The Dictatorship

Airport lines grow longer — and Congress can’t even agree if DHS shutdown talks exist

Published

3 months ago

March 11, 2026

Mar. 11, 2026, 5:42 PM EDT

It’s been nearly a month since thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees were forced to begin working without pay, and the negotiations to overhaul and fund the department haven’t yielded any meaningful progress.

In fact, talks have moved so slowly that lawmakers are now publicly arguing over whether negotiations even exist.

Lengthening TSA lines, dwindling disaster aid funds and rejected proposals to fund portions of the department have forced lawmakers to acknowledge they’re nowhere close to a deal.

“If Democrats won’t sit down with us, it’s showing you who’s playing you right now,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told reporters Tuesday. “They’re playing you.”

Britt said she’s sought meetings with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and has been rebuffed.

Murray said she’s willing to negotiate, but President Donald Trump’s White House needs to acknowledge it has to change tactics at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as Democrats seek requirements for agents to wear body cameras, remove masks and cooperate with state and local investigations, among other things.

“I am willing to talk to people, but I’m not willing to sit in a room, have coffee, give away a few things and have Stephen Miller override whatever we all agreed to in a room,” Murray said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Murray sought agreement on the Senate floor to pass a bill to fund most of the department, excluding funds for ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the secretary’s office, which Britt objected to.

That leaves the TSA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard and other agencies running on fumes, as pressure builds on lawmakers.

FEMA was projected to have about $5.9 billion left in its Disaster Relief Fund at the end of February and $2.1 billion left at the end of this month, according to its latest report. Those funds were projected to run out before the end of April.

TSA wait times have varied widely as employees work without pay. On Wednesday afternoon, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport posted TSA wait times of 40 minutes at its main terminal. But Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, another major hub, posted wait times between 0 and 10 minutes at its terminals. Meanwhile, over the weekend, wait times in Houston and New Orleans were as long as three hours.

The ouster of Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary, and the selection of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., as the new nominee, hasn’t won over Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said ICE needs to be overhauled legislatively, and not just a change in personnel.

“The president has fired Kristi Noem. Good riddance,” Schumer said last week when Mullin was named as the new nominee. “But the problems at this agency, at ICE, transcend any one person. The rot is deep.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a Republican who helped push Noem out of her position — citing over-the-top mass deportations, mismanagement of disaster responses and her decision to kill her dog — said he’s not sure Mullin will change the negotiations over DHS funding.

He said he expects Mullin to “have a transformative impact on FEMA.” But Tillis said he still wants answers about ICE operations in North Carolina, which Noem didn’t answer.

“I just want to demonstrate that this mass deportation idea was a bad idea because it was quantity over quality — quality of really bad people that need to be incarcerated or deported, or hopefully deported and incarcerated in whatever country they came from,” Tillis told MS NOW Wednesday.

It’s been nearly two weeks since the White House last sent Democrats an offer in the ICE negotiations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Wednesday that Democrats still hadn’t responded to the latest GOP offer.

Thune said Republicans aren’t going to agree to a funding bill that cuts out money for ICE and CBP.

“You take away border security — I can’t imagine wanting to do that,” he said. “This bill needs to move together.”

The spat over funding other agencies only highlighted the chasm between the two parties on policy changes at ICE and CBP.

“We are not going to defund the police,” Britt said of Murray’s proposal to fund other agencies. “We are not going back to Biden’s open borders.”

Murray pushed back, contending it’s “absurd” to say Democrats are defunding the police. She noted that ICE and CBP received billions of dollars in last year’s Republican reconciliation bill — money that’s still available during the shutdown.

After the tense exchange on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said it’s clear lawmakers have a long way to go.

“We are not that close,” Schatz said. “And so if everybody agrees on that, that we’re not that close, that it’s not like negotiations have shut down, but they’re a little stalled.”

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.

The Dictatorship

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Published

10 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.

Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.

* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.

* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.

* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.

* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.

* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.

* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.

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.”

The Dictatorship

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Published

10 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Jun. 22, 2026, 11:39 AM EDT

After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”

Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.

The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.

“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.

Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.

Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.

In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.

But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.

An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.

The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.

“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.

“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.

Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.

“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.

“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.

In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”

In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”

After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.

“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”

Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”

“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.

On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”

Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.

Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

Published

10 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.

But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”

In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:

In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.

As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”

He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.

“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”

The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”

Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.

In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.