Congress

Trump threatens to send ICE to airports amid DHS standoff

Published

3 months ago

March 21, 2026

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send federal immigration agents to airports across the country on Monday if Democrats don’t agree to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, now approaching five weeks.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” he wrote.

“Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia” would be targeted with an especially firm hand, the president wrote on Truth Social.

Shortly thereafter, Trump followed up to say he plans to send ICE to airports in just days.

“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” he wrote in a separate Truth Social post on Saturday.

It’s his latest bid to push Democrats, who have refused to greenlight DHS funding without changes to how it carries out immigration enforcement, pointing to deadly incidents as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended en masse on major American cities. Increased callouts among TSA agents and airport staffers are expected to roil airports in the coming weeks, with major interruptions to airport procedure likely to follow.

Both sides have seemingly made progress in recent days toward ending the shutdown. The White House made several concessions on immigration enforcement policies in a proposal shared with Senate Democrats on Friday. But the ICE agent masking ban Democrats are seeking in exchange for their support on a funding package remains a bridge too far, Republicans argue.

Trump’s latest threat isn’t likely to make the prospects of a truce any more viable, especially given his focus on Minnesota, where tensions flared after federal immigration agents killed two protesters during a major surge of personnel in January.

In a post on X following Trump’s threat, Rep. Lauren Boebert said, “The airport in Minnesota is about to be a ghost town.”

The president’s threat Saturday lands squarely in the middle of a confirmation fight over his pick to run DHS, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a process that has quickly become a proxy battle over the future of ICE itself.

At his hearing this week, Mullin tried to strike a more measured tone than in some of his past remarks, pledging to rein in some enforcement tactics and lower the agency’s public profile. But he repeatedly defended ICE agents amid mounting scrutiny, including backing officers involved in high-profile civilian deaths and arguing Democrats are tying the agency’s hands.

Republicans — including Mullin — have instead pushed to expand ICE’s resources and authority, framing the standoff as a fight over public safety.

The backdrop is the messy ouster of Kristi Noem, whose tenure was defined by aggressive deportation policies, costly PR campaigns and a series of controversies that ultimately led Trump to push her out after a bruising round of congressional hearings.

The enforcement-heavy approach Trump threatened Saturday sets up a preview for what Mullin will perhaps be asked to defend — and potentially formalize — as the next head of DHS.

ICE and the Transportation Security Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Blue Light News.

Congress

Hegseth to brief House Republicans on White House goals for party-line package

Published

43 minutes ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give a classified briefing Wednesday to a group of House Republicans about the administration’s goals for military funding and another party-line reconciliation bill, according to three people granted anonymity to describe a private meeting.

The gathering will take place during the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch and be held in the House SCIF, underscoring the potentially sensitive nature of Hegseth’s planned presentation.

Lawmakers are expected to also press Hegseth on the agreement the Trump administration has reached with Iran to end the war.

Congress

Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters

Published

6 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek has a narrow lead over GOP rival Ashley Hinson in a new internal poll of likely general-election voters.

Turek leads Hinson 47 percent to 45 percent in the poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group from June 8-11 among 1,000 likely general election voters. The poll shows that Republicans have a 10-point edge in voter registration (42 percent to 32 percent) and an electorate that voted for Trump by 9 points (50 percent for Trump to 41 percent for Kamala Harris).

But the polling also shows President Donald Trump’s favorabilities underwater across the electorate, with 45 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable. Among registered independents, Trump is upside down 28 points.

Turek is “significantly outperforming the state’s underlying partisan dynamics,” Global Strategy Group’s Matt Canter & Ramzi Ebbini write in a memo first obtained by Blue Light News. “Republicans maintain substantial advantages in voter registration and party identification, yet Turek enters the general election ahead of Republican Ashley Hinson, with stronger personal favorability ratings, overperforming a generic Democrat, and with clear opportunities to expand his coalition as more voters become familiar with him.”

Some Republicans have acknowledged a concern about Iowa.

“There are some issues there that we got to deal with — the biggest one is trade — trade and tariffs,” said a Republican close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the obstacles.

In his early general election messaging, Turek has leaned into farmers’ frustrations.

“Josh Turek is winning this race because Iowans are sick and tired of multi-millionaire politicians like Ashley Hinson who sell out working families while they get rich,” Turek for Iowa campaign manager Brendan Koch said in a statement first shared with Blue Light News. “We will spend the next 134 days connecting with Iowans in every corner of the state and across the political spectrum to send a fighter for the working class to the U.S. Senate.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real

Published

7 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans have eight days to prove Reconciliation 3.0 might actually happen.

The House returns Tuesday with only eight legislative days before they break again for the July 4 holiday. If members want a realistic chance at fulfilling their self-imposed timeline for advancing the legislation before the end of July — when they pause work again for another five weeks — they need to move fast.

That means assembling, and then adopting, a budget resolution — the first step in unlocking the filibuster skirting power of the reconciliation process. It took Republicans months to advance such a blueprint during their two earlier reconciliation efforts this Congress.

House GOP leaders are tentatively planning another senior-level reconciliation meeting for Wednesday, according to three people involved in the talks granted anonymity to discuss private plans.

Still, the House is coming back with several other moving items to deal with this week, including promised briefings on the president’s Iran deal and a major housing affordability package GOP leadership wants to clear as soon as Wednesday.

Reconciliation talks also come as President Donald Trump is expected to join the Senate’s GOP lunch Wednesday, where he’ll likely continue pushing the chamber to pass his SAVE America Act or attach pieces of the GOP elections bill to the party-line legislation (an idea one of the bill’s biggest backers, Sen. Mike Lee, spiked Sunday).

Republicans involved with Reconciliation 3.0 discussions also warn they need to reach a final agreement on how to pay for the bill as well as what policy items will be included before GOP leaders can try to advance any budget resolution.

At this point, however, many fiscal hawks and at-risk incumbents are largely unhappy about how the discussions are coming along.

“It’s fake pay-fors for defense spending no one has fully agreed to and no meaningful reforms,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to discuss private talks.

Back on the other side of the Capitol, GOP senators have been in no rush to start working on a third party-line bill, especially as they are consumed with other political fires — like trying to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence to speed up a FISA reauthorization (more on that below).

Rep. Morgan Griffith said he was confident if the right policies are included in the House plan the Senate would then take it up — although he, too, acknowledged the challenges of a short timeline.

“If we do it right, yeah,” Griffith said. “There’s some interesting things out there that are being discussed that could make it a real possibility.”

What else we’re watching:

— OBAMA’S FEROCIOUS IRAN CRITIC SOFTER ON TRUMP DEAL: Tom Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and chair of the chamber’s Intelligence panel, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position trying to defend Trump’s Iran deal after lambasting President Barack Obama’s a decade before. But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot.

— FIRST IN IC: DEMS WANT MORE OF JACK SMITH’S REPORT: Senate Judiciary Democrats are asking a federal court to unseal part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term. The request from the Senators comes as the Judiciary Committee is poised to call Smith to testify about his Biden-era cases before the end of this Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have been investigating Smith’s work, alleging it amounted to a weaponization of the federal government against the then ex-president.

Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.