuelan public funds is interfering with their right to have a lawyer of their choosing under the sixth amendment of the US constitution.
Their lawyers have said Maduro and Flores cannot afford to pay their defense fees on their own.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, who represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said he wants to withdraw from the case if Hellerstein doesn’t dismiss the charges and the Venezuelan government cannot pay his fees.
DHS shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight and delays at airports
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
There was no breakthrough in talk to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday as the shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight.
Democratic lawmakers demanded new restrictions on federal agents carrying out the president’s deportation crackdown. But Republicans rejected the proposal, offering instead to remove money for immigration enforcement from the homeland security spending bill.
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months.
But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.
The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday that nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since what she called “the Democrat shutdown” began.
“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.
The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.
Meanwhile, Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.
“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
-
The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Wednesday that airports across the country are experiencing the “highest wait times in TSA history”, as the partial shutdown of the DHS enters its sixth week. At a House homeland security committee hearing, Ha Nguyen McNeill said her agency has been shut down for 50% of the fiscal year so far – a stretch that includes last year’s record-breaking 43‑day lapse in federal funding. She told lawmakers that by Friday, TSA employees will have missed $1bn in paychecks as a result of the closures. More here.
-
The US has launched another strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the US Southern Command said. The command, which oversees combatant operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that it had conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”. More here.
-
Progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters. The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. More here.
-
The Trump administration’s federal housing director Bill Pulte is asking prosecutors to investigate New York attorney general Letitia James for insurance fraud, according to criminal referrals reported by MS Now and CBS News. The referrals to prosecutors in Florida and Illinois allege that James may have committed mortgage insurance fraud. The allegations center on applications made to Universal Property Insurance company, which is based in Florida, and Allstate in Illinois. More here.
