Category: Politics

Washington — A partial government shutdown centered on the Department of Homeland Security began Saturday amid a stalemate over the Trump administration’s controversial immigration enforcement policies. 

It’s the second time in as many weeks that funding has lapsed for part of the government as Democrats and the White House remain at odds on restraints for federal immigration agents. DHS oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, whose conduct has been increasingly scrutinized since federal agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. 

Though the impasse has revolved around immigration enforcement, the shutdown will impact other agencies under DHS’ umbrella, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Republicans have noted that ICE and CBP received an infusion of $140 billion in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enough to carry them through the rest of President Trump’s term. 

Disagreements over DHS funding led to a four-day partial shutdown that ended earlier this month with an agreement to fund most of the government, except DHS, through September. Funding for DHS, which employs more than 260,000 people, was instead extended at current levels for two weeks, expiring Friday. 

On Thursday, Senate Democrats stood firm in opposing legislation to fund DHS through September without additional reforms to ICE and CBP. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans in favor of advancing the legislation. Democrats also blocked an effort to extend DHS funding for another two weeks while negotiations continue. 

“Our caucus is passionate about this. If you sat in on our caucus meetings, you’d see how strongly people feel,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, told reporters after the vote. “And you know who are among the strongest? Some of the very people who didn’t vote with us last time.”

Congress left town Thursday without any agreement on DHS funding and isn’t expected to return until Feb. 23, a day before Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address. Leaders could call back members before then if a deal is reached. 

But it’s unclear how close negotiators are to ending the impasse. 

Mr. Trump said Thursday afternoon that some of the Democrats’ demands are “very, very hard to approve.” 

Requiring immigration agents to wear body cameras and identification, banning them from wearing masks and mandating judicial warrants for arrests on private property are among Democrats’ demands. 

Schumer said Thursday that Democratic negotiators “will be available 24/7” to continue discussions once the White House and Republicans are ready to “get serious.” 

The White House sent a legislative proposal for full-year funding to Democrats late Wednesday, days after Democrats sent their own draft bill. But Democratic leaders have dismissed the White House’s offer as insufficient, though specifics of the proposal have not been disclosed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said Friday afternoon that Democrats planned to respond to the White House’s plan. 

“It’s my expectation that at some point, Democrats in the House and the Senate, jointly, will respond to the latest unserious offer formally, and then it will once again be in the hands of Donald Trump and Republicans to decide what’s next,” Jeffries said. 

Earlier Friday, Mr. Trump said negotiations are ongoing, while adding that his goal is to “protect our law enforcement.” 

“We’ll see what happens,” he said of cutting a deal with Democrats. 

Before Thursday’s Senate vote, Mr. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced a surge in federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota would come to an end, one step that Democrats have demanded. But Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor that “ICE’s abuses cannot be solved merely through executive fiat alone.” 

“We first and foremost need legislation,” Schumer said, noting that Mr. Trump could decide to reverse course without legislative guardrails. 

In a memo Friday directing DHS to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said the Trump administration “is currently engaged in good faith negotiations with Congress to address recently raised concerns.” 

“The Administration will continue to seek good-faith, bipartisan solutions to complete the appropriations process and avoid another damaging government shutdown,” Vought wrote. 

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told the Munich Security Conference on Friday exactly why the world is seeing a rise in autocrat-friendly populism. 

“I think one of the connections and relationships that is underdiscussed, particularly in the security space, is the fact that I believe we’re seeing an economy … around the world—including in the United States—that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drives in a sense in authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and very dangerous domestic internal politics,” she said. “And that is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver. The failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.” 

Ocasio-Cortez noted that stark economic inequality fundamentally conflicts with the core tenets of democracy. She pointed to the growing consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of a few.

“There is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can get so big that its consolidated power can rival that of nation states,” she said. “Massive corporations that then begin to consume the public sector gobble up the spending. They start to call the shots, and we’re starting to see this with some of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic politics and in global politics as well.”

Ocasio-Cortez remains one of the shining lights of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, consistently advocating a platform to address what most Americans believe to be a growing wealth-inequality crisis.

Since Alex Pretti’s killing three weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been trying to distance herself from Minneapolis—politically and geographically. Last week, Noem went to southern Arizona to give a speech about border-wall construction. Yesterday, she was at a warehouse along the border in California, straining to tout the Trump administration’s drug-seizure data above the clamor of protesters outside. Noem returned to Arizona today to promote President Trump’s proposed election legislation, describing voting in the swing state as “an absolute disaster.”

Trump made clear that Noem’s approach to carrying out mass deportations had become a liability when he sent Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” to take over in Minnesota. Homan’s job was to defuse anger and remediate the political debacle that Noem and her team created when federal agents killed two U.S. citizens, detained young children, and triggered daily scenes of mayhem, corroding Trump’s approval ratings on what he has long viewed as his strongest issue.

In public, Trump has continued to praise Noem and shrug off calls for her resignation. But White House officials have privately grown frustrated with her performance, as Republican midterm strategists raise alarms about the political damage. One person familiar with the discussions told us that Noem’s position is no longer secure, even though the president has not yet moved against her.

Democrats, angered by the lawlessness of the crackdown and emboldened by Trump’s sinking poll numbers, are demanding more concessions on immigration enforcement from the administration. They are poised to shut down DHS this weekend, absent a deal to rein in the conduct of ICE officers.

“President Trump and Secretary Noem have ensured the most secure border in our Nation’s history and our homeland is undoubtedly safer today than it was when the President took office last year,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us in a statement. “The President continues to have full confidence in the Secretary.”

The shutdown will hinder Noem’s efforts to pivot away from Minneapolis. Her team has already canceled her upcoming travel plans to New Orleans, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other destinations because the travel is not considered mandatory, three officials told us. They, like others we interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

In the short term, Democratic calls for Noem’s removal may help her keep the job, if only temporarily, because Trump doesn’t want to reward such attacks. The president’s loyalty to Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s early campaign manager who functions as Noem’s de facto chief of staff, is a second reason she has not yet been ousted. Lewandowski is a “special government employee” at DHS with no formal position or salary, and his role running the department on a day-to-day basis has fueled infighting among those tasked with carrying out Trump’s immigration crackdown. The structure of Trump’s team remains unwieldy, with the policy adviser Stephen Miller issuing directives to Noem and Lewandowski.

Read: Battles are raging inside the Department of Homeland Security

And yet, since Pretti’s killing, Homan, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, and other veteran immigration-enforcement officials have gained an upper hand over Noem and Lewandowski for control of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told us that Homan is in charge in Minneapolis, citing Trump’s social-media posts, but did not say whether he will direct operations elsewhere. On Tuesday, when ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons testified to the House Homeland Security Committee, Democratic Representative Tim Kennedy asked him whether Noem should resign. Lyons didn’t defend her. “I’m not going to comment on that, sir,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article yesterday citing anonymous officials who described Noem and Lewandowski’s chaotic tenure at DHS, including a long-rumored extramarital affair that both have denied. Noem, among other alleged excesses, attempted to fire a Coast Guard pilot who forgot to bring her blanket aboard a DHS flight, the Journal reported, and has complained to staff that Homan eclipses her in television appearances. Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate staff, dismiss the expertise of career law-enforcement officials, and fly around the country on a luxury jet with a private rear cabin that is supposed to be used for deportations, according to the Journal. A spokesperson for DHS disputed the claims.

As word spread this week that Noem was headed to the Phoenix area for an election-related news conference, state and local election officials, along with the attorneys who represent them, grew apprehensive. Just two weeks ago, FBI agents had seized election material from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County. They worried that something similar could happen in Maricopa County, which was central to Trump’s loss in 2020. Online, Republicans who regularly spread misinformation about that defeat raised expectations of a “Georgia-like event.” The suspense grew when reporters who wanted to attend the news conference—including one of us—were driven in a convoy of about a dozen unmarked vehicles from an ICE field office in Phoenix to a Homeland Security Investigations office 30 minutes away, racing up the freeway during rush hour at more than 75 miles an hour in SUVs driven by federal authorities wearing tactical gear. (On the way there, a driver said that he was on the lookout for signs that bad actors were following us.)

The news conference did not live up to the hype.

When Noem appeared—40 minutes late—she gave a long and rather dry lecture on one of Trump’s favorite themes: questioning the integrity of the nation’s elections. She cited rare instances of voting by noncitizens in other states, and spoke in favor of GOP-backed legislation that election experts have said would disenfranchise millions of voters. (Among other things, the SAVE America Act would require people to use birth certificates or passports to prove that they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote in federal elections.) Noem said it was important that the nation’s election equipment—which is considered critical infrastructure that her agency is responsible for securing—is reliable and trustworthy.

Read: ‘The trust has been totally destroyed’

“I hope that you do recognize that, in the past, your state has been an absolute disaster on elections,” she told her Arizona audience. “That your leaders have failed you dramatically by not having systems that work, by disenfranchising Americans who wanted to vote. They had to stand in lines for hours because machines failed or software failed. There’s no state that could use more improvement than Arizona.” (In 2016, the inadequate number of voting locations in Maricopa County led to long lines, and in 2022, printers that produced ballots failed at dozens of locations around the county.)

As she spoke, Lewandowski stayed mostly hidden, occasionally peeking out from behind a wall.

A DHS shutdown won’t make much difference to Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the president signed in July included $170 billion for immigration enforcement, a sum approaching three times the annual DHS budget. ICE alone got $75 billion of supplemental funding, including $30 billion for operations. DHS could essentially remain shut down for the rest of Trump’s term, and the agency would still see a net funding increase. But other parts of the department, including the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office and significant parts of the cybersecurity and election-infrastructure offices, face furloughs, according to a person briefed on the plans. Transportation Security Administration officers, who screen passengers at airports, will work without pay.

Lewandowski and Noem have frustrated career officials at DHS with a policy implemented last summer that requires Noem’s signature on any contract worth more than $100,000. The requirement has been a source of infighting and finger-pointing. Noem’s team blames career DHS officials for moving too slowly, and they say that she’s added an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that has hampered border-wall construction and the expansion of ICE’s detention capacity.

Read: Why Trump loves mega-prisons

Although the administration has quietly wrapped up its operation in Minnesota, it is not abandoning its push to increase deportations. Officials in New Hampshire published an ICE memo today that outlines the agency’s $38.3 billion plan to construct eight “large-scale detention sites” across the country with capacity for up to 10,000 detainees, along with 16 processing sites. The memo describes a “new detention model” the agency aims to build over the next seven months by converting warehouse sites into windowless mega-jails. According to the memo, ICE plans to phase out contracts with for-profit detention companies in favor of acquiring, renovating, and building its own sites, including some in Democrat-run states with large immigrant populations but relatively little ICE infrastructure.

ICE, which had 39,000 detainees in custody when Trump took office, said that its “detention reengineering initiative” will provide capacity to hold more than 92,000 people in its warehouses.

At today’s news conference, we asked Noem whether she was still in charge of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The secretary smiled before quickly replying, “I’m still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Putting a billionaire back in the White House, and hoping that he would solve the economic woes of the working class, never made sense, but that is exactly what white working-class voters did in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump immediately took office and demonstrated why this was not a good idea, as within a few months, he launched a trade war and declared that inflation had been fixed, even though it definitely had not.

Most voters, when they are forced to choose between what is happening in their own finances or the sales pitch of a politician, will go with their own experiences.

The economy is an issue that Trump has not been able to gaslight his way out of. Trump keeps telling the American people that his economy is great, but people go to the grocery store, and they see otherwise.

The backbone of voters who sent Trump back to the White House were white working-class voters. Trump has been able to play into their resentments and anger for a decade.

Trump won working-class voters by 34 points in 2024. In that same election, House Republicans won working-class voters by 33 points. All of these advantages are now gone.

Elon Musk, who formally distanced himself from the White House last year, hasn’t stopped trying to influence American politics.

Musk took a step away from the Department of Government Efficiency—the agency he crafted and wielded against long-held federal spending practices. But, contrary to what some expected, that didn’t signal indefinite distance from Republican politics for the South African-born, Texas-voting centibillionaire. To the contrary, campaign finance records and his own social media profiles indicate that he’s ready to wield power whenever, wherever.

His public clash with President Donald Trump also doesn’t appear to be sticking. Musk has dined with the president and first lady Melania Trump and, weeks ago, attended the wedding of Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff, at Mar-a-Lago alongside prominent administration officials. 

He’s also been ceaselessly posting political commentary and recommendations on X, which he owns. Including frequent posts about the Epstein files, which he is in but has attempted to distance himself from.

One of his main targets of late has been the SAVE Act, Republican legislation that, if both houses of Congress pass it, could disenfranchise tens of millions of potential voters and uniquely target women through new voter ID requirements. 

Republicans have been taking notice.

According to Politico:

The campaign has driven a huge volume of calls to member offices, according to two aides granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, forcing Republican after Republican to publicly state their support for the legislation.

After spending more than $290 million to get Trump and other Republicans elected in 2024 cycle, Musk claimed in May that he’d be cutting back. “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the time. “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.” 

His announcement came after pouring money into the high-profile Wisconsin Supreme Court election—to no avail. 

Seems like he found a reason.

Musk gave $20 million to the two political groups by the end of 2025. With the midterms revving up, Republicans are considering what an influx of money from Musk, a divisive character due to his history of slashing government funding that affected Americans across the political spectrum, could do for their campaigns. 

Talking to Politico, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) worried about how midterms tend to be rough for the president’s party. 

“History is not on our side,” Gimenez said. “We’ll take any and all help possible to reverse that trend in history, because I think it’s important for the Republican Party.”

The Department of Education released a breathless report on Wednesday detailing how many colleges and universities receive foreign money, “documenting over 8,300 transactions worth more than $5.2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts.” There’s even an online portal where you can go see how all these universities nefariously enter into agreements with suspicious foreigners.

Let’s check in with Education Secretary Linda McMahon to learn more about this, shall we?  

“Thanks to the Trump Administration’s new accountability portal, the American people have unprecedented visibility into the foreign dollars flowing into our colleges and universities—including funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America’s national security.”

It isn’t clear exactly which countries McMahon is bloviating about here, but the countries highlighted in her news release and the portal are Qatar, the United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.

Which of these countries, exactly, are “involved in activities that threaten America’s national security”? Have the United Kingdom and Japan been saber-rattling against us? 

Qatar tops the list as far as actual dollars, with the country spending $1.1 billion with American universities in 2025. That’s meant to sound super-startling, but that number is high in part because the Qatari government officially sponsors an education initiative in the United States, and both Cornell and Carnegie Mellon—two of the universities the Trump administration is howling about the loudest—have operations in Qatar, so of course there is money going back and forth.

The problem with the Education Department’s online portal is that it collapses all sorts of activities, like tuition reimbursement and contracts for campuses abroad, into one scary glob of undifferentiated money. That allows the administration to imply that countries are just showering schools with billions for funsies and influence rather than paying for educational services rendered.

Hyping Qatar’s involvement here is especially hilarious given that Qatar gave Trump a $400 million plane and, in return, got a declaration that the U.S. would “regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States” and that “the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military—to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

Related | Only Trump is allowed to be bribed by Qatar, apparently

Yes, that’s President Trump just single-handedly promising NATO-level support to Qatar after getting a free plane. 

Scaremongering about Saudi Arabia is ridiculous as well, given that the Trump Organization is doing business there, and Trump netted about $21 million in 2024 to slap his name on various projects. There’s also LIV Golf, which is backed by the Saudi government and just so happens to have a deal with Trump to host tournaments at Trump-owned properties. 

And let’s not forget that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner got a cool $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for his private equity firm. And we also can’t overlook the impressive achievements in crypto grifting that the Trump family businesses are currently engaged in. 

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security adviser for the United Arab Emirates, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi, and brother of the president of the UAE, just spent $500 million to buy a stake in World Liberty Financial, a deal that was very cool and good for the Trump family but doesn’t seem to make much financial sense on the UAE side of things. 

Related | Columbia caves to Trump, setting dangerous precedent for higher ed

Well, until you realize it’s $500 million to curry favor with Trump, not to actually make money on whatever shoddy crypto scam the Trump sons are hawking these days. 

Trump desperately wants to push nativist scaremongering about how dirty foreigners and dirty money are invading our pristine American universities, but it’s pretty hard to do when Trump himself will take cash from pretty much anyone. Being lectured about foreign influence by the most bribeable president in U.S. history is a joke. 

There are many possibilities for who the whistleblower complaint filed against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was related to, but when thoughts turn to Trump’s inner circle and foreign nationals, one name often forgotten is Jared Kushner.

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It was widely assumed that Kushner took the Saudi billions and ran after the first Trump administration, but Trump’s son-in-law has been popping up more and more frequently. Whether he is in Israel calling Gaza excellent beachfront property that needs to be “cleaned up,” or showing up in meetings involving Russia and Ukraine, Kushner seems to still be around. He is just not as visible.

If there is money to be made from a foreign country or government, it seems like Jared Kushner is never far behind. The White House considers Kushner a “volunteer” who has no formal government role.

This appears to be Trump’s way of deflecting congressional scrutiny from Kushner, but as a private citizen, Kushner has fewer protections from investigations than if he were serving in the administration and could be shielded by executive privilege claims.

The latest revelation about the whistleblower complaint is trying to hide, which should definitely get the attention of Democrats in Congress.

Story continues below.

In the summer of 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr. took the stage at the NAACP’s 47th annual convention in San Francisco. Speaking at the precipice of the Civil Rights Movement, King cautioned that “the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive.” Over the next decade, Black Americans’ struggle for racial justice would lead to major victories from the workplace to the ballot box. But today, as King warned, the “old order” clings on, and the civil rights gains fought for in the ’60s are under siege. 

Since last January, the Trump administration has dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and shuttered civil rights offices across the federal government; rejected the legal framework used to protect marginalized groups’ access to jobs, housing, and education. Last month, Donald Trump even told the New York Times that he thought civil rights amounted to “reverse discrimination” against white people.

A year into Trump’s second term, and with months to go until the midterm elections, I spoke with NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson about Trump’s multifront attack on civil rights protections, federal agents’ violent invasion of Minneapolis, resistance to data centers in Black communities across the South, and the role of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization in this political moment.

Days before we spoke, an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good in South Minneapolis, just blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered by police in 2020. Johnson, who has presided over the NAACP since 2017, called ICE’s intimidation and harassment of citizens and non-citizens alike, due process violations, and use of racial profiling (greenlighted by the Supreme Court) “something that we have not seen at this level in this country for many, many decades, if ever.”

The NAACP of the 1950s and ’60s—after leading the charge against segregation in the 1954 landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education—paired its winning legal strategy with support for nonviolent direct action. The year after Brown overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal,” the NAACP provided legal aid to Black Alabamians boycotting segregated buses in Montgomery, and years later, to students protesting discrimination at lunch counters across the South. It even played a pivotal role in planning the 1963 March on Washington. But in the next decade, during the more militant Black Power movement, and into the Reagan years, the organization struggled with the departure of its longtime executive director Roy Wilkins, declining youth membership, and financial challenges.

At the start of the 21st century, the NAACP focused on less confrontational strategies until the emergence of Black Lives Matter in the 2010s—and Trump’s election—threw the organization into a new period of uncertainty. Promising a “systemwide refresh,” it dismissed its 18th president in May of 2017. Six months later, Johnson—the interim president and then-head of its Mississippi conference—was elected to the role.

In Trump’s first term, the NAACP took on high-profile court cases like its successful defense of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and since the start of his second, it’s taken a more offensive posture, disinviting the sitting president from last year’s annual conference for the first time in its history, and stepping up its support for more direct, localized action in Black communities resisting aggressive ICE raids and rapidly expanding data centers.

At the end of January, the NAACP launched a campaign calling on senators to block federal funding for ICE, impeach and prosecute Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and, ultimately, abolish the agency completely.

More and more Americans are calling on the government to do the same. More than six in ten respondents in a New York Times/Siena poll— after the fatal shooting of Good on January 7, but a week before federal agents killed Alex Pretti on January 24—believed that “the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have gone too far.” (Other polls show weakening support, even among Trump’s base, for the president’s immigration agenda, which may make it increasingly difficult for the GOP to hold on to its narrow majority in Congress.)

The same poll found that voters’ primary concern is the economy, where Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted. Data centers cropping up across the country have sent electricity bills surging, contributing to voters’ anger about the cost of living. As the AI industry booms, voters across party lines are pushing back on data center construction in their communities. 

Johnson told me that the NAACP has been “on the frontlines” of the data center resistance, starting with its work in Southwest Memphis, where Elon Musk’s xAI quickly built a data center in 2024, beginning construction last year on a second one on the Tennessee-Mississippi border, with talks of a third in the works. Last July, the organization threatened a lawsuit against xAI over the company’s use of polluting methane gas turbines to power those facilities, which it contends violate the Clean Air Act. Last September, the organization released resources for activists and organizers demanding increased transparency and accountability from the tech giants building this infrastructure. 

After Trump’s second victory, Johnson said it was clear to the group he heads that the administration “would pursue a course of mass distraction” to achieve its goals. Trump first deployed these “distraction tactics”—“othering communities and seeking to erode protections” at home and creating conflict abroad—to push through his tax and spending megabill, Johnson said.

Now, as immigration agents swarm blue cities and tensions escalate with countries like Venezuela and Nigeria, “we believe all of these things in sum total are means by which the administration is trying to avoid the accountability around the Epstein files and releasing them, and to mask the current economic predicament”—including prices that, despite Trump’s promises, continue to rise.

In preparation for the midterms, the NAACP has been “actively engaged in the mid-cycle redistricting process, which is unprecedented,” he told me. In addition to filing lawsuits in states like Texas, the NAACP is “working with policymakers in certain targeted states” to protect Black voters’ access to the ballot box. Last fall, the NAACP also launched a mass mobilization in support of California’s redistricting ballot initiative, Prop 50, as I reported for Mother Jones in November. 

Nearly 70 years after King’s speech, as the NAACP reaches its 117th anniversary—coinciding with a century of Black history commemorations and the nation’s semiquincenntinal—Johnson told me he believes “we are in a setback,” but also “at an inflection point.” 

What’s at stake, he said, is “whether or not we will have a true representative democracy, or something less than that.”

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from downgrading the military retirement rank and pay of Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, finding that the government had “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms.”

A retired Navy captain, Kelly drew the Trump administration’s ire after he and five other Democratic lawmakers posted a video urging members of the military to “refuse illegal orders.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s order prohibits the Defense Department and the Trump administration from taking any adverse action against Kelly to reduce his retirement rank and pay.

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Leon wrote. “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media that the ruling would be “immediately appealed.”

Leon’s ruling comes a month after Kelly sued Hegseth, arguing that he was the target of “extreme rhetoric and punitive retribution” by the Trump administration. 

Kelly asked Leon to set aside Hegseth’s recent moves to demote him and cut his military pension, and to block the enforcement of any punishment against him.

Leon’s decision came two days after federal prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office failed to secure an indictment against Kelly and the other Democratic lawmakers who appeared in the video. Prosecutors had hoped to charge them with violating a federal law that makes it a crime to counsel or cause “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or reversal of duty” by military members, sources previously told CBS News.

Kelly and his colleagues came under fierce criticism by the Trump administration after they posted the video in November. The video was published amid the military buildup around Venezuela and strikes against alleged drug boats. The other five Democrats were also either military veterans or members of the intelligence community, but they have not faced any adverse action from the Defense Department because they do not draw retirement pay from the U.S. military. 

Soon after the video was published, President Trump and Hegseth lambasted the lawmakers for the comments, with the president claiming that their statements amounted to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Hegseth claimed Kelly’s statements “undermined the chain of command” and constituted “conduct unbecoming an officer.” The Pentagon announced it was conducting a review of misconduct allegations against Kelly to determine whether he should be recalled to active duty to face court-martial proceedings.

The Defense Department said in December it was escalating its review into a command investigation. Hegseth then announced that the Pentagon had “initiated retirement grade determination proceedings” that could result in a “reduction in his retired grade” and “a corresponding reduction in retired pay.” Hegseth also said he issued a formal letter to censure Kelly, citing his “reckless misconduct.”

In a statement, Kelly said Leon’s order “made clear that Pete Hegseth violated the constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said. But this case was never just about me. This administration was sending a message to millions of retired veterans that they too can be censured or demoted just for speaking out. That’s why I couldn’t let it stand.”

“I also know that this might not be over yet, because this President and this administration do not know how to admit when they’re wrong,” Kelly continued. “One thing is for sure: however hard the Trump administration may fight to punish me and silence others, I will fight ten times harder. This is too important.”

CBS News has reached out to the Defense Department for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.

At a recent court hearing, Leon grilled the Justice Department and expressed strong reservations about the Pentagon’s efforts. Active-duty military officers typically face limitations on their right to free speech to promote discipline and obedience, but the military is now seeking to extend those limits to retired service members like Kelly.

“That’s never been done,” Leon told Justice Department attorney John Bailey during the Feb. 3 hearing, adding that the government did not have a single case to support the argument.

“You’re asking me to do something that the Supreme Court has never done,” Leon said. “That’s a bit of a stretch, is it not?”

In his ruling on Thursday, Leon reiterated those concerns again.

“Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military 

servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces,” Leon wrote.

“Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Federal officials from the Department of Homeland Security were eyeing a Kansas City warehouse for one of their next detention facilities for immigrants. The company that owns the Missouri warehouse, Platform Ventures, announced on Thursday that it is not moving forward with the sale. 

The move comes after steep pressure from locals who have been consistently protesting the potential sale since immigration officials toured the facility on January 15. 

Platform Ventures said it “is not actively engaged with the U.S. Government or any other prospective purchaser” in a statement to Kansas City Public Radio. 

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said that while his city welcomed the news, his office is prepared to keep fighting. “A mass encampment warehouse” is “offensive to the dignity and human rights of those who would be detained.”

According to a report from the American Immigration Council, by the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for detention than at the start of the year. That’s a 91 percent increase. The Council report found that the Trump administration’s arrest practices have led to a 2,450 percent increase in the number of people being held in ICE detention with no criminal record.

As DHS continues to expand its existing presence and open new offices around the country, Kansas City residents join other community leaders in Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Ashland, Virginia, and elsewhere who are fighting back against potential ICE detention centers in their cities. 

Terrence Wise, a leader with the activist groups Stand Up KC and Missouri Workers Center, said in a statement that the no-sale wouldn’t have happened without “several weeks of protest and collective action” from locals who “will continue fighting to keep masked, unaccountable federal agents out of our communities.”