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House and Senate Republicans agree to pass funding bill to end historic partial government shutdown<\/p>\n
House Republicans announced today that they will pass a bill, advanced by the Senate last week, to end the record-breaking partial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, which has lasted 47 days so far.<\/p>\n
Last week, GOP in the lower chamber rejected the funding measure<\/a> <\/a>to reopen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa). Notably, the bill withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Instead, House Republicans passed a continuing resoltion to keep DHS running through 22 May.<\/p>\n In a joint statement Wednesday, speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority leader John Thune said that congressional Republicans will not attempt to push the stopgap bill \u2013 which Democrats say has no chance of clearing the 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n Now, they will advance the legislation which hardline House Republicans previously rebuked. They will also seek to pass wider funding for the DHS, which will include funding for enforcement and removal operations, through reconciliation.<\/p>\n This maneuver, used to pass Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping tax policy bill last year, only requires a simple majority in the Senate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else \u2013 including their own power of the purse \u2013 which means open borders and protecting criminal illegal aliens,\u201d Johnson and Thune said. They noted that the future budget resolution will underwrite the DHS for three years, until Trump leaves office. Republican leadership said this will protect against \u201cfuture attempts by the Democrats to defund those agencies\u201d.<\/p>\n While Congress is on a scheduled recess at the moment, there are pro forma sessions on Thursday where lawmakers could take up and pass the funding bill that previously failed.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a015.43 EDT<\/p>\n I just spoke with Amanda Frost, a professor of immigration law at the University of Virginia, who was watching the arguments at the court today.<\/p>\n She said that her \u201cimmediate reaction\u201d is that the challengers, represented by Cecillia Wang, \u201cwill prevail\u201d.<\/p>\n She added:<\/p>\n double quotation markThe justices asked all the right questions of both sides, and the solicitor general did not have the answers that they would have needed to rule for him.<\/p>\n Frost also underscored how the justices didn\u2019t seem swayed by the administration\u2019s policy-based arguments about the significance of birth tourism. As I reported earlier, D John Sauer conceded that \u201cno one knows for sure\u201d how significant a problem this issue is. The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration thinktank, said that there are between 20,000 to 26,000 births<\/a> by women on tourist visas annually. This is less than one percent of all babies born in the US each year.<\/p>\n During today\u2019s arguments, chief justice John Roberts even suggested that concerns about birth tourism have \u201cno impact on the legal analysis\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a015.46 EDT<\/p>\n Governor Ron DeSantis<\/a> of Florida signed legislation on Wednesday to require documented proof of citizenship to register to vote and to begin a process that will eventually unenroll voters who have not provided citizenship documentation.<\/p>\n Florida is now the third state to pass proof-of-citizenship laws for voting this year, after South Dakota<\/a> and Utah\u2019s<\/a> governors each signed proof of citizenship bills into law in March.<\/p>\n Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference in Miami, Florida, 10 April 2025. Photograph: Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The changes come as Donald Trump\u2019s signature restrictive voting bill, the Save America Act, languishes in the US Senate with little chance of passage. The president is left weighing his options about how to move forward with its provisions, which include documented proof of citizenship requirements to register and strict photo ID requirements to vote.<\/p>\n The most likely path forward will be to continue to encourage conservative states to enact the same voting restrictions.<\/p>\n The Florida<\/a> law requires the Florida department of state to identify registered voters who may not be citizens and therefore ineligible, checking their registration against state and federal records to determine citizenship. A potentially ineligible voter will be contacted by the registrar and asked to provide documentation, and unenrolled if they do not do so.<\/p>\n The law also adds US passport cards to the list of the types of ID acceptable as voter ID, while removing retirement center IDs, public assistance IDs, neighborhood association IDs, and debit and credit cards as acceptable ID. The changes will take effect on 1 January 2027.<\/p>\n Read the full report here:<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Lawyer challenging Trump executive order is a birthright citizen<\/p>\n As we noted earlier, the lawyer for the challengers in today\u2019s case is Cecillia Wang, the national legal director of the ACLU. My colleague Ed Pilkington previously reported on how Wang\u2019s personal journey, as a birthright citizen herself, influenced her approach to this moment.<\/p>\n Wang\u2019s parents moved to the US from Taiwan in the late 1960s, beneficiaries of the civil rights era and the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act that finally ended racist quotas from Asia.<\/p>\n \u201cI really feel a personal moral obligation to be a civil rights lawyer. In a real sense, that\u2019s why I\u2019m here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Wang also has the benefit of experience with Trump\u2019s modus operandi given the ACLU\u2019s relentless stand against Trump\u2019s constitutional excesses during his first presidency.<\/p>\n A star litigator, she was on the frontlines of many of the organization\u2019s biggest victories. Overall, the ACLU filed almost 250 lawsuits<\/a> against the first Trump administration and succeeded in stalling or scuppering many of his most egregious acts, especially those relating to immigration.<\/p>\n Cecillia Wang speaks outside the US supreme court after justices heard oral arguments on whether president Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, 1 April 2026. Photograph: Tom Brenner\/AP<\/p>\n The organization helped put a stop to family separation<\/a> at the Mexican border, prevented a citizenship question from being inserted into the 2020 census and forced the contentious Muslim travel ban to be rewritten twice before the supreme court finally approved it. The ACLU also pushed back relentlessly on Trump\u2019s other policies, winning a major victory<\/a> in 2020 prohibiting employment discrimination against gay and transgender workers. After the supreme court abolished the constitutional right to abortion \u2013 a decision that came during Joe Biden\u2019s term but fulfilled a core Trump promise \u2013 the ACLU and its affiliates immediately filed lawsuits to protect reproductive rights in almost a dozen states.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a014.42 EDT<\/p>\n Away from the supreme court, another big story today is the expected launch of the Artemis II moon mission.<\/p>\n Four astronauts are preparing to lift off on a 685,000-mile journey as hundreds of thousands of spectators will watch on the ground \u2013 and millions will follow it live around the globe.<\/p>\n You can watch and follow all the latest updates in our Artemis II blog here:<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Here’s a recap of the oral arguments at the supreme court<\/p>\n Justices appeared skeptical of the Trump administration\u2019s argument to restrict birthright citizenship for hundreds of thousands of children born to undocumented immigrants of temporary foreign nationals. The solicitor general, D John Sauer, argued that since noncitizens who are in the country temporarily aren\u2019t \u201cdomiciled\u201d they aren\u2019t pledging \u201callegiance\u201d to the US, and that subsequently invalidates their children\u2019s claims to citizenship.<\/p>\n However, both liberal and conservative blocs on the bench probed Sauer about his position since the language of \u201cdomicile\u201d isn\u2019t part of the citizenship clause of the fourteenth amendment. Chief justice John Roberts at one point referred to part of the government\u2019s argument as \u201cvery quirky\u201d, while justice Elena Kagan said the administration\u2019s \u201crevisionist theory\u201d requires the court to change what \u201cpeople have thought the rule was for more than a century\u201d.<\/p>\n Sauer also argued that unrestricted birthright citizenship has \u201cspawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism\u201d and created \u201ca whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties\u201d to the US. When Roberts asked the solicitor general how significant a problem this is, Sauer conceded that \u201cno one knows for sure\u201d, but cited a number of media reports about estimates. Overall, justices didn\u2019t seem swayed by the administration\u2019s policy-based arguments about the significance of birth tourism, and Roberts even suggested that concerns have \u201cno impact on the legal analysis\u201d in the case.<\/p>\n Justices also grilled the lawyer for the challengers in today\u2019s case, Cecillia Wang, the national legal director of the ACLU, who said that Donald Trump\u2019s executive order violates the fourteenth amendment, and would render swaths of American laws \u201csenseless\u201d. Wang noted that in US v Wong Kim Ark, a landmark decision on birthright citizenship, the court ruled that the fourteenth amendment \u201cembodies the English common law rule\u201d and that virtually everyone born on US soil is \u201csubject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen\u201d.<\/p>\n Throughout their questions, Wang maintained that a foreign national\u2019s so-called \u201callegiance\u201d to another country should not affect their child\u2019s citizenship. \u201cThe government\u2019s rule, which really is looking at whether someone has a divided allegiance because they\u2019re a citizen of another country, would exclude the children of all foreign nationals,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n The government argued the executive order should only apply \u201cprospectively\u201d \u2013\u00a0to babies yet to be born. If the court rules that the executive order can stand, it could leave around 250,000 children a year without citizenship. It would also mean that 3.5 million people annually would have to provide \u201cacceptable evidence\u201d of their own status or citizenship. Legal experts also say that the order opens up questions that potentially unwind everyone\u2019s citizenship.<\/p>\n Trump attended the hearing on Wednesday, widely considered to be the first time a sitting president has attended arguments at the supreme court. He sat through Sauer\u2019s arguments before returning to the White House. In recent months, the president has slammed the highest court<\/a>, saying he was \u201cashamed\u201d of the justices who ruled against many of his sweeping tariffs.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a016.04 EDT<\/p>\n The solicitor general, D John Sauer, issued a very brief rebuttal in which he reiterated the government\u2019s argument that the ratification of the fourteenth amendment in 1868 was about overruling the \u201cgrave injustice\u201d of the Dred Scott decision<\/a> and making sure that \u201callegiance\u201d was granted the children of newly freed slaves.<\/p>\n However, Sauer said, there is a \u201cvery strong, impressive consensus\u201d in the years following that the children of \u201ctemporary sojourners\u201d are not covered by the citizenship clause.<\/p>\n The arguments have now concluded.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the administration\u2019s argument rests on a \u201cdifferent understanding of allegiance than what was in the English common law\u201d, which explains that \u201cyou can have allegiance to two different sovereigns at the same time\u201d.<\/p>\n Wang agrees with Jackson\u2019s interpretation, and notes that if you want to look at the foreign national parents of those children born in the US, they owe \u201ctemporary allegiance\u201d.<\/p>\n Jackson follows Wang\u2019s argument: \u201cSo the babies get the permanent allegiance piece of this, and the parents get the local allegiance piece of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a012.38 EDT<\/p>\n Joseph Gedeon<\/p>\n Beija McCarter, an eighth grade US History teacher, and Noah Goldstein, a New Yorker who was also at last month\u2019s trans rights rally, both arrived at Wednesday\u2019s supreme court demonstration with clear eyes and little optimism about what the justices inside might decide.<\/p>\n \u201cChecks and balances only works if there\u2019s balance, and we\u2019re not really having that,\u201d said McCarter, who was born in Brazil to American military parents and had to formally apply for her own citizenship, giving her a small window into a process that is far harder for most others. \u201cThe rhetoric is that immigrants are taking our jobs, but they\u2019re actually doing the jobs that Americans aren\u2019t hoping to do \u2013 we should be nicer to our neighbor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Goldstein was just as blunt about the court itself: \u201cAll nine of those justices in there know that birthright citizenship is codified in the fourteenth amendment, and I\u2019m not confident that they are going to speak to what they know to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can only hope they\u2019re going to take their jobs seriously,\u201d McCarter chimed in.<\/p>\n But for both of them, the point of showing up went beyond the verdict.<\/p>\n \u201cI always tell my students that they have a voice,\u201d McCarter said, \u201cand I can\u2019t preach it if I\u2019m not going to use it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n There are some so-called \u201cexceptions\u201d to the birthright citizenship rule for children born in the US. These are outlined in Wong Kim Ark.<\/p>\n Children born to foreign diplomats or ministers<\/p>\n Children born on foreign public ships in US waters<\/p>\n Children born to foreign enemies within the US during a hostile occupation<\/p>\n Children of members of the Indian tribes, who owe direct allegiance to their tribe<\/p>\n A note that Congress ultimately guaranteed US citizenship for Native Americans in 1924.<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/George-Chidi.jpg\")
George Chidi<\/p>\n