President Donald Trump has blessed an emerging deal to stave off a partial government shutdown at 12:00 a.m. Saturday, handing Democrats a potential victory in their fight to clamp down on federal immigration agents they say are breaking the law and sewing chaos in American cities.
Senate Republican leaders were circulating the deal among senators, according to two sources familiar with the matter. It provides for the passage of five spending bills covering a full year, and temporarily funds the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks while lawmakers continue negotiating.
If agreed to, the Senate could approve the deal as early as Thursday night. But the compromise would still require passage by the House, meaning there could still be a shutdown, albeit of shorter length.
“Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before). Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan “YES” Vote,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Earlier Thursday, senators failed to clear a procedural hurdle for a vote to pass all six funding bills. But negotiations continued between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Schumer had urged Republicans to pass five of the six bills, while keeping negotiations going on policy changes at federal immigration agencies. Some Republicans, feeling pressure after federal officers shot and killed 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Prettisaid it would be a good idea to decouple Homeland Security talks from the rest of the funding package. In addition to DHS, the larger package supported the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and others.
Schumer and Democrats had demanded serious changes to how Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts itself. ICE is part of DHS, along with the Customs and Border Protection agency. Agents from those entities were responsible for fatal shootings of Renee Good and Prettyboth American citizens, this month in Minnesota.
“What ICE is doing outside the law is state-sanctioned thuggery, and it must stop,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer. “And Congress has the authority and the moral obligation to act.”
Senate Democrats have formally laid out three demands they must receive in exchange for their vote on permanent DHS funding: End roving patrols and tighten rules about the use of warrants, create a uniform code of conduct for federal agents, and implement a “masks off, body cameras on” policy, as Schumer put it.
“This is a moment of truth for the United States of America,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
“What ICE is doing outside the law is state-sanctioned thuggery, and it must stop,” he continued. “And Congress has the authority and the moral obligation to act.”
There is evidence that the public is souring on ICE and Trump’s immigration tactics, and the president is not only negotiating with Democrats to forestall a shutdown – something he did not do during the last one — but has sought to de-escalate the rhetoric in Minnesota.
To some, like Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., that’s a sign of the politics underpinning the issue.
“Even this White House understands public sentiment, that the public in this country is overwhelmingly against ICE being unleashed on the American public,” Warner told MS NOW.
As with most legislative items over the last year, Senate Republicans have suggested they’ll follow Trump’s lead.
“My hope and expectation is that the White House and the Senate Democrats, they work this out and they’ll be able to produce the votes that are necessary to pass,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters before the vote.
Other key Republicans held out hope for a deal. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, told MS NOW that she wants “a bipartisan, bicameral solution.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said passing five of the six bills would be a good outcome.
“We should take a win,” Tillis said. “If we’re going to be able to get four or five bills done through regular order, I mean, that’s a great win for Susan Collins. That stuff doesn’t happen around here very often.”
The uneven pace of negotiations throughout this week has almost guaranteed at least a short, partial shutdown for many agencies. With only a day and a half before the deadline, senators would need unanimous agreement in order to hold a passage vote in time. And if senators make any changes to the six-bill package — including splitting off one of the bills — the House would have to approve those changes. House members are on recess and don’t plan to return until Monday, sources have told MS NOW.
Senators maintained hope that the talks between Trump and Schumer could yield a deal.
“I think there’s a path forward with — probably not no chance of a shutdown, but a very limited shutdown, just in terms of getting the House back and accepting any modifications that might be made in the six-bill package,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told reporters on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, a number of key hurdles remained.
First, Democrats still have to recruit at least 13 Republicans to join them in voting to strip the DHS funding bill from the package to clear the 60-vote threshold, a high bar they failed to scale on Thursday.
At least five Republicans — Rounds and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — had publicly said they’d support such an effort. Kennedy, however, insists there are more quietly waiting in the wings.
“It’s a better alternative than shutting down the government,” Daines said Thursday.
Then the parties would have to agree on the length for a stopgap bill to keep DHS funded. Democrats pushed for a short timespan to keep the pressure on GOP lawmakers. Republicans, meanwhile, wanted a lengthier measure to allow time for substantive talks.
“We’d prefer longer to actually have time to work through this,” a GOP aide told MS NOW. “Short-term doesn’t provide that much runway.”
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., said the ultimate length will be up to Schumer and Trump.
Finally, there’s toughest lift of all: Democrats and Republicans will have to negotiate a new DHS funding bill palatable to both parties, tackling an issue that has historically been one of the most difficult on which to find a bipartisan consensus.
Thune insists those policy changes won’t be written into the current, six-bill package. But splitting off DHS funds from the other bills could allow negotiations to continue without threatening a lengthy shutdown for roughly 80% of the federal government.
“That’s not going to happen in this bill,” Thune said of the Democrats’ policy proposals. “But there are — I mean, there’s a path to consider some of those things and negotiate that out between Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate and White House.”
“But that’s not going to happen in these bills,” he said.
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.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW’s senior congressional correspondent and the host of “Way Too Early.” She is the author of “Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme CourtJustice Ketanji Brown Jackson has delivered a sustained attack on her conservative colleagues’ use of emergency orders to benefit the Trump administration, calling the orders “scratch-paper musings” that can “seem oblivious and thus ring hollow.”
The court’s newest justice, Jackson delivered a lengthy assessment of roughly two dozen court orders issued last year that allowed President Donald Trump to put in place controversial policies on immigration, steep federal funding cuts and other topics, after lower courts found they were likely illegal.
While designed to be short-term, those orders have largely allowed Trump to move ahead — for now — with key parts of his sweeping agenda.
Jackson spoke for nearly an hour on Monday at Yale Law School, which posted a video of the event on Wednesday.
Last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor similarly talked about emergency orders in an event Tuesday at the University of Alabama that also took issue with the conservatives’ approach.
Jackson has previously criticized the emergency orders both in dissenting opinions and in an unusual appearance with Justice Brett Kavanaugh last month. But her talk at Yale, addressing the public rather than the other eight justices, was notable.
She referred to orders, which often are issued with little or no explanation as “back-of-the-envelope, first-blush impressions of the merits of the legal issue.”
Worse still, she said, was that the court then insists that “those scratch-paper musings” be applied by lower courts in other cases.
The orders suffer from an additional problem, she said, a failure to acknowledge that real people are involved, making them “seem oblivious and thus ring hollow.”
She also pushed back on the court’s assessment that preventing the president from putting his policy in place also is a harm that often outweighs what the challengers to a policy might face.
“The president of the United States, though he may be harmed in an abstract way, he certainly isn’t harmed if what he wants to do is illegal,” Jackson said during a question-and-answer session with law school dean Cristina Rodriguez.
The court used to be reluctant to step into cases early in the legal process, she said. “There is value in avoiding having the court continually touching the third rail of every divisive policy issue in American life,” Jackson said.
While she said she couldn’t explain the change, “in recent years, the Supreme Court has taken a decidedly different approach to addressing emergency stay applications. It has been noticeably less restrained, especially with respect to pending cases that involve controversial matters.”
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Jackson, often joined by Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, has frequently dissented.
There have been conversations about emergency orders among the justices, Jackson said, but she decided to speak publicly with the goal of being “a catalyst for change.”
Also on Wednesday, Sotomayor issued a rare public apology to another justice, Kavanaugh, for what she termed “hurtful comments” she made last week during an appearance at the University of Kansas law school.
Referencing an opinion Kavanaugh wrote in an immigration case where the court granted an emergency order sought by the administration, Sotomayor said her colleague “probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” Her remarks were reported by Bloomberg Law.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors made an unannounced visit this week to a construction site at Federal Reserve headquarters that is the focus of an investigation into a $2.5 billion renovation projectaccording to two people familiar with the visit.
Two prosecutors and an investigator from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office were turned away on Tuesday by a building contractor and referred to Fed attorneys, one of the people said. The two people familiar with the visit spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.
The visit underscores that the Trump administration is not backing down from its investigation of the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, even though the probe has delayed the confirmation of a new chair nominated by President Donald Trump. The investigation is focused on cost overruns and brief testimony about the project last summer by Powell. Trump confirmed in an interview that aired Wednesday on Fox Business that he wants to continue the probe.
Last month, during a closed-door hearing before a federal judge, a top deputy from Pirro’s office conceded that they hadn’t found any evidence of a crime in their investigation of the headquarters project.
Robert Hur, an attorney for the Federal Reserve board of governors, sent an email to Pirro’s prosecutors about their visit and their request for a “tour” to “check on progress” at the construction site. Hur’s email, which The Associated Press has viewed, noted that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg concluded that their interest in the Federal Reserve’s renovation project was “pretextual.”
AP AUDIO: Prosecutors sought access to Federal Reserve building as Trump threatens to fire Powell
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports on more drama surrounding a federal probe of a massive construction project at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters.
“Should you wish to challenge that finding, the courts provide an avenue for you; it is not appropriate for you to try to circumvent it,” Hur wrote.
Republican Tillis is key vote
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is a key member of the Senate Banking Committee, has vowed to vote against Kevin WarshTrump’s nominee to replace Powell as Fed chair, until the investigation is dropped. With the committee closely divided on partisan lines, Tillis’ opposition is enough to block Warsh from receiving the committee’s approval.
Tillis on Wednesday criticized the investigation as “bogus, ill-timed, ill-informed” and repeated that seven Republican members of the banking panel have said they do not believe Powell committed a crime when he testified last June.
Tillis also said there aren’t enough votes on the committee or in the broader Senate to do an end-run around the committee and get Warsh confirmed some other way.
“There really is no path,” he told reporters, adding that Pirro and her aides were “asleep at the switch” because the investigation has essentially delayed Powell’s departure from the Fed, despite Trump’s obsessive criticism of the Fed chair. Powell has now said he won’t leave until the investigation is resolved.
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Tillis suggested Pirro blindsided the White House with her investigation. “They should have consulted with the White House, because I’m sure if they would have, (the White House) would have said, ‘no, we can wait,’” until Powell steps down.
But Kevin Hassett, the Trump administration’s top economist, said Wednesday that the Justice Department got involved because “the president wanted to investigate the cost overrun,” Axios reported.
The Banking panel said Tuesday that it will hold a hearing on Warsh’s nomination April 21. Powell’s term as Fed chair ends May 15, but Powell said last month he would remain as chair until a replacement is named.
Powell is serving a separate term as a member of the Fed’s governing board that lasts until January 2028. Chairs typically leave the board when their terms as chair end, but they can remain on the board if they choose. Powell has said he won’t leave until the investigation is resolved. If he remains it would deny Trump the opportunity to appoint someone else to the seven-member board.
Late Tuesday Tillis posted a link on social media to The Wall Street Journal’s article on the visit below an image of the Three Stooges and wrote, “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. at the crime scene.”
Investigation centers on building renovations
The investigation centers on an appearance by Powell before the Banking Committee last June, when he was asked about cost overruns on the renovations. The most recent estimates from the Fed suggest the current estimated cost of $2.5 billion is about $600 million higher than a 2022 estimate of $1.9 billion.
“It is probably corrupt, but what it really is, is incompetent,” Trump said. “Don’t you think we have to find out what happened there?”
The president’s support for the investigation threatens a timeframe set out by Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who chairs the Banking Committee. Scott said Tuesday on Fox Business that he believed the investigation would be “wrapped up in the next few weeks,” allowing Warsh to be confirmed soon after.
Threat to fire Powell
News of the unannounced visit by prosecutors comes as Trump has again threatened to fire Powell, if the Federal Reserve Chair decides to stay on the central bank’s governing board after his term as chair expires next month.
“Well then I’ll have to fire him, OK?” Trump said.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said Trump can only fire Powell “for cause,” meaning some kind of misconduct, “so that’s a pretty tall order.”
Supreme Court weighing another Trump removal
Trump’s threat to fire Powell comes as the Supreme Court is weighing the president’s effort to remove another central bank governor, Lisa Cook. Lower courts have so far allowed Cook to remain in her job while her legal challenge to the firing continues. The Supreme Court also seemed likely to keep her on the Fed when the court heard arguments in January. A decision could come any time.
The issue in Cook’s case is whether allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied, is a sufficient reason to fire her or a mere pretext masking Trump’s desire to exert more control over U.S. interest rate policy.
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