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Senate votes to advance $70bn funding plan for ICE and Border Patrol

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

The Senate voted to adopt a $70bn budget plan to fund ICE and Border Patrol as part of a new effort to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The impasse has been going on since mid-February as Democrats have demanded policy changes in the wake of fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents. The budget resolution would fund the two agencies for three years, through the rest of Trump’s term.

Republicans are now trying to fund the two immigration enforcement agencies through the complicated, time-consuming process called budget reconciliation, a manoeuvre that they also used to pass president Donald Trump’s package of tax and spending cuts last year with no Democratic votes.

Senate majority leader John Thune said:

double quotation markWe have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies.

The budget process only requires a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing filibuster rules that require Republicans to find 60 votes on most bills when they only hold 53 seats.

The Senate held the first series of votes through a late night ‘vote-a-rama’ session, starting on Wednesday evening and into early Thursday morning.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said:

double quotation markInstead of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into ICE and Border Patrol, Republicans should be working with Democrats to lower out-of-pocket costs.

The Senate adopted the final resolution 50-48, shortly after 3.30am ET.

In other developments:

The Pentagon announced, without explanation, that “Secretary of the Navy John C Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately”. The head of the US navy, which is now enforcing a wartime blockade of Iranian ports, was replaced by a former Maga political candidate, Hung Cao, now acting secretary of the navy.
The surprise announcement brought renewed attention to Cao’s 2023 comments that that “witchcraft” had “taken over” Monterey, California.
Virginia’s attorney general, Jay Jones, promised to appeal an injunction issued by a circuit court judge that temporarily blocks the state from certifying the results of the Tuesday’s redistricting referendum.
As jet fuel prices spike amid the ongoing energy crisis sparked by Donald Trump’s war on Iran, two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, denounced a proposed US government bailout of budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
Representative David Scott, a Democrat from Georgia, has died at the age of 80. He is the fifth member of Congress to die in office within the last year.

Key events

Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to undermine faith in US elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, potentially creating fertile ground for misinformation heading into November’s midterm elections.

A new poll showed sharp partisan divides over trust in elections, with solid majorities of Republicans saying fraud is widespread – despite a lack of evidence to support this claim – and favoring federal law enforcement presence at polls.

Some 46% of respondents said they agreed with the statement that there are large numbers of fraudulent ballots cast by non-citizens in US elections, with 82% of Republicans agreeing compared with 18% of Democrats and 38% of independents.

About 53% of respondents said they were worried about fraudulent mail-in or absentee ballots, compared with 43% who said they were not, with partisan division again apparent: 83% of Republicans expressed concern, versus 33% of Democrats.

Michael Sainato

Cuts to the Social Security Administration have caused “customer service chaos” for millions of older Americans and those with disabilities who rely on the agency’s services, according to a new report from a group of Democratic senators.

An investigation found that phone wait times were more than 10 times higher than what the agency claimed on its website, if the calls were even answered at all.

The longer wait times come after the Trump administration laid off more than 7,000 employees at the Social Security Administration, which the report said has led to devastating cuts to service for beneficiaries.

“The results of these cuts have been catastrophic – driving up wait times for phone services and in-person field office appointments,” the report said. “Some rural field offices have reportedly been left with such limited capacity that [they] are effectively closed – unable to carry out the in-person services millions of older Americans and people with disabilities rely on.”

The report from Elizabeth Warren provides updates from the first year of the “Social Security War Room” that was created to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine social security. Warren formed the group with other senators in the chamber’s finance committee, including ranking member Ron Wyden, Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock.

The senators factchecked billionaire Elon Musk who, as head of Doge, said that there was fraud, waste and abuse within the Social Security Administration.

Musk falsely claimed that dead people and undocumented immigrations were receiving social security benefits, which he called a “ponzi scheme”.

Lauren Gambino

Six candidates vying to become the next governor of California sparred on Wednesday in the first debate since the already topsy-turvy race was plunged into upheaval by the sudden collapse of former congressman Eric Swalwell’s campaign after sexual assault and misconduct allegations.

With a clear frontrunner still yet to emerge, the unusually wide-open race to replace the outgoing governor Gavin Newsom in the heavily Democratic state has left nearly a quarter of voters undecided ahead of the 2 June primary.

While sharp contrasts emerged over how to address some of the state’s biggest anxieties – from the high cost of living and housing affordability, to homelessness and the looming threat of artificial intelligence – the evening likely did little to settle the race with less than two weeks before ballots begin arriving in voters’ mailboxes.

The primetime showdown, hosted by Nexstar Media Group, featured two Republicans – Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host and director of strategy to former UK prime minister David Cameron, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County – and the four leading Democrats: billionaire Tom Steyer, former health secretary Xavier Becerra, former congresswoman Katie Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

The Democrats largely agreed on policy, but jostled with one another over the best way to bring down high prices and challenge Donald Trump. The Republicans, meanwhile, blamed the state’s woes on 16 years of “failed” Democratic governance.

“The system is not working,” said Hilton, who has consistently led in polling and recently earned Trump’s endorsement.

If adopted by the House, the resolution will allow congressional committees to begin filling in the details on how the $70bn would be spent in separate legislation that president Donald Trump would have to sign into law.

The new funding would be expected to run through Trump’s presidency, which ends in January 2029.

With Democrats adamantly opposed to the funding initiative, Republicans plan to employ a rarely used procedure known as budget reconciliation in the separate legislation, which allows some budget-related bills to bypass Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Such measures require only a simple majority for passage in the 100-member chamber, instead of the usual supermajority of 60 votes or more. Republicans hold a 53-47 seat majority.

Funding for most of DHS ran out more than nine weeks ago, as Democrats pressed Republicans and the White House to accept new constraints on ICE and Border Patrol, which operate under the direction of DHS.

After two US citizens were fatally shot by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Democrats insisted that ICE and Border Patrol be subject to the same operational rules as police forces across the United States, including a requirement that judicial warrants be obtained before agents can enter private homes.

But weeks of negotiations ended in a stalemate.

The Senate has since passed legislation to fund DHS operations other than ICE and Border Patrol. But the measure has stalled in the House, where hardline Republicans have demanded funding for those two entities as well.