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Airport security misses first paycheck as DHS shutdown nears a month
Employees at the Transport Security Administration (Tsa) are set to miss their first full paychecks today as the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nears a month.
On Thursday, the Senate failed again to pass a funding bill to reopen the department. For the fourth time, the upper chamber was unable to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation, as Democratic lawmakers demand stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement.
Notably, only some agencies within the DHS, including the Tsa and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and the Coast Guard are affected by the shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is able to continue operating thanks to the billions-dollar injection from Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-policy bill, signed into law last year.
For their part, Democrats say they’re willing to separate a bill to keep impacted agencies, like the Tsa, funded, but have been met with resistance from Republicans who demand that Congress pass a full appropriations bill to keep the entire DHS funded through September.
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Department of Defense moves additional marines and warships to the Middle East – report
The Pentagon is moving additional marines and warships to the Middle East, three unnamed officials tell the Wall Street Journal.
As the Iranian regime continues to disrupt the flow of oil and cargo ships through the strait of Hormuz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has approved a request from US Central Command (Centcom) to send a unit “typically consisting of several warships and 5,000 Marines and sailors” to the region, according the officials cited.
According to the Journal, the Japan-based USS Tripoli and its attached Marines are now headed for the Middle East. Marines are already in the Middle East supporting the Iran operation, the officials said.
The extra force comes as the Trump administration routinely claims that the US military has significantly degraded Iranian capabilities to the point of victory. Earlier this week, the Donald Trump boasted “we won”, while on stage at an event in northern Kentucky. On Friday. The president also told Fox News earlier today thathe US plans on hitting Iran “very hard” over the next week.
At a Pentagon press conference today, Hegseth was bellicose. “[Iran’s] production lines, their military plants, their defence innovation centres; defeated. Iran’s leadership is in no better shape,” he told reporters. “Desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground, cowering – that’s what rats do.”
Lucy Campbell
Only 77 ships have so far crossed the strait of Hormuz in March as the Mideast war disrupts one of the world’s most vital shipping routes, a maritime data firm reported on Friday.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence said most of these vessels belonged to the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ – ships used to skirt Western sanctions and regulations, typically linked to Russia and Iran.
They are often ageing ships in poor condition, without proper insurance and with opaque ownership.
The 77 transits recorded so far this month compare with 1,229 passages between 1 and 11 March last year, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
Sam Levin
Reporting from Portland, Oregon
US immigration agents in Oregon used a custom-made app to identify neighborhoods and people to target, and had daily arrest quotas they sought to meet during operations, courtroom testimony has revealed.
Details about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ surveillance tools and arrest goals in the state have come to light in a federal lawsuit that compelled officers to answer questions under oath, offering a rare window into opaque, internal strategies that are generally kept secret and have been driving mass detentions and chaotic raids.
The class-action suit, filed by Innovation Law Lab, an immigrants’ rights non-profit, challenged ICE’s practice of detaining people without warrants or probable cause. Advocates said the tactic resulted in widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests, and a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a ruling broadly halting warrantless arrests in Oregon.
Testimony in a December hearing in the case provided a remarkable acknowledgment by an ICE officer of how daily target arrest numbers played out at the local level, and appeared to contradict the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials’ repeated claims that officers didn’t have quotas. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has publicly said the administration’s target was 3,000 daily arrests. The hearing also appeared to be the first time that ICE disclosed in court its use of an app called Elite for operations.
In the hearing, an ICE agent identified as JB testified that his team was given a verbal order to target eight arrests a day.
JB’s team was made up of nine to 12 officers and was tied to the DHS’s so-called “Operation Black Rose”, which launched in Portland last fall and yielded more than 1,200 arrests through mid-December, according to DHS. The target of eight daily arrests a team suggested a potential quota of about 50 daily arrests across Oregon, Innovation Law Lab estimated.
Read the full report:
Officials say that suspect in Michigan synagogue attack lost relatives in Israeli strike on Lebanon
The armed suspect who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an unnamed official told the Associated Press on Friday.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township outside Detroit on Thursday. There were no casualties or injuries to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center on site.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is leading the investigation, described the attack as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
Ghazali came to the US in 2011 on a family-related visa as the spouse of a US citizen and was granted US citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
A local official in Mashgharah, in central Lebanon, told the Associated Press on Friday that Ghazali’s two brothers and a niece and nephew were killed at their home in the 5 March airstrike just after sunset as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
At a press conference on Froday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said she would not comment on whether she believed the attack was in response to the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, that has also resulted in mass casualties and displacement in Lebanon as Israel attempts to strikes Hezbollah targets.
“Putting my theories into the press is not going to help an investigation, so I’m going to refrain from that,” Whitmer told reporters.
The governor did call the Thursday attack antisemitic. “It was hate, plain and simple,” she added. “We must lower the rhetoric in the state and in this country, especially at this moment where we’ve seen such a rise in antisemitism and more attacks on the Jewish community. We must keep each other close. This community is on the edge.”
It’s worth noting that earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that “more than 300 employees” have left the Transportation Security Administration (Tsa) amid the ongoing shutdown affecting the agency.
Donald Trump has vowed that he will not sign any other legislation until Republicans’ massive – restrictive – voting bill, the Save America act, is passed. The bill would upend voting for all Americans in the middle of a federal midterm election year and create costly, chaotic changes for elections workers.
My colleague Rachel Leingang has this explainer on what the legislation includes and whether it has a chance of becoming law:
House oversight committee seeks to depose prison guard on duty at time of Epstein’s death
As part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the House oversight committee announced today it is seeking testimony from a prison guard who was on duty the night the disgraced financier died.
In a letter shared on X, the committee’s Republican chair James Comer called Tova Noel for a deposition on 26 March. “Due to public reporting, documents released by the Department of Justice, and documents obtained by the Committee, the Committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation,” the letter to Noel states.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide several weeks later in a Manhattan jail. Noel and another guard who was on duty were allegedly sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring him that night. They have been accused of lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on him before he was found in his cell. Noel also allegedly Googled Epstein minutes before his body was found.
The deposition is part of the oversight committee’s sweeping investigation into Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and potential co-conspirators in their sex trafficking ring, as well as the circumstances of his death.
Hegseth claims Iran’s supreme leader is ‘wounded and likely disfigured’
Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “wounded and likely disfigured”, Pete Hegseth claimed today, questioning Khamenei’s ability to govern after nearly two weeks of US-Israeli attacks on Iran. At present, there is no proof for the US defense secretary’s claim.
No images have been released of Khamenei since an Israeli strike at the start of the war that killed much of his family, including his father and wife, on 28 February. He was hurt in that attack, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus confirmed on Wednesday, and there has been much speculation about the full extent of his injuries and speed of his recovery.
The first comments in his name were read out on state TV rather than delivered live or on video. In the statement, he vowed to keep the strait of Hormuz closed and called on neighboring countries to close US bases on their territory or risk Tehran targeting them.
Hegseth told a briefing this morning:
We know the new so-called not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.
Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father – dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.
Hegseth said that the United States would show no mercy in the war. “We will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemy,” he said.
You can follow all the latest developments from the Middle East over on our dedicated live blog here:
Airport security misses first paycheck as DHS shutdown nears a month
Employees at the Transport Security Administration (Tsa) are set to miss their first full paychecks today as the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nears a month.
On Thursday, the Senate failed again to pass a funding bill to reopen the department. For the fourth time, the upper chamber was unable to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation, as Democratic lawmakers demand stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement.
Notably, only some agencies within the DHS, including the Tsa and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and the Coast Guard are affected by the shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is able to continue operating thanks to the billions-dollar injection from Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-policy bill, signed into law last year.
For their part, Democrats say they’re willing to separate a bill to keep impacted agencies, like the Tsa, funded, but have been met with resistance from Republicans who demand that Congress pass a full appropriations bill to keep the entire DHS funded through September.
Cuban officials have held talks with the US government to seek solutions to the blockade imposed on the Caribbean nation, Miguel Díaz-Canel has said in a video broadcast on national television.
“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, said in the video, which aired on Friday, shortly before he was scheduled to address Cuban media in a rare appearance that comes amid a severe economic crisis and as the Communist government has come under increasing pressure from Donald Trump.
Díaz-Canel said that the Cuban negotiators had participated “on the basis of equality and respect for the political systems of both states, and for the sovereignty and self-determination” of the Cuban government. He added that no petroleum shipments have arrived on the island in the past three months, which he blamed on a US energy blockade.
Cuba’s western region was hit by a massive blackout last week, leaving millions without power.
Trump has said repeatedly that the United States was already in high-level talks with Cuban representatives. Until now, the Cuban government had denied that any official encounters are underway but had not explicitly denied media reports of back-channel discussions with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of Raul Castro, who is 94 and still wields great influence.
In recent weeks Trump has made a series of statements, saying Cuba was on the verge of collapse or eager to make a deal with the United States. On Monday he said Cuba may be subject to a “friendly takeover”, then added: “It may not be a friendly takeover.”
During Pete Hegseth’s Penatgon press conference today, the defense secretary noted that the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait of Hormuz right now is “Iran shooting at shipping”. He appeared to suggest that direct attacks were the biggest threat to the vessels in the waterway. “It is open for transit should Iran not do that,” he said.
Earlier this week, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported that US intelligence sees direct attacks by Iran as the greatest threat to oil tankers going through the strait of Hormuz. While the Trump administration has been spooked by possible preparations by Iran to mine the strait, the more potent threat remains the risk of a direct attack by Iran at scale.
As a result, even if US navy destroyers escorted the tankers, they might not be able to intercept every incoming missile, and even in the event the Trump administration provides risk insurance directly to operators, ships’ crews would still need to be convinced to pilot the vessels through the strait.
All six crew members confirmed dead on military plane crash in Iraq
All six crew members aboard a US military refueling aircraft that went down in western Iraq are now confirmed dead, according to a statement from US Central Command (Centcom). The aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace on Thursday. This is an update, as earlier Centcom said that only four members of the crew had died.
The KC-135 plane crashed in western Iraq, in an incident the military said involved another aircraft but was not the result of hostile or friendly fire.
Centcom added that the circumstances of the incident are under investigation, and the identities of the service members killed are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.
Tom Perkins
Reporting from Detroit
On a rainy Detroit afternoon at a gas station off Interstate 75, Victor Rodriguez watched the pump tally tick up as he filled up his F-250 diesel pickup truck for $4.19 per gallon. It totaled $110. “Ridiculous,” he said.
The US-Israel war on Iran has crippled major portions of the oil supply chain, sending gas prices soaring as the conflict enters its third week. Rodriguez said he supports “getting rid of this thug”, referring to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by the US, but the cost is too high.
Rodriguez said he jumped off the freeway while returning from an airport drop-off because he saw diesel advertised for $4.19 per gallon. The high price is a deal compared with the $5.00 per gallon he saw in Romeo, an exurb where he lives about a half-hour drive north.
“Nothing is worth higher gas prices, obviously,” Rodriguez said.
Across Michigan, gas prices have spiked by 60 cents per gallon over the most recent week analyzed by insurer AAA. Most have pushed even higher in recent days, topping $4.30 at one station near downtown Detroit, where prices are generally among the highest. Prices are up 27 cents across the US on average, according to AAA’s last figures.
Gas prices matter in Michigan – a critical swing state that Donald Trump narrowly won twice and lost once. His promise to lower prices across the economy helped propel him back to power here in 2024. So far he has dismissed the nation’s pump pain as temporary. “I don’t have any concern about it,” the president told Reuters. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline price go up a little bit. And they haven’t risen very much.”
Read the full dispatch:
Donald Trump is in Washington today.
He’ll sign executive orders and greet the National Finals Rodeo winners at the White House, but this will be closed to the press. If anything opens up we’ll let you know and bring you the latest lines.
Later the president will travel to Palm Beach, Florida, for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago club.
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