Senate minority leader rejects Trump’s ultimatum over strict voter ID law amid DHS shutdown – US politics live

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a press conference earlier today that investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the plane crash at LaGuardia airport.

“In order to get to the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, we, the Port Authority and the emergency responders cut a hole on the roof of the aircraft, dropped down and were able to get the CVR and FDR for us,” Homendy said. “One of our investigators drove back to our labs in Washington, DC today, where they’ve been able to at least verify that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged.”

“My hope is that we’ll have information to share on that tomorrow,” she added.

Homendy said NTSB is working its way through the massive debris left by the incident.

“While they [investigators] are on scene, there is a tremendous, tremendous amount of debris from taxiway Delta across runway four into some other areas,” she said. “It’s pretty expansive.”

State senator Scott Wiener held a press conference on Monday outside the San Francisco International Airport following a viral video that showed federal agents forcefully detaining a woman in front of her daughter at the airport on Sunday night.

The incident was unrelated to the recent deployment of immigration officers to bolster short-staffed airports during the partial government shutdown.

“We don’t want ICE here and when ICE descends on our communities, it only creates fear,” Wiener said.

San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie said in a post on Monday that the San Francisco Police Department played no role in the detention, and added that local resources will not be used to assist federal civil immigration raids.

“Like many San Franciscans, I found the incident at SFO last night upsetting,” Lurie said. “I have spoken to leaders at SFO and SFPD, and we believe this is an isolated incident. We have no reason to believe there is broader federal immigration enforcement at SFO.”

“Under our city’s longstanding policies, local law enforcement does not participate in federal civil immigration enforcement,” Lurie added.

Prediction markets are facing fresh bipartisan scrutiny in the US Senate as companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket continue to battle state-led efforts to regulate online betting.

A bill was introduced in the US Senate on Monday that would ban federally regulated platforms from allowing wagers on sporting events, what would be a huge blow to marketplaces where billions of dollars have been traded on major events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA’s March Madness.

The bill follows several other state-level efforts to regulate marketplaces, which are overseen by a federal agency. On Friday, a Nevada judge temporarily banned most of Kalshi’s operations in the state for two weeks after the state filed a lawsuit against the company.

Online prediction markets are currently regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Under the Trump administration, the agency has argued it has exclusive regulatory control over the companies.

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The Pentagon has revised its media policy in compliance with a court order issued on Friday, which ruled that the Trump administration’s controversial policy was unconstitutional.

Spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on Monday that the department “always complies with court orders but disagrees with the decision and is pursuing an appeal.”

The initial policy introduced in October prohibited journalists from soliciting information that the defense department didn’t directly provide, and revoked the credentials of any outlet that didn’t sign on.

“Effective immediately, the Correspondents’ Corridor is closed,” Parnell said on Monday. “A new and improved press workspace will be established in an annex facility outside the Pentagon, but still on Pentagon grounds, and will be available when ready.”

Under the revised ​policy, Parnell said all journalists’ access to the ​Pentagon will require escort by authorized defense department ‌personnel.

The Trump administration is quietly weighing Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, as a potential partner, and even a future leader, Politico reported on Monday, citing two administration officials.

“He’s a hot option,” one administration official told Politico. “He’s one of the highest…But we got to test them, and we can’t rush into it.”

Some officials in the White House see Ghalibaf as a workable partner who could lead Iran and negotiate with the Trump administration in the war’s next phase, according to the report.

Ghalibaf denied any negotiations with the US in a post on Monday, but administration officials who spoke with Politico dismissed his comments as internal posturing.

“We’re in the testing phase of really trying to figure out who can rise, who wants to rise, who tries to rise,” the first official said. “And then as people rise, we’ll do a quick test, and if they’re radical, we’ll take them out.”

California attorney general Rob Bonta filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to block a Department of Energy order that allows Sable Offshore Corp to restart two onshore oil pipelines linked to the devastating 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill, according to a statement released Monday.

The lawsuit stems from Energy secretary Chris Wright’s order to restart the pipelines earlier this month, declaring a national emergency and directing Sable Offshore Corp to prioritize the transportation of crude oil over any other existing contracts.

California officials argue the move is an unconstitutional overreach that ignores state safety laws and risks another environmental catastrophe on the Santa Barbara coast for “negligible” domestic energy gains.

“The fossil fuel industry says ‘Jump,’ and the Trump administration asks, ‘How high?’,” Bonta said in the statement. “The Trump administration and its oil industry buddies are once again violating the law and trampling on our state’s rights in pursuit of corporate profits.”

“California has seen first-hand the devastating environmental and public health impacts of these pipelines rupturing, and there are court-ordered legal requirements in place to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” he added. “But instead of following the law, the Trump administration and an increasingly desperate Sable are attempting to ride roughshod over state authority and judicial independence – all so that Sable can profit.”

Over 100 airport leaders have called on Congress to resolve a funding standoff that has left 50,000 TSA officers without pay and caused massive security delays.

In a letter released Monday, the CEOs of the Airports Council International – North America and the American Association of Airport Executives joined local airport officials to warn that the shutdown is creating “growing operational disruptions at airports… The impacts of the shutdown are significant, growing, and potentially long-lasting.”

NBC News is reporting that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have launched an investigation into Corey Lewandowski, a top aide to outgoing DHS secretary Kristi Noem.

The probe follows allegations that Lewandowski sought personal payments from government contractors in exchange for favorable contract decisions.

Democrats sent a letter to the private prison company GEO Group on Monday, according to the report, requesting it disclose details of meetings and conversations with Lewandowski dating back to 2024.

Geo Group, the largest owner of detention centers in the US, was the subject of a Guardian investigation last year, revealing an array of alleged due process violations, medical issues, and abuse.

According to the NBC News investigation, GEO Group and several other companies in government contracting have complained to Trump administration officials that Lewandowski directly or indirectly stood to personally profit from the DHS contracting process.

An indignant Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer swatted aside Donald Trump’s insistence that Democrats support the Save America Act before they can reach a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump made his ultimatum late Sunday as his administration geared up to send agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to airports where lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints are stretching for hours.

But Democrats are not backing down from their demands for new guardrails on immigration enforcement, while saying they would support passage of standalone legislation to fund TSA and other components of the DHS that are not involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

“Donald Trump is now saying we’ll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do, what a callous thing to do. He doesn’t give a damn about the American people,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.

The Save America act would impose a host of new ID requirements to both register to votes and cast ballots. It’s currently before the Senate after passing the House nearly on party lines, but has no pathway to clearing the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold because of Democratic opposition.

“He cares about his own election, he thinks the Save Act, which isn’t going to pass, will change how the election comes out, and he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages,” Schumer said. “How can our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle go along with this? It stinks on its face. You don’t need any deeper explanation.”

The Department of Education launched two more investigations against Harvard University amid allegations that the institution “continues to discriminate against students on the basis of race, color, and national origin”.

The move is the latest step in the Trump administration’s crackdown against top US educational institutions, and it comes just days after officials filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging Harvard violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli people in the aftermath of the war in Gaza.

“Harvard University should know better,” reads a Monday statement by secretary of education, Linda McMahon. “No one – not even Harvard – is above the law. If Harvard continues to stonewall as we try to verify its basic compliance with antidiscrimination statutes, we will vigorously hold them to account to ensure students’ rights are protected.”

The investigations will look into whether Harvard uses race-based preferences in admissions after the supreme court’s 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action in higher education and into allegations of antisemitism on the Ivy League’s campus, according to the statement by the department.