US Senate refuses to push through ICE funding amid row over Trump’s ballroom
A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.
It comes amid backlash from members of Trump’s own party against an attempt to latch funding for his ballroom project on to the immigration bill.
The plan prompted intense anxiety among congressional Republicans, who feared diverting taxpayer dollars toward Trump’s “East Wing modernization project” amid mounting cost of living concerns across the US would risk alienating voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Some Senate Republicans have also expressed concerns about a plan, announced on Monday, to create a secretive $1.776bn fund – which critics have argued is essentially a slush fund – to compensate Trump allies as part of an agreement in which the president and his sons dropped a $10bn long-shot lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service.
Key events
Stephen Miller suggests ‘innocent’ rioters who attacked Capitol police on January 6 are ‘owed’ more than just $1.776bn by US taxpayers
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, took three minutes of questions from reporters on Thursday.
He concluded by defending the $1.776bn in taxpayer funds the Trump administration set aside this week to compensate people who claim they were wrongly prosecuted by the federal government, apparently including the hundreds of violent rioters convicted of attacking police officers as they tried to get at lawmakers on January 6 2021 in a failed bid to keep Donald Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Miller was asked about the fact that there was significant pushback over the fund from lawmakers on Thursday, reportedly including 25 Republican senators who objcted to it during a nearly two-hour meeting on Thursday with Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer now serving as the acting attorney general.
“That’s a good closing question only because it allows me to say this, which is that the- we lived through four years of– more than four years, actually, but I’ll just say four years in this case, of unimaginable weaponization of the federal government against innocent people,” Miller said.
“We’ve had so many lives- it really goes back to, I would say, further, but so many lives destroyed, so many livelihoods ruined, so many people who were deprived of their fundamental rights and freedoms as American citizens. And this settlement is just a small measure of the justice that they are owed,” he continued.
Having delivered what seemed like his pre-scripted talking points, the influential adviser then immediately concluded the briefing, holding up his hands and saying “anyway, thank you all for your time”, and walking away before any follow-up questions could be asked.
Aura Bogado
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.
The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.
The DHS bulletin was issued by the department’s Nashville field office in February, about a week before the Washington Post profiled Palmer after a kindergarten teacher reported one of her student’s parents to Palmer’s supposed-tip page on spurious grounds, thinking she was communicating with the government.
The Bolo was then shared by the Illinois State Police to a distribution list of state and local law enforcement agencies. The alert on Palmer was obtained by the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Injustice Watch through a series of public records requests. It was not immediately clear how many other law enforcement departments around the US may also have shared the federal alert, as Injustice Watch was investigating matters in Illinois.
Even in Greenland, the shadow of Jeffrey Epstein looms over Trump’s ambitions
As our colleague Miranda Bryant reports, hundreds of Greenlanders protested against the opening of a new US consulate in the island’s capital, Nuuk, on Thursday.
The protesters waved Greenlandic flags, held up signs that read “USA ASU” (“USA stop it” in the local Inuit language) and shouted “go home”, one day after Donald Trump’s envoy, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, toured the capital trailed by a dogged protester who shouted at him: “Colonizer go home! You’re not welcome here! This is Indigenous land!”
Amid speculation that Trump has turned to foreign military adventures at least in part to change the subject from the uproar over his long friendship with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, photographs and video of the protest in Nuuk showed that Greenlanders were also keen to associate the US president with his friend of nearly two decades.
One pair of signs seen near the front of the march in video and photographs of the protest march featured a 1997 photograph of Trump smiling with his hand on Epstein’s shoulder as the two friends posed together at the future president’s Mar-a-Lago beach club.
As South Carolina proceeds forward in passing the new congressional map that would eliminate the state’s only majority-Black district, Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California spoke out in a video post on X.
“We must stand up to this modern day Dred Scott Court,” he said. The Dred Scott court refers to the US Supreme Court’s 1857 decision about Black Americans not being US citizens and hence not being able to sue in federal court, among other limitations to their rights.
“They have unleashed a process that will eliminate the only Black-majority district in the state of South Carolina. South Carolina has a black population of 25% but they would be left with not a single Black majority district or Black political representation in the House,” said Khanna.
Calling out the Supreme Court, Khanna said “We need term limits for these justices now,” adding that the Court should to be expanded from 9 justices to 13 justices.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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US Senate refuses to push through ICE funding amid row over Trump’s ballroom. A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
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The Democratic National Party belatedly released a copy of a report about why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, written by a Democratic strategist. The report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.
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Trump insists White House ballroom security costs would be a ‘very good expenditure’ despite GOP backlash. Asked about Republican backlash over plans to provide $1bn in security funds for his White House ballroom project, Trump drew distinctions between the ballroom and proposed security improvements.
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Trump postponed a signing ceremony for an executive order on artificial intelligence because he didn’t like some aspects of the text. He announced this just a few hours before the ceremony with top CEOs at the White House was due to take place.
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Trump says ‘it looks like I’ll be the one’ to intervene in Cuba after Castro indictment. Asked about the US aircraft carrier that arrived in the Caribbean yesterday and whether it was meant to intimidate the Cuban government, Trump said: “No, not at all.”
“Today the American people had a win in the US senate,” said Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen in a video post on X Thursday afternoon. “We stopped them from moving forward on a huge slush fund for ICE to provide billions of your taxpayer dollars for a lawless ICE operation.”
Van Hollen said that after the Democrats laid out their concerns with Trump’s $1.8 bn taxpayer funded slush fund, Republicans “pulled down votes & are going home.”
Maya Yang
Former head of Minnesota non-profit gets nearly 42-year prison sentence for fraud
A federal judge has sentenced the Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock to nearly 42 years in prison for orchestrating what prosecutors called the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the country.
Thursday’s sentencing follows a $250m plot that exploited federal child nutrition programs. The plot later became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, leading to violent demonstrations and the ICE killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Prosecutors had asked for a 50-year sentence, arguing Bock’s crimes – which included conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery – stole millions intended to feed children during the Covid-19 pandemic and caused “profound” damage that would reverberate far beyond the state.
“I understand I failed. I failed the public, my family, everyone,” Bock said in federal court.
“Feeding Our Future operated like a cash pipeline, open to anyone willing to submit fraudulent claims and pay kickbacks,” prosecutors said in a court filing. “The ripple effects of her actions are profound, immeasurable, and will have lasting consequences for both Minnesota and the nation.”
Bock was convicted last year of multiple counts involving conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery. She had long insisted she was innocent.
Robert Tait
The DNC autopsy report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.
It also takes an in-depth look at campaign spending and advertising, and highlights the need to involve new voters in campaign messaging rather than just pushing out messages.
Notably, the autopsy does not mention the role that Joe Biden’s age or the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza played in the wider Democratic defeat, despite widespread polling about the impact of those issues.
Misgivings about the quality and contents of the 192-page document are stated graphically at the beginning and at the top of each page in the form of a disclaimer marked in red, stating: “This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”
Sections thereafter are punctuated with multiple qualifiers questioning sourcing, data accuracy or a perceived lack of evidence.
One qualifier undermines the author’s version of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters bent on overturning the 2020 presidential election result, which he states led to the deaths of five people. “Claim contradicts public reporting”, reads an interposed remark. In fact, five people died within 36 hours of the attack. A further four police officers who responded to the insurrection died by suicide in the following seven months.
Jay Bhattacharya, the director of National Institutes of Health, testified in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee about Trump’s 2027 fiscal budget Thursday morning.
When Bhattacharya was asked about the Trump’s proposal to cut $6bn of dollars in funding for research at NIH, he said:
“Senator, the budget is obviously a major problem for this country. The NIH, my job is to make sure that my colleagues have the resources they need to fund the best biomedical research in this country. And I am really grateful to work with Congress and the administration to make sure that that’s possible.”
The budget hearing comes amid questions about the severity of the hantavirus. Bhattacharya, who is also the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said hantavirus “is largely contained”.
US Senate refuses to push through ICE funding amid row over Trump’s ballroom
A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.
It comes amid backlash from members of Trump’s own party against an attempt to latch funding for his ballroom project on to the immigration bill.
The plan prompted intense anxiety among congressional Republicans, who feared diverting taxpayer dollars toward Trump’s “East Wing modernization project” amid mounting cost of living concerns across the US would risk alienating voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Some Senate Republicans have also expressed concerns about a plan, announced on Monday, to create a secretive $1.776bn fund – which critics have argued is essentially a slush fund – to compensate Trump allies as part of an agreement in which the president and his sons dropped a $10bn long-shot lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service.
The DNC autopsy report is a disgrace, said RootsAction, a progressive grassroots advocacy group, in a statement Thursday.
The report focuses extensively on ad spending and fundraising, without providing enough attention to the Democratic policy positions and the context of the 2024 election, said the advocacy group.
“The word “affordability,” arguably the most important issue in the 2024 election, appears twice in the 129-page report,” said the statement. “The report makes no mention whatsoever of Gaza or Israel — neither word even appears in its text.”
The Democratic party is trying to distance itself from the report by poking holes into its legitimacy instead of taking responsibility after commissioning it, the statement said.
Republicans are also reacting to the report. Democrats didn’t need a report to tell them the obvious, said Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“Democrats keep stepping on the same rake and seem genuinely surprised when it smacks them in the face,” said Marinella. “Americans have made it pretty clear they’re tired of radical social experiments and out of touch priorities.”
On the Supreme Court’s decision about birthright citizenship that was expected today – but wasn’t announced – Trump claimed the US is the only country in the world to have it.
About 32 other countries, most of them in the Western Hemisphere, have birthright citizenship laws that are similar to the US, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Approximately 50 other countries have variations of birthright citizenship.
“This was not meant for Chinese billionaires to come in and have their kids here,” he said. “This was meant for the babies of slaves. You look at the dates, it was right after the Civil War, and you can tell.”
Trump said are misusing the birthright citizenship and “if allowed to stand, it will be a disaster.” The Supreme Court will probably rule against eliminating birthright citizenship, he said.
“Birthright citizen is done by no other country in the world,” Trump said. “We are a laughingstock.”
If birthright citizenship is overturned, hundreds of thousands of children born annually would be blocked from US citizenship.
Trump says ‘it looks like I’ll be the one’ to intervene in Cuba after Castro indictment
Asked about the US aircraft carrier that arrived in the Caribbean yesterday and whether it was meant to intimidate the Cuban government, Trump said: “No, not at all.”
“We’re going to help them along … because I want to help them,” he said, adding: “Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years. It looks like I’ll be the one that does it. We want to open it up to Cuban Americans where they can go back and help.”
Fears of potential US military strikes on Cuba are growing, following the issuing of a federal criminal indictment against former president Raúl Castro and five others yesterday, marking a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.
David Smith
I’ve just been in the Oval Office, wishing I’d worn dark glasses to dim the glare of all that gold. Donald Trump was ostensibly promoting of the reversal of Joe Biden’s regulations on fridges but sounded more enthusiastic about his White House ballroom, Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and triumphal arch, which just received approval from a fine arts commission.
I asked the US president why today’s AI executive order signing ceremony – which tech titans were expected to attend – has abruptly been called off. “Because I didn’t like certain aspects of it, I postponed it,” said Trump, sitting at the Resolute desk. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s gonna get in the way of that lead.”
He said AI is “causing tremendous good and it’s also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. Again, we have more people working right now than we’ve ever had. I really thought that could have been a blocker and I want to make sure that it’s not.”
Trump travelled to China last week with Elon Musk of Tesla, Tim Cook of Apple and other tech leaders. Did he discuss AI safeguards with Chinese leader Xi Jinping? “I did, I did, I discussed it and he acknowledges how well we’re doing,” the presidenty said. “It’s the two of us, the two countries are fighting for it. Other countries are way behind. Way, way behind.
“They’re fighting for it, they want it, everybody wants it but they’re way behind. But I didn’t want to do it – I postponed that meeting – it was a signing actually – because I didn’t like what I was seeing.”
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