Congressional Democrats have joined a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch, arguing in U.S. District Court that the project must receive congressional approval before moving forward.
The top Democrats on committees overseeing federal lands and natural resources filed an amicus brief Friday, citing the Commemorative Works Act, a 40-year-old federal law that governs the design and placement of memorials in Washington. Under the law, certain parts of the city — including Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout near Arlington National Cemetery,which Trump is eyeing for his planned arch — are considered protected land, and monuments built there would require congressional authorization. The circle sits narrowly inside the boundaries of Washington.
“Washington D.C. is not the President’s backyard to renovate, relandscape, and build in as he sees fit,” Sens. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Angus King of Maine, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Reps. Jared Huffman of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon wrote in their brief. King is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
King also requested a review from the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan think tank that serves lawmakers, which independently concluded that an arch built in Memorial Circle would require congressional authorization. King’s office shared the review with the Washington Post.
“This is a straightforward issue of who’s in charge,” King said in an interview Friday. “The law is clear that any structure in this zone — of which Memorial Circle is certainly part — has to have the express approval of Congress.”
Huffman said the president’s plans raise “moral and political” questions, including whether the arch is a “vanity project” rather than a necessary monument.
“This is not Pyongyang,” Huffman said, invoking the capital of North Korea. “Most Americans want to be able to appreciate the view of Arlington Cemetery without a massive eyesore.”
The White House criticized Democrats’ legal challenge, saying that the party is “opposed to anything that celebrates the greatness of our Country” and mocking them as “America Last losers.”
“The Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “It will enhance the visitor experience at Arlington National Cemetery for veterans, the families of the fallen, and all Americans alike, serving as a visual reminder of the noble sacrifices borne by so many American heroes throughout our 250 year history so we can enjoy our freedoms today.”
The White House did not respond to questions about whether officials would seek congressional approval of their planned arch.
Military veterans and a historic preservationist sued the Trump administration last month, arguing that Trump’s planned arch would obstruct key views when visiting Arlington National Cemetery and interfere with the intent of nearby monuments. Public Citizen, a government watchdog organization, is seeking to halt the project until the administration secures approval from Congress and federal review panels.
The White House has yet to formally propose its arch or seek those approvals, but Trump has repeatedly said that construction will soon begin. He has also tied the arch to the nation’s 250th anniversary, with Freedom 250 — a Trump-aligned group helping plan commemorative activities this year — helping guide the project’s development.
“We’re doing one that will be more magnificent and larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris,” the president said in an interview last month with NBC News, invoking the famous 164-foot-tall arch in France. Trump said that his planned arch would be “about” 250 feet high.
The Justice Department on Thursday publicly posted additional records related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including some that include allegations against President Donald Trump, following sharp criticism of the agency’s handling of the issue.
The agency said the files, which include detailsfrom FBI interviews with a woman who told authorities she had been sexually assaulted by Trump and Epstein, had not been previously released because they were incorrectly determined to be duplicates of other records. The Justice Department has posted millions of pages of Epstein-related records online, including investigative materials, following the passage of a law last year mandating their release.
The woman, who was interviewed by the FBI in 2019, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her decades earlier when she was a minor. No evidence has emerged publicly to corroborate that accusation. The White House called the allegations against Trump “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence.”
The additional records were posted as Trump and his administration have struggled to combat controversies involving the release of files connected to Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while facing charges of sex-trafficking and abusing girls.
The Justice Department has faced particular criticism over its response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a measure passed by Congress last year that demanded the agency make public a wide array of records by mid-December. While the agency did release more than 100,000 pages by that point, it did not make public most of its files until weeks later, well after the deadline.
Lawmakers have faulted the Justice Department for missing the deadline, failing to redact some information related to victims’ identities and redacting other information. Last month, after multiple media outlets reported thatsummaries of the woman’s account had not been included, the Justice Department said it was examining whether it wrongly withheld records containing allegations against Trump, who had been friends with Epstein for years before they had a falling out.
On Thursday, the Justice Department said in a social media post that it had discovered that “15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicative.” Among these records were notes from multiple FBI interviews with the woman, who spoke to authorities following Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
According to the interview notes, the woman told investigators that she had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and Trump during separate incidents in the 1980s, when she was a minor. The Washington Post has been unable to corroborate these allegations or reach the woman.
Though summary reports of three of her FBI interviews were not included in files previously released by the administration, the Justice Department had already posted a report on one of the interviews as well as a summary file referencing the woman’s allegations against Trump.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, pushed back against the allegations in a statement Friday.
“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s [Justice Department] knew about them for four years and did nothing with them — because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt said. “As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files.”
The Justice Department this week said it had “not deleted any files from the library,” and a spokeswoman called it “the most transparent Department of Justice in history.”
In addition to the FBI interviews, the Justice Department said Thursday that federal officials in South Florida had separately concluded that five prosecution memos “initially marked as privileged could be released while still protecting the privileged materials.” Those were also released, the agency said.
The release of the FBI interviews and other documents came a day after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi, escalating tensions between Congress and the administration.
Bondi, testifying last month before Congress, said the Justice Department “spent thousands of hours painstakingly reviewing millions of pages to comply with Congress’s law.”
It was not clear how Bondi intends to respond to the subpoena, which compels her to appear before the committee for a closed-door deposition about the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein records.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Florida Bar on Friday walked back what it said was an erroneous earlier statement its representatives had made indicating that it had an open investigation into Lindsey Halligan, a former top federal prosecutor in Virginia.
A letter from a bar association representative to an advocacy group that had requested an inquiry into Halligan said that there was an “investigation pending” in response to the group’s complaint.
Jennifer Krell Davis, a spokeswoman for the Florida Bar, also said Thursday that there was an “open file” but declined to comment further “as active Florida discipline cases are confidential.”
On Friday, however, Davis issued a new statement saying, “The Florida Bar wrote a letter to the complainant erroneously stating that there is a pending Bar investigation of member Lindsay Halligan. There is no such pending Bar investigation of Lindsay Halligan.”
She said the Florida Bar had received a complaint and was monitoring the “ongoing legal proceedings” but did not explain the discrepancy.
Halligan, a former White House aide for President Donald Trump, pursued cases against the president’s opponents but ultimately left the job after her appointment was deemed unlawful.
The Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog that had sought the bar inquiry, published a letter on its website in which a representative of the Florida Bar confirmed that the organization had an investigation pending.
A spokesperson for the Florida Bar had told the Associated Press on Thursday that there was an open file on Halligan but declined to comment further because disciplinary cases are confidential.
On Friday, Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of CfA, said the Florida Bar had not directly told them that the Feb. 4 letter contained an erroneous mention of a pending investigation. She said it’s “hard to reconcile” the Bar’s latest statement.
“If there is no longer an investigation into Halligan, the question is why not, given that three judges indicated she engaged in conduct that appears to violate ethics rules,” Kuppersmith said in a statement.
Halligan did not immediately respond to several email requests for comment about the investigation.
The complaint centers on Halligan’s brief but turbulent time as the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, historically one of the Justice Department’s most elite and prestigious prosecution offices.
Halligan secured both indictments but ran into difficulty right away as lawyers for Comey raised questions about a series of what they said were irregularities in the grand jury presentation of the case, including legal and factual errors that tainted the process. A judge in November scolded Halligan for “fundamental misstatements of the law,” including what he said was her suggestion to the grand jury that Comey did not have a Fifth Amendment right to not testify in the case.
A different judge subsequently dismissed both the Comey and James prosecutions after concluding that Halligan’s appointment by the Justice Department had been unlawful. Halligan left the position in January.
The complaint rehashes that chronology and also suggests that Halligan may have violated rules of professional conduct by continuing to hold herself out in court filings as acting U.S. attorney for the district after a judge had ruled that she was serving in the position illegally.
“In this way, Ms. Halligan appears to have issued false or misleading communications regarding herself and her services,” the complaint said.
BATON ROUGE, La. — The ambitious liver doctor would go just about anywhere in his home state to give people the hepatitis B vaccine.
Bill Cassidy offered jabs to thousands of inmates at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in the early 2000s. A decade before that, he set up vaccine clinics in middle schools, a model hailed nationally as a success.
“He got that whole generation immunized in East Baton Rouge,” said Holley Galland, a retired doctor who worked with Cassidy vaccinating schoolchildren.
About the same time, a lawyer and environmental activist with a famous last name was starting to build the loyal anti-vaccine coalition that, two decades later, would move President Donald Trump to nominate him as the nation’s top health official.
Today, a year after now-Sen. Cassidy warily cast the vote that ensured Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ascension to that role, the Louisiana Republican’s life’s work — in medicine and in politics — is unraveling.
Newborn hepatitis B vaccination rates in the U.S. had plunged to 73% as of August, down 10 percentage points since a February 2023 high, according to research published in JAMA last month. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices — remade by Kennedy — voted to revoke a two-decade-old recommendation that all newborns get the shot.
The next month, Trump endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, a Cassidy challenger in what’s shaping up to be a competitive Republican Senate primary. Letlow’s foray into politics began in 2021 when she took the seat won by her husband, left vacant after he died from COVID.
KFF Health News made multiple requests for comment from Cassidy over three months. His staff declined to make him available for an interview or provide comment. Letlow’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Rise of the skeptics
As the May primary nears, some Louisiana doctors are worried they’ve begun a long trek down a dark road when it comes to vaccine-preventable diseases.
Last year, on the day Kennedy was sworn in a thousand miles away in Washington, Louisiana’s health department stopped promoting vaccines, halting its clinics and advertising. Its communications about an ongoing whooping cough outbreak in the state have nearly ceased. It took months for the state to announce last year that two infants had died from the illness. A Louisiana child’s death from the flu was confirmed this January, and a couple of cases of measles were reported last year.
Spokespeople for the Louisiana Department of Health did not respond to questions.
When parents have concerns about vaccines, pediatrician Mikki Bouquet of Baton Rouge, La., offers them a handmade folder she created that addresses common misconceptions or fears about vaccines.
“It’s so hard to see children get sick from illnesses that they should have never gotten in the first place,” said Mikki Bouquet, a pediatrician in Baton Rouge. “You want to just scream into the void of this community over how they failed this child.”
As anti-vaccine forces have taken hold of the state and federal health departments, Cassidy has lamented the consequences.
“Families are getting sick and people are dying from vaccine-preventable deaths, and that tragedy needs to stop,” he wrote on social media last fall.
But while it is Cassidy’s duty as chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to conduct oversight of the health department, Kennedy has appeared before the committee just once since he was confirmed.
The secretary speaks at a “regular clip” with Cassidy, said Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon.
Kennedy’s department has elevated Louisiana vaccine skeptics. The state surgeon general who terminated Louisiana’s vaccine campaign, Ralph Abraham, was named deputy director of the CDC. (He left the role in February.) And Kennedy handpicked Evelyn Griffin, a Baton Rouge OB-GYN who later replaced Abraham as the state surgeon general, for an appointment to ACIP. Griffin has suggested the COVID vaccine had dangerous side effects for young patients.
Research has shown that serious side effects from the vaccinations are rare and that the shots saved millions of lives during the pandemic.
Cassidy “has really not had an outspoken chorus of policy supporters” when it comes to inoculating people, said Michael Henderson, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “There’s not a lot of political stakes in doing that in Louisiana if you’re a Republican.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry reprimanded Cassidy after the senator called for the state’s health department to ease access to COVID shots.
“Why don’t you just leave a prescription for the dangerous COVID shot at your district office and anyone can swing by and get one!” the Republican quipped on X in September.
On ‘eggshells’ in the exam room
On a sunny February afternoon, as Carnival floats were readied to parade the streets of New Orleans, pediatrician Katie Brown approached a basement apartment on a well-child visit. Cowboy boot pendants dangled from her ears, and a pack of diapers were clutched tightly in her arms.
The patient, a toddler who waved at the sight of visitors, was up to date on her immunizations. But when Brown suggested a COVID vaccine, the girl’s mother quickly declined, noting she had never gotten the shot either.
Many of Brown’s young patients — seen through Nest Health, which offers in-home visits covered by Louisiana’s Medicaid program — are current with their vaccines. Brown said home visits make parents more comfortable immunizing their children, but she’s still spending more time these days explaining what they’re getting in those shots.
“After COVID vaccines, that’s when some people just decided, ‘I don’t know if I trust vaccines, period,’” she said.
Across the state, vaccination rates have declined since the pandemic, falling short of the levels scientists say are required to achieve herd immunity for some deadly diseases, including measles. About 92% of Louisiana’s kindergartners have had the recommended two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
The New Orleans Health Department has tried to step up with a $100,000 immunization campaign of its own, with clinics and billboards, during this year’s flu season, said Jennifer Avegno, the department’s director.
But the state’s absence is felt. Other parishes across Louisiana have not taken similar action, leaving doctors largely on their own to promote immunizations.
“I’ll say that with certainty,” Avegno said. “It’s been a blow to not have a statewide coordination.”
A day after Brown’s home visit, a mother in Baton Rouge shook her head when Bouquet offered a flu shot for her 10-year-old daughter in an exam room.
In the waiting room, parents could thumb through a handmade book that offers scientific facts to counter fears about vaccines. A laminated guide placed in each exam room explained the benefits of each recommended immunization.
Bouquet said she’s experimenting with ways to educate parents about vaccines without seeming overbearing. She still hasn’t figured out a surefire formula. Some parents now shut down any vaccine talk, and she worries others skip scheduling appointments to avoid the topic entirely.
“We’re having to walk on eggshells a bit to determine how to get that trust back,” Bouquet said. “And maybe these discussions can come up in future visits.”
Pro-Vax, pro-anti-Vaxxer
Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit that Kennedy helmed, worked to erode vaccine trust during the pandemic — falsely claiming, for instance, that COVID shots cause organ damage and that polio vaccines were at fault for a rise in the disease. The organization also sued the federal government over the mRNA-based COVID shots, hoping to get their emergency authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration revoked.
When Kennedy came before Cassidy’s committee in January 2025 as Trump’s nominee for health secretary, the senator-doctor saw risks if the prominent anti-vaccine lawyer was confirmed.
Cassidy described a time years ago when he loaded an 18-year-old onto a helicopter to get an emergency liver transplant. The young woman had acute hepatitis B, an incurable disease that is spread primarily through blood or bodily fluids and can lead to liver failure.
It was “the worst day of my medical career,” he said, addressing Kennedy at the witness table in front of him. “Because I thought, $50 of vaccines could have prevented this all.”
Cassidy started in politics in 2006 as a state senator, winning election to the U.S. House two years later. When he first ran for the U.S. Senate, in 2014, he charmed Louisiana voters with campaign ads showing him dressed in scrubs and a white lab coat, talking about his work with Hurricane Katrina evacuees and patients at Baton Rouge’s public hospital.
But some Republicans soured on Cassidy after he voted to convict Trump on an article of impeachment charging him with inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The impeachment vote has hampered Cassidy’s reelection bid this year in a state where Trump captured 60% of the vote in 2024.
“Cassidy has things that are associated with his name: the impeachment vote in 2021,” Henderson said.
Cassidy’s loyalty to Trump was tested again with Kennedy’s nomination. Cassidy said he endorsed Kennedy after extracting pledges that he wouldn’t tinker with the nation’s vaccination program.
But since taking office, Kennedy has largely ignored those promises, and Cassidy hasn’t publicly rebuked him.
Former Texas congressman Michael Burgess served for years with Cassidy in the House, where they were founding members of the GOP Doctors Caucus, started in 2009. He said Cassidy’s discomfort with some of Kennedy’s actions is palpable.
“You could hear some of the pain in Sen. Cassidy’s voice when he was addressing that the secretary wanted to drop the birth dose of hepatitis B,” Burgess said. “You got cases to nearly zero on hepatitis B. It was painful to him to think about taking this away from the population.”
Retired Baton Rouge nurse-practitioner Elizabeth Britton has switched her party affiliation so she can vote in the closed Republican primary for Cassidy, with whom she vaccinated inmates decades ago.
She doesn’t quite understand the “mess” in Washington that resulted in the senator voting to confirm a vaccine critic.
Watching Kennedy and others promulgate doubts about shots she once administered has made her “profoundly sad” and “angry,” she said, but most of all worried.
“It puts a pit in my stomach, because I know the consequences of people not getting the vaccine,” she said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel fired roughly a dozen agents and staff members who once had ties to an investigation of Donald Trump. Among them were agents who specialized in addressing threats from Iran and its proxies.
Three days after the firings began, the United States was bombarding Iran.
The fighting abroad poses a major test for a Justice Department and FBI reeling from mass firings, reassignments, and departures during Trump’s 14 months in office for his second term, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity either out of concern about retaliation or to discuss continuing investigations.
The FBI and Justice Department still have skilled leaders in many key national security positions, the people said, but they warned that the bench of expertise has significantly thinned over the past year, and the number of leaders with deep expertise in handling domestic threats has diminished.
Thinner ranks, especially of experienced staff members, can matter in multiple ways, the current and former officials said.
When the U.S. is engaged in conflict abroad, domestic law enforcement goes into high alert. FBI agents with national security experience sift through scores of possible threats, determining which are worth investigating further, which may be tied to terrorist groups — and which do not need to be followed up on.
For serious threats, FBI agents often coordinate with Justice Department prosecutors to determine whether and how to execute warrants to surveil and arrest people before any possible violence occurs.
Today, experienced agents and prosecutors are more scarce. At the FBI, the recent terminations came on top of scores of firings of agents and field-office leaders that Patel has ordered during his tenure, often without explanation.
One former prosecutor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to broadly discuss an investigation that has not been made public, said he worked last year with more than a half-dozen FBI agents to surveil a man who officials feared may have been planning a violent attack.
FBI agents surveilled the man 24-7, the former prosecutor said. But Patel reassigned those agents to work on immigration, and the FBI’s capabilities to trail that suspect around-the-clock waned, the prosecutor said.
As of October, roughly 25% of FBI agents had been assigned to immigration enforcement, stretching thin an already busy workforce.
Each termination of an experienced agent also rids the bureau of years of source building, the current and former officials said.
It’s impossible to know for sure what impact such departures have on the ability to track threats, they said. But, they said, each of the Iranian experts the FBI has lost probably had sources in and around Iranian American communities that they used to help monitor specific threats and people. Such source relationships, which are built on trust, cannot easily be transferred and are typically severed when agents leave.
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson defended the bureau on social media. The recent firing of agents happened because “they acted unethically and violated the mission,” he said, adding that three agents with Iran expertise were ousted. The bureau did not answer questions about how the agents acted unethically or violated the FBI’s mission.
“While we do not comment on personnel matters, the FBI maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country, who delivered record results in 2025 — including a 35% increase in counterintelligence arrests, six of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives captured, and multiple foiled terrorism plots just in December alone,” Williamson said in a statement. “Our teams remain fully engaged across the country and prepared to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners — as well as state and local law enforcement.”
There’s no question, however, that the administration’s firings across the Justice Department and FBI have created big gaps in expertise across the law enforcement agency. The staffing losses have been widespread, hitting U.S. attorneys offices, FBI field offices and critical divisions at headquarters in Washington. The Justice Department has struggled to fill many of these slots with qualified people, the Washington Post has reported.
The firings started on Day One of the Trump administration. Top Justice Department leaders pushed out Bruce Swartz, the deputy for international affairs in the criminal division, who had worked at the department for decades. Michael Nordwall, who headed the FBI’s criminal and cyber investigations division, and Robert Wells, whose portfolio included all of national security for the FBI, were also pushed out.
At the time, The Post reported that Brian Driscoll — the acting FBI director while Patel was awaiting Senate confirmation — fought to keep Nordwall and Wells, saying their expertise was needed. Driscoll lost that fight. He subsequently was also pushed out by Patel.
George Toscas — a veteran national security prosecutor who, in previous administrations, would have been overseeing the threats cases — was also ousted.
Some of the removed leaders have been replaced with others who have years of experience in the department, the people interviewed said. In many cases, however, talented employees were promoted before they otherwise would have been, cutting short their training for senior positions. Others, they said, are unqualified for their jobs.
Further stretching the national security leadership, Matthew Blue — the chief of the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section — is an Air Force veteran who has been serving in the D.C. National Guard since August. Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard to tackle “out of control” crime in the nation’s capital.
One of Blue’s deputy chiefs, a longtime Justice Department prosecutor, has been serving as acting chief in his absence.
Firings in other parts of the Justice Department can also have a ripple effect. Kyle Boynton — a former Civil Rights Division prosecutor and FBI agent who left the Justice Department in 2025 — noted that prosecutors who have reason to fear a person is planning a violent act can sometimes bring charges of an attempt to commit a hate crime before they carry out a violent attack. That can be a critical tool in preventing attacks, he said.
As a prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division, Boynton said he would receive calls from FBI agents when they were tracking a threat against a synagogue, for example. He would help determine what search warrants or surveillance measures they could legally request. Boynton said he fears that few people remain in the division’s criminal section who have handled such investigations.
The entire leadership of the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division has departed or been ousted in recent months, two people familiar with staffing in the division said.
“It requires an enormous amount of manpower to track people before they commit a crime,” Boynton said. “What you are looking for is evidence of intent and evidence that they have taken substantial steps in furtherance of intent. That requires an enormous amount of attention and scrutiny by FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors.”
Current and former Justice Department attorneys said they are frustrated that the Trump administration, including Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, did not appear to carefully consider the long-term ramifications of their staffing decisions.
“We are now in a heightened-threat situation, not just in the Mideast but also here in the U.S. Iran, acting through its proxies, has long sought to carry out a terrorist attack or assassination inside the country,” said one longtime former senior National Security official.
“The danger today is that we have lost so much of our capability to uncover and stop such an attack,” the official said. “We have let down our guard at the worst time.”
It’s the second vote in as many days, after the Senate defeated a similar measure along party lines. Lawmakers are confronting the sudden reality of representing wary Americans in wartime and all that entails — with lives lost, dollars spent, and alliances tested by a president’s unilateral decision to go to war with Iran.
While the tally in the House, 212-219, was expected to be tight, the outcome provided a clarifying snapshot of political support for, and opposition to, the U.S.-Israel military operation and Trump’s rationale for bypassing Congress, which alone has the power to declare war. At the Capitol, the conflict has quickly carried echoes of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many Sept. 11-era veterans now serve in Congress.
“Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The House also approved a separate measure affirming that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Republicans largely back Trump, and most Democrats oppose the war
Trump’s Republican Party, which narrowly controls the House and Senate, largely sees the conflict with Iran not as the start of a new war, but the end of a government that has long menaced the West. The operation has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which some view as an opportunity for regime change, though others warn of a chaotic power vacuum.
Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” the country posed.
Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the war powers resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”
For Democrats, Trump’s attack on Iran, influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war of choice that is testing the balance of powers in the Constitution.
“The framers weren’t fooling around,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), arguing that the Constitution is clear that only Congress can decide matters of war. “It’s up to us.”
While views in Congress are largely falling along party lines, there are crossover coalitions. The war powers resolution, if signed into law, would have immediately halted Trump’s ability to conduct the war unless Congress approved the military action. The president would likely veto it.
Trump officials provide shifting rationale for war
After launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials spent hours behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week trying to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.
Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait, and Trump has said more Americans could die. Thousands of Americans abroad have scrambled for flights, many lighting up phone lines at congressional offices as they sought help trying to flee the Middle East.
Trump said Thursday he must be involved in choosing Iran’s new leader. Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said this week that America has enough problems at home and is not about to be in the “nation-building business.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war could extend eight weeks, twice as long as the president first estimated. Trump has left open the possibility of sending U.S. troops into what has largely been a bombing campaign by air. More than 1,230 people in Iran have died.
The administration said the goal is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles that it believes are shielding its nuclear program. It has also said Israel was ready to act, and American bases would face retaliation if the U.S. did not strike Iran first. On Wednesday, the U.S. said it torpedoed an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka.
“This administration can’t even give us a straight answer of as to why we launched this preemptive war,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky, an outlier in his party.
Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), who had teamed up to force the release the Jeffrey Epstein files, also pushed the war powers resolution to the floor, past objections from Johnson’s GOP leadership. Another Republican, Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, a former Army Ranger, was also expected to back the war powers resolution.
Johnson has warned that it would be “dangerous” to limit the president’s authority while the U.S. military is already in conflict.
“Congress must stand with the president to finally close, once and for all, this dark chapter of history,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas) said.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D., Ariz.) said that as the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled their homeland, she celebrates Khamenei’s death. But she warned that a democratic transition for the people of Iran never seems to a priority for Trump and his officials who briefed lawmakers.
“War carries profound and deadly consequences for our troops, for the American people and for the entire world,” she said. “It’s the most serious decision that a nation can make and the American people deserve debate, transparency and accountability before that decision is made.”
Other Democrats have proposed an alternative resolution that would allow the president to continue the war for 30 days before he must seek congressional approval. It is not expected yet for a vote.
Senators sit in their desks for solemn vote
In the Senate, Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts during Trump’s second term. This one, however, was different.
Underscoring the gravity of the moment Wednesday, Democratic senators filled the chamber and sat at their desks as the voting got underway.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said before the vote that every senator will pick a side. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said “Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program.”
The legislation failed on a 47-53 tally mostly along party lines, with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) in favor and Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) against it.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman promised to back President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed Kristi Noem within minutes of her abrupt firing as secretary of homeland security.
Trump has tappedU.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol, and the two agencies’increasingly unpopular operations in carrying out Trump’s deportation agenda.
Mullin’s nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.
“I’m not sure how many fellow Democrats will vote to support our colleague [Sen. Mullin] as the next DHS Secretary, but I am AYE,” Fetterman said in a post on X, which also noted his membership on the committee that oversees the department.
Mullin and Fetterman (D., Pa.) were both elected to the Senate in 2022. The Oklahoma Republican had served in the U.S. House for a decade before joining the upper chamber. Mullin told reporters he had already received a text message from Fetterman after Trump’s announcement.
“You guys know John and I are friends. … We’re going to try to earn everybody’s vote,” Mullin said when asked whether other Democrats would vote for him.
The sudden change in leadership at DHS follows growingoutrage over ICE’s tactics and questions aboutNoem’s leadership, both of which escalated nationally after federalagents shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in January in Minneapolis.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appears for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, March 3, 2026.
Fetterman and other senators who had voted for Noem’s confirmation called for her to be fired after Pretti’s killing. She also faced criticism from both sides of the aisle at a recent oversight hearing before the Senate that examined a controversial $220 million ad campaign she approved, among other topics.
U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) said on Thursday that he supports Mullin’s nomination.
It is unclear whetherother Democratic senators will give the green light to Mullin’s nomination, but many on Thursday were quick to celebrate Noem’s departure as she transitions into a newly createdrole in the Trump administration called “the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., speaks with reporters on the steps at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 5, 2026.
But he cautionedthat Noem’s termination is “only the start of getting rid of the deep rot of corruption in the Trump administration,” and that other officials, including Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, the border czar, should be held accountable for immigration agents’ conduct.
Kim and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) have offered legislation to prohibit such moves and Gov. Josh Shapiro has floated possible legal action over DHS’s purchase of two warehouses in Pennsylvania.
Democratic House members from the region echoed Kim’s sentiment that more change is needed than just the leadership of the department.
Lawmakers are still debating future funding for DHS, with Democrats demanding reforms to immigration enforcement before they will approve more money for the department.
“Change the lousy policies, not just the person,” U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Philadelphia) wrote on X.
“We still need real accountability at DHS, including meaningful reforms to ICE so agents are not terrorizing Americans,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Philadelphia) said on X.
Boyle criticized Fetterman for immediately pledging to support Mullin, saying in another post that the Pennsylvania senator is “Trump’s favorite Democrat for a good reason.“
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Chester) congratulated Trump in a statement Thursday for “taking this long overdue action” in firing Noem.
“I sincerely hope Mr. Mullin or whomever is eventually confirmed will be prepared to reform ICE and to work with the Congress to rein in its most destructive practices,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R., Lehigh), who represents a key swing district, said he looks forward to “seeing a greater emphasis on transparency” under Mullin.
He stopped short of criticizing Noem and said in the last year DHS“made critical progress towards securing the border once and for all.”
His office underlined that a new leader should focus on rebuilding the department’s reputation with the American people.
“The Department of Homeland Security carries one of the most important missions in government — protecting the American people. That mission requires the public’s trust, and Congressman Fitzpatrick believes a leadership change was needed to help restore confidence in the department,” Fitzpatrick spokesperson Casey-Lee Waldron said in a statement.
“He hopes Senator Mullin will work to rebuild that trust and strengthen DHS moving forward.”
Two groups — one with the imprimatur of Congress, the other with President Donald Trump’s blessing — are jockeying to host celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary, sparking confusion, muddled messages, and new scrutiny from Democrats who ask why the Trump-aligned group is receiving federal money.
America250, led by a bipartisan board created by Congress a decade ago to mark the nation’s Semiquincentennial, has overseen events such as the Army’s 250th anniversary last year. It has also issued grants to state commissions and sponsored initiatives such as a float in this year’s Rose Parade.
Freedom 250, a public-private partnership launched by the White House in December, has emerged as the more publicized and prolific group, with a flurry of high-profile announcements, including some from the Oval Office.
“Freedom Trucks,” six customized semitrucks backed by $10 million in federal funds and with educational content crafted by conservative educators, have begun crisscrossing red states. A “Freedom Plane” took flight from Washington this week, beginning a National Archives-led nationwide tour in which the Boeing 737 will ferry an original engraving of the Declaration of Independence and other historic documents. The group is also planning a national prayer event on the National Mall, an IndyCar race around D.C., and a UFC fight hosted outside the White House on Trump’s birthday. The organization is led by Keith Krach, who served in the first Trump administration.
Both groups are drawing on private funds for their programming, with sponsors such as Exiger, Oracle, and Palantir contributing to both organizations. The groups are also set to share in $150 million appropriated by Congress last year and managed by the Interior Department.
The rapid rise of Freedom 250, with its Trump-tailored programming, has unnerved some liberals and watchdog organizations, who question whether it is wrongly tapping into funds intended for nationwide anniversary celebrations and promising access to the president at a price. Twelve Senate Democrats on Tuesday pressed the Interior Department to provide a “clear accounting” of money routed to Freedom 250, in a letter sent to the Trump administration and shared with the Washington Post.
“The Trump administration’s latest venture, Freedom 250, continues to raise serious and troubling questions about whether access to the president or official government events is for sale to the highest bidders,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who led the letter, said in a statement to the Post. “And if the administration is commingling taxpayer dollars with other funds in an unaccountable private entity run by the president’s allies, it is an open invitation for corruption. We need answers.”
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, also has called for congressional investigations, citing a recent New York Times report that donors to Freedom 250 were offered access to Trump if they gave $1 million or more.
Freedom 250 spokeswoman Rachel Reisner referred questions about its federal funding to the Interior Department. Trump “is deeply grateful for the support of his donors, but unlike the politicians of the past, he can’t be bought,” she said in a statement.
She added that the organization has reached out to all 50 governors and partnered with a range of organizations, including PragerU and MyAmerica2026.
“As we approach this historic milestone in our nation’s founding, we will not be deterred by any partisan outrage or political theater,” Reisner said.
The Trump administration also has touted its approach, and Trump has repeatedly celebrated that he will be the president to oversee the nation’s 250th anniversary — an idea he embraced on the campaign trail.
Asked about its plans to distribute the $150 million provided by Congress and what share would go toward Freedom 250, the Interior Department declined to comment.
“The Department of the Interior looks forward to celebrating Freedom 250 and saluting 250 years of American greatness alongside President Donald J. Trump — the most iconic and accomplished President in the history of our great nation,” the department said in a statement.
America250 and Freedom 250 have publicly touted their shared commitment to the nation’s Semiquincentennial.
Rosie Rios, the Democrat leading America 250, has repeatedly praised her counterparts in interviews and statements, saying that Freedom 250 will focus on Washington-area events while her group tackles nationwide programming.
The bipartisan commission “has taken every possible step” to support the Trump administration’s activities, the group said in its report to Congress in January.
But the tensions between the organizations have grown, according to fivepeople who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Freedom 250 officials have bristled at the pace of America250’s work and output, and argued that the bipartisan group has been overly bureaucratic and politically correct. They also argue that America250 — which has received more than $100 million in federal funding since 2019 — has little to show for those contributions.
In comparison, one person familiar with the matter said, Freedom 250 drew on $3 million in federal funds last year to quickly produce a New Year’s Eve light display on the Washington Monument.
America250 said in a statement that it continues to actively collaborate with the White House task force, Freedom 250 and the full executive branch to plan the celebrations.
The group has been running a nationwide contest for students to submit perspectives on what America means to them and has been to eight states so far with a storytelling program on identity, service, community, and personal legacy.
Meanwhile,America250 officials and allies have questioned whether the Trump-backed group is too focused on activities that please the president and say the group threatens to siphon money that could be used for nationwide activities. America250 has received $25 million of the $150 million apportioned by Congress last year for anniversary activities, according to a person familiar with its finances.
The friction between the groups reached a breaking point in the planning for the Army’s 250th birthday last summer — a military parade in Washington that coincided with Trump’s birthday, said one person familiar with the plans. America250 wanted the celebration to focus on the military, not the president. Freedom 250 wanted Trump, as the commander in chief, to be front and center, the person said.
Some programming has shifted between the two groups. America250 originally applied for and received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the Freedom Trucks, mobile museums inspired by the American Freedom Train that crisscrossed the country from 1975-1976. The institute is a federal agency that provides financial support for museums and libraries. The $10 million grant was later voluntarily transferred to Freedom 250, according to an official of the agency.
“These mobile museums, which tell the incredible story of our nation’s founding, will be a cherished memory for an entire generation,” Keith Sonderling, a Trump appointee who leads the museum and library agency, said in a statement.
Marissa Streit, chief executive of PragerU, a conservative media organization, said her company volunteered to produce all video and educational content for the Freedom Trucks after White House officials came up with the vision and worked with Hillsdale College to develop the displays.
Streit insisted that despite the uniformly conservative credentials of the people involved, the exhibits showed a balanced view of history.
“I believe we need to teach and talk about both the negative things that have happened in our country as well as the positive,” she said.
The tensions are a departure from the approach taken during the bicentennial under President Gerald Ford, who sought to make sure the celebrations did not raise questions of impropriety in the wake of the Watergate scandal, said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
“The one thing our taxpayer funds should not be used for is politicizing the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country,” said Painter, co-author of The U.S. Presidency: Power, Responsibility, and Accountability. “One of the things [the founders] were most afraid of is faction and political parties destroying our democracy. The celebrations here shouldn’t be owned by one political party or another.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday fired his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, after mounting criticism over her leadership of the department, including the handling of the administration’s immigration crackdown and disaster response.
Trump, who said he would nominate Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin in her place, made the announcement on social media after Noem faced a two-day grilling on Capitol Hill this week from GOP members as well as Democrats.
Noem’s departure marks a stunning turnaround for a close ally to the president who was tasked with steering his centerpiece policy of mass deportations. But she appeared to increasingly become a liability for Trump, with questions arising over her spending at her department and over her conduct in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Trump said Noem “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!).” He said he was making her a “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” a new security initiative that he said would focus on the Western Hemisphere.
Noem, who appeared at a law enforcement event in Nashville, moments after Trump’s announcement, did not address her ouster there. She read from prepared remarks and was not asked by attendees about the development.
Later, in a social media post, she thanked Trump for the new appointment and touted her accomplishments as secretary.
“We have made historic accomplishments at the Department of Homeland Security to make America safe again,” she wrote.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration will work with the GOP-led Senate to get Mullin, whom she called “extraordinarily qualified,” confirmed to lead DHS “as soon as possible.”
The administration’s immigration crackdown faced criticism, especially in Minnesota
Noem is the first cabinet secretary to leave during Trump’s second term. Her tenure looked increasingly short-lived after hearings in Congress this week where she faced rare but blistering criticism from Republican lawmakers. One particular point of scrutiny was a $220 million ad campaign featuring Noem that encouraged people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily.
Noem told lawmakers that Trump was aware of the campaign in advance, but Trump disputed that in an interview Thursday with Reuters, saying he did not sign off on the ad campaign.
Noem has faced waves of criticism as she’s overseen Trump’s immigration crackdown, especially since the shooting deaths of the two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of immigration enforcement officers. In the immediate aftermath of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Noem portrayed both of them as aggressors, contradicting widely viewed videos and descriptions of their deaths from bystanders. She declined to apologize for her description over two days of congressional testimony.
The former South Dakota governor was also criticized over the way her department has spent billions of dollars allocated to it by Congress.
Her department, DHS, has been at the center of a funding battle in Congress over immigration enforcement tactics and has been shut down for 20 days, although many of the employees are continuing to work, often without pay.
Even before Noem’s appearance before key congressional committees this week, Republican lawmakers had been anticipating the secretary’s eventual ouster, particularly after her handling of the immigration enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis.
As they tried to end the ongoing Homeland Security shutdown, Senate Republicans had noted privately to Democratic senators that Noem was likely on her way out and that that should prompt Democrats to move forward with agreeing to fund the department again, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Democrats did not see that as an actual concession by Republicans, considering Noem was becoming a political liability for the GOP, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Aside from immigration, Noem also faced criticism — including from Republicans — over the pace of emergency funding approved through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and for the Trump administration’s response to disasters.
Critics welcomed Noem’s departure. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wrote “good riddance” on social media, a sentiment echoed by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
Some immigration activists questioned whether her departure would change the execution of an immigration agenda that they fundamentally disagree with.
“This is not accountability, just a reshuffling of the enablers of the agenda of President Trump,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group. She said Noem’s tenure was “marked by cruelty.”
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who was elevated under Noem’s watch to lead immigration crackdowns in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, was one of the few who applauded Noem’s tenure.
“She is the best Secretary I ever worked for, period. The others weren’t even close. Noem is the ultimate patriot,” Bovino told the Associated Press.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (center) arrives at Philadelphia International Airport to attend the NCAA Division 1 men’s wrestling championships at the Wells Fargo Center on March 22, 2025.
DHS leadership changes come at a pivotal time
Mullin would need to be confirmed by the Senate, but under a federal law governing executive branch vacancies, he would be allowed to serve as an acting Homeland Security secretary as long as his nomination is formally pending.
Voting in the Senate just after Trump’s announcement, Mullin said he has “no idea” how quickly his nomination will move.
“The president and I are good friends. So we look forward to working closer with the White House, and obviously I’m gonna be over there a lot more,” he said.
Mullin would take over the third-largest department in government that has responsibility for carrying out Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. And he would assume the role at a pivotal time for that agenda.
Immigration enforcement during the first year of Trump’s administration was largely defined by high-profile, made-for-social-media operations with flashy names, often led by Bovino, who reported directly to Noem. Noem herself often went out on those operations, riding along with officers when they went out to make arrests.
But those high-profile operations in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis often led to clashes with activists and protesters that were captured on video and drove opposition to the president’s immigration agenda.
That culminated with the shooting deaths in Minneapolis after which Trump shuffled leadership of the operation. The number of officers there was drawn down shortly after.
WASHINGTON — Republicans invoked the war in Iran and the prospect of retaliatory terrorist attacks as they made another unsuccessful effort Thursday to pass a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats are insisting on changes to immigration enforcement operations as part of the measure and blocked it from advancing. The procedural vote was 51-45, falling well short of the 60 that Republicans needed to proceed with the measure. While the House will also take up the bill Thursday, that outcome will be more about putting lawmakers on the record about where they stand.
In the end, a bipartisan compromise will have to be reached to end a DHS shutdown that began Feb. 14.
The funding bill first passed the House back in January, but it has gone nowhere in the Senate as Democrats seek new restraints on immigration enforcement tactics following the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis.
Republicans have called on Democrats to reconsider their vote in the wake of the conflict in Iran.
Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said Democrats would bear responsibility for the next cyberattack that is missed or the next “lone wolf terrorist” who attacks in the U.S.
“Blood will be on their hands,” Barrasso said on the Senate floor. “Because we don’t have a functioning Department of Homeland Security that is funded with people on the ground in every position receiving their paychecks.”
It did not appear the GOP’s strategy had changed the position of Democratic lawmakers, though. They said they are prepared to fund most of the agencies at the department, just not Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.
“It’s the same lousy, rotten bill that does not put any guardrails or constraints on ICE or CBP after federal agents shot American citizens in the street,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said.
Moments before the vote, senators were getting word that President Donald Trump had just fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. The news did not change Democrats’ resolve to force operational changes within the department through the spending bill.
“Good riddance,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “But the problems at ICE transcend any one individual.”
Workers are beginning to miss part of their paychecks
Following the longest federal shutdown in the country’s history last year, Congress has completed work on 11 of this year’s 12 appropriations bills. Only the bill for Homeland Security remains outstanding.
Republicans said the timing couldn’t be worse for a Homeland Security shutdown. While a large majority of the department’s employees are considered essential and continue to work, many will not receive a full paycheck this week.
“Like Democrats’ first shutdown a few months ago, this shutdown is causing a lot of financial stress, uncertainty, and pain for hardworking Americans,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. “It’s also making it harder for those working to keep America safe.”
Republicans said the prospect of an increase in unscheduled absences by the Transportation Security Administration’s agents could lead to longer wait times at the nation’s airports. Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has canceled various assessments to determine vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. And training for first responders conducted through the Federal Emergency Management Agency was canceled.
Democrats are seeking several changes at the department that include prohibiting ICE enforcement operations at sensitive locations like schools and churches, allowing independent investigations into alleged wrongdoing, requiring warrants to be signed by judges before federal agents can forcibly enter private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent, and requiring agents to wear identification and remove their masks.
Republicans note that the bill does include a bipartisan provision directing more resources for de-escalation training and $20 million to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body-worn cameras.
Little to show from negotiations
The White House and congressional Democrats don’t appear to have made significant progress in recent weeks in resolving their differences after trading several offers.
“Look, we’re still far apart, but we’re negotiating and exchanging paper back and forth,” Schumer said.
The size of the divide appeared significant during Thursday’s debate on the Senate floor.
Alabama Sen. Katie Britt said that through their actions, Democrats were “still the party of open borders, they are still the party of defund the police, now actually more than ever.”
She and other Republicans also cited last weekend’s mass shooting in Austin, Texas, as an example of the dangerous threat environment that’s facing Americans following the attack on Iran.
“We know this couldn’t come at a more dangerous time.,” Britt said.
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that Democrats were simply working to make sure federal immigration officials follow the same standards as other law enforcement officers.
“We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for basic steps to protect Americans’ constitutional rights and their safety,” Murray said.
