Chuck Schumer rejects Trump’s ‘Save America Act’ ultimatum amid DHS shutdown
Chris Stein
An indignant Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer swatted aside Donald Trump’s insistence that Democrats support the Save America Act before they can reach a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump made his ultimatum late Sunday as his administration geared up to send agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to airports where lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints are stretching for hours.
But Democrats are not backing down from their demands for new guardrails on immigration enforcement, while saying they would support passage of standalone legislation to fund TSA and other components of the DHS that are not involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“Donald Trump is now saying we’ll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do, what a callous thing to do. He doesn’t give a damn about the American people,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Save America act would impose a host of new ID requirements to both register to votes and cast ballots. It’s currently before the Senate after passing the House nearly on party lines, but has no pathway to clearing the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold because of Democratic opposition.
“He cares about his own election, he thinks the Save Act, which isn’t going to pass, will change how the election comes out, and he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages,” Schumer said. “How can our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle go along with this? It stinks on its face. You don’t need any deeper explanation.”
Key events
Closing summary
We’re wrapping up our live coverage for the day, but we’ll be back on Tuesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:
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The US Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, elevating the Republican senator to a role where he will be among the public faces of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The Republican controlled chamber confirmed Mullin largely along party lines, with a vote of 54-45. More here.
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Donald Trump has claimed there have been talks between the US and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement”, appearing to avert a potentially severe escalation of the conflict. Tehran has denied the claim, in which Trump also speculated that a deal could soon be done to end the war. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said no talks had been held with the US since the bombing campaign began 24 days ago. More here.
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Security lines stretched for hours at US airports where unpaid Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) screening agents refused to report for duty and ICE agents deployed by Donald Trump were reportedly seen in a dozen cities. The president claimed over the weekend that immigration agents could help manage long lines, but in Atlanta, little immediate impact of their presence could be observed. More here.
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The US supreme court appeared poised to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year. The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. More here.
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California attorney general Rob Bonta said he has sued the US energy department to stop it from using a cold-war era law to restart the long-disputed Sable Offshore pipeline system linking the Santa Ynez offshore platform to California refineries. US energy secretary Chris Wright earlier this month restarted the pipelines using powers granted to him by Donald Trump through an executive order that invoked the Defense Production Act to supersede state laws. More here.
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Prediction markets are facing fresh bipartisan scrutiny in the US Senate as companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket continue to battle state-led efforts to regulate online betting. A bill was introduced in the US Senate on Monday that would ban federally regulated platforms from allowing wagers on sporting events, what would be a huge blow to marketplaces where billions of dollars have been traded on major events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA’s March Madness. More here.
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said on Monday that delays at TSA lines have prevented her full team from arriving on-site quickly to assess the aftermath of the plane collision at LaGuardia Airport.
Earlier today, Homendy said one of the air traffic control specialists “was in line with TSA for three hours until we called in Houston to beg to see if we can get her through so we can get her here. So it’s been a really, really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they’re still arriving as I speak.”
“It is a long travel day for many of those,” she said during a press conference on Monday. “We have had many that have come here by train and certainly automobile. I drove. We drove up a number of us.”
Costa Rica signs agreement to accept migrants deported by the US from other countries
The US and Costa Rica have signed an initial agreement for Costa Rica to accept migrants deported by the US from other countries, according to Rodrigo Chaves Robles, Costa Rica’s President.
“This is a voluntary agreement. Under this protocol, we could reject anyone, or decline to accept specific nationalities, while still collaborating within the framework of human rights in our country,” said Chaves Robles in a video posted on Monday.
As many as 25 people are expected to be transferred to the country per week, according to a statement, with the US putting forth “the necessary financial support.”
The International Organization for Migration, affiliated with the UN, will offer food and housing.
Chris Stein
While Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman endorsed Mullin shortly after his nomination, support from New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich was a surprise. After voting to advance his nomination over the weekend, Heinrich released a statement calling Mullin a “friend” who “is not someone who can simply be bullied into changing his views”.
“I look forward to having a secretary who doesn’t take their orders from Stephen Miller,” Heinrich said, referring to the White House official who is an architect of Trump’s immigration policies.
Mullin is set to play a key role in implementing those policies, which polls show are growing increasingly unpopular among the public ahead of the November midterms, in which Republicans will be defending their control of the Senate and House of Representatives.
A former House representative who was elected Oklahoma’s junior senator in 2022, Mullin now leads a 260,000-employee department whose sub-agencies include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol.
Here’s more on Mullin’s confirmation:
Senate confirms Markwayne Mullin to lead Homeland Security
In a 54-45 vote, the Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday.
Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who’s been in the Senate since 2023, was confirmed following months of backlash to Kristi Noem’s leadership. All Republican senators except for Rand Paul of Kentucky voted to confirm Mullin.
Mullin will take the reins as ICE agents are deployed to US airports to bolster security during a budget standoff in Congress and at a tumultuous time for DHS, which has been shut down since mid-February.
“I can have different opinions with everybody in this room, but as secretary of homeland I’ll be protecting everybody,” Mullin said during his confirmation hearing.
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a press conference earlier today that investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the plane crash at LaGuardia airport.
“In order to get to the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, we, the Port Authority and the emergency responders cut a hole on the roof of the aircraft, dropped down and were able to get the CVR and FDR for us,” Homendy said. “One of our investigators drove back to our labs in Washington, DC today, where they’ve been able to at least verify that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged.”
“My hope is that we’ll have information to share on that tomorrow,” she added.
Homendy said NTSB is working its way through the massive debris left by the incident.
“While they [investigators] are on scene, there is a tremendous, tremendous amount of debris from taxiway Delta across runway four into some other areas,” she said. “It’s pretty expansive.”
State senator Scott Wiener held a press conference on Monday outside the San Francisco International Airport following a viral video that showed federal agents forcefully detaining a woman in front of her daughter at the airport on Sunday night.
The incident was unrelated to the recent deployment of immigration officers to bolster short-staffed airports during the partial government shutdown.
“We don’t want ICE here and when ICE descends on our communities, it only creates fear,” Wiener said.
San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie said in a post on Monday that the San Francisco Police Department played no role in the detention, and added that local resources will not be used to assist federal civil immigration raids.
“Like many San Franciscans, I found the incident at SFO last night upsetting,” Lurie said. “I have spoken to leaders at SFO and SFPD, and we believe this is an isolated incident. We have no reason to believe there is broader federal immigration enforcement at SFO.”
“Under our city’s longstanding policies, local law enforcement does not participate in federal civil immigration enforcement,” Lurie added.
Gaya Gupta
Prediction markets are facing fresh bipartisan scrutiny in the US Senate as companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket continue to battle state-led efforts to regulate online betting.
A bill was introduced in the US Senate on Monday that would ban federally regulated platforms from allowing wagers on sporting events, what would be a huge blow to marketplaces where billions of dollars have been traded on major events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA’s March Madness.
The bill follows several other state-level efforts to regulate marketplaces, which are overseen by a federal agency. On Friday, a Nevada judge temporarily banned most of Kalshi’s operations in the state for two weeks after the state filed a lawsuit against the company.
Online prediction markets are currently regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Under the Trump administration, the agency has argued it has exclusive regulatory control over the companies.
Read the full story here:
Pentagon revises media policy in compliance with court order
The Pentagon has revised its media policy in compliance with a court order issued on Friday, which ruled that the Trump administration’s controversial policy was unconstitutional.
Spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on Monday that the department “always complies with court orders but disagrees with the decision and is pursuing an appeal.”
The initial policy introduced in October prohibited journalists from soliciting information that the defense department didn’t directly provide, and revoked the credentials of any outlet that didn’t sign on.
“Effective immediately, the Correspondents’ Corridor is closed,” Parnell said on Monday. “A new and improved press workspace will be established in an annex facility outside the Pentagon, but still on Pentagon grounds, and will be available when ready.”
Under the revised policy, Parnell said all journalists’ access to the Pentagon will require escort by authorized defense department personnel.
The Trump administration is quietly weighing Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, as a potential partner, and even a future leader, Politico reported on Monday, citing two administration officials.
“He’s a hot option,” one administration official told Politico. “He’s one of the highest…But we got to test them, and we can’t rush into it.”
Some officials in the White House see Ghalibaf as a workable partner who could lead Iran and negotiate with the Trump administration in the war’s next phase, according to the report.
Ghalibaf denied any negotiations with the US in a post on Monday, but administration officials who spoke with Politico dismissed his comments as internal posturing.
“We’re in the testing phase of really trying to figure out who can rise, who wants to rise, who tries to rise,” the first official said. “And then as people rise, we’ll do a quick test, and if they’re radical, we’ll take them out.”
California attorney general Rob Bonta filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to block a Department of Energy order that allows Sable Offshore Corp to restart two onshore oil pipelines linked to the devastating 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill, according to a statement released Monday.
The lawsuit stems from Energy secretary Chris Wright’s order to restart the pipelines earlier this month, declaring a national emergency and directing Sable Offshore Corp to prioritize the transportation of crude oil over any other existing contracts.
California officials argue the move is an unconstitutional overreach that ignores state safety laws and risks another environmental catastrophe on the Santa Barbara coast for “negligible” domestic energy gains.
“The fossil fuel industry says ‘Jump,’ and the Trump administration asks, ‘How high?’,” Bonta said in the statement. “The Trump administration and its oil industry buddies are once again violating the law and trampling on our state’s rights in pursuit of corporate profits.”
“California has seen first-hand the devastating environmental and public health impacts of these pipelines rupturing, and there are court-ordered legal requirements in place to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” he added. “But instead of following the law, the Trump administration and an increasingly desperate Sable are attempting to ride roughshod over state authority and judicial independence – all so that Sable can profit.”
Over 100 airport leaders have called on Congress to resolve a funding standoff that has left 50,000 TSA officers without pay and caused massive security delays.
In a letter released Monday, the CEOs of the Airports Council International – North America and the American Association of Airport Executives joined local airport officials to warn that the shutdown is creating “growing operational disruptions at airports… The impacts of the shutdown are significant, growing, and potentially long-lasting.”
NBC News is reporting that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have launched an investigation into Corey Lewandowski, a top aide to outgoing DHS secretary Kristi Noem.
The probe follows allegations that Lewandowski sought personal payments from government contractors in exchange for favorable contract decisions.
Democrats sent a letter to the private prison company GEO Group on Monday, according to the report, requesting it disclose details of meetings and conversations with Lewandowski dating back to 2024.
Geo Group, the largest owner of detention centers in the US, was the subject of a Guardian investigation last year, revealing an array of alleged due process violations, medical issues, and abuse.
According to the NBC News investigation, GEO Group and several other companies in government contracting have complained to Trump administration officials that Lewandowski directly or indirectly stood to personally profit from the DHS contracting process.
Chuck Schumer rejects Trump’s ‘Save America Act’ ultimatum amid DHS shutdown
Chris Stein
An indignant Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer swatted aside Donald Trump’s insistence that Democrats support the Save America Act before they can reach a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump made his ultimatum late Sunday as his administration geared up to send agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to airports where lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints are stretching for hours.
But Democrats are not backing down from their demands for new guardrails on immigration enforcement, while saying they would support passage of standalone legislation to fund TSA and other components of the DHS that are not involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“Donald Trump is now saying we’ll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do, what a callous thing to do. He doesn’t give a damn about the American people,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Save America act would impose a host of new ID requirements to both register to votes and cast ballots. It’s currently before the Senate after passing the House nearly on party lines, but has no pathway to clearing the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold because of Democratic opposition.
“He cares about his own election, he thinks the Save Act, which isn’t going to pass, will change how the election comes out, and he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages,” Schumer said. “How can our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle go along with this? It stinks on its face. You don’t need any deeper explanation.”
The Department of Education launched two more investigations against Harvard University amid allegations that the institution “continues to discriminate against students on the basis of race, color, and national origin”.
The move is the latest step in the Trump administration’s crackdown against top US educational institutions, and it comes just days after officials filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging Harvard violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli people in the aftermath of the war in Gaza.
“Harvard University should know better,” reads a Monday statement by secretary of education, Linda McMahon. “No one – not even Harvard – is above the law. If Harvard continues to stonewall as we try to verify its basic compliance with antidiscrimination statutes, we will vigorously hold them to account to ensure students’ rights are protected.”
The investigations will look into whether Harvard uses race-based preferences in admissions after the supreme court’s 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action in higher education and into allegations of antisemitism on the Ivy League’s campus, according to the statement by the department.
