DHS officials testify on effects of partial shutdown

Tensions flared behind closed doors today as defense and intelligence officials briefed some lawmakers about the war in Iran, with Republicans and Democrats expressing frustration about a lack of clarity and information about Trump’s strategy, according to four congressional officials who attended the briefing and a lawmaker who was briefed on it later.

Much of the frustration during the briefing for the House Armed Services Committee centered on the prospect of the United States’ sending ground troops into Iran, the officials and lawmaker said, including what the troops could be used for and whether the U.S. can adequately protect them once they were deployed.

“There was no plan, no strategy, no end game shared, and they didn’t give any answers. It’s unclear if there isn’t a plan or if there is a plan and they wouldn’t share it with members,” one of the congressional officials said.

The briefing took place as the war nears the one-month mark and the Trump administration is both engaging in a diplomatic effort to try to end it and sending more troops to the Middle East while Trump weighs whether to deploy American forces on the ground inside Iran.

Read the full story here.

First lady Melania Trump walked side by side with a sleek, black-and-white faceless figure today during an education summit she hosted at the White House. Despite its appearance, it wasn’t an otherworldly creature. It was a humanoid AI robot, known as Figure 03.

In videos from the summit, the robot can be seen mechanically strolling next to the first lady, even welcoming all in the room in several different languages and waving its hand.

“Figure 03, thank you for joining me,” the first lady said. “It’s fair to state you are my first American-made humanoid guest in the White House.”

Videos of the first lady walking beside the robot quickly went viral online and accumulated hundreds of thousands of views and comments, but little was said about who made the robot and what it’s used for.

Read the full story here.

Michael Flynn and the Justice Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, over his claims of political targeting in a 2017 case in which he initially pleaded guilty.

The parties notified a federal judge Wednesday in Florida that they had reached a settlement. The amount was not disclosed. Flynn had sued for $50 million in 2023, alleging malicious prosecution and abuse of process.

A judge previously tossed Flynn’s lawsuit in 2024. His attorneys filed an amended complaint last June, claiming the U.S. “improperly and politically targeted General Flynn because of his lawful association with the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.”

Read the full story here.

A Trump administration official made two criminal referrals today against New York Attorney General Letitia James months after the Justice Department failed for a third time in its efforts to prosecute the longtime Trump target.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in the referrals that James committed insurance fraud, saying she may have falsified information on separate homeowner’s insurance applications regarding occupancy at two homes in Norfolk, Virginia, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

One referral was made to U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones in the Southern District of Florida and the other to U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros in the Northern District of Illinois, as the insurance companies for the two respective applications, each for a different Norfolk property, are based in those jurisdictions.

Read the full story here.

A Venezuelan man sent to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT prison filed a $1.3 million lawsuit today against the Trump administration.

Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel was detained in Texas on March 13, 2025 — his birthday — removed from the U.S. and flown to CECOT with dozens of other immigrants on now-infamous flights.

Leon Rengel's relatives did not know where he was for weeks, and they told NBC News they got different answers from authorities when they tried to find him. NBC News confirmed he had been sent to CECOT and informed his brother who had been searching for him.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Leon Rengel, 28, alleged loss of liberty, physical injury, severe emotional stress and lasting psychological trauma as a result of his detention, removal and imprisonment in CECOT.

Read the full story here.

Trump tonight called on Republicans to pass a new crime bill, saying it should impose “penalties for dangerous repeat offenders” and crack “down on rogue judges.”

He criticized judges for handing down decisions that “hurt our country” and then slammed the Supreme Court for striking down his tariffs.

The court’s decision, Trump said, is “going to cost our country hundreds of billions, potentially, of refunds, giving them back to people that have been ripping off our country.”

Trump said using the word “war” to refer to Iran is “maybe not a good thing to do.”

“They don’t like the word ‘war’ because you’re supposed to get approval. So I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is,” Trump said.

Trump said the U.S. was having "tremendous success" in Iran.

Trump calls the Iran conflict a military operation

01:31

Trump said ICE agents have done a great job amid the partial DHS shutdown that has resulted in high callout numbers among TSA officers.

“They didn’t need any rehabilitation, but they did in terms of the fake news," Trump said of ICE. "And they’re doing such an unbelievable job at the airports.”

Trump added that he was willing to send in the National Guard to help if needed, blaming Democrats for the DHS funding lapse.

'Unbelievable job': Trump praises ICE at airports, says he's open to deploying National Guard

02:11

Trump criticized voting by mail-in ballots, calling it “a way of cheating.”

“I happen to be a fan of no mail-in ballots, even though I won Florida, which is mail-in ballots,” Trump said. “I hate mail-in ballots. I’ve won with mail-in ballots, but I hate mail-in ballots, because basically it’s a way of cheating.”

Trump voted by mail-in ballot this week for a Florida special election in which a Democrat flipped a Republican-held seat in a state district that includes his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump calls mail-in ballots a 'way of cheating' despite casting one himself

01:02

Trump has started his remarks to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, which is having its annual fundraising dinner at Union Station in Washington.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced legislation today that aims to pause the construction of new data centers.

Sanders warned of the dangers of AI regarding the economy and exposure to children, telling reporters, “There is literally an existential threat to the existence of the human race.”

"I don't think the Democratic Party leadership is taking this issue anywhere near as serious seriously as it should. We need to develop a sense of urgency here," he added.

Ocasio-Cortez said AI and data centers are hurting everyday people by driving up energy bills when Americans are already battling rising housing costs.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board, filed a motion today in her lawsuit against the Trump administration asking a federal judge to block the Kennedy Center’s name change.

“Can the Board of the Kennedy Center—in direct contradiction of the governing statutes—rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, 'no,'" Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky wrote in their motion for a partial summary judgment. “By renaming the Center—in violation of the law—Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees.”

The Senate again failed to advance the full-year, House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The 54-46 vote fell short of the 60 needed to advance the measure. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote in favor of advancing it.

Before the vote, Senate Democrats sent Republicans a counteroffer to fund DHS, which included policy changes to immigration enforcement operations. Republicans rejected the proposal, calling it “not even close to real.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats were “asking for things that have already been turned down, so it just seems like they’re going in circles.”

Bipartisan negotiators pressed forward today in the Capitol, seeking to find a deal between both parties to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., met with Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Don Davis, D-N.C., and Adam Gray, D-Calif., this morning about finding a path to end the shutdown.

"I think we’re all committed to opening the department, so I think we need to do whatever it takes to get there," she said, adding, “There’s deals on the table, so we look forward to hopefully finding a way to move forward." 

Gottheimer said that “we’ve got to work 24/7 on both sides, working together from the House and the Senate to get this across the finish line,” and that “we shouldn’t stop until we get there.”

City Manager Mike Carter kicked off 2026 with news he promised would bring jobs, money and prosperity to the 20,000 residents of this Tulsa suburb: Google was interested in building its newest AI data center on 827 acres of farmland just outside town.

Two weeks later, a group of local residents marched into City Hall with paperwork for a ballot measure to recall the entire City Council, including Mayor Jim Spoon. They had also filed a lawsuit.

Read the full story here.

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee announced plans today to craft a major Republican-only bill that would fund conservative priorities such as immigration enforcement, military spending during the Iran war and new election rules.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he will “expeditiously move” to write the budget “reconciliation” process for the measure, which would allow the Republican-led Senate to bypass the 60-vote filibuster rule and cut Democrats out of the action. It’s the same procedure they used to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.

Graham said the project has the support of Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.

The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”

Read the full story here.

Former special counsel Jack Smith’s team had evidence that Trump had classified documents, including materials relevant to business interests, after leaving office following his first term, according to a memo given to Congress by the Justice Department.

The memo, obtained by NBC News, provides a summary of what prosecutors were working on as of January 2023 related to investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“Trump had in his possession some highly sensitive documents — the type of documents that only presidents and officials with the most sensitive authority have,” the memo said. That included one document that was previously “accessible by only 6? people, including the president.”

Read the full story here.

Trump will visit Beijing on May 14 and 15 to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said today. His trip was originally set to take place next week but was delayed so he could focus on Iran.

She added that Xi will visit Trump in Washington "at a later date to be announced this year."

The House hearing on the impact of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown has adjourned after more than three hours of testimony.

Senior officials from TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency said their operational readiness has been severely affected by the shutdown, including the ability of TSA to screen passengers ahead of the surge in air travel expected during the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced on the Senate floor that “this morning, Democrats sent Republicans our counteroffer on legislation to reopen DHS, pay TSA workers, while at the same time, rein in ICE with common sense guardrails.”

“Our offer is a reasonable, good-faith proposal that contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about now for months,” he added. 

Coast Guard Vice Commandant Thomas Allan told lawmakers that "our defense industrial base is suffering right now."

Work is being stopped on ships in shipyards because the Coast Guard cannot pay bills.

"We are seeing crucial readiness that needs to be done in the repair of these ships," he said. "And the shipyard officers are not doing what our Coast Guard people are doing, working without a paycheck. They're asking us to leave those shipyards because we cannot pay the bills."

Allan said he feared the shutdown's impact could go beyond the short term.

"What we worry about is that's not only a near-term impact, but as we bid for these contracts with these companies in the future, they're not going to come to the Coast Guard, they'll go to the Navy, they'll go to the Marines, they'll go to the others receiving a budget."

Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., pressed McNeill about what ICE agents are doing at airports to alleviate the long lines at TSA given that officers have to be trained to perform their key functions.

"They’re helping us on several different functions, including queue management, helping us with exit lane staffing, divesting, giving passengers instructions on how to load up their bins and all of that, and then helping operate the travel document checker as well," McNeill said.

She said that they began training ICE agents to do some of this when they were sent to airports earlier this week.

"It’s gone extremely well, and our feedback from the passengers and our field leadership has been very positive," she said.

McIver responded, "I wish I could say the same thing for Newark Liberty Airport. That’s not the case there. Folks are really annoyed, you know, just seeing them standing around."

Much of the Homeland Security Committee hearing has consisted of Democrats and Republicans blaming each other for the DHS shutdown.

Republicans are pointing to the refusal of Democrats to back a funding bill to reopen the full department until immigration enforcement activities are reformed, and Democrats are pointing to Republicans rejecting attempts to fund individual DHS agencies like TSA.

Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., said at one point, "A lot of the American people seem to be following this massive gaslighting campaign that this is a Republican shutdown."

Minutes earlier, Rep. Tim Kennedy, D-N.Y., said Democrats want the witnesses' agencies funded, casting blame on Trump and Senate Republicans "who are doing his bidding."

Meanwhile, federal workers at agencies like TSA and FEMA are not being paid, and federal employee call-outs at airports are leading to hourslong wait times at security checkpoints.

A jury convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft for requesting the ballots of Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their consent.

Jurors in Racine County found Harry Wait guilty of two misdemeanor election fraud charges and one felony identity theft charge yesterday following a two-day trial. He was acquitted of a second count of identity theft.

Wait leads a group that makes false election claims, including that Wisconsin’s elections are riddled with fraud and that Trump won the 2020 election. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.

Wait admitted in 2022 that he requested Vos’ and Mason’s ballots to try to prove that the state’s voter registration system is vulnerable to fraud. Wait told The Associated Press at the time that he wasn’t surprised he was charged.

Read the full story here.

The House Oversight Committee has postponed its planned interview with Tova Noel, one of the prison guards on duty the night Jeffrey Epstein died.

The panel had earlier this month asked Noel, who's said she believes she's the last person to have seen Epstein alive, to come in tomorrow for a transcribed interview.

A spokesperson for the committee said the interview is not taking place this week, and the panel is in communication with her attorney about a future date.

The committee asked to speak to Noel after documents released by the Justice Department suggested she was googling him shortly before he was found dead in his cell back in 2019.

Noel and her partner that night, Michael Thomas, were supposed to be checking on Epstein, who was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges and had previously attempted suicide, every 30 minutes.

Both admitted to not making those checks.

Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., said that members of Congress should not be paid until federal workers are paid. He said he has told the Congressional Management Office to withhold his paycheck.

"Do we really want to end this shutdown or not?" Correa asked.

"We could start out by doing what I just did a few weeks ago, which is I wrote to the Congressional Management Office and said, 'Withhold my paycheck,'" he continued. "Don’t pay me until TSA workers are paid. Mr. Chairman, let’s start at the beginning. No pay for federal workers, no pay for us. Think so? Yes, no? Let’s do it."

TSA workers are not being paid as the shutdown continues. DHS has said that hundreds of workers have quit since the partial department shutdown began.

McNeill noted in her opening statement that the shutdown is causing problems in training transportation security officers in time for the FIFA World Cup this year.

Asked about that by Garbarino, McNeill said it takes these officers four to six months to be fully certified to operate a checkpoint.

"At this point, if we bring on any TSOs, you know, those will not be deployed in time by FIFA," McNeill said. "And so we are watching our attrition rates very closely to make sure that, you know, if we see any spikes, we'll have to pivot and assess how we are going to staff the FIFA locations adequately," McNeill said.

Acting TSA administrator says partial shutdown 'significantly undermines' security

04:28

The senior official performing the duties of the TSA administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, said in her opening statement that the DHS shutdown has led to the "highest wait times" at airports in the agency's history.

“We are being forced to consolidate lanes and may have to close smaller airports if we do not have enough officers,” she said. “It’s a fluid, challenging and unpredictable situation. We understand this is frustrating and disruptive.”

McNeill noted that this is the third shutdown at the department in the current fiscal year.

"Many in our workforce have missed bill payments, received eviction notices, had their cars repossessed and utilities shut off, lost their child care, defaulted on loans, damaged their credit line and drained their retirement savings," she said.

"Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood and plasma and taking on job second jobs to make ends meet, all while being expected to perform at high level when in uniform to protect the traveling public," she added.

Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., called Democratic lawmakers' actions regarding the Department of Homeland Security shutdown "reckless, dangerous and unacceptable" in his opening statement at a hearing with senior DHS officials.

Garbarino accused Democrats of choosing to shut down the department "and weaken our national security posture for their own political gain."

Democrats had rejected bids to fund the entire department, insisting on reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, Republicans have rejected Democrats' efforts to fund the Transportation Security Administration.

NBC News reported yesterday that Senate Republicans are hopeful about a potential path forward to reopen the department, which would involve funding most of DHS, except for certain ICE operations, which they would try to pass through a special budgetary process without needing Democratic support.

The House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the DHS shutdown has started. The witnesses are:

• Thomas Allan, vice commandant, U.S. Coast Guard
• Ha Nguyen McNeill, senior official performing the duties of the administrator, TSA
• Nicholas Andersen, acting director and deputy director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
• Gregg Phillips, associate administrator, Office of Response and Recovery, FEMA

A Cambodian man deported by the U.S. to the African kingdom of Eswatini under the Trump administration’s third-country program was released today to be repatriated after spending five months at a maximum-security prison with other deportees, his lawyer said.

Pheap Rom was deported to the southern African nation in October and held at the Matsapha Correctional Center. He was due to take a commercial flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, to start his journey to Cambodia, his U.S.-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told The Associated Press.

The U.S. has sent 19 migrants from other countries to Eswatini in three batches since July. Rom is the second to be repatriated after a Jamaican man was flown home in September.

Trump has taken a hard-line stance on immigration and the U.S. has deported around 300 migrants to countries they have no ties with under the third-country program, which lawyers have criticized as unlawful.

The family of Dennis Coyle thanked the Trump administration and members of Congress for their efforts to secure his release after being detained for more than a year in Afghanistan.

Coyle a 64-year-old academic, was detained in January 2025 on suspicion of violating laws, although Afghan officials never shared specific allegations publicly. He was released in Kabul yesterday on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, with the Taliban-run Foreign Ministry saying Afghanistan’s Supreme Court “considered his previous imprisonment sufficient.”

“While we begin the healing process with Dennis back with us, we remain mindful of the many families who are still waiting for their loved ones to return, including the families of Mahmoud Habibi and Paul Overby,” the family said in a statement. “It was our hope that Dennis, Mahmoud Habibi, and Paul Overby would be returned together to their families, and we cannot imagine the pain that our good fortune will bring them.”

“We recognize the immense privilege of our family’s reunion today, and pledge to keep praying and fighting for all Americans held to be swiftly released,” they added. 

A shrug, perhaps even a flash of dismay. But despite the public insults emanating from the White House, those close to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer say there is little chance he will hit back at Trump over the Iran war.

The embattled prime minister is still pursuing close coordination with Trump, even after the latest indignity hurled by the president toward London as the conflict threatens havoc on the already stale British economy.

This weekend, Trump reposted a sketch, portraying the British leader as a weakling terrified of his fearsome American counterpart, that aired on the inaugural episode of the new “Saturday Night Live UK”

The president shared the skit after weeks of insults and accusations leveled at Starmer for not joining the Iran war.

Read the full story here.

Around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 2019, two guards were making the breakfast rounds in a locked and isolated unit of the federal jail in lower Manhattan when one of them knocked on the metal door of Jeffrey Epstein’s cell.

Epstein did not stir. When Thomas entered the cell, which was unusually cluttered with extra blankets and linens, he discovered Epstein alone and unresponsive, hanging by a strip of orange cloth tied to the top of a bunk bed. Thomas yelled to the other guard, Tova Noel, to call for help, and tried to resuscitate Epstein, according to transcripts of their interviews with federal investigators.

“He kept saying, ‘Breathe, Epstein, breathe,’” Noel, who was the last person to see the convicted sex offender alive the night before, told investigators. Thomas “was like, ‘We’re going to be in so much trouble.’”

The events that unfolded at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center, and the cascade of staff failures that precipitated Epstein’s suicide, are documented in interview transcripts and other investigatory files, videos and photos that the Justice Department recently made public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Epstein, a wealthy New York financier who cultivated influence with politicians, royalty, academics and other powerful elites, was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges related to the sexual abuse of girls as young as 14.

Read the full story here.

Senior Department of Homeland Security officials will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee this morning about the effect the lapse in funding for the department has had on its operations.

Ha Nguyen McNeill, a senior official performing as Transportation and Security Administration head; Nicholas Andersen, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Gregg Phillips, an associate administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and Adm. Thomas Allan, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, are scheduled to testify.

Airports around the nation have been gnarled in long lines, with travelers waiting hours to board flights, as the partial DHS shutdown has dragged on for more than a month. Trump has sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports to help manage the crowds and said he would consider sending the National Guard to assist as well.

Senate Republicans this week expressed optimism about a plan to fund all of the department except ICE, which they said they think will garner enough Democratic support to advance. They would then use a separate process to fund ICE and advance elements of the Save America Act, an election overhaul bill that Trump supports.

The Senate declined by a vote of 47-53 to bring a war powers resolution to the floor.

The resolution was “to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.”

The vote last night was largely along party lines, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democrat to vote against it. On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote yes.

This is the third time the Senate has failed to advance a resolution to rein in Trump’s military action against Iran, which critics say needs congressional approval. Democrats have said they will continue bringing war powers resolutions to the floor until Republicans agree to hold public hearings on Iran.

The Justice Department has requested House Intelligence Committee records related to former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent target of Trump, according to two sources familiar with the request.

The Intelligence Committee voted last night to send to the Justice Department several classified hearing transcripts related to Brennan, according to a source familiar with the panel’s actions. The vote came at the request of the Justice Department, the two sources said.

A spokesperson for Republicans on the committee said in a statement that the panel “voted to report out classified hearing transcripts at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for an ongoing investigation related to the 2017” report by GOP members of the committee, “which was declassified and released last year, and other topics related to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”

Read the full story here.

An accountant and an attorney for Jeffrey Epstein told the House Oversight Committee that government investigators never interviewed them about the late sex offender and the work they did for him, according to videos of their depositions released yesterday.

The panel questioned Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant, and Darren Indyke, Epstein’s lawyer, behind closed doors this month as part of its investigation into Epstein. Both maintained they did not witness any wrongdoing, and authorities have accused neither of misdeeds.

Kahn’s and Indyke’s testimony that federal investigators never interviewed them raises questions about the depth of the Justice Department’s review of Epstein, which the Justice Department and the FBI called “exhaustive” in an unsigned joint memo in July announcing that the government would not disclose additional materials on the disgraced financier.

Read the full story here.

Democrat Emily Gregory yesterday won a special election for the Florida state House district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, flipping the seat from Republican control, The Associated Press projects.

Gregory beat Republican Jon Maples, whom Trump endorsed, in the race for a seat that has been vacant since August, when Mike Caruso resigned from the Legislature and was appointed Palm Beach County clerk.

Democrats have performed well in special elections during Trump’s second term, with the party pointing to those results as a sign of strength ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Florida’s 87th District is the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat Democrats have flipped around the country since Trump took office again last year. Republicans have not flipped any Democratic state legislative seats during that time.

Trump carried this Florida legislative district by about 11 percentage points in 2024, according to The Downballot, a left-leaning political site that tracks special elections.

Read the full story here.