Politics

New polling memo urges Senate Dems to ‘play hardball’ on ICE

Published

5 months ago

January 28, 2026

Democrats should “play hardball” ahead of a looming partial government shutdown and use their “leverage to reform ICE,” according to a new polling memo circulating among Democratic senators Tuesday.

The polling, in the field January 23 to 26 during the height of public backlash to Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis, found that 58 percent of likely midterm voters want ICE to be reined in. More voters prefer reforming ICE than the number who prefer eliminating the agency entirely by 30 percent to 19 percent, according to the survey shared first with Blue Light News.

“Voters want ICE to follow the law, and focus enforcement on people who pose a threat to public safety. They want to see tangible changes to ICE operations and oppose letting ICE detain U.S. citizens, enter homes without warrants, or fail to wear identifying uniforms,” according to the memo. “There is a desire for immigration enforcement that is lawful, reasonable, and effective. “

The memo was written by Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), for his organization the Searchlight Institute, which conducted the 1,502-person online survey alongside Tavern Research.

The influential new think tank seeks to push the Democratic Party toward broadly popular positions, regardless of ideology. In the case of ICE, Jentleson writes, Democrats should embrace reforming, not abolishing, the agency.

“Democrats should use their leverage to demand commonsense reforms to ICE that have the backing of broad bipartisan majorities of Americans,” Jentleson writes in the memo, which came across the desk of aides to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday and continued to make the rounds among Senate Democrats early Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Searchlight’s latest survey finds that “bipartisan majorities of voters oppose ICE’s lawless tactics, including detaining U.S. citizens (73 percent), entering people’s homes without warrants (79 percent), and failing to wear clearly identifying uniforms (70 percent)”, according to the memo.

The polling comes as Senate Democrats are demanding to re-negotiate a hulking DHS funding bill ahead of a Friday midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown, carving it off from a six-bill appropriations package.

“This is likely to be their last major leverage point for several months at least if not for the rest of the year” to curtail the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Jentleson told Blue Light News. “But there’s a larger reason, which is that the tragic events that have unfolded in Minneapolis have shocked the conscience of Americans and brought their attention to the horrible shit that ICE is doing. Those two things combined give them a lot of leverage at this moment.”

Democratic likely midterm voters were split in the poll over how to change ICE, with 34 percent favoring reforming ICE and 33 percent wanting to get rid of it as an agency — meaning that it’s “a coin flip among Democrats,” Jentleson said. That indicates that in contested Democratic primaries, it’s not clear which side of that debate will have the edge with base voters.

What’s clearer, he wrote in the memo, is that voters do support some degree of immigration enforcement. The memo notes that the view that “immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should not be deported” receives no more than 30 percent support among Democrats and young people, and even less among other groups.

Senate Democrats have embraced this push.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Schumer seemed to set the predicate for the partial shutdown, saying any administrative actions on ICE wouldn’t be enough and that “any fix should come from Congress. The public can’t trust the administration to do the right thing on its own and the Republicans and Democrats must work together to make that happen.”

Senate Republicans face a Friday midnight deadline to avert a shutdown. GOP Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski have said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired. President Donald Trump acknowledged shaking up his border security leadership team Tuesday.

“Senate Democrats should embrace this reality and use their leverage to achieve meaningful changes that rein in ICE’s abuses and refocus the agency on its critical law enforcement mission,” Jentleson writes.

Politics

Iran set to progress at World Cup

Published

36 minutes ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iran’s adventure through a World Cup beset by geopolitical complexity and logistical complications will likely continue after the team landed a frenetic 1-1 draw against Egypt. The high-stakes encounter kicked off hours after a tenuous peace between Washington and Tehran was threatened by American strikes on Iranian military installations along the Strait of Hormuz. Read the full story from Seattle by Sasha Issenberg and Sophia Cai here.

Politics

The “Pride Match” that wasn’t

Published

2 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — As a lesbian who was born in Egypt, Noha Mahgoub could have chosen to dress for what local organizers branded a “Pride Match” in colors associated with either her sexual orientation or her country of origin. The 43-year-old Democratic legislative aide — one of the top staffers in Washington state government — chose the latter, arriving in a red Egyptian national team jersey, a black hat emblazoned with YALLA and red-white-and-black tricolor facepaint.

“I’ve seen Pride shirts, I’ve seen Pride face paintings,” she observed from a concourse minutes before national anthems began echoing around Lumen Field. “It’s been really great, but I’m seeing a lot more Egypt and Iran and people cheering for their countries and singing their songs.”

Indeed, despite FIFA’s announcement that rainbow flags would be permitted in the stadium, few were visible as the match began. Instead, the stands rippled with the colors of the two Middle Eastern countries on the field, including many of the pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flags that FIFA has attempted to ban under a stadium code of conduct that prohibits political displays.

Mahgoub had seen Egypt’s national team in person only once before, as a child while the team was angling to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Since then, Mahgoub and her family relocated to Washington state, where she said the local Egyptian-American community has become enlivened by new arrivals coming to work at Seattle-based tech companies.

“You know how it is, you start calling everybody your cousins — a lot of cousins that I wasn’t related to,” Mahgoub said. “Well, I think a lot of them are here.”

Politics

Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils

Published

5 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Ah, Belgium. The country of fries, chocolate, Kevin De Bruyne and, some might say, chronic political division.

Beyond Brussels, a mighty international melting pot, the country is split between Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and a small German-speaking community. Those linguistic divisions are mirrored in its politics: Belgium has separate party systems on either side of the language border, as well as a highly devolved federal structure that gives significant powers to its regions.

Today, Belgian politics is as fragmented as ever. It took 234 days to form a federal government after the June 2024 election (yes, you read that right). The delay was driven largely by the fact that no camp came close to winning a majority, forcing months of negotiations between parties with sharply different ideological and linguistic bases.

Flemish nationalism has also become a growing force, shaped by two right-wing nationalist parties: the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which wants to transform Belgium into a looser confederal state and ultimately give Flanders far greater autonomy, and the far-right Vlaams Belang, which openly campaigns for Flemish independence.

So, you might think the 2026 World Cup would offer Belgium’s leader a rare opportunity to rally and unify the country behind a shared national symbol, right?

Wrong.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who hails from the N-VA party, has expressed almost no public support for the Red Devils, Belgium’s national soccer team.

That contrasts with leaders in nearby countries that also qualified for the World Cup. The leaders of the Netherlands, Germany and France have all publicly backed their squads, whether on social media or through public appearances.

The reason may be simple: De Wever just doesn’t care for the sport.

A Belgian official told Blue Light News: “The prime minister is not a soccer fan, so he doesn’t seek to project that image publicly. To do otherwise would not be authentic.”

Flemish media have indeed reported that the prime minister has little interest in soccer. In a podcast appearance a few years ago, he said the sight of people “going totally crazy in a group in the stands” left him feeling “ice cold.”

But politics is likely part of the story too. De Wever has led the Flemish nationalist N-VA since 2004. Throughout his political career, he has argued that Flanders should have far greater autonomy and that Belgium should evolve into a confederal state. For a politician with that background, overt displays of Belgian national unity probably don’t come naturally, and in fact contradict emphasis on Flemish autonomy.

This is not the first time the N-VA’s relationship with the Red Devils has attracted attention. In 2015, after Belgium reached No. 1 in the FIFA world rankings, Francophone Socialist Party leader Laurette Onkelinx asked the Chamber of Representatives to applaud the team. All parties joined in, except the N-VA.

During Euro 2016, the N-VA had to deny it instructed ministers and MPs to avoid publicly celebrating the Red Devils so as not to appear too Belgian, after rumors circulated in Belgian media.

One of De Wever’s few comments about this year’s World Cup concerned Belgium’s official tournament song. His complaint: It did not contain a single word of Dutch.

“My staff have confirmed to me that not a single word is sung in Dutch. That is, to put it mildly, not elegant,” he said, in keeping with his ideologies of promoting Flanders, when asked about the song during a parliamentary committee hearing.

Sport is often treated as a vehicle for national unity. In New Zealand, Belgium’s opponent in today’s match, elite teams have successfully woven elements of Māori culture into their sporting traditions, most famously through the prematch haka, which has helped create a shared cultural identity that connects Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders.

In Belgium, however, this World Cup has not yet become that kind of unifying project. At least not from the very top.