Nearly 500 airport security staff quit as DHS shutdown drags on with no end in sight – US politics live

From 40m agoDHS shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight and delays at airportsHello and welcome to the US politics live blog.There was no breakthrough in talk to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday as the shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight.Democratic lawmakers demanded new restrictions on federal agents carrying out the president’s deportation crackdown. But Republicans rejected the proposal, offering instead to remove money for immigration enforcement from the homeland security spending bill.The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months.But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday that nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since what she called “the Democrat shutdown” began.“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.Meanwhile, Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”Read our full story here:In other developments: The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Wednesday that airports across the country are experiencing the “highest wait times in TSA history”, as the partial shutdown of the DHS enters its sixth week. At a House homeland security committee hearing, Ha Nguyen McNeill said her agency has been shut down for 50% of the fiscal year so far – a stretch that includes last year’s record-breaking 43‑day lapse in federal funding. She told lawmakers that by Friday, TSA employees will have missed $1bn in paychecks as a result of the closures. More here. The US has launched another strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the US Southern Command said. The command, which oversees combatant operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that it had conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”. More here. Progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters. The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. More here. The Trump administration’s federal housing director Bill Pulte is asking prosecutors to investigate New York attorney general Letitia James for insurance fraud, according to criminal referrals reported by MS Now and CBS News. The referrals to prosecutors in Florida and Illinois allege that James may have committed mortgage insurance fraud. The allegations center on applications made to Universal Property Insurance company, which is based in Florida, and Allstate in Illinois. More here. Key events13m agoTrump to hold first cabinet meeting since start of Iran war at 10am ET28m agoVenezuela's Maduro due back in US court in dispute over legal fees40m agoDHS shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight and delays at airportsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureAnna BettsAfter casting her vote for Donald Trump in 2024 in hopes that he would bring transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein case, Epstein survivor Jena Lisa Jones said in an interview this week that she now fears “we’re not going to get justice in all of this”.“I wanted my day in court,” said Jones, who has said she was abused by Epstein when she was 14, in an interview on the Shadow Sessions podcast that aired on Thursday morning. “I didn’t get that, and we were so close to it, it really got ripped from us, and then after [Epstein] passed, everything just went into a circus show.”Jones said she backed Trump in the 2024 election because of his promises to release the files related to Epstein – who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors – and his network.“Trump ran his whole freakin’ election on the release of these freakin’ files,” she said. “And it sparked it back all up again, gave us hope, gave me hope at least.“He runs his campaign on this, and he runs it really, really hard to the point that a lot of us voted for him,” she added.However, after the election, Jones said that she felt a shift.“As soon as he gets in, we started pushing for the release of the files, and now it’s a ‘Democratic hoax’,” she said, referring to remarks Trump made in the fall in which he dismissed some calls to the release additional Epstein files as a Democratic “hoax”.Trump to hold first cabinet meeting since start of Iran war at 10am ETDonald Trump will hold a cabinet meeting later today, his first since the US started its war with Iran.It is due to be held at 10am ET, with the president and defense secretary Pete Hegseth expected to give a rosy view of the US military campaign.Venezuela's Maduro due back in US court in dispute over legal feesOusted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro returns to a Manhattan court on Thursday where he will argue that drug trafficking charges against him should be thrown out more than two months after he and his wife were captured in a surprise US military raid in Caracas.Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been embroiled in a dispute over US sanctions that prevent the Venezuelan government from paying for the couple’s legal defense, Reuters reported.Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have each pleaded not guilty to charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and are jailed in Brooklyn pending trial.They have asked US district judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the charges, saying their inability to rely on Venezuelan public funds is interfering with their right to have a lawyer of their choosing under the sixth amendment of the US constitution.Their lawyers have said Maduro and Flores cannot afford to pay their defense fees on their own.Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, who represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said he wants to withdraw from the case if Hellerstein doesn’t dismiss the charges and the Venezuelan government cannot pay his fees.Maduro appears in US court to face narco-terrorism charges, January 5, 2026. Photograph: Jane Rosenberg/ReutersDHS shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight and delays at airportsHello and welcome to the US politics live blog.There was no breakthrough in talk to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday as the shutdown extends to almost six weeks with no end in sight.Democratic lawmakers demanded new restrictions on federal agents carrying out the president’s deportation crackdown. But Republicans rejected the proposal, offering instead to remove money for immigration enforcement from the homeland security spending bill.The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months.But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday that nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since what she called “the Democrat shutdown” began.“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.Meanwhile, Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”Read our full story here:In other developments: The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Wednesday that airports across the country are experiencing the “highest wait times in TSA history”, as the partial shutdown of the DHS enters its sixth week. At a House homeland security committee hearing, Ha Nguyen McNeill said her agency has been shut down for 50% of the fiscal year so far – a stretch that includes last year’s record-breaking 43‑day lapse in federal funding. She told lawmakers that by Friday, TSA employees will have missed $1bn in paychecks as a result of the closures. More here. The US has launched another strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the US Southern Command said. The command, which oversees combatant operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that it had conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”. More here. Progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters. The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. More here. The Trump administration’s federal housing director Bill Pulte is asking prosecutors to investigate New York attorney general Letitia James for insurance fraud, according to criminal referrals reported by MS Now and CBS News. The referrals to prosecutors in Florida and Illinois allege that James may have committed mortgage insurance fraud. The allegations center on applications made to Universal Property Insurance company, which is based in Florida, and Allstate in Illinois. More here.