Senate minority leader rejects Trump’s ultimatum over strict voter ID law amid DHS shutdown – US politics live | US news
Chuck Schumer rejects Trump’s ‘Save America Act’ ultimatum amid DHS shutdown
Chris Stein
An indignant Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer swatted aside Donald Trump’s insistence that Democrats support the Save America Act before they can reach a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump made his ultimatum late Sunday as his administration geared up to send agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to airports where lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints are stretching for hours.
But Democrats are not backing down from their demands for new guardrails on immigration enforcement, while saying they would support passage of standalone legislation to fund TSA and other components of the DHS that are not involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“Donald Trump is now saying we’ll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do, what a callous thing to do. He doesn’t give a damn about the American people,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Save America act would impose a host of new ID requirements to both register to votes and cast ballots. It’s currently before the Senate after passing the House nearly on party lines, but has no pathway to clearing the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold because of Democratic opposition.
“He cares about his own election, he thinks the Save Act, which isn’t going to pass, will change how the election comes out, and he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages,” Schumer said. “How can our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle go along with this? It stinks on its face. You don’t need any deeper explanation.”
Key events
NBC News is reporting that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have launched an investigation into Corey Lewandowski, a top aide to outgoing DHS secretary Kristi Noem.
The probe follows allegations that Lewandowski sought personal payments from government contractors in exchange for favorable contract decisions.
Democrats sent a letter to the private prison company GEO Group on Monday, according to the report, requesting it disclose details of meetings and conversations with Lewandowski dating back to 2024.
Geo Group, the largest owner of detention centers in the US, was the subject of a Guardian investigation last year, revealing an array of alleged due process violations, medical issues, and abuse.
According to the NBC News investigation, GEO Group and several other companies in government contracting have complained to Trump administration officials that Lewandowski directly or indirectly stood to personally profit from the DHS contracting process.
Chuck Schumer rejects Trump’s ‘Save America Act’ ultimatum amid DHS shutdown
Chris Stein
An indignant Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer swatted aside Donald Trump’s insistence that Democrats support the Save America Act before they can reach a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump made his ultimatum late Sunday as his administration geared up to send agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to airports where lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints are stretching for hours.
But Democrats are not backing down from their demands for new guardrails on immigration enforcement, while saying they would support passage of standalone legislation to fund TSA and other components of the DHS that are not involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“Donald Trump is now saying we’ll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do, what a callous thing to do. He doesn’t give a damn about the American people,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Save America act would impose a host of new ID requirements to both register to votes and cast ballots. It’s currently before the Senate after passing the House nearly on party lines, but has no pathway to clearing the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold because of Democratic opposition.
“He cares about his own election, he thinks the Save Act, which isn’t going to pass, will change how the election comes out, and he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages,” Schumer said. “How can our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle go along with this? It stinks on its face. You don’t need any deeper explanation.”
The department of education launched two more probes against Harvard University amid allegations that the institution “continues to discriminate against students on the basis of race, color, and national origin.”
The move is the latest step in the Trump administration’s crackdown against top US educational institutions, and it comes just days after officials filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging Harvard violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli people in the aftermath of the war in Gaza.
“Harvard University should know better,” reads a Monday statement by secretary of education, Linda McMahon. “No one – not even Harvard – is above the law. If Harvard continues to stonewall as we try to verify its basic compliance with antidiscrimination statutes, we will vigorously hold them to account to ensure students’ rights are protected.”
The probes will look into whether Harvard uses race-based preferences in admissions after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action in higher education and into allegations of antisemitism on the Ivy League’s campus, according to the statement by the department.
Summary of the day so far
It is 4pm in Washington DC – here are the key moments of the day so far:
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Donald Trump has urged Republicans in Congress not to make any deals with Democrats unless they agree to pass his strict voter identification law known as the Save America Act as part of any agreement for funding the Department of Homeland Security. Speaking in Memphis, he told Republicans even Easter was not a reason to leave Washington before the act is passed.
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The president claimed Iran “wants to settle” and that there was a “very good chance of a deal”. Trump said Tehran had “one more opportunity to end its threats” towards the United States and its allies and claimed “really good discussions” had been ongoing since Sunday night. Iran has rejected Trump’s claims as “fake news”.
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As ICE agents began deploying to US airports to help with security amid an ongoing DHS shutdown that has caused long lines, Trump claimed the idea of sending ICE was his alone, comparing it to the invention of the paperclip. He told reporters: “It was so simple, and everybody that looked at it said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
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The president also threatened on Monday to deploy national guard troops to US airports if the congressional funding freeze of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continued.
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Trump commented on the LaGuardia crash that killed the pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express jet and injured several other people. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in Florida, the US president called the deadly crash “terrible”, adding: “They made a mistake. It’s a dangerous business. That’s terrible.” It was unclear who he was referring to exactly.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former senior adviser and longtime ally, has suggested the president’s deployment of ICE to US airports could be part of a “test run” to “perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterms”.
Bannon – who has no formal power, but is an influential figure on the far right – made the comments on his War Room podcast, adding: “They’re trained to, wait for it, check IDs. That’s why it’s perfect training for the fall of 2026.”
He went on to say: “ICE is going to be there in the fall of ‘26, just like they’re in airports today.”
This is not the first time Bannon has called for immigration agents at the polls in November. After Trump suggested in February that the federal government “should take over the voting” and federalize elections, which are run by local and state jurisdictions, as part of his ongoing false claims that Democrats have stolen elections, Bannon enthusiastically supported the call, telling his listeners, “damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November”.
Elections officials nationwide have grown more concerned about potential interference from the Trump administration in this year’s midterms.
One of those fears is that immigration agents will be near polling places or have a heavy footprint in Democratic areas on election day – risking that voters won’t cast their ballot out of fear of reprisals.
Immigration agents, in particular, have caused people – including US citizens and otherwise legal residents – to stay home for fear of detention or racial profiling.
A video heavily viewed on social media showing a struggle between a woman and two federal immigration agents at San Francsiso international airport appears not to have been the result of Donald Trump’s deployment of ICE agents into the nation’s airports.
The footage showed the woman crying loudly while the two agents appear to try to handcuff or restrain her as she is on the ground. A second woman, unseen in the video, can be heard repeatedly asking one of the agents to show his identification badge.
But according to statements issued by San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, and other city officials, the woman was not arrested at the airport. Instead, the struggle took place as the agents were transporting the woman and a child on an outbound flight, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
It took place just hours after the announcement of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to airports to help ease delays caused by the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has affected the transportation safety administration – the body that oversees airport safety.
Doug Yakel, an airport spokesperson, said: “We believe this is an isolated incident and have no reason to suspect broader enforcement action at SFO.”
Trump visits Graceland, home of Elvis Presley
Donald Trump’s well-documented love of popular culture and music of the late 20th century was given fresh expression on Monday with a trip to Graceland, home of Elvis Presley.
“I’m going to see Graceland after this, I think. Is that right?” Trump said during a meeting of the Memphis Safe Task Force. “I love Elvis.”
Agency pictures later showed the president inside the late singer’s former home – which was opened to the public as a museum in 1982, five years after his death.
Trump frequently plays some of Elvis’s best-known songs at his campaign rallies. The decision to make the pilgrimage may be seen as a frivolous indulgence by some, given the backdrop of the war and soaring global oil prices it has triggered.
The president has been known to compare himself to Presley in the past, even suggesting they share a physical resemblance. “For so many years people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place,” Trump wrote on a social media post in 2024 that composite pictures showing one half of his face blended with Presley’s. “What do you think?”
Trump is not the first Republican president to have a public association with Presley. Richard Nixon memorably hosted the singer at the White House in 1970, an encounter that has been the subject of several books and dramatized films.
Graceland has on occasion ranked as the second most-visited home in the US after the White House.
LaGuardia airport was due to reopen a single runway today at 2pm eastern time, according to a Federal Aviation Authority announcement.
The reopening was scheduled in response to demands from the authorities for the airport to resume operations after the fatal collision between an Air Canada plane and an airport vehicle on the runway. Kathryn Garcia, the Port Authority’s executive director, had warned that reopening the airport could take longer.
The FAA did not specify when the other runways might open.
Rachel Leingang
The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.
The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fourteen states, Washington DC and three US territories have similar laws that allow for late-arriving ballots to be counted. Based on the justices’ questions, it is clear the case isn’t focused narrowly on Mississippi’s grace period, but on other states’ rules, which in some cases allow for a longer grace period and don’t require postmarks.
Mississippi, a red state, is defending its ability to set its own procedures for elections against the challenge from the Republican party, which argues that the grace period violates federal laws that set election day for the first Tuesday of November.
Rachel’s full report can be read here.
Trump tells Republicans not to deal with Democrats until voting law passed
Donald Trump urged Republicans in Congress to hold the line and not make any deals with Democrats unless they agree to pass his voter identification law known as the Save America Act as part of any agreement for funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaking in Memphis at a roundtable on fighting violent crime, he told the GOP that even Easter wasn’t reason enough to leave Washington before the act is passed.
So I’m tying homeland security into voter identification with picture and proof of citizenship in order to vote.
And those two items are the most important thing having to do with homeland security, so it should be part of the homeland security bill.
And I’m requesting that Republican senators do that immediately. You don’t have to do a fast vote. Don’t worry about Easter or going home, in fact, make this one for Jesus, okay? That would be a damn good thing.
Trump says Iran talks have been very good and Tehran wants to settle
Speaking in Memphis just now, Donald Trump has claimed that Tehran “wants to settle” and that there’s a “very good chance of a deal” with Iran.
“We’ve eliminated everything there is to eliminate in Iran, including leaders,” he said.
Tehran has “one more opportunity to end its threats” towards the United States and its allies, he said, adding:
We are now having really good discussions. They started last night, a little bit, the night before that. I think they’re very good. They want peace. They’ve agreed they won’t have a nuclear weapon. But we’ll see. We have to get it done.
As Trump repeats his message that all of Iran’s leaders are “gone”, it’s worth noting that, as my colleagues over on our dedicated Middle East crisis live blog reported earlier, he has also said today that the US is talking to a “top person” within the Iranian regime to try to end the war, but not the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since being named supreme leader two weeks ago, after an Israeli airstrike killed his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, fuelling speculation about his health. Trump had made clear before his selection that he considered Mojtaba an “unacceptable” choice, and has speculated about the extent of his injuries and ability to lead Iran.
Further, Trump told reporters earlier that there have been talks between the US and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement” and said both wanted “to make a deal”.
He claimed the US and Iran are discussing 15 points to end the war, with Tehran giving up nuclear weapons as points “number one, two and three”. The US president also said he would postpone American attacks on Iranian power plants by five days after having “productive conversations” with Tehran.
He suggested that the US could go in to recover nuclear material from Iran if a deal was made.
The US president also said that you could consider that Iran was already undergoing a regime change because the US-Israeli attacks targeted and killed a large number of top Iranian leaders.
If there was no deal, he said, “we will just keep bombing our little hearts out.”
Iran’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, denies that any talks with the US have taken place during the past 24 days.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is to visit the scene of last night’s LaGuardia airport accident along with Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary.
“I’m headed to @LGAairport to join @SecDuffy in the wake of last night’s collision. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this tragedy, their families and loved ones. We’ll continue to support @NTSB as they lead the investigation,” he wrote in a social media post.
Donald Trump says it was his idea to deply ICE in airports and compares it to invention of paperclip
Donald Trump has claimed personal credit for deploying ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents) to airports, comparing it to the invention of the paperclip.
“That was mine,” he told reporters in reference to the ICE deployment in an impromptu news conference on the tarmac of Palm Beach international airport in Florida.
Embarking on an apparently unrelated digression, he added: “That was like the paperclip. You know the story the paperclip, 182 years ago, a man discovered the paperclip. It was so simple, and everybody that looked at to say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
In fact, the paperclip has been credited to several different individuals and Trump’s dating of it as 182 years old seems questionable.
The first patent for a bent wire paperclip was awarded in the US to Samuel B Fay in 1867, according to the Early Office Museum. Another claim has been traced to Herbert Spencer, an Englishman who registered his binding pin 1846. It is said to look more like a cotter pin than a modern paperclip.
Credit is more commonly given to Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor who was granted patents in the US and Germany in 1901.
On ICE, Trump was unambiguous: “ICE was my idea. I called first person I called was Tom Homan [the Trump administration’s border czar]. I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘I think it’s great.’”
He said he had requested that ICE agents at airports operate without the masks that have been a controversial hallmark of the agency’s detention operation.
“Then I saw today, there was some masks on. I didn’t think the masks were appropriate. I put out a statement, and I asked them, would it be possible to take off the mask, because they should wear a mask when they’re dealing with the murderers and the thugs.”
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