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House moves ahead with vote to end partial shutdown, clearing procedural hurdle
The House cleared a procedural hurdle for a five-bill funding package and stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security to avert an ongoing partial government shutdown. It will now head to the House floor for a debate and a final vote.
Republicans can only afford for one member of their party to defect, or they will need help from Democrats to pass the bills. Thomas Massie, a GOP congressman from Kentucky, voted against the legislation earlier and is expected to hold out again.
Key events
Man accused of attacking Ilhan Omar appears in federal court
The man accused of spraying congresswoman Ilhan Omar with an unidentified substance at a Minneapolis town hall last week is appearing before a federal judge today.
The justice department charged Anthony James Kazmierczak, 55, on a single count of “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated and interfered” with Omar – a crime that carries up to a year in prison.
A magistrate judge today denied Kazmierczak’s request for release while he awaits trial.
In a criminal complaint and attached affidavit, signed by an FBI special agent, a forensic team determined that the substance sprayed at Omar was a mixture of “water and apple cider vinegar”. Court documents state that Kazmierczak rushed the lectern after Omar called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished “for good” and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, to resign. “She [Noem] is not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart,” Kazmierczak said after he sprayed the lawmaker, according to the affadavit.
House moves ahead with vote to end partial shutdown, clearing procedural hurdle
The House cleared a procedural hurdle for a five-bill funding package and stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security to avert an ongoing partial government shutdown. It will now head to the House floor for a debate and a final vote.
Republicans can only afford for one member of their party to defect, or they will need help from Democrats to pass the bills. Thomas Massie, a GOP congressman from Kentucky, voted against the legislation earlier and is expected to hold out again.
US shoots down Iranian drone approaching aircraft carrier, official says
The US military has shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea in an incident first reported by Reuters.
The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying toward the carrier “with unclear intent” and was shot down by an F-35 US fighter jet, the US military said.
“An F-35C fighter jet from Abraham Lincoln shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board,” said navy captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson at the US military’s Central Command.
No American service members were harmed during the incident and no US equipment was damaged, he added.
The incident came as diplomats sought to arrange nuclear talks between Iran and the United States, and Donald Trump warned that with US warships heading toward Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
The Lincoln carrier strike group is the most visible part of a US military buildup in the region following a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest domestic unrest in Iran since its 1979 revolution.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking,” while Tehran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, said arrangements for negotiations were under way.
US Central Command said that in another incident today, hours later in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed a US-flagged, US-crewed merchant vessel.
“Two IRGC boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached M/V Stena Imperative at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker,” Hawkins said.
With the key procedural vote on the funding package to end the partial government shutdown under way, GOP leaders are in a scurry to win over enough of their members on the House floor.
We’ve already had two “no” votes from Thomas Massie of Kentucky and John Rose of Tennessee.
With the full Democratic caucus currently voting against the package, speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose one GOP vote. So, to get the near-unanimous support that he needs from his Republican conference to proceed to a final vote, he would need one lawmaker to change their vote before the vote on the rule closes.
Tulsi Gabbard running solo 2020 election inquiry separate from FBI investigation
Hugo Lowell
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, the Guardian has learned, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week.
Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid.
But Gabbard, whose role ordinarily focuses on overseeing the intelligence agencies, has played only a minimal role in the criminal investigation, according to three administration officials. “She’s doing her own thing,” one of the officials said.
The parallel investigations into the 2020 election underscore the extent to which it has returned as a priority to the president. And Gabbard being sent to the raid showed the interest on voting machine manipulation claims that Trump has cited as evidence the election was stolen.
The review led by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), authorized on the basis that it is assessing election integrity, has been focused for months on potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference.
As part of that effort, Gabbard has been briefing Trump and senior White House advisers every few weeks. Officials said Trump directed her to travel to Fulton county, Georgia, so she could observe the FBI executing a search warrant on Wednesday.
The raid itself was overseen by Andrew Bailey, the deputy FBI director, who was also sent by Trump to Georgia. A copy of the search warrant cited possible violations of federal laws governing the preservation of election records and the procurement of false ballots or voter registrations.
The warrant authorized agents to seize sweeping amounts of voter data from Fulton county, including all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from that year.
The target of the criminal investigation was not immediately clear. Spokespeople for the justice department and the FBI did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the investigation or Gabbard’s role.
Read Hugo’s full report here:
Democratic lawmakers ask DHS watchdog to ‘expedite’ investigation into use of force in immigration crackdown
More than 40 Democratic members of Congress have written a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general (IG), to expedite its investigation into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ use of force.
This comes after two US citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good – were fatally shot my federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, and protests continue to grip the Twin Cities.
The lawmakers write that agents are using “needlessly violent force against community members who are exercising their First Amendment rights and pose no threat”.
Last year, several Democratic lawmakers urged the IG to launch an investigation into the department’s practices and use of force. In January, the IG launched a new audit along the lines of the lawmakers’ request. However, the members of Congress note, these probes usually take more than a year to complete.
“Given the urgency of this situation – with communities facing severe, and sometimes fatal, harm from ICE’s tactics on American streets every day – we request that your office conduct this review expeditiously and share any preliminary findings with Congress and the public on an expedited basis,” they wrote.
Petro arrives at White House for meeting with Trump, without fanfare
The press pool notes that Colombian president, Gustav Petro, has arrived at the White House for his meeting with Donald Trump. There was no traditional military honor guard or ceremonial protocol, reporters at the White House note.
Just a note on the vote to end the partial government shutdown, and pass a five-bill package, as well as a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for two weeks while Democrats negotiate guardrails on federal immigration enforcement.
Right now, there is a procedural vote in the House. This will set the parameters of the debate on the legislation. A reminder that Trump called on “no changes” when urging Republican lawmakers to pass the bills, noting that a longer shutdown was out of the question.
Later today, the whole House will vote on the legislation. Republicans can only afford one defector, after the balance shifted to 218-214 on Monday when speaker Mike Johnson swore in Christian Menefee, the newly elected Democrat from Houston.
A quick reminder that last year, just months into his second administration, Trump signed an executive order to enact sweeping restrictions and conditions on voting rights throughout the country. Again, changes that constitution prevents the executive branch from carrying out.
Most notably, Trump signed an order that directs states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote. It’s in line with his claims that non-citizens are voting in droves, despite election officials repeatedly refuting these assertions. However, a federal judge blocked this effort last year, ruling that it was a “violation of the separation of powers”. Also part of Trump’s directive was an effort to block states accepting ballots after election day, despite the fact that many accept mail-in votes as long as they have been postmarked in time. The president has routinely derided mail-in ballots as fraudulent, despite having used the method to vote in the past.
My colleague, Andrew Gumbel, has been tracking Trump’s attack on elections and voting. Read more below:
Per my earlier post about Trump’s comments that Republicans should “nationalize” voting in certain places, it’s worth remembering that the president, and many members of his administration, have repeated the baseless claims that he won the 2020 election.
Even on Bongino’s podcast the president doubled down. “We have states so crooked, counting votes, that I won that show I didn’t win,” he said. “2020, I won that election by so much.”
Trump also teased more about the FBI’s operation in Georgia last week which saw the seizure of hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots from Fulton County. “You’re gonna see something in Georgia … the ballots, you will see some interesting things come out,” Trump said.
DHS gears up for supreme court appeal after judge blocks end of TPS for Haitians
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has vowed to challenge a federal judge’s ruling that blocks the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians in the US.
“Supreme Court, here we come,” said assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “This is lawless activism that we will be vindicated on.”
Judge Ana Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee, issued a halt on the expiration of the program for more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants who are living and working with authorization in the US.
“Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program,” McLaughlin added. “Yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench.”
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