Trump tells Republicans not to deal with Democrats until voting law passed
Donald Trump urged Republicans in Congress to hold the line and not make any deals with Democrats unless they agree to pass his voter identification law known as the Save America Act as part of any agreement for funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaking in Memphis at a roundtable on fighting violent crime, he told the GOP that even Easter wasn’t reason enough to leave Washington before the act is passed.
So I’m tying homeland security into voter identification with picture and proof of citizenship in order to vote.
And those two items are the most important thing having to do with homeland security, so it should be part of the homeland security bill.
And I’m requesting that Republican senators do that immediately. You don’t have to do a fast vote. Don’t worry about Easter or going home, in fact, make this one for Jesus, okay? That would be a damn good thing.
Key events
Donald Trump’s well-documneted love of popular culture and music of the late 20th century is to be given fresh expression with a trip to Graceland, home of Elvis Presley.
“I’m going to see Graceland after this, I think. Is that right?” Trump said during a meeting of the Memphis Safe Task Force. “I love Elvis.”
Trump frequently plays some of Elvis’s best known song at his campaign rallies. The decision to make a pilgrimage to the late singer’s his former home – which was opened to the public in 1982 – may be seen as a frivolous indulgence by some, given the backdrop of the war and soaring global oil prices it has triggered.
The president has been known to compare himself to Presley in the past, even suggesting they share a physical resemblance. “For so many years people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place,” Trump wrote on a social media post in 2024 that composite pictures showing one half of his face blended with Presely’s. “What do you think?”
Trump is not the first Republican president to have a public association with Presley. Richard Nixon famously hosted the singer at the White House in 1970, an encounter that has been the subject of several books and dramatized films.
Graceland has on occasion ranked as the second most-visited home in the US after the White House.
LaGuardia airport was due to reopen a single runway today at 2pm eastern time, according to a Federal Aviation Authority announcement.
The reopening was scheduled in response to demands from the authorities for the airport to resume operations after the fatal collision between an Air Canada plane and an airport vehicle on the runway. Kathryn Garcia, the Port Authority’s executive director, had warned that reopening the airport could take longer.
The FAA did not specify when the other runways might open.
Rachel Leingang
The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday 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. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fourteen states, Washington DC and three US territories have similar laws that allow for late-arriving ballots to be counted. Based on the justices’ questions, it is clear the case isn’t focused narrowly on Mississippi’s grace period, but on other states’ rules, which in some cases allow for a longer grace period and don’t require postmarks.
Mississippi, a red state, is defending its ability to set its own procedures for elections against the challenge from the Republican party, which argues that the grace period violates federal laws that set election day for the first Tuesday of November.
Rachel’s full report can be read here.
Trump tells Republicans not to deal with Democrats until voting law passed
Donald Trump urged Republicans in Congress to hold the line and not make any deals with Democrats unless they agree to pass his voter identification law known as the Save America Act as part of any agreement for funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaking in Memphis at a roundtable on fighting violent crime, he told the GOP that even Easter wasn’t reason enough to leave Washington before the act is passed.
So I’m tying homeland security into voter identification with picture and proof of citizenship in order to vote.
And those two items are the most important thing having to do with homeland security, so it should be part of the homeland security bill.
And I’m requesting that Republican senators do that immediately. You don’t have to do a fast vote. Don’t worry about Easter or going home, in fact, make this one for Jesus, okay? That would be a damn good thing.
Trump says Iran talks have been very good and Tehran wants to settle
Speaking in Memphis just now, Donald Trump has claimed that Tehran “wants to settle” and that there’s a “very good chance of a deal” with Iran.
“We’ve eliminated everything there is to eliminate in Iran, including leaders,” he said.
Tehran has “one more opportunity to end its threats” towards the United States and its allies, he said, adding:
We are now having really good discussions. They started last night, a little bit, the night before that. I think they’re very good. They want peace. They’ve agreed they won’t have a nuclear weapon. But we’ll see. We have to get it done.
As Trump repeats his message that all of Iran’s leaders are “gone”, it’s worth noting that, as my colleagues over on our dedicated Middle East crisis live blog reported earlier, he has also said today that the US is talking to a “top person” within the Iranian regime to try to end the war, but not the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since being named supreme leader two weeks ago, after an Israeli airstrike killed his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, fuelling speculation about his health. Trump had made clear before his selection that he considered Mojtaba an “unacceptable” choice, and has speculated about the extent of his injuries and ability to lead Iran.
Further, Trump told reporters earlier that there have been talks between the US and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement” and said both wanted “to make a deal”.
He claimed the US and Iran are discussing 15 points to end the war, with Tehran giving up nuclear weapons as points “number one, two and three”. The US president also said he would postpone American attacks on Iranian power plants by five days after having “productive conversations” with Tehran.
He suggested that the US could go in to recover nuclear material from Iran if a deal was made.
The US president also said that you could consider that Iran was already undergoing a regime change because the US-Israeli attacks targeted and killed a large number of top Iranian leaders.
If there was no deal, he said, “we will just keep bombing our little hearts out.”
Iran’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, denies that any talks with the US have taken place during the past 24 days.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is to visit the scene of last night’s LaGuardia airport accident along with Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary.
“I’m headed to @LGAairport to join @SecDuffy in the wake of last night’s collision. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this tragedy, their families and loved ones. We’ll continue to support @NTSB as they lead the investigation,” he wrote in a social media post.
Donald Trump says it was his idea to deply ICE in airports and compares it to invention of paperclip
Donald Trump has claimed personal credit for deploying ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents) to airports, comparing it to the invention of the paperclip.
“That was mine,” he told reporters in reference to the ICE deployment in an impromptu news conference on the tarmac of Palm Beach international airport in Florida.
Embarking on an apparently unrelated digression, he added: “That was like the paperclip. You know the story the paperclip, 182 years ago, a man discovered the paperclip. It was so simple, and everybody that looked at to say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
In fact, the paperclip has been credited to several different individuals and Trump’s dating of it as 182 years old seems questionable.
The first patent for a bent wire paperclip was awarded in the US to Samuel B Fay in 1867, according to the Early Office Museum. Another claim has been traced to Herbert Spencer, an Englishman who registered his binding pin 1846. It is said to look more like a cotter pin than a modern paperclip.
Credit is more commonly given to Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor who was granted patents in the US and Germany in 1901.
On ICE, Trump was unambiguous: “ICE was my idea. I called first person I called was Tom Homan [the Trump administration’s border czar]. I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘I think it’s great.’”
He said he had requested that ICE agents at airports operate without the masks that have been a controversial hallmark of the agency’s detention operation.
“Then I saw today, there was some masks on. I didn’t think the masks were appropriate. I put out a statement, and I asked them, would it be possible to take off the mask, because they should wear a mask when they’re dealing with the murderers and the thugs.”
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator for Massachussetts, has opened an investigation into the Pentagon’s threats to punish the AI company Anthropic over its refusal to lift restrictions over lethal weapons and mass surveillance tools.
Warren has written to Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, over his threat to label the company a “supply-chain risk” – a designation that could prohibit other companies with Pentagon contracts from doing business with it.
She has called on him to explain “what appears to be retaliation by the Department of Defense against artificial intelligence contractors that seek contractual guardrails to prevent the misuse of their AI tools.
“DoD did not have to take such extreme actions: it could have chosen to terminate its contract with Anthropic or continued using its technology in unclassified systems. Instead, it appears that you went beyond this approach and retaliated against the company by weaponizing longstanding statutes intended to protect against genuine national security threats.”
She also accused the Pentagon of “trying to strong-arm American companies into providing the department with the tools to spy on American citizens and deploy fully autonomous weapons without adequate safeguards”.
Separately, Warren wrote to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, questioning his company’s recent contract with the Pentagon.
“I am concerned that you appear to have rushed into an agreement with Secretary Hegseth that gives him and other Trump administration officials free rein to engage in domestic surveillance – including spying on U.S. citizens exercising their legal rights – or build autonomous weapon systems that have enormous power to make decisions about targeting without human intervention,” she wrote.
“Nothing in this agreement stops DoD from using OpenAI’s tools to employ AI-enabled weapons of war in a manner that threatens civilians.”
Trump comments on LaGuardia crash
Donald Trump has commented on the LaGuardia crash. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in Florida, the US president called the deadly crash “terrible”.
Trump said: “They made a mistake. It’s a dangerous business. That’s terrible.” It was unclear who he was referring to exactly.
Chris Stein
After an unusual weekend spent working, the Senate has made negligible progress on passing the Save America act, despite continued pressure from Donald Trump and his rightwing allies.
The major problem facing the legislation, which would tighten requirements for people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a photo ID at polling places, is that it does not have the support needed to pass. Democrats have no intention of backing the legislation, which requires 60 votes to overcome the Senate’s filibuster. Republicans control only 53 seats in the chamber, making the minority party’s opposition the biggest challenge the bill faces.
Trump nonetheless continues to make the bill his top legislative priority. This morning, he rejected any effort to compromise with Democrats over funding for the Department of Homeland Security that would alleviate long lines at airport security checkpoints, saying Republicans should focus on passing the Save America act instead.
“It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate,” Trump wrote.
But the GOP doesn’t appear particularly well organized around the bill either, at least at the moment. The sole vote on the measure taken over the weekend was an amendment proposed by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville to insert language prohibiting transgender athletes from girl’s sports, but that failed along party lines. The culprit may be attendance — 10 senators missed the vote, four of whom were Republicans. Fellow Republican Eric Schmitt has also introduced an amendment to include provisions banning mail-in voting and gender-affirming care for minors, but that has not yet received a vote.
Approving any of these amendments may complicate things further for Republicans. Any changes to the bill that the Senate makes would have to be approved by the House of Representatives, which the GOP controls by what is at this point a margin of just one vote. There’s no telling if some of the far-right provisions that Senate Republicans want to add will be palatable to that chamber’s moderates ahead of the November midterm elections.
But we may never find out the answer to that question, because there’s no viable path for the Senate to approve the bill anyway.
Canadian prime minister Carney says crash ‘deeply saddening’
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has spoken out about the collision at LaGuardia, emphasizing cooperation between US and Canadian officials.
Posting on X, he called the event “deeply saddening”.
He added: “Canadian officials are working closely with their US counterparts on the ground as the investigation continues. My thoughts are with the victims, their families, and all those affected”
Trump threatens to deploy national guard at airports
Donald Trump threatened on Monday to deploy national guard troops to US airports if the congressional funding freeze of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continued.
The president’s threat came as Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers were drafted into airports to make up for the shortfall of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff, who are not being paid due to the impasse over DHS funding.
“I’ll bring in the national guard,” Trump told reporters after initially responding positively to an offer by Elon Musk, the world’ richest person, to pay the salaries of TSA workers in the absence of approved funding from Congress.
“I’d love it. I think it’s great. Let him do that,” he said about Musk’s offer.
The idea of deploying the national guard would represent an adaptation of the White House’s previous policy of federalizing guard troops in several Democrat-run cities that Trump has painted as crime-ridden, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland. Troops have since been withdrawn from the cities after an adverse court ruling. But national guard forces still patrol the streets of Washington DC after first being deployed last August.
In other remarks, Trump attacked his former counter-terrorism supremo, Joe Kent, who resigned last week in protest over the war against Iran.
“I’m not a fan of the guy,” he said. if you look at his truths [social posts] or his statements, he was all for everything. All of a sudden, he wasn’t.
“He was a man that I met at Dover. He came in. His wife was killed. He remarried fairly quickly, his wife was killed, and I felt badly for him.
“He ran for Congress and he lost He ran for Congress again and he lost. I said, you know, he’s a guy, nice guy. Seemed like a very nice guy. I met him. He was pretty heartbroken, pretty but I said, you know, it’s a shame he ran for Congress twice, call him up, give him a job in the White House.
“They gave him a job in the White House, and this is what he does to me. You know, being a nice guy doesn’t pay off too much.”
Apparently alluding to Kent’s supposed far-right sympathies, Trump went on: “I saw him a couple of times, but I never dealt with him at all. I had no idea his ideology was left or right, whatever it is. I can say this. He said very strongly that Iran is not a threat. Iran’s been a threat for 47 years, and there’s not a country in the world that doesn’t agree with me on that.
New York mayor says he was briefed on LaGuardia crash
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani said he has been briefed on the crash at LaGuardia and was in close contact with federal, state and local officials.
Mamdani said he was “grateful to our first responders, whose swift actions saved lives”.
Mamdani said the flight operator, Air Canada, had set up a hotline for friends and families of affected passengers: 1-800-961-7099.
LaGuardia airport is now closed. The Port Authority advises travelers to check with their airline for the latest flight information before coming to the airport.
Chuck Schumer calls for LaGuardia crash investigation
The Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has expressed his sorrow after a crash at New York’s LaGuardia airport left two people dead and several injured.
Schumer, a New York senator, also called for an “immediate investigation” into the causes of the crash.
Schumer wrote on X: “I am heartbroken to learn of the tragic crash at LaGuardia this morning. Thank you to the brave first responders their quick action, and I am praying for the passengers, crew, and their families. We need an immediate investigation into what happened here so we can make sure it never happens again.”
Oliver Milman
Away from US airport chaos, a statue of Christopher Columbus has been installed in the grounds of the White House in the latest attempt by Donald Trump to position the controversial explorer as a foundational hero of the US.
The president had the 13ft statue, which weighs one ton, placed outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a replica of a monument to Columbus that was torn down and tossed into Baltimore’s inner harbor by protesters in the city amid widespread anti-racism protests in 2020.
There are more pictures coming to us via the news agencies – showing lines snaking through airports and some travelers venting their frustration about huge delays.
Travelers vent frustration at long lines at Atlanta airport
George Chidi
Lines at Hartsfield Jackson international airport at 8am wound inside and out of the staging area, easily three to four hours long as ICE agents arrived to assist with security screening on Monday.
The partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has left America’s busiest airport without most of its TSA agents. The situation has become confusing and frustrating for passengers and staff.
“I asked someone, and they said they’re trying to kill this line that we’re in. I’ve been in it since about 6.20am,” a passenger flying to Minnesota said at 8am, standing in a line that reached all the way outside of the building to the passenger drop-off area on the sidewalk.
“It’s total chaos,” said Tom Healey of Alpharetta, trying to make a Louisville flight. He had been in line for three hours by 8am; his flight is scheduled for around 9am.
“Look at what happened at LaGuardia,” he said, noting the fatal collision of a cargo plane with a truck this morning. “My wife’s got to fly out of that place. She was supposed to fly out of LaGuardia today. She’s got to go out of White Plains and then Washington DC, and then here. So it’s crazy.”
Donald Trump deployed ICE agents to assist with passenger screening in Atlanta on Monday. Agents could be seen unmasked in the terminal.
“According to federal officials, these personnel will be assigned to support operational needs directed by the Transportation Security Administration,” said Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens, “including line management and crowd control within the domestic terminals. Federal officials have indicated that this deployment is not intended to conduct immigration enforcement activities.”
The general public does not routinely interact with immigration enforcement agents. For many travelers, this will be the first time they have seen an ICE agent in person.
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