Hmmmm … an attempt to keep a highly questionable administration in office!
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What We’re Covering Today
Voter ID Bill: Under pressure from President Trump, the House and the far right, Senate Republicans opened debate on Tuesday on legislation they call the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show approved photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. It is expected to be a prolonged and bitter election-year debate, with the potential to disenfranchise millions of voters.
D.H.S. Funding: The White House indicated in a letter to two Senate Republicans that it was open to rolling back some of its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. Trump officials have been negotiating on the enforcement campaign with Democrats to end a partial government shutdown, which has disrupted most funding for the Department of Homeland Security and, according to a top T.S.A. official, could force smaller U.S. airports to close.
Epstein Files: The House Oversight Committee sent a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi, requiring her to testify in a deposition about the Justice Department’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and its release of material connected to Epstein. The deposition has been scheduled for April 14. Five Republicans had joined Democrats in voting to approve the subpoena two weeks ago. Separately, Ms. Bondi and Todd Blanche, her deputy, will brief committee members on Wednesday.
The Senate voted 51-48 to open debate on its contentious voter ID bill, with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining Democrats in opposition. The debate is expected to last for days, and the close vote illustrates the tensions surrounding the legislation.
Senator Thom Tillis, another Republican opponent of the legislation, was absent.
The Senate is teeing up its first test vote on the Republican proposal to put tougher voter identification and registration rules in place for the November elections. At least one Republican, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has said he would join Democrats in opposing the effort to bring the bill to the floor, narrowing the Republican margin for error. If the first procedural hurdle is cleared, days of debate are expected.
What’s in the voter ID bill that Trump and Republicans are pushing?
The Senate has taken up a strict voter identification bill that President Trump has demanded Congress deliver him, and that he and his Republican allies groundlessly claim is needed to combat mass voter fraud by noncitizens.
Passed narrowly by the House last month, the legislation, which Republicans call the SAVE America Act, would normally seem to have little chance of enactment given near-solid Democratic opposition. That means it lacks the 60 votes required to move to a final vote.
President Trump threatened on Tuesday to campaign against any lawmaker who votes against the voter ID bill, escalating what had been a steady barrage of warnings against any effort to stymie the politically divisive legislation. “Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote in a social media post, in which he pledged he would never endorse anyone who voted against it.
The Senate’s debate over the bill is expected to be long and bitter.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday narrowly agreed to open what is expected to be a prolonged and bitter election-year debate on a bill to stiffen voter identification and registration rules, defying Democratic vows to block the measure even though they lack the votes in their own ranks to push it through.
Under pressure from President Trump, the House and the far right, Senate Republicans voted to move ahead with the legislation they call the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show approved photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. It would also require states to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security to remove those flagged as noncitizens.
David Steiner, the postmaster general, said at a congressional oversight hearing that at the current rate, “we’ll be out of cash in less than 12 months, so in about a year from now the postal service will be unable to deliver the mail if we continue the status quo.”
“The postal service is at a critical juncture,” he said.
Trump administration offers narrow immigration changes to end D.H.S. shutdown.
White House officials on Tuesday outlined narrow adjustments the administration would make to federal immigration enforcement operations to answer Democratic demands for major changes in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security.
In a letter to Senate Republicans, the administration ignored several of Democrats’ top priorities, including blocking immigration officers from wearing masks to shield their identities and requiring them to obtain warrants from judges to enter private homes or businesses. And the proposal did not address Democrats’ call for a use-of-force policy, a central demand they made after federal immigration officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis.
A T.S.A. official warns that small U.S. airports could close if the partial government shutdown continues.
With more than 30 percent of Transportation Security Administration officers absent from work at several airports across the United States this week, a senior T.S.A. official warned on Tuesday that the ongoing partial government shutdown may force the closure of small U.S. airports.
The latest court ruling voiding the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America dealt another blow to Kari Lake, a Trump ally and the de-facto head of V.O.A.’s oversight agency, and President Trump, who has called the news group the “voice of radical America.” It was not immediately clear whether the administration will appeal.
This ruling comes more than a week after Judge Lamberth ruled Lake’s appointment illegal, effectively voiding all layoffs. But that ruling fell short of ordering the administration to bring back journalists and resume all news programming. Nearly all V.O.A. journalists had been on paid leave since March, 2025.
A federal judge has voided nearly all actions that the Trump administration took to shutter Voice of America, a federally funded news group that broadcast to countries with limited press freedoms, such as Iran, China and Russia.
In a victory for V.O.A. reporters and staff who sued the administration, Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered more than 1,000 full-time journalists and support staff at the news group to return to work by March 23 and to resume broadcasting operations.
Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, who is presiding over the lawsuit challenging President Trump’s White House ballroom project, said he would rule on a motion to halt construction by the end of March.
A bipartisan bill would waive Trump’s $100,000 visa fees for medical professionals.
A bipartisan bill introduced in the House on Tuesday would waive the $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas for foreign health care professionals seeking to work in the United States, among them doctors and nurses.
The fee, imposed by the Trump administration last September, threatened to drive up costs for hospitals that rely on foreign health providers for staffing, and typically bring on a new class of medical residents, among them many foreign medical school graduates, on July 1.
As Congress remains locked in a standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said that progress had not yet been made around some of Democrats’ major demands. Those demands include requiring officers to not use masks, to display visible identification, and to require warrants when entering private homes. “They haven’t budged on those,” Schumer said of the White House. “They’ve got to get serious.” The department’s funding lapsed on Feb. 14, but negotiations have remained stalled.
Chief Justice John Roberts says personal attacks on judges are ‘dangerous’ and must stop.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Tuesday denounced personal attacks aimed at judges and justices, calling them “dangerous.”
“It’s got to stop,” he said.
Democrats hammer Trump on ‘energy affordability.’
Democrats are dialing up their rhetorical attacks against President Trump over energy affordability as the war against Iran drags into its third week, and oil prices remain elevated.
In a new report on Tuesday, top Senate Democrats accused the Trump administration of waging a “war on energy affordability” by canceling hundreds of clean energy projects even before the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran — strikes which have sent energy costs higher. The report is a precursor to a series of live-streamed round-table discussions that party leaders hope will keep a spotlight on their campaign mantra for the fall’s midterm elections, focusing on lowering the cost of living.
The House Oversight Committee sent a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, requiring her to testify in a deposition about the Justice Department’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and its release of material connected to Epstein. Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, was forced to issue the subpoena after a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted to do so in a hearing.
In the subpoena, Comer scheduled Bondi’s deposition for April 14. Separately, Bondi and Todd Blanche, her deputy, will brief committee members on Wednesday.
Speaking in the Oval Office, President Trump said Cuba’s government was in “very bad shape” and that “they are talking to Marco,’’ referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio stepped in to say that “their economy does not work, it is a non-functioning economy” and that the country’s subsidies from Venezuela had halted. The Trump administration is seeking to push the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, from power, according to four people familiar with talks between U.S. and Cuban officials.
President Trump just addressed his trip to China, which he delayed over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. “We are resetting the meeting, and it looks like it will happen in five or six weeks,’’ Trump said, speaking in the Oval Office.
Trump says Newsom shouldn’t be president because he is dyslexic.
President Trump said on Monday that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat widely seen as a likely presidential contender, should not be president because he has dyslexia. A leading advocacy group for people with learning disabilities criticized the comments.
In an appearance at the White House, Mr. Trump said that he was “all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president — a president should not have learning disabilities.” He added, referring to Mr. Newsom, “Everything about him is dumb.”
Judge ejects federal prosecutor from court and orders bosses to testify.
A federal judge threw a top prosecutor from the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office out of his courtroom during a sentencing hearing this week and demanded that the office’s leadership testify about who had authority over their actions, according to court documents.
The rapid sequence of events on Monday in the courtroom of Judge Zahid N. Quraishi was the latest indication of growing tensions between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary in New Jersey. It came during the scheduled sentencing of a man who last year agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography.
Trump officials weigh a new $1 billion deal to block offshore wind farms off New York and North Carolina.
The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.
Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.
The Supreme Court has deferred a decision on Trump’s bid to end protections for migrants.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to immediately allow the Trump administration to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants living in the United States, and instead agreed to hear oral arguments in the matter in late April.
As part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, the administration has moved to terminate a program, known as Temporary Protected Status, that has allowed migrants from certain troubled nations to live and work legally in the United States. At issue in the cases before the Supreme Court are protections for some 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians.
The Latest on the Trump Administration
Legal Retribution Campaign: In the wake of a lacerating ruling by a federal judge derailing an inquiry into the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, prosecutors are floundering in the most basic steps of criminal investigations into those President Trump wants scrutinized.
Susie Wiles Diagnosed With Breast Cancer: Trump’s White House chief of staff, the first woman to ever hold that position, said that the disease was caught in its early stages, and she is not planning to take a leave.
War in the Middle East: The president is no stranger to staking out contradictory stands, part of what his aides say is his negotiating style. But on Iran, Trump’s shifting positions are colliding with the consequences of war. And a surge in oil price is threatening to raise costs across the economy and cut into the already modest stimulus the tax cuts passed by Republicans last year were poised to deliver.
Kennedy Center: The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has voted to shutter the institution for a two-year renovation project after Trump warned them that the building was in “very bad shape” and had been on “the verge of collapse” before he took over.
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The Senate majority leader, John Thune, and his Republican colleagues plan to move ahead on Tuesday with the legislation they call the SAVE America Act. Credit…Nathan Howard for The New York Times
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