Congress
Tuberville shares social media post suggesting Muslims are ‘the enemy’
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on Thursday shared a social media post calling Muslims “the enemy,” joining a growing number of sitting GOP members to share Islamophobic rhetoric.
Tuberville on Thursday retweeted a post that showed a picture of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by people that was juxtaposed with a photo of the Twin Towers in New York burning on Sept. 11, 2001. The caption of the original post read, “Less than 25 years apart.”
Tuberville added his own caption: “The enemy is inside the gates.”
A spokesperson for Tuberville’s office referred Blue Light News to a separate post by Tuberville on Thursday that stated that calling Islam a “cult” doesn’t make someone an Islamophobe, among other things.
In U.S. courts, state and federal laws supersede religious rules. However, a group of Congressional members have started the Sharia-Free America Caucus.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, who is the first Muslim mayor of New York City, referred Blue Light News to Mamdani’s own post.
“Let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
Tuberville’s post on Thursday is the latest in a string of anti-Islam attacks made by sitting members of Congress. Earlier this week, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) faced backlash for saying “Muslims don’t belong in America.” Last month, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) faced calls for censure from Democrats after saying dogs are preferable to Muslims.
But Republican leadership has not publicly denounced or reprimanded members for such posts.
Speaker Mike Johnson did notcondemn Ogles’ post this week, and none of the Senate GOP leadership — Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso or Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton — immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuberville’s post.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, was quick to condemn Tuberville’s post as “Islamophobic hate.”
“This is mindless hate,” Schumer said in a post on X. “Muslim Americans are cops, doctors, nurses, teachers, bankers, bricklayers, mothers, fathers, neighbors, mayors, and more. Islamophobic hate like this is fundamentally un-American and we must confront and overcome it whenever it rears its ugly head.”
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
House Republicans eye passage of Senate-backed DHS funding bill
House Republican leaders are working to approve a bill Thursday that would fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except its immigration enforcement agencies — potentially ending the department’s 76-day shutdown — according to a half-dozen people granted anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes talks.
Speaker Mike Johnson is discussing the idea with members of his conference who have wanted to hold off on passage of the bill until Republicans enact a separate party-line package to fund agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
The Senate passed the partial DHS funding measure in March, but for more than a month, House GOP leaders have bowed to the holdouts and resisted calls to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Now the White House and some House Republican lawmakers are pressuring Johnson to clear the bill before lawmakers leave town for a weeklong recess.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma and House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan were among the Republican lawmakers who confirmed that GOP leaders are attempting to send the bill on for Trump’s signature Thursday.
Johnson and Cole have both floated the idea of tweaking the bill to omit language explicitly stating that ICE and Border Patrol aren’t funded. But that would require sending it back to the Senate — not directly to Trump.
The speaker is still considering whether to alter the bill or put it on the floor without changes, the people familiar with the talks said. Either would involve using a fast-track process that requires support from two-thirds of lawmakers for passage.
Congress
Mike Johnson backs Louisiana election delay, urges other states to redraw maps
Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map Wednesday.
“The governor has no choice but to suspend it,” Johnson said. “The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.”
He spoke as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Louisiana could not carry out elections under the current map and would be working “to develop a path forward.” Any new map is likely to threaten the seats of Democratic Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, who are both Black.
The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the longstanding practice of requiring line-drawers to protect racial minorities’ voting power.
The exact timing of the rescheduled elections is “not my decision,” Johnson added, but said “the way it was typically done” was to hold an all-party “jungle” primary in November, with a runoff in December, and “it looks like it may be that way again.”
“But again, my fingerprints aren’t on it,” Johnson added. “It’s a decision of the state Legislature.”
He also encouraged other states with VRA-mandated minority districts to act quickly and potentially redraw their maps before November, even though many have their election processes well underway already.
“All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,” he said.
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