Democrats reject White House ICE offer as partial shutdown looms – US politics live

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that Democratic leaders say a proposal from the White House is “incomplete and insufficient” as they demand new restrictions on president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement late Monday that a White House counterproposal to the list of demands they called for over the weekend “included neither details nor legislative text” and does not address “the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct.” The White House proposal was not released publicly.

The Democrats’ statement comes as time is running short, with another partial government shutdown threatening to begin Saturday, AP reported. Among the Democrats’ demands are a requirement for judicial warrants, better identification of DHS officers, new use-of-force standards and a stop to racial profiling. They say such changes are necessary after two protesters were fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis last month.

Earlier on Monday, Senate majority leader John Thune had expressed optimism about the rare negotiations between Democrats and the White House, saying there was “forward progress.”

Thune said it was a good sign that the two sides were trading papers, and “hopefully they can find some common ground here.” But coming to an agreement on the charged issue of immigration enforcement will be difficult, especially as rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties were skeptical about finding common ground.

Many Democrats who are furious about ICE’s aggressive crackdown have said they won’t vote for any more Homeland Security funding until enforcement is radically scaled back. “Dramatic changes are needed at the Department of Homeland Security before a DHS funding bill moves forward,” Jeffries said earlier Monday. “Period. Full stop.”

In other developments:

• Donald Trump threatened to block a new bridge connecting the US and Canada he supported in 2017 and made the bizarre false claim that increased trade between Canada and China would include a total ban on Canadians playing ice hockey.

• The Miami Herald reported that one partially redacted Epstein files document includes an account of a 2006 phone call in which Trump told the Palm Beach police chief that “everyone has known” Jeffrey Epstein was abusing girls and Ghislaine Maxwell ‘“is evil”. Trump now says he had no idea Epstein was abusing girls and wishes Maxwell well.

• An immigration judge rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was arrested last year as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said in a statement.

• The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced it carried out another deadly strike on Monday, killing two suspected drug smugglers in the eastern Pacific.

• A federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction that blocks part of a new state law that bans federal law enforcement officers from covering their faces.