Senate Republicans are advancing a plan to fully fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term through budget reconciliation, a move that would require only a simple majority of 50 Republican votes plus Vice President JD Vance.
This means funding for the agencies will become immune to Democrat filibusters or shutdown threats.
The announcement came Thursday from Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, who confirmed he and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham will meet with President Trump at the White House on Friday to finalize the framework.
Barrasso told Fox News, “I’ll be at the White House with Lindsey Graham…we’re going to be talking with the president specifically about funding ICE, Immigration Custom Enforcement, funding the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol, and doing it not just for this year, but through the entire time that President Trump is still in the White House, and doing it with Republican votes alone.”
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The plan uses the budget reconciliation process, which allows certain fiscal measures to pass with 51 votes in the Senate (or 50 plus the vice president) and bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Republicans aim to narrowly target funding for immigration enforcement agencies, as there are ongoing disputes over the broader Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding package.
The move follows weeks of deadlock over DHS appropriations from Democrats.
A partial DHS shutdown has dragged on for nearly two months, with Democrats refusing to support full funding for ICE and CBP without concessions on immigration policy.
Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democrat attempts to fund most of DHS while excluding or limiting enforcement operations.
Barrasso emphasized that Democrats “aren’t interested in funding national security,” forcing Republicans to “go it alone” through reconciliation.
The plan would secure long-term funding for deportations, border security, and interior enforcement, which are all priorities of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Barrasso did not specify a timeline for a floor vote, but GOP leaders will likely move quickly after the White House meeting.
What does this mean? Perhaps Donald Trump's latest statement is meant to paraphrase a line from the most worthwhile Star Wars film: You have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.
Sometime in the next few hours, talks will begin in Islamabad between the US and Iran in an attempt to end the war. Trump agreed to a two-week cease-fire that stopped a massive American attack on energy and transportation infrastructure in exchange for a full re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iranian missile and drone attacks. Not only has Iran not delivered on those points, but its negotiators keep adding conditions and demands:
... These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.”
Needless to say, there is precisely zero chance that the US will release Iran's financial assets, nor will the United Arab Emirates, which apparently froze them when Iran started showering them with missiles and drones. The Iranians did not come to Islamabad because they were winning the conflict. They came to avoid massive destruction, and only avoided it by about 90 minutes through Pakistan's urgent intervention.
Perhaps the regime remnants believe they can work the refs with Trump, or are trying his own Art of the Deal playbook by posturing with extreme demands to push a better deal. The problem with that approach is that the Iranian regime has little left to offer other than terrorism, and even that hasn't deterred the US or Israel. It may, however, have convinced Trump to alter the deal at hand, and especially its window.
Trump told the New York Post that he'll know much sooner than two weeks whether the regime remnants are serious about survival. If not, as he teased on Truth Social at about the same time, he's readying a massive "reset".
“We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon,” Trump said in a phone interview when asked if he thought the talks would be successful.
“We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made — even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” he said.
“But we’re loading up the ships. We’re loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
Trump then followed up with a more direct response to the regime's attempts to reframe the context of the talks:
The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Translation: If Iran tries to stall or renegotiate the cease-fire, it will be a very short round of negotiations. The B-52s could be back in the air by this time tomorrow, along with other sorties, perhaps more engaged in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's ability to export oil. The US staged demonstration strikes on Kharg Island just before the cease-fire went into effect, and that apparently pushed the regime toward negotiations.
Abbas Araghchi should understand the message. He tried blustering his way with Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the talks that took place on February 28, when Araghchi told Witkoff that there was nothing we could do about Iran's nuclear-weapons program. That ended badly for Ali Khamenei and most of the regime's top IRGC leadership.
In fact, perhaps the IRGC thinks Araghchi learned too much from that last round of talks with the US. The Jerusalem Post reports that current IRGC chief and Nepo Babytollah sock-puppeteer Ahmad Vahidi wants to shuffle the deck in Islamabad to include more hardliners in the Iranian contingent:
The sources shared that IRGC Commander-in-Chief Ahmad Vahidi is attempting to curb the authority of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran International wrote.
Vahidi has called for the inclusion of Mohammad Bagheer Zolghadr on the negotiating team, whom Iran International previously reported had been appointed Secretary of the National Security Council as a direct result of IRGC pressure on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The negotiating team has been pushing back against the demand, as they consider Zolghadr too inexperienced for strategic negotiations.
Vahidi wants to limit the scope of the talks as well:
The IRGC commander-in-chief and the IRGC Aerospace Commander have also insisted that the delegation refuse to negotiate on Iran’s missile program, according to Iran International.
If Vahidi wants to learn the same lesson Araghchi did in February, he's welcome to try. The Gulf states will not stand for a deal that doesn't impose severe limits on Iran's missile and drone capacities after experiencing the threat they represent first-hand in this war. Neither will Israel, not even if Trump is inclined to push that issue off – and there is no indication he is so inclined at all.
Essentially, this is the very same situation in which Iran found itself six weeks ago. Did they learn anything from that lesson? As Trump suggests, we should know pretty soon, and the consequences will likely follow as quickly as on February 28, if not more so. If nothing else, we'll see who plays Darth Vader and who plays Lando Calrissian in this round.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
Tiny Delaware is a corporate behemoth, but the trickle that began with Elon Musk — as so many things do — is now a flood worth more than three trillion dollars in corporate value. "Since 2024, over 61 companies have left or filed to leave Delaware," Leave Delaware reported on Thursday, including "Tesla, SpaceX, Coinbase, Roblox, Dropbox, Simon Property Group, Dillard's, and Fidelity National Financial."
An additional seven "pending shareholder votes are scheduled in the next two months" to reincorporate elsewhere.
Delaware’s business-friendly reputation is why the state has just about one million residents, but two million registered business entities.
That is, until the state's corporate-focused Court of Chancery twice denied Tesla's proposed pay package for Musk, even though it was fully shareholder-approved. The decision was exactly the kind of nanny-statism that companies incorporated in Delaware to avoid.
So Tesla reincorporated in Texas — Wall Street firms have major outposts there now, too, as well as in Florida — and SpaceX quickly followed.
Serving as a corporate P.O. box accounts for as much as one-third of Delaware's state revenues. But clearly that's changing almost as quickly as the Court of Chancery sabotaged the state's reputation in a fit of suicidal pique over Musk's politics.
Today's news goes back to something I've written about California several times over the last five or six years.
The Big Tech firms that dominate Silicon Valley — and whose profits and income taxes keep Sacramento afloat — likely aren't going anyway. I'm talking the real big boys like Alphabet (Google's parent), Meta (Facebook), and Apple. Steve Jobs didn't devote so much effort while he was dying to get the company's five-billion-dollar "spaceship" headquarters designed and approved, just to have Tim Cook hang a "For Rent" sign on the front door someday.
But their Bay Area footprints haven't grown very much, while all three firms have expanded out-of-state in big ways. Meta alone plans hundreds of billions worth of new U.S. infrastructure by 2028, mostly in states like Texas, New Mexico, Indiana, South Carolina... pretty much anywhere but business-hostile California.
While those massive HQs aren't going anywhere, the problem California Democrats have yet to recognize, at least publicly, is where the next Apple, Facebook, or Google pops up. Tech firms almost always go from Too Big to Fail to Too Big to Innovate. It's almost a sure thing that the next generation of startups — the ones that turn today's giants into tomorrow's also-rans — will launch in Texas, North Carolina, or... well, pretty much anywhere but business-hostile California.
But that's in the medium-to-long term.
What's amazing about Delaware's "bad luck" is just how quickly things began to unravel. It's been more than a century since Delaware became the favorite place for businesses located anywhere to incorporate, thanks to expert Chancery Court judges, predictable corporate legal precedents, and a light regulatory touch. The First State quickly became the legal home for most Fortune 500 companies. No factories. No fancy headquarters. Just a P.O. box.
California's growth stalled a decade ago, and unless the business climate improves, the Bay Area will get slowly nibbled to death by out-of-state upstarts.
Capital finds a way, to misquote Dr. Ian Malcolm.
But as Elon Musk could tell you — and probably did, if you follow him on X — it's a helluva lot easier to move a corporate P.O. box than it is to relocate a billion-dollar HQ.
Law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every time they suit up for work, not knowing whether they'll be able to come home to their loved ones at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, some don't, and, tragically, this scenario played out on Thursday in Tulare County, California, when deputies went to serve an eviction notice on a man. The suspect, 59-year-old David Eric Morales, resisted, and the result was a seven-hour standoff that left Tulare County Detective Randy Hoppert, 35, dead:
The shooting happened about 10:20 a.m. near Newcomb Street and Grand Avenue. Deputies attempted to serve an eviction notice to 59-year-old David Eric Morales, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said. Boudreaux said Morales had been notified about a month earlier that he would need to leave his home.
“This was the day where he was going to be spoken to by us to say you must leave. He knew this. He armed himself and prepared himself and he laid [in wait],” Boudreaux said.
Authorities said Morales opened fire with a rifle, prompting an officer-involved shooting and a large response from multiple agencies, including Porterville police, Visalia police and the California Highway Patrol.
Here's a short video, presumably taken by a neighbor, showing the intensity of the scene:
At some point, Morales exited the home through a window and found a hiding spot, where he continued engaging in gunfire with the officers.
Eventually, however, he met his fate courtesy of a BearCat vehicle. Sheriff Boudreaux did not mince words while discussing the decision to run Morales over:
Authorities said the standoff ended when a BearCat vehicle struck and killed Morales. Boudreaux said, “We intentionally ran him over.” He added, “Don't shoot at cops, if you shoot a cop, we are going to run you over. He got run over, he got what he deserves.”
Watch:
"We have a four-month-old baby that will never know his or her father," Boudreaux stated about Hoppert, a U.S. Navy veteran whose wife is four months pregnant. "This is senseless. I'm angered over the whole thing."
Please remember Deputy Hoppert and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
Former Obama Secretary of State was seen dining with several Iranian regime officials.
An onlooker snapped this photo as Kerry left the restaurant.
Jason Osborne, a former Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump’s campaign, posted this tweet earlier today:
So John Kerry just left a meeting @ L’Avenue in Paris w/3 Iranians. A friend was sitting next to their table and heard JK blasting @realDonaldTrump. The Iranians had a 5 person security detail and left in diplomatic vehicles. Is he FARA registered? @seanhannity @TuckerCarlson
Kerry was meeting with Kamal Kharazi at the time. Kerry and Democrats were hoping to assist the ghoulish regime in seeking a nuclear program.
