Congress
Henry Cuellar warns against shutdown, handing DHS ‘blank check’
Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who helped craft and backed the Homeland Security funding bill now fueling a standoff in the Senate, said in an interview Tuesday that he supports putting more guardrails on federal immigration enforcement agencies but urged senators to pass the legislation the House approved last week.
The partial government shutdown senators are barreling toward after Saturday’s DHS-involved killing of a Minneapolis man, he warned, would be “the worst situation,” leaving the controversial agencies operating with “a blank check.”
“If you have a government shutdown, what really happens? ICE got $75 billion in the big-beautiful-slash-ugly bill. [But] you shut down FEMA, you shut down TSA, you shut down the Coast Guard, you shut down CISA,” the moderate Texas lawmaker said. “I don’t think that’s a good alternative.”
Cuellar, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he supports many strictures that got left on the cutting room floor in the House, including banning agents from wearing masks and requiring identification, codifying parts of the agency’s use of force policy and notifying Congress about large surges in ICE activity.
But he suggested those could be revisited in the next yearly funding cycle if Democrats are unable to secure commitments from Republicans before the shutdown deadline. And he said there are steps the Trump administration could take now to defuse tensions, such as increasing training and enforcing ICE’s internal use-of-force policy.
“I sense an opening where I think we can get more Republicans to work with us,” Cuellar said.
Amid bipartisan backlash to Alex Pretti’s killing, Senate Democrats are seeking to strip the DHS funding bill from a larger six-bill appropriations package and renegotiate it. They’re seeking a raft of new provisions, including requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests, mandating federal agents identify themselves and compelling DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations.
But Republicans are scrambling to avoid making changes to the massive bill as the Friday midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown approaches. With the House out till next week, passing the funding package intact is the only viable path to avoiding a shutdown.
Cuellar joined his fellow Democrats and many Republicans in calling for independent investigations into the shootings of both Pretti and Renee Good, who was also killed in a confrontation with a DHS officer. And he didn’t rule out joining House Democrats’ push to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem if President Donald Trump doesn’t fire her first.
“I’ll wait until a later time” to weigh in, Cuellar said. “But I’m certainly looking at everything that’s going on, and [Trump and his team] definitely need to change course on it.”
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
-
Politics1 year agoJohn Legend advises Trump to drop the ‘dictator s‑‑‑’ if he wants Nobel Peace Prize
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit