The Dictatorship
Republicans and Democrats are growing further apart on Homeland Security funding
When Donald Trump came before lawmakers Tuesday night during the first State of the Union to ever occur during a partial government shutdown, the president used the occasion to issue Democrats a schoolyard dare.
“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support,” Trump said. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
When few Democrats stood, Trump made it clear he’s digging in for a fight over immigration.
“You should be ashamed of yourself for not standing up,” Trump told Democrats, who made a point most of the night not to engage with the president’s speech.
That exchange encapsulated the state of negotiations on reining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and funding the Department of Homeland Security, Democrats said — a negotiation in which there’s been very little actual negotiating.
DHS has been shut down since Feb. 14, and it’s been more than a week since there were tangible developments in talks.
At no point in Trump’s speech Tuesday night did he mention the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, Renee Good and Alex Prettinor did he mention Democratic proposals to require federal agents to wear body cameras, to receive judicial warrants to enter people’s homes, and to stop wearing masks — among other things. Instead, Trump shifted to a Republican proposal to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“What I took away from his comments was a total misunderstanding and resistance to any reform of an agency that’s lawless and totally out of control,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told MS NOW on Wednesday. “He has no concept of how brutal and violent DHS is in violating constitutional rights.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Trump wanted to shift focus away from the public outcry over ICE’s actions.
“Donald Trump didn’t want to talk about what happened with ICE in Minneapolis,” Van Hollen told reporters Wednesday.
Since last Monday, when Democrats sent a DHS funding counteroffer to the White House, there haven’t been many real developments. The White House quickly rejected the Democratic proposal, and never sent back a counteroffer.
“We sent them a proposal a week ago Monday. We still haven’t heard back,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “Crickets.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told reporters that the ball is in the GOP’s court. And when asked if the White House was negotiating in good faith, she didn’t have a very encouraging answer.
“Not yet,” she said.
“We have sent them what our priorities are,” Murray said Wednesday. “They responded with a very weak response. We sent back the other response and have heard nothing.”
But congressional Republicans say, despite the lack of progress, they’re negotiating in good faith. They expect Democrats to warm up to their positions as the effects of the shutdown intensify. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Wednesday there are still “overtures and outreach being done by the White House.”
The question is, Thune suggested, how motivated are Democrats to compromise.
“These agencies that are not currently being funded, and these people who are not going to start not getting paid — in a couple of weeks, it’s going to become very real for them,” he said.
DHS employees are set to receive paychecks Thursday for half of their pay. Their first fully missed paycheck is scheduled for March 12. The White House is able to pay some employees during the shutdown, especially those with border security responsibilities, thanks to billions of dollars provided in last year’s tax-and-spending bill, which isn’t affected by the funding lapse.
Republicans have made offers for changes at ICE, but not the measures Democrats have asked for.
The gap between what Democrats want and what Republicans are willing to agree to is clearly wide. And the bad blood over negotiations is only getting worse over a Democratic refusal to agree to a continuing resolution to keep the agency running a bit longer.
“We’ve offered more training, body cams, those kinds of things,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters Wednesday. “Or a CR, if the Dems want to keep negotiating. At what point does them turning that down just say they want to not pay [Transportation Security Administration] and the others?”
Those offers from Republicans, however, have not addressed the specific demands from Democrats. Schumer told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans “have not budged on the key issues, like masks, like warrants, like oversight from state authorities.”
The lack of movement has left rank-and-file lawmakers confused.
“It’s been very quiet, so unusually quiet,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told reporters Wednesday. “Last I knew that offers that went back and forth were dead on arrival in each other’s hands. So it didn’t sound very good.”
Republicans suspect Democrats will keep playing hardball, knowing it benefits them to fight Trump as the 2026 midterm elections draw near, Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., told MS NOW.
“I don’t think this has a thing in the world to do with DHS,” Justice said Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with Homeland. I think this is all one thing, a midterm play, 100%. And the Democrats, really and truly, are really good at playing that hand, and the Republicans are probably not so good at playing that hand.”
So far, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is the lone Democrat to agree with that analysis.
He told MS NOW he agrees with his party’s push for policy changes to rein in ICE, but that he doesn’t think the shutdown will yield results.
“Yeah, you can want reforms, but if you want those changes, then do something that could produce those things,” Fetterman said. “Shutting down the entire part of DHS won’t do that. We all know that.”
Kevin Frey, Nora McKee and Peggy Helman contributed reporting.
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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