Congress

Republicans just took ICE spending fights off the table. It won’t end shutdown threats.

Published

3 days ago

June 10, 2026

Republicans just solved an immediate crisis with a party-line vote to fund immigration enforcement agencies into 2029. But that hardly improves the chances of avoiding a shutdown for the rest of the government.

Lawmakers in both parties say the odds of another federal funding lapse are unimproved, if not heightened, by the GOP’s move to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration and border security efforts for three years through the party-line budget reconciliation process.

The Sept. 30 government shutdown deadline, less than four months away, hits just weeks before the November elections that will determine which party controls the House and Senate next year. This electoral uncertainty was already complicating cross-party negotiations to fund federal agencies.

“It’s not helpful for sure,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters this week of the GOP’s party-line gambit. “It makes it very difficult for us moving forward.”

The Senate’s top appropriators, who are typically chummy, are at loggerheads over totals for the military and nondefense programs — prompting the cancellation this week of committee markups for the second week in a row.

Republicans’ move to stiff-arm Democrats has further soured negotiations to fund the government and raised concerns of more my-way-or-the-highway ultimatums from members on both sides.

“Does it mean that we avoid a shutdown in that area? Takes care of that,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior appropriator, said about removing the need to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol past the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

“But how many other accounts do we have that we could have another kerfuffle?” she continued. “And all of a sudden we now have leverage, because we tried it once — and we pulled the trigger.”

Murkowski voted against the reconciliation bill last week — the only Senate Republican to do so.

It’s widely accepted on Capitol Hill that Congress will pass a stopgap funding bill to keep cash flowing for federal agencies past the midterms.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who oversees annual transportation and housing spending, predicted this week that Congress will be crafting a funding patch come September. “I just hope we’re not seriously talking about a potential shutdown again,” he added. “We touched that stove once. It was pretty hot.”

Yet some are predicting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will direct his members to band together to oppose a funding patch, as Democrats did last September in triggering a 43-day government shutdown.

“They do not want appropriation bills. They do want to shut down government,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters about Democrats. “And they think they’re going to take the House and maybe the Senate and can get a better deal then.”

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins said Democrats “have made clear they are not willing to work with us” to pass government funding bills. But the Maine Republican also said she doesn’t think her party’s move to fund immigration enforcement through reconciliation “has an effect one way or another” on funding the rest of the government beyond September.

Though ICE and Border Patrol are now funded through September 2029, some Democrats say they are planning to use the dozen annual government funding bills as leverage to demand policy changes and funding cuts at those two agencies.

“I can tell you this: We’re going to try every which way to unfund these agencies,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “We have 12 bills that we have to pass. We have so many battles — this piece is one of them.”

Democrats had for months been demanding guardrails on Trump’s immigration enforcement activities as a condition of supporting enforcement funding after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January. When talks broke down, Republicans made the decision to act alone.

It’s not just ICE and Border Patrol that control immigration enforcement policy, though. Congress still has to fund the broader operations of DHS each year, including the office of Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who recently told lawmakers he couldn’t commit to following court orders.

“You still have to ultimately deal with the Homeland Security bills, and they’ve refused to rein in a lawless ICE operation,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a top Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “That’s not changed.”

Some appropriators are holding out hope that collegiality on the House and Senate funding panels will ultimately prevail, if for no other reason than the margins of the Republican majorities in both chambers depend on it.

“You don’t have to have a master’s in logic to figure out that, at the end of the process, the bills in today’s Congress are going to have a bipartisan flavor,” Womack said, “because the numbers dictate that anybody that thinks otherwise is just simply not being intellectually honest about the situation that we happen to be in.”

After Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) proposed the idea this week of funding other controversial agencies through party-line reconciliation bills, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole immediately rejected the idea floated by one of his subcommittee chairs.

“We’re not doing that. I will just tell you flat out, that will not happen,” the Oklahoma Republican told reporters.

He also refuted the idea that the $70 billion party-line immigration enforcement package could be attractive for his colleagues to replicate going forward.

“I don’t think it’s a precedent,” Cole said. “But if it became a regular practice, I certainly wouldn’t be supporting it.”

Congress

House Oversight requests Alan Dershowitz testify in Epstein probe

Published

20 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Oversight Committee requested that Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who once represented Jeffery Epstein, testify as part of its investigation into the federal government’s handling of the Epstein files.

The interview is tentatively slated for 10 a.m. on July 9, with a video and transcript of the testimony being released “as expeditiously as practical,” Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote in a letter to Dershowitz on Friday.

“Due to public reporting, documents released by the Department of Justice, documents obtained by the Committee, and your former role as Mr. Epstein’s attorney, the Committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation,” Comer wrote.

Comer told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted to hear from Dershowitz, who helped Epstein secure a controversial plea deal in his 2008 sex abuse case.

“I’m looking forward to testifying,” Dershowitz wrote in a text message to Blue Light News on Friday, adding that he is “trying to adjust my schedule” for July 9.

Congress

Cornyn tells Mike Lee to lay off John Thune

Published

22 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. John Cornyn isn’t a card-carrying member of the Senate GOP’s growing YOLO caucus. But with less than seven months left in office after losing his primary, the Texas Republican appears to be feeling newly free to speak his mind.

The latest clap-back came Thursday night and the early hours of Friday morning, when Cornyn called a conservative influencer a “grifter” and told Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on social media to stop publicly blaming fellow Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader John Thune — for the fact that the GOP elections bill doesn’t have support to pass inside the party.

“You don’t have the votes” for the SAVE America Act, Cornyn posted on X. “@LeaderJohnThune can’t change that. It is math.”

He was directing his comments at Lee, who had just penned a post telling Thune, “let’s do this!”

Cornyn continued, “Try focusing on Democrats instead of Republicans. Republican on Republican attacks are hurting our chances to win the majority in November.”

Lee responded to ask, “on what planet is this an attack on Republicans?” and appeared to suggest a staffer was tweeting on Cornyn’s behalf: “Once my friend John Cornyn realizes that you’re saying this in his name—whoever you are—I don’t think he’ll be happy with you.”

Cornyn, however, is known for posting himself on his social media accounts in a chamber where many Senate accounts are run solely by staff. And he’s been making it clear all week that he will push back on Trump and his party when he thinks it’s needed.

In multiple conversations with reporters in the Capitol, Cornyn said that Republicans need to “stop the circular firing squad.” And he added that he won’t intentionally be “a thorn in [Trump’s] side,” but he’s also “not going to go out of my way to try to appease him.”

“I want him to succeed, I want the Republican Party to succeed, I want the country to succeed,” Cornyn said this week. “But on a case-by-case basis, when I think there’s been overreach or just a bad idea, I’m not going to hesitate to weigh in.”

The four-term senator’s comments come after he lost his primary last month to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed in the final days of the runoff.

Cornyn said in an interview with The New York Times that he was not a “wounded bear” but that he believed Trump’s insistence on “slavish adherence” was going to backfire for Republicans in the midterms and result in “the most miserable two years of his life” if Democrats flip the House or Senate.

“I think it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next seven months,” Cornyn said.

Congress

Capitol agenda: What Schumer told us about AI

Published

1 day ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Chuck Schumer wants Congress to pass AI legislation. But he’s casting doubt on it happening this year.

“In this Congress, it’s hard,” the Senate minority leader said in an interview Thursday.

Schumer’s reality check isn’t a complete door-slam. But it underscores the steep climb lawmakers face to bridge a slew of intra-party and inter-chamber divides about what Washington’s approach should be toward the emerging opportunities and risks from the rapidly developing technology.

The problems are multi-pronged.

The White House, whose posture toward AI has shifted dramatically in recent weeks, is angling to enact legislation that would preempt state laws in favor of a national standard. Most recently, administration officials have been exploring a plan to attach preemption legislation to bills designed to shore up kids’ safety online. But there are issues — House Republicans aren’t in love with the Senate GOP’s kid safety bills and Senate Majority Leader John Thune has warned that many senators have concerns “about not trampling states’ rights in the process.”

Democrats aren’t unified on what to do next, with the public broadly skeptical about AI.

Some House and Senate Democrats are leery of state preemption and want to wait until next year to tackle AI, when they might be in power. Opposition from key Democrats is a major factor derailing an attempt by Reps. Lori Trahan and Jay Obernolte to strike a deal on legislation that would set nationwide safety and transparency rules while restricting state action. And Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a moratorium on AI data centers pending stricter government oversight.

Schumer is striking a balanced tone on how to proceed, arguing that there are “tremendous benefits” from AI but that “we also have to have guardrails.”

“We should get something done on AI, and it’s … got to be balanced — keep innovation strong, but have guardrails to prevent the dangers,” he said. “That’s a hard needle to thread, but I would very much like to see that get done the sooner the better.”

What else we’re watching:

— FISA LAPSE, CLAYTON NOMINATION: Thune is vowing to move “fairly quickly” to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence, with the FISA Section 702 spy authority set to lapse at midnight thanks to a stalemate between Democrats and the White House over the position.

— GOP ADVANCES BIG DEFENSE BOOST — Republicans have taken the first steps toward granting President Donald Trump’s request for the largest budget ever for the Pentagon. Senate Armed Services members on Thursday approved a draft of their annual defense authorization bill outlining priorities for $1.14 trillion in defense spending next year. The House Appropriations defense subcommittee advanced $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2027 funding for the Defense Department in a closed-door markup.

Calen Razor and Connor O’Brien contributed reporting.