Key events
Voters in northwest Georgia go to the polls on Tuesday in a congressional race between a moderate Democrat and a Republican backed by President Donald Trump, in a test of Trump’s sway over his base and a possible barometer for the November midterms.
The two-way race is to fill a US House of Representatives seat vacated in January when conservative Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned after a public break with Trump, exposing divisions within his Make America Great Again movement, Reuters reports.
The contest pits Clay Fuller, a Trump-endorsed former district attorney and US Air National Guard veteran, against Shawn Harris, a moderate Democrat who has been trying to win over disaffected Trump voters in one of the state’s most conservative districts.
Fuller is favored. The runoff was triggered after no candidates secured an outright majority in a 10 March special election, with Harris winning 37.3% of the vote and Fuller topping a crowded Republican field of a dozen contenders with 34.9%.
Record-breaking partial government shutdown rolls on as Mullin considers pulling ICE from sanctuary city airports
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The record-breaking partial government shutdown has now entered its eighth week, with little end in sight.
Congress is on recess, and isn’t set to return for until 13 April. Yesterday, House lawmakers again took no action to pass a Senate bill to fund affected Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subagencies during its scheduled procedural session.
It comes after Republican leadership in both chambers announced a compromise to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), but withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Their plan is to subsequently fund immigration enforcement through a reconciliation bill that would only require a simple majority in the Senate, and therefore skirt the filibuster.
However, House speaker Mike Johnson is facing pushback from hardline GOP lawmakers over the Senate-passed legislation. They argue that Republicans are ultimately conceding to Democrats’ demands, after they refused to pass a wider DHS funding bill without guardrails on ICE and CBP after federal officers fatally shot two US citizens during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said he’s considering pulling US customs agents from airports in sanctuary cities – a move that could upend international travel to and from some of the country’s busiest airports.
Mullin said he was considering the change because “I believe sanctuary cities is not lawful.”
In other developments:
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Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into a law a bill that allows the state to designate terrorist groups, then punish those who promote them. Critics say the law will threaten free speech, especially on school campuses. The bill specifics bars the state’s courts from enforcing foreign religious laws, specifically naming Sharia Law. Florida courts enforce secular laws passed in the state, however.
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Representative Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, will introduce impeachment articles next week against defense secretary Pete Hegseth. “Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys,” Ansari said in a statement.
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Donald Trump reiterated his threats to bomb Iranian energy and civilian infrastructure if the White House does not reach a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz 8pm ET today. “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said during a 90-minute press conference Monday afternoon.
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District court judges have been increasingly issuing strong rulings challenging the legality of many of Trump’s policies and power grabs, blocking key ones at least temporarilyand sparking angry responses from the president, former judges and prosecutors say.
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Trump threatened to jail a journalist – or journalists – who reported that a second US airman was missing after being shot down by Iran on Friday in an effort to identify their source. The badly injured airman hid in a mountain crevice to avoid capture before being rescued by a US recovery team that received heavy fire.
