Congress
Congress ends record-shattering DHS shutdown
On the 76th day since Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed, Congress passed a bill Thursday restoring the flow of federal dollars to most of its agencies — without solving any of the policy disagreements that led to the record-breaking shutdown.
The House approved by voice vote the partial DHS funding measure the Senate passed more than a month ago. President Donald Trump is expected to swiftly sign the bipartisan legislation, fully funding the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with other offices within DHS that don’t deal with immigration enforcement.
Now congressional Republicans turn their attention to enacting tens of billions of dollars for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a party-line package. They jump-started the process this week with the adoption of a framework unlocking special budget power to skirt the Senate filibuster.
Trump is demanding that bill, which would fund the controversial agencies for the remainder of his term, land on his desk by June 1. ICE and Border Patrol have been operating largely as normal during the shutdown due to funding previously provided in last year’s GOP megabill.
The upshot of the two-track approach to funding DHS is that there will be no changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, which led to the shutdown stalemate that began in February after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
In the more than 10 weeks since DHS funding lapsed, Democrats have remained largely united in refusing to support funding for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities without new guardrails. Republicans, meanwhile, are doubling down on funding those agencies without strings — emphasizing a blunt partisan divide five months before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
House GOP leaders sat on the bipartisan package for weeks, scoffing at the late-night decision Senate leaders made last month to fund DHS through the two-step maneuver without consulting their House counterparts.
“You don’t dump things on the other chamber in the middle of the night without talking to the speaker about it,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters this week. “This is created by bad management in Senate leadership and by not being transparent and open with us in the House.”
But pressure from the White House and some Republican lawmakers prompted House GOP leaders to ultimately pass the package unchanged, even after floating the idea of tweaking the bill and sending it back across the Capitol.
Trump administration officials have grown increasingly antsy to see the legislation enacted after nearly draining the $10 billion fund they have been tapping to cover paychecks for DHS workers. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned last week that his department would run out of payroll money in the coming days.
Under the package, all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol will be funded through September, the end of the fiscal year.
The legislation includes some new guardrails on immigration enforcement tactics negotiated early this year. But it does not contain any of the additional rules Democrats sought, including barring immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants to make arrests or enter private property.
The end result of the funding lapse is largely what top Democrats have advocated for months as a fallback plan if Republicans wouldn’t agree to any new enforcement restrictions. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, introduced a bill more than two months ago to fund all but ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the Secretary at DHS.
Instead, House Republicans repeatedly passed legislation to fund all of DHS throughout the shutdown, daring lawmakers on the other side of the aisle to oppose it. While a few Democrats broke ranks, the Republican attempts were met with consistent opposition among Democrats in the Senate, where the bills inevitably ran up against the filibuster.
Off Blue Light News, TSA agents and other DHS workers who aren’t considered law enforcement personnel worked for weeks without pay, until Trump directed DHS to temporarily cover their paychecks last month.
Since the funding lapse began, more than 1,100 agents have quit at TSA and some homeland security efforts have been halted, including preparations for the World Cup soccer games being hosted in U.S. cities this summer.
Andres Picon contributed to this report.
Congress
GOP unity cracks with latest Iran war vote
GOP unity over the Iran war started to crack Thursday when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to halt the conflict, marking the first time a Republican has changed their vote on the military campaign in the Middle East.
While the vote failed, the shift signaled President Donald Trump could soon face far more resistance over the conflict. That’s especially true as he blows past a legal deadline this week for the U.S. to exit the war without congressional authorization.
Just two Republicans — Collins and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined Democrats to support curtailing Trump in a 47-50 vote. Unlike Collins, Paul has supported all attempts to rein in the war. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania continued to be the lone Democrat to oppose the effort.
The measure is the sixth resolution the Senate has rejected since the conflict began in February.
The military campaign against Tehran will hit a 60-day deadline Friday that requires the administration to halt U.S. involvement unless Congress authorizes continued military action. Trump does not seem eager to end the military campaign unilaterally, and no legislation exists yet to green-light its continuation, meaning the war is certain to break the threshold.
Democrats have been counting on that deadline to sway Republicans, several of whom have said they’ll be hard pressed to continue their support beyond the deadline.
“Time’s up,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Republicans, stop sitting out, start speaking up.”
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 limits U.S. involvement in hostilities to 60 days after the president has notified Congress, which the Trump administration provided March 2. The White House can extend military operations for another 30 days in order to wind down U.S. involvement.
Collins flipped her vote a day ahead of the administration’s legal deadline, which she signaled would be a turning point for her. The move by Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, also reflects her tough reelection bid as Democrats count on unseating her to win the majority. The war is largely unpopular, and her challenger, Graham Platner, is running on an anti-war platform.
“I have said from the very beginning that the law is definitive that at 60 days, Congress has to either authorize or block the military hostilities,” Collins said ahead of the vote. “I’ve been pretty clear what I was going to do at that point.”
Collins gave a preview of her vote Tuesday, when she joined with Democrats on a separate measure to block potential military action against Cuba. That measure was also defeated by Republicans.
Other GOP senators who indicated the 60-day mark would be problematic for them held off joining with Democrats on Thursday. One such Republican, Sen. John Curtis of Utah, said in a statement that he was “engaged in thoughtful discussion” on the path forward. But he also warned: “I will not support continued funding for the use of force without Congress weighing in.”
A White House official, granted anonymity to describe the dynamics of the 60-day deadline ahead of the vote, said the administration “is in active conversations with Blue Light News on this topic.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, though, suggested to senators on Thursday that the ceasefire would effectively negate the 60-day clock. War powers advocates contend that’s not how the statute works and note the U.S. military is still blockading Iranian ports.
Congress
Senate approves FISA punt
Senators approved a 45-day extension of a key surveillance program by voice vote Thursday, just hours before it is set to lapse.
The extension will give Congress until mid-June to work out a deal on a long-term reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which targets foreigners abroad but can sweep in communications involving Americans.
The House is set to hold a vote Thursday afternoon to pass the extension and send it to President Donald Trump ahead of the deadline.
The Senate’s decision to do a short-term extension came after the House passed a three-year bill Wednesday but packaged it with a controversial digital currency provision that made it “dead on arrival,” according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
The Senate has been working on its own three-year extension, and supporters of the surveillance program say more time is needed to finalize a longer deal. “This will allow additional time to do that,” Thune said Thursday on the Senate floor.
Congress
Maxwell’s former boyfriend testifies in House Epstein probe
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said they left an interview Thursday with Ted Waitt, Ghislaine Maxwell’s former boyfriend, largely empty handed after an hourslong grilling as part of the panel’s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
The committee was interested in what Waitt knew about Epstein’s crimes during his relationship with Maxwell, a former British socialite who is now serving 20-years in prison for her part in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme. Waitt amassed his wealth founding the computer company Gateway and has become a philanthropist supporting ocean conservation. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the late convicted sex offender.
“Epstein was committing some of his crimes while Waitt and Maxwell were in a romantic relationship, so [we] want to understand what if anything he knew about that,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight panel, before entering the interview room Thursday morning, adding, “I find it very hard to believe that they had no knowledge or indication of it.”
But the interview did not appear to be fruitful. Partway through the interview, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) claimed that the committee had learned nothing new.
“I’m interested to see what the Republicans want to know from this,” Subramanyam told reporters. “Maybe it was to connect [President Bill] Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell a little more, because [Waitt] came up in the Clinton deposition.”
Waitt, whose communications with Maxwell appear in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, also happens to be a friend of the former president and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He brought Maxwell as a plus-one to the wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, in 2010 and she appears in at least one photo taken during the ceremony.
Hillary Clinton said she did not recall speaking with Maxwell at the wedding during her deposition before the committee in February.
A GOP committee spokesperson countered the claim that the interview was ineffective in producing new information, saying in a statement that Democrats “made today’s interview as they always do all about President [Donald] Trump, and Ted Waitt had no information about him.”
“In fact, he said Maxwell never brought Trump up,” the spokesperson continued. “Unlike Democrats, Republicans asked substantive questions and gained new information. We will have follow up actions soon.”
During the interview, Democrats only asked about Trump once, according to a person familiar with the questioning who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door conversation.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Waitt could not recall the answers to many of the panel’s questions.
In her interview with then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche in July, Maxwell said she began dating Waitt around 2003 after her relationship with Epstein and stayed with him until around 2010. She met him at a dinner with Bill Clinton in Hong Kong, she told Blanche.
Maxwell also maintained that her former paramour was the subject of blackmail because of her association with Epstein. She stated that Waitt “was asked for $10 million to keep me out of any of Epstein’s civil suits” in 2009, when the convicted sex offender was in litigation.
“He had everything. He was way, way more wealthy than Epstein, if anyone cares,” Maxwell said last July, of her former boyfriend.
A lawyer for Waitt did not return a request for comment.
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