Congress braces for DHS shutdown as funding bill negotiations stall
Congress is facing a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if doesn’t pass a full year funding bill by Friday.
Lawmakers passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the department running until 13 February, while Democrats negotiate with GOP colleagues and the White House over further guardrails for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), amid the ongoing use of force by officers – which has resulted in the fatal shootings of two American citizens in Minneapolis.
Democrats argue that federal immigration enforcement officers are conducting indiscriminate raids, brutalizing people, and hiding their identities in the process. They have issued list of demands which include the need for judicial warrants, and for agents to not wear masks. Republicans, by and large, have pushed back – saying these are non-starters. Instead they have floated another short-term spending bill to extend negotiations in the midst of another policy impasse.
Democrats, however, seem deeply reluctant for another stopgap, and would favor a shutdown to make their points clear.
Key events
Maxwell’s lawyer says she is ‘prepared to speak honestly if granted clemency’
In a social media post earlier, Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus said he had advised her to plead the fifth during her deposition today and that she was “prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump”.
“Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters,” Markus said. “For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”
The attorney said he had delivered that statement to the House oversight committee, and told members that his client “would very much like to answer your questions” but she “must remain silent because she has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial”.
Democrats have condemned Maxwell invoking her right to silence and refusal to answer any questions. California Democrat Ro Khanna posted on X:
Here is my conclusion after sitting through Maxwell’s deposition with her refusing to answer a single question about the men who raped underage girls, saying she would only do so for clemency. She must immediately be sent back to the maximum security prison where she belongs.
Representative Suhas Subramanyam, of Virginia, said:
She is campaigning over and over again to get that pardon from President Trump, and this president has not ruled it out. And so that is why she is continuing to not cooperate with our investigation.
And the BBC reported New Mexico Democrat Melanie Stansbury as saying:
This was an effort to essentially try to secure her pardon by keeping her mouth shut, and we will not allow this silence to stand.
‘Who is she protecting?’ Garcia demands answers to Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘cover-up’ after she invokes fifth amendment during committee deposition
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight comittee, issued a sharp rebuke following Ghislaine Maxwell’s virtual deposition earlier today.
Maxwell, a convicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, invoked the fifth amendment and “no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls”, according to Garcia.
“After months of defying our subpoena, Ghislaine Maxwell finally appeared before the Oversight Committee and said nothing,” he added in a statement.
“Who is she protecting? And we need to know why she’s been given special treatment at a low security prison by the Trump Administration. We are going to end this White House cover-up.”
Dharna Noor
Bad Bunny’s treatment of Puerto Rico’s grid crisis in his Super Bowl performance has sparked social media conversation from scholars.
Toward the end of his performance, Bad Bunny performed his song “El Apagón,” which translates to “blackout.” Dancers playing workers hung from electric poles as the singer lambasted the energy instability facing Puerto Rico.
“The power lines moment was kinda extraordinary,” historian Adam Tooze said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In 2016, a controversial Obama-era law created an oversight board to manage Puerto Rico’s longstanding debt crisis, which critics said infringed on the island’s economic autonomy. The board recommended that the island’s publicly owned electric grid be privatized, sparking fury from opponents.
The following year, the longest blackout in US history began in Puerto Rico in the wake of the deadly Hurricane Maria. Some residents, left without electricity for almost a year, were forced to learn electrical skills themselves, climbing up power lines in an attempt to rig up homemade solutions to the outage.
After the harrowing outage, the island’s then-governor announced he would indeed privatize the grid, selling it to Canadian company Luma Energy. Puerto Ricans were promised their energy woes were behind them, but more than one million were affected by power outages just days later, and blackouts have remained a persistent issue.
“Maldita sea, otro apagón,” Bad Bunny sang in “El Apagón” – “Damn, another blackout.”
A staunch opponent of grid privatization, the artist in 2024 spent hundreds of thousands on billboards criticizing Puerto Rico’s New Progressive Party for corruption and its links to Luma Energy.
Historian Greg Grandin called Bad Bunny “our social democratic moment’s answer to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s [neoliberal] Hamilton,” noting that Miranda, the composer, supported Promesa, though he later expressed opposition to harsh austerity measures implemented by the board.
Disgraced former congressman, George Santos, has also weighed in on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.
“I expected a little more energy and sassiness from Bad Bunny,” he wrote on X. “Lady Gaga was out of no where or simply the token white girl?”
A reminder that Santos, a Republican, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud. However, Donald Trump commuted Santos’s sentence last year.
“I speak fluent Spanish and I still can’t decipher what Bad Bunny says when he ‘sings’… lol but it does make you at least want to move your body and dance lol,” Santos added, in a series of comments about the half-time show watched by millions.
Richard Luscombe
Tom Homan – the Trump administration’s “border czar” sent to Minnesota in January after federal agents fatally shot two US citizen protesters – warned last year that the government’s aggressive, widespread approach to immigration enforcement would cost it public support.
Homan made the observation in an interview with NBC in June for the forthcoming book Undue Process, by the network’s homeland security correspondent, analyzing the immigration policy of mass deportation that Donald Trump has pursued during his second presidency.
“I think the vast majority of the American people think criminal illegal aliens need to leave,” Homan told author Julia Ainsley, reported by NBC News on Monday. “And if we stick to that prioritization, I think we keep the faith of the American people.
“And I think the more we do that, the more the American people will support what President Trump’s doing. We got to do it and we’ve got to do it in a humane manner.”
Instead, the homeland security department (DHS) has rounded up hundreds of thousands of people, including US citizens, in an aggressive and often violent manner, prompting protests in numerous cities and punctuated by the shooting deaths in Minneapolis in January of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers.
And figures released on Monday, reported by CBS, reveal that less than 14% of almost 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first year of Trump’s second presidency had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses – discrediting the administration’s often repeated insistence it was targeting only “the worst of the worst”.
Current and former Trump officials echoed the president’s criticisim of Bad Bunny’s widely acclaimed Super Bowl performance.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, wrote: “My mother: ‘who is this Bad Bunny?’ Don’t worry mom, we aren’t watching him.”
Podcast host Dan Bongino, who served for a short period as the deputy director of the FBI, wrote “Kid Rock > Sad Bunny” in reference to Turning Point USA’s counter programming during the half-time show.
Meanwhile, conservative activist Laura Loomer, agreed with Trump’s assessment of the performance, but went further. “Not a single white person or English translation at the Super Bowl,” she wrote. “This isn’t White enough for me. Cant even watch a Super Bowl anymore because immigrants have literally ruined everything.”
Miranda Bryant
US senator Lisa Murkowski said “it hurts my heart” that the trust between Greenland and the US, built up since the second world war, has been broken by “just a few sentences and words”. This comes after Donald Trump’s insistence that the US should acquire the autonomous territory, against the will of its people, Denmark, and the rest of Nato.
Addressing Greenlandic people, the senator for Alaska appeared at a press conference alongside three other lawmakers who made the visit – Independent senator Angus King of Maine, and Democratic senators Gary Peters of Michigan, and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.
Speaking in Nuuk, the delegation appeared alongside Pipaluk Lynge and Erik Jensen, members of Greenland’s foreign and security policy committee, and the actor Viggo Mortensen, a vocal Donald Trump critic.
The visit, which saw them go to the US space base in Pituffik, meet with Greenlandic politicians and a helicopter tour of the Greenland ice sheet, comes after a US senatorial delegation visited Copenhagen last month.
“To the citizens of Greenland, it hurts my heart to know how much anxiety and worry you feel in these times of uncertainty,” Murkowski added. “In just a few sentences and words, the trust that has been built since the second world war has been eroded and degraded.”
The Republican senator added:
I want to remind you that regardless of what our president says, we have a big role in Congress. And I believe there is a common interest that we must work together on, and it begins and ends with respect and dialogue.
Congress braces for DHS shutdown as funding bill negotiations stall
Congress is facing a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if doesn’t pass a full year funding bill by Friday.
Lawmakers passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the department running until 13 February, while Democrats negotiate with GOP colleagues and the White House over further guardrails for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), amid the ongoing use of force by officers – which has resulted in the fatal shootings of two American citizens in Minneapolis.
Democrats argue that federal immigration enforcement officers are conducting indiscriminate raids, brutalizing people, and hiding their identities in the process. They have issued list of demands which include the need for judicial warrants, and for agents to not wear masks. Republicans, by and large, have pushed back – saying these are non-starters. Instead they have floated another short-term spending bill to extend negotiations in the midst of another policy impasse.
Democrats, however, seem deeply reluctant for another stopgap, and would favor a shutdown to make their points clear.
Ghislaine Maxwell to testify before committee in virtual deposition
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, is set to attend a virtual deposition for the House oversight committee at 10am ET today.
This is part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into the handling of Epstein’s case,
Maxwell, however, is set to plead the fifth amendment, which protects her against self-incrimination, while addressing lawmakers today. It’s a move that representatives are concerned will make her testimony useless.
In a letter to oversight chairman James Comer, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna wrote that Maxwell’s decision is not in keeping with her interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche last year. Where she did, albeit sparingly, provide details about working with Epstein.
“I understand that Ms Maxwell intends to assert this privilege on a “blanket basis” by reading a prepared statement at the outset of the deposition and refusing to permit Members to question her individually through counsel, rather than invoking the privilege on a question-by-question basis,” Khanna, who also serves on the oversight committee, wrote.
In response he outlined several questions in his letter to find out whether Maxwell intends to invoke the fifth amendment when answering them.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. He doesn’t have any events that will be open to the press, per his official schedule. He’s due to tape a TV interview at 3pm ET, and hold a policy meeting at 5.30pm ET.
We’ll let you know if anything changes and we hear from the president later.
Stars heap praise on Bad Bunny’s ‘unifying’ half-time show
Donald Trump may have not enjoyed Bad Bunny’s acclaimed Super Bowl half-time show but so many others have taken to social media to heap praise on the performance.
The 31-year-old singer took to the stage in Santa Clara, California, for a performance which was almost entirely in Spanish to celebrate his Puerto Rican heritage and culture.
American DJ and producer Diplo wrote:
The real American Dream isn’t about fitting a stereotype – it’s about believing in yourself when the world tries to tell you otherwise.
Proud to call Bad Bunny my friend – a Puerto Rican, an American, a creator who stood on the Super Bowl stage and reminded the world that language, culture, and identity are part of this country’s story.
In a moment that sparked outrage and debate, he chose unity, joy, and love over division, and showed what it means to represent all of America. This controversy didn’t weaken the dream – it proved why believing in yourself never sounded more American.
Fellow Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin also joined Bad Bunny for the show, and he wrote on X:
They need to give me several hours to let me process and understand the tsunami of emotions I’m feeling. Thank you.
Meanwhile, Lady Gaga shared a post on Instagram to her 61.8 million followers of herself singing during the performance. She wrote:
It was my absolute honour to be a part of Benito’s halftime show.
Thank you Benito for inviting me and thank you to the entire cast for welcoming me onto your stage. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Other celebrities to praise the show included Grammy-winning country singer Kacey Musgraves, rapper Doechii and singer-songwriter John Mellencamp.
Aaron Glantz
A Venezuelan migrant whose detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sparked a protest that involved nearly 2,000 people and led to 30 arrests is free after spending seven months in custody in Washington state, after a ruling from a federal judge who said his constitutional rights had been violated.
Joswar Torres, 29, was granted humanitarian parole in the United States and had an asylum application pending, but was nevertheless detained in June 2025 after a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office in Spokane, Washington.
The case garnered national attention after protesters attempted to block an ICE transport that carried Torres and another migrant to Tacoma. The protest turned contentious at times, with a government car’s windshield smashed and tire slashed, but for the most part it was peaceful, with demonstrators linking arms as they faced down masked federal agents.
A month after the protest, federal prosecutors took the unusual step of bringing conspiracy charges against nine of the demonstrators. Legal experts said the episode marked an escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on first amendment rights.
Richard Barker, a career justice department prosecutor, resigned as acting US attorney for eastern Washington state rather than sign the indictments. “No one was hurt,” Barker said. “You have people who were executing their rights to free speech. You have people who were seeing an injustice and they were saying something about it.”
Michael Sainato
Maine, the US’s whitest state, has been shaken by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a crackdown that could threaten Republican control of the Senate in November’s crucial midterm elections.
Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in the state on 21 January, targeting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities”, according to the administration.
As critics said the operation had caused “pain and suffering”, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican facing a re-election this year in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, claimed she spoke with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who told her the operation has ended at her request.
But residents doubt Collins has defanged ICE and say the agency is still making its presence known and causing chaos in the bucolic state nicknamed Vacationland.
“I don’t think anyone here has any trust that will be lasting,” Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, a state federation of more than 200 local labor unions in Maine. “You can’t turn a tiger into a vegetarian.”
Workers and labor unions in Maine claimed ICE is racially profiling people and has created an environment where people of color are under “an occupation” impeding their freedom of movement.
US energy secretary Chris Wright plans to visit Venezuela soon to “start the dialogue” with officials on the future leadership of Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, Politico reported on Monday.
Wright, who plans to visit some of the nation’s oilfields, told Politico: “PDVSA was a highly professional, technically competent oil and gas company 30 years ago, and it hasn’t been one for quite some time.“
He intended to improve the management of the state-run oil company which has emerged as an obstacle in the Trump administration’s efforts to push international oil companies to invest in the country, the report said.
US vice-president JD Vance will visit Armenia and Azerbaijan this week to push a Washington-brokered peace agreement that could transform energy and trade routes in the strategic South Caucasus region.
His two-day trip to Armenia, which begins later on Monday, comes just six months after the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders signed an agreement at the White House seen as the first step towards peace after nearly 40 years of war, Reuters reports.
Vance, the first US vice-president to visit Armenia, is seeking to advance the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a proposed 43km (27 mile) corridor that would run across southern Armenia and give Azerbaijan a direct route to its exclave of Nakhchivan and in turn to Turkey, Baku’s close ally.
“Vance’s visit should serve to reaffirm the US’s commitment to seeing the Trump route through,” said Joshua Kucera, a senior South Caucasus analyst at Crisis Group.
“In a region like the Caucasus, even a small amount of attention from the US can make a significant impact.“
Ghislaine Maxwell intends to plead fifth amendment in upcoming deposition, lawmaker says
In other news, Ghislaine Maxwell is expected to plead the fifth amendment to avoid self-incrimination during her deposition in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee later today, according to a letter from Democratic congressman Ro Khanna to the committee chair.
Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 for her role in helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Instead of answering individual questions, Maxwell intends to read a prepared statement at the beginning of her deposition, Khanna, who serves on the committee, said without detailing the source of his information.
“This position appears inconsistent with Ms. Maxwell’s prior conduct, as she did not invoke the fifth amendment when she previously met with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche to discuss substantially similar subject matter,” Khanna wrote in his letter seeking clarification on her testimony.
It comes after the Department of Justice released millions of files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a well-connected financier who officials say killed himself in federal custody in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The House of Representatives’ oversight committee is investigating Epstein’s connections to powerful figures and how information about his crimes was handled.
Less than 14% of ICE arrestees in Trump’s first year back in office had violent criminal records, documents indicate
As we referenced in the opening post, Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny used his speech at the Grammys at the start of the month to call out anti-immigration sentiment that has surged amid ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations which have caused terror in communities across American states. At least eight people have been killed by federal agents or have died while in ICE custody in 2026 so far.
It has now emerged that under 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Trump’s first year back in office had charges or convictions for violent criminal offences, an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by CBS News shows.
This seriously undermines the administration’s frequent claims that the operations are targeting illegal immigrants who are violent and need to be deported for public safety.
According to the DHS document, nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions, although most were for non-violent crimes.
Trump blasts Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl show as ‘absolutely terrible’
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics. Donald Trump has said Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl half-time show performance celebrating Latino heritage and culture was “absolutely terrible” and “an affront to the Greatness of America”.
The Puerto Rican musician made history by becoming the first Super Bowl half-time show headliner to perform nearly entirely in Spanish, and to host a wedding during the show, which included appearances from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, among others.
In a lengthy Truth Social Post published after, Trump wrote:
The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence.
Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World.
This “Show” is just a “slap in the face” to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day – including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!
There is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, it will get great reviews from the Fake News Media, because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.
It’s hardly surprising Trump did not like Bad Bunny’s show. The 31-year-old, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has been a vocal critic of ICE and of Trump and his administration’s authoritarian immigration policies.
In January, Trump criticized the selection (alongside rightwing media commentators) as “absolutely ridiculous” while also claiming he was unfamiliar with the artist. At the time, Trump said of Bad Bunny and punk rock band Green Day, who also performed: “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”
Sunday’s performance came a week after Bad Bunny’s ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’ became the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammy for album of the year, building more anticipation for his Super Bowl show, still one of the staples of the American cultural calendar.
The Super Bowl is the most-watched annual television event in the United States. Last year’s game averaged nearly 130m US viewers, according to NFL figures, with an additional 62.5m watching internationally.
“God bless America!” Bad Bunny shouted toward the end of the half-time show, which ran to nearly 14 minutes. He then gave a roll call of the countries of North, South and Central America, including Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, the US and Canada.
A colourful parade of flags from those nations marched through the sugar plantation fields that functioned as the energetic show’s centerpiece. You can read the Guardian’s five-star review of the performance here.
Source link