Congress

Capitol agenda: Democrats demand more from GOP on DHS

Published

5 months ago

February 10, 2026

Do we have a negotiation or a stalemate?

The answer to that question will determine whether the Department of Homeland Security shuts down in just four days, and Tuesday morning, it’s not entirely clear which way things are headed.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries panned a White House counterproposal sent to them Monday evening as too light on details for how to rein in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

— Dems vs. White House: “The initial GOP response is both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct,” the leaders said in a statement. “Democrats await additional detail and text.”

That’s far from a “hell no,” but expect to hear more later Tuesday morning on where Democrats stand after Jeffries and Schumer meet with their respective caucuses.

Neither side is saying exactly what the GOP counter to the 10-point Democratic offer entails, but White House allies made clear Monday that one key Democratic demand — requiring federal law enforcement officials to obtain judicial warrants before entering private property — is dead on arrival.

Other Democratic asks — including a mask prohibition, ID display requirements and limits on places where agents can operate — would need major concessions from Democrats to make them palatable for the administration, several people close to the White House said.

But the trading of offers is giving GOP leaders optimism that a deal is possible. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he’ll probably get the ball rolling on a continuing resolution Tuesday to give negotiators more time to strike a deal.

— About that CR: Whether a stopgap can pass depends almost entirely on the tenor of DHS talks come Thursday, when senators are hoping to leave town.

Republicans need at least seven votes from Senate Democrats to prevent a DHS shutdown, and some Senate Democrats continue to signal they could be convinced — if there’s a bona fide negotiation.

“It depends on whether we’re making progress or not,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told reporters Monday. “We’ve got some time. Hopefully people will be working to try and get something done.”

Also undecided is how long a short-term DHS funding punt might run. GOP appropriators want at least two weeks, but the exact length “will have to be negotiated,” Thune said.

What else we’re watching:

— A high-stakes rule vote: House GOP leaders will attempt to adopt a rule Tuesday that includes language to block votes on President Donald Trump’s global tariffs through July after Democrats threatened to move as soon as Wednesday to overturn the president’s levies on Canada.

It could get hairy: Under the current member math, as few as two GOP defections could block adoption of the rule. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is a no. Keep an eye on Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.).

— SAVE America Act inches forward: The House will consider the SAVE America Act in Rules Tuesday despite the uncertain future in the Senate for the GOP elections overhaul. It’s on track to hit the House floor Wednesday.

The four Democrats who supported a version of the bill in April — Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Ed Case of Hawaii, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Jared Golden of Maine — have so far been mum on whether they will support the updated measure. Jeffries said House Democrats will discuss the measure Tuesday morning.

— DHS officials take the stand: House Homeland Security Committee members will question DHS officials Tuesday morning for the first time since last month’s fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti sparked bipartisan backlash against the Trump administration.

Acting director for ICE Todd Lyons, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow will testify.

While Democrats are expected to give the officials a fierce grilling, some Republicans will also likely push them for more clarity on ICE operations.

Myah Ward, Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Congress

Online safety coalition urges House to reject KIDS Act compromise

Published

1 hour ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A coalition of children’s safety advocates is urging House leaders to reject a bipartisan compromise on online safety, arguing it weakens protections for minors and lets tech companies avoid accountability.

In a letter first shared with Blue Light News, the groups urged Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to oppose the bipartisan package — known as the KIDS Act — ahead of a potential House vote as soon as next week.

Led by Design It For Us, ParentsTogether, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and the Young People’s Alliance and signed by 90 other organizations, the coalition said the deal struck by Energy and Commerce lawmakers fails to address its chief concern: the omission of a “duty of care” provision that would require tech companies to mitigate harms they know their products cause to young users.

“The Committee rejected our concerns and opted to negotiate a version that let Big Tech off the hook and rush this legislation to the House floor,” they wrote.

The warning comes after the groups previously raised similar concerns when the committee approved a version of the KIDS Act along party lines in March.

The Senate’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act — an expected component of Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s ongoing negotiations over online safety regulations — includes the “duty of care” language. Some House members have raised concerns that it could incentivize social media platforms to overzealously censor content to avoid litigation.

“It pains us that, given how hard we have fought for a strong federal solution to online child protection and for a strong bill to move to the House floor, the KIDS Act is the bill the House is championing,” they wrote, urging lawmakers to oppose the bill.

Parents RISE, a coalition of parents who have experienced child loss or mental health difficulties due to tech platforms, sent a second letter to the same parties laying out similar qualms. “We did not create Social Media Victims Remembrance Day so that our children’s names could be used as cover for a bill that protects the very companies that harmed them,” they wrote.

Tech industry group NetChoice has come out against the KIDS Act over censorship concerns.

Spokespeople for Johnson, Jeffries, Guthrie and Pallone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Leon Black tells House Oversight he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes

Published

2 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leon Black told the House Oversight Committee on Friday that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes during the years he paid the convicted sex offender tens of millions of dollars, according to a copy of the billionaire investor’s prepared remarks.

“I don’t understand why people — including members of this committee — would accept baseless speculation about me without regard to the facts and spin such ugly and vicious narratives that are demonstrably false,” Black said in his opening statement, obtained by Blue Light News.

Lawmakers, however, filed into Black’s scheduled transcribed interview Friday morning already suspicious of their witness. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters he believed Black’s testimony had “the potential to be the most groundbreaking” of anything the panel has heard so far in its long-running Epstein investigation.

Comer also said the committee had reason to believe that Black had signed nondisclosure agreements with some of Epstein’s victims.

Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, did acknowledge in his prepared remarks that he was aware of Epstein’s 2008 sex crime conviction at the time of their association but that “Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID.”

“Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others,” he continued. “I wish I had not.”

Black also told lawmakers that he knew Epstein for 18 years before he began paying him in 2013 for tax and estate planning. At that time, Black said, he saw Epstein surrounded by some of the world’s most powerful people — among them former President Bill Clinton, tech mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates and then-White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.

And he appeared to suggest that he saw Epstein as legitimate, in part, because of those who chose to associate with him: “Epstein appeared to me and to many others to have redeemed himself: [H]e served on several prestigious boards, hobnobbed with leading people in academia, the arts, business executives, and numerous world leaders.”

Clinton and Gates have already spoken with Oversight investors about their ties to Epstein; Ruemmler has agreed to sit for an interview with the panel in July.

Black said he ultimately fired Epstein in 2018 “after growing tired of his relentless pursuit of more and more money from me for professional services, his mistruths and misrepresentations … and his failure to repay most of a $30 million demand loan that I had made to him.”

He also acknowledged the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been levied against him in litigation, which he called “demonstrably baseless” and “entirely fabricated.”

In one recent case, the judge found that the law firm that had been representing Black’s accusers and the plaintiff in the case were “engaged in serious, sanctionable misconduct in this case.” However, the lawsuit — brought by a woman who claimed to have been raped by Black when she was 16 — was allowed to proceed.

“There are numerous allegations of real abuse by women — by survivors — against Mr. Black,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, told reporters Friday morning.

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP agenda gets tenuous Trump lifeline

Published

5 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump handed Speaker Mike Johnson a lifeline Thursday to get Republicans’ agenda back on track next week.

But hard-liners’ festering discontent over Trump’s stalled election bill could jam the chamber again.

For now, members plan to return Monday and press forward on a long list of major legislation before Independence Day recess, including fiscal 2027 funding bills, the annual defense policy bill, a kids online safety bill and negotiations for a third reconciliation measure lawmakers want to stuff with party priorities.

Trump Thursday instructed the band of GOP hard-liners to lift their procedural block of House floor business. Still, some are doubling down in new ways.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who engineered this week’s impasse through a blockade of procedural votes, said if leaders want her support to advance legislation next week, they’ll need to attach the SAVE America Act to the defense policy bill.

Senior House Republicans feel joining the bills would kill the must-pass defense legislation that typically wins bipartisan support. And Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday that attaching the two measures would also sink the defense bill in the Senate.

Meanwhile, another hard-liner, Rep. Chip Roy, responded to Trump’s call to lift the House gridlock with a new list of legislative demands for House leaders.

Johnson, for his part, focused on the positive. He told reporters at the Capitol after meeting Trump that he and the president are “on exactly the same page” about stopping “any blockade in the House.”

He also said Congress would be transmitting the housing affordability bill it cleared this week to the White House, after the president abruptly reversed course Wednesday on a signing ceremony for the bill and demanded Senate passage of the controversial election overhaul first.

What else we’re watching:

— HISPANIC CAUCUS BRACES FOR CHAIR’S SUCCESSOR: Hispanic Caucus members are still reeling from Chair Adriano Espaillat’s electoral defeat this week. But they’re warily preparing to welcome his successor — with some conditions. Darializa Avila Chevalier — a Democratic Socialist who ousted Espaillat in New York’s primary Tuesday, said Thursday in a statement she plans to join the CHC when she gets to Congress, which is all but guaranteed in November.

— COMER TO GRILL EPSTEIN-LINKED INVESTOR: Investor Leon Black will speak to House Oversight Friday for an interview Chair James Comer has called “the big one” in his panel’s investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein case. “It’s going to be hard for him to deny the questions we’re going to ask,” Comer told reporters this week.

Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney, Riley Rogerson and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.