A closed sign is seen on the Washington Monument on Oct. 1, 2025 in Washington, D.C. The federal government shut down many operations overnight after Congress failed to pass a stopgap funding bill. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday the administration is looking for ways to get a handful of additional U.S. Senate Democrats to vote for Republicans’ stopgap spending bill to reopen government. 

But, in the meantime, White House officials plan to lay off federal workers en masse, a dramatic and unsettling step that’s not traditionally been taken during past shutdowns. 

“We’re going to have to take extraordinary measures to ensure the people’s government operates — again not perfectly because it’s not going to operate perfectly in the midst of a shutdown — but operates as well as it possibly can,” Vance said.

Any Democrats concerned about the impacts of layoffs on federal programs or people’s lives, Vance said, should vote to advance a seven-week stopgap spending bill that has stalled in the Senate.  Senate and House Democrats say they will not support a GOP path to reopen the government unless Republicans agree to negotiate on rising health care costs. 

Typically during a shutdown, some federal employees are categorized as exempt, meaning they work throughout the funding lapse. Others are furloughed. All receive back pay once Congress funds the government, under a 2019 law.  

Widescale layoffs were not part of the 2013 shutdown or the 2018-2019 shutdown that took place during the first Trump administration. 

Vance during the White House briefing placed blame for the shutdown on Democrats, as the Trump administration ramped up similar rhetoric, including on government agency websites that said the “radical left in Congress” is at fault.

“Three moderate Democrats joined 52 Republicans last night. We need five more in order to reopen the government and that’s really where we’re going to focus, is how to get those five additional Democrats,” Vance said. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during the same briefing that layoffs for federal employees are “imminent” but declined to say what percentage of workers would be let go or share any other details. 

Leavitt indicated that White House budget director Russ Vought would release those details “soon,” saying she didn’t want to get ahead of that office.  

“These (Reductions in Force) are unfortunately going to have to happen very soon,” Leavitt said. 

Effects on key programs

The administration expects several programs will be impacted by the shutdown, including new enrollees in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. 

Leavitt said the funding lapse means “1.3 million active duty troops will work now without pay; critical food assistance for low-income women, infants and children will now lapse, no new mothers or children are allowed to join this critical program because of the Democrats’ decision to shut down the government; telehealth services for seniors and in-home treatment options for Medicare patients will now come to an end; nearly 50,000 members of the United States Coast Guard are going to have to work unpaid; over 13,000 air traffic controllers will work without pay as well as TSA agents, which will very likely create flight disruptions; and pay will now stop for over 150,000 federal law enforcement officers. 

“These are not just numbers and statistics, these are real Americans who have families at home. And I saw some Democrat members today saying they’re still going to accept their paychecks because they have three kids at home and they have mouths to feed. Well, so do these federal workers.”

Members of Congress, the president and federal judges must receive their salary under various provisions in the Constitution. While some lawmakers have publicly asked for their paychecks to be withheld until the government reopens, that’s not a legal option. 

They could, however, donate their salaries to charity, which they can do regardless of whether the government is shut down.  

‘Mafia-style threat’

The threat to fire federal workers en masse has already prompted a lawsuit in a Northern California district court, arguing the executive branch has no statutory authority to fire federal workers during a government shutdown.

There were roughly 2.2 million federal workers throughout the country as of July 1, with large portions of them living in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Texas and Virginia. Roughly 30% of the workforce is made up of veterans. 

Maryland’s Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen told States Newsroom on Wednesday morning that his office has not heard of any federal workers in his state being fired, and even if it were the case, “it’s illegal.” 

“The president has no additional authority, in a shutdown, to fire people,” Van Hollen said. “This is just a mafia-style threat and blackmail.”

He didn’t detail what plans Democrats have to prevent those potential firings, but called them unlawful and pointed to the lawsuit filed in California by labor unions representing more than 1 million federal employees. Those unions are the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner made similar remarks, saying “the president has no enhanced powers during the shutdown so his ability to randomly and arbitrarily fire is not enhanced.”

North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer said Democrats “don’t have the high ground in this situation” and need to pass the GOP stopgap bill so that the government can reopen. 

But Cramer said he’s concerned the White House budget office will go too far in implementing a shutdown, including mass layoffs, and could create challenges for Republican lawmakers. 

“I worry a little bit that they could be counterproductive for us politically in the long run, because other things are going to require 60 votes again,” Cramer said.

Legislation needs the support of at least 60 senators to advance toward final passage, a rule that typically leads to compromise and bipartisanship in that chamber. 

Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said he hopes lawmakers can strike a deal to prevent the Trump administration from firing more federal workers. He said Congress has specifically carved out protections for federal workers, such as in 2019 when lawmakers included a provision to give back pay to furloughed federal workers.  

“So it used to be we had to fight about back pay after the shutdown,” he said. “Now everybody’s guaranteed back pay, so they have that as a backstop that they can count (on).”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a press conference Wednesday President Donald Trump’s administration “has been engaging in” the mass firings of federal workers since Trump took office on Jan 20.

“The Trump administration has been killing jobs,” the New York Democrat said. “This is a job-killing administration. Job creation is down, but you know what’s up? Costs. They promised to lower costs on day one. Costs aren’t going down. Costs are going up.” 

Here are department shutdown plans

The Trump administration has been steadily posting its plans for how many federal workers in each department will keep working without pay during a shutdown and which employees will be furloughed. 

The plans, listed below, also detail which programs the Trump administration believes it can legally continue during a funding lapse without violating federal law. 

They do not explain how many federal workers could be laid off and the White House declined to provide additional details about those plans or whether they’ll be posted publicly following the briefing, 

• Agriculture Department contingency plan
• Commerce Department contingency plan
• Defense Department contingency plan
• Education Department contingency plan
• Energy Department contingency plan
• Health and Human Services contingency plan
• Homeland Security Department contingency plan
• Housing and Urban Development contingency plan
• Interior Department contingency plan
• Labor Department contingency plan
• Justice Department contingency plan
• State Department contingency plan
• Social Security Administration contingency plan
• Transportation Department contingency plan
• Treasury Department contingency plan
• Veterans Affairs Department contingency plan

Attack banners

The Trump administration has taken a new approach to letting people visiting their websites know about the shutdown, adding banners laying the blame at Democrats’ feet. 

The Agriculture Department’s website states that “(d)ue to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown, this government website will not be updated during the funding lapse. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.”

The website for the Department of Housing and Urban Development includes a pop-up and a banner on the homepage that reads, “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need.”

The Defense Department had a more measured message: “The most recent appropriations for the Department of War expired at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Sept. 30, 2025. Military personnel will continue in a normal duty status, without pay, until such time as a continuing resolution or appropriations are passed by Congress and signed into law. Civilian personnel not engaged in excepted activities will be placed in a non-work, non-pay status.”

The message posted by the Department of Health and Human Services was similar. 

“Mission-critical activities of HHS will continue during the Democrat-led government shutdown. Please use this site as a resource as the Trump Administration works to reopen the government for the American people.”

The messages could be in violation of a longstanding rider in federal spending law that states “(n)o part of any funds appropriated in this or any other Act shall be used by an agency of the executive branch … to support or defeat legislation pending before the Congress, except in presentation to the Congress itself.” 

Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to the media at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Thune was joined by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The federal government started shutting down early Wednesday after Congress failed to approve a funding bill before the beginning of the new fiscal year — resulting in widespread ramifications for hundreds of programs and giving the Trump administration an avenue to fire federal workers en masse.

The U.S. Senate was unable to advance two short-term government funding bills Tuesday when Democrats and Republicans deadlocked for the second time this month, with just hours to go before the midnight Tuesday shutdown deadline.

Senators voted 55-45 on Republicans’ bill that would fund the government for seven weeks and 47-53 on a Democratic stopgap proposal that would keep the lights on for a month and included several health care provisions that they said were needed for their support. Neither had the 60 votes needed to advance. 

Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voted with GOP senators on their stopgap bill. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted against it.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said in a memo to departments and agencies Tuesday night after the Senate vote that “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.” Vought said federal employees should report for their next regularly scheduled tour of duty to undertake shutdown activities.

The consequences of a shutdown will be sweeping in the nation’s capital and across the country, where states are bracing for the impact. About 750,000 federal workers could be furloughed, leading to a $400 million impact a day, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported. All federal employees would go unpaid until the shutdown is over.

Additionally, the Trump administration plans to lay off thousands of federal employees, which would reshape the federal workforce. President Donald Trump again vowed Tuesday to undertake layoffs and a major government employee union filed suit in federal court in advance of such a move.

More votes on GOP bill planned

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said hours before the votes there wouldn’t be any talks with Democrats during a shutdown. 

“The negotiation happens when the government is open. So let’s keep the government open and then we will have the negotiations,” Thune said. 

“We’re happy to sit down and talk about these issues that they’re interested in,” he said. “But it should not have anything to do with whether or not for a seven-week period we keep the government open, so that this government can continue to do its work and that we can do our work through the regular appropriations process to fund the government.” 

After the votes failed, Thune expressed his frustration with Democrats during a press conference. 

“This is so unnecessary and uncalled for,” he said. 

Thune said he plans to bring up a vote on the continuing resolution again. He said as soon as Wednesday the federal government can be funded if five Democrats voted with Republicans. 

“Democrats may have chosen to shut down the government, but we can reopen it tomorrow,” Thune said. 

Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming said the “cracks in the Democrats are already showing,” noting that three Democrats voted with Republicans Tuesday night. 

“There is bipartisan support for keeping the government open,” Barrasso said. “We’re happy to see that the Democrats are already starting to break from (Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer) and we’re going to continue to offer a clean (continuing resolution) on the floor of the Senate to open the government for the next seven weeks.”

Health care tax credits at center of standoff

The disagreement isn’t entirely about GOP lawmakers writing their short-term funding bill behind closed doors and then expecting Democrats to help advance it in the Senate, where bipartisanship is required for major legislation.

Democratic leaders have raised concerns for weeks about the end-of-year sunset of enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, arguing a solution is needed now ahead of the open enrollment period starting on Nov. 1. 

Democrats have also grown increasingly frustrated with the White House budget office’s unilateral actions on spending, arguing Vought is significantly eroding Congress’ constitutional power of the purse. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday the Government Accountability Office should sue the Trump administration over its efforts to freeze or unilaterally cancel spending approved by Congress. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats need an agreement with Republicans to extend the enhanced tax credits. 

Schumer said people will begin getting notices in October telling them how much the cost of their ACA plans will increase during the next year, which he expects will ratchet up pressure on Republican leaders to broker a bipartisan agreement. 

“We’re going to be right there explaining to them it’s because the Republicans wouldn’t negotiate with us,” Schumer said, referring to consumers. “We’re ready to do it anytime. And there will be huge heat on (Republicans) on this issue.”

People who buy health insurance on the ACA marketplace and receive subsidies through enhanced ACA tax credits could expect to pay on average more than double for annual premiums in 2026 if the credits expire as scheduled at the end of this year, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonprofit health policy research organization KFF. 

The analysis found premiums could increase from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 in 2026.

Claims about immigrants 

Schumer also rebuffed GOP leaders saying that Democrats want to include people without legal immigration status in federal health care programs. 

“They say that undocumented people are going to get these credits. That is absolutely false. That is one of the big lies they tell, so they don’t have to discuss the issues,” Schumer said. “The federal government by law that we passed does not fund health insurance for undocumented immigrants in Medicaid, nor the ACA nor Medicare. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health insurance premiums.” 

Immigrants in the country without legal authorization are not eligible for Medicaid, and neither are most immigrants with legal status, such as those with student visas or enrollment in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. 

Only immigrants with a “qualified status,” such as legal permanent residents, asylees and refugees, are able to get Medicaid benefits, and they usually have to wait five years before their coverage can even begin. 

Democrats explain why they voted with GOP 

Cortez Masto of Nevada wrote in a statement explaining her vote to advance the GOP stopgap bill that she could not support “a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration.”

“We need a bipartisan solution to address this impending health care crisis, but we should not be swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another,” she added. “I remain focused on protecting health care for working families, and I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work together to tackle this problem.”

Pennsylvania’s Fetterman wrote in a statement of his own that his vote on the Republican bill “was for our country over my party.

“Together, we must find a better way forward.”

Collins said during a brief interview before the vote she is worried about the broad authority the White House holds during a shutdown and how the Office of Management and Budget has indicated it will use that power. 

“I’m much more concerned about OMB sending signals that there should be mass firings of federal employees who have the misfortune to be designated as non-essential, when in fact they’re performing very essential work, they’re just not being paid,” Collins said.  

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven, chairman of the Agriculture spending subcommittee, said lawmakers will have to sort through how various departments implement their contingency plans as well as the possibility of mass layoffs during a shutdown. 

“We’ll have to work through those things and figure out how we do keep things going as best we can during this Democrat shutdown,” Hoeven said.

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Republicans are “unified in the belief that this is an easy choice” to fund the government with a stopgap bill that doesn’t include any contentious or political provisions. 

Capito — who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor — said there are several programs that will be “missed” during a shutdown. 

“And that’s concerning. So I think the option is to keep the government open so we can avoid this pain,” Capito said. 

‘I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get a path forward’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said he is worried about the possible impacts of a shutdown on his home state and that keeping the government open is the only way to avoid that.  

“I’m sure the administration will do everything they can,” Hawley said. “But the solution is to not shut the government down. I mean, why would you punish working people because you’re not getting what you want on any issue, whatever it is.”

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said he doesn’t expect a shutdown will end until after Democrats have sent a message to their voters. 

“I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get a path forward until they’ve had a shutdown,” he said. 

Rounds, who negotiated a handshake agreement with the White House budget director this summer to preserve some funding for rural tribal radio stations after Congress eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said that deal could be affected by a shutdown. 

“They’re putting the administration in a position where they can pick and choose what they’re going to do, and a shutdown is not going to be beneficial to these Native American radio stations,” Rounds said. 

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said she wants Democrats and Republicans to negotiate on health care provisions.

“I’ve been making the case constantly, that (it) is literally my obligation to try and fight for health care, and I’m willing to talk to anyone,” she said. “I’m willing to accept that I certainly will not get everything I want.”

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said that while Democrats agreed to help advance what’s known as a continuing resolution in March, they can’t now because of “what President Trump is doing to this country, particularly when it comes to health care costs for families.”  

The shutdown will significantly affect the operations of the federal government as lawmakers have not passed any of the dozen full-year appropriations bills that finance agency operations. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the new fiscal year for the federal government.

Shutdown plan for national parks

Departments began releasing updated contingency plans this weekend, detailing how many of their employees would work during a government shutdown and how many would be furloughed.

The Interior Department, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, posted its updated plans late Tuesday. 

The National Park Service plans to furlough 9,300 of its 14,500 workers. 

The Trump administration will allow several activities necessary for the protection of life or property to continue, including fire suppression for active fires, permitting and monitoring First Amendment activities, border and coastal protection and surveillance, and law enforcement and emergency response.

The contingency plan says that roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors,” but it adds that if “access becomes a safety, health or resource protection issue … the area must be closed.”

Union files suit

In anticipation of layoffs by the Trump administration, labor unions representing more than 1 million federal workers filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California on Tuesday to block the Trump administration from carrying out mass firings. The suit argues that there is no statutory authority to fire federal employees during a government shutdown.

“These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this Court,” according to the suit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Ashley Murray and Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report. 

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, pictured at center, was released from jail in Putnam County, Tennessee, on August 22, 2025. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting in March, said over the weekend that the administration moved him from one U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Virginia to another in Pennsylvania, raising concerns over his access to legal counsel.

In a Saturday legal filing, attorneys representing Abrego Garcia in a criminal case in Tennessee said the federal government’s decision to move him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, has made it difficult to meet and “properly prepare for trial.”

His attorneys also raised concerns over the conditions at the facility, saying that a detainee died by suicide last month.

“There have been recent reports of assaults, inadequate medical care, and insufficient food, and the Department of Homeland Security abruptly terminated an internal investigation into allegations of excessive force and abuses by guards at the facility,” according to the filing. 

Last month, a judge in Maryland signed a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from transferring Abrego Garcia more than 200 miles from the federal courthouse in Greenbelt. The facility in Pennsylvania is 189 miles from the courthouse.

In the Maryland case, Abrego Garcia is challenging his removal from the U.S. and asking to remain in the country while he pursues his asylum case. 

Wrongful removal sparked conflict between branches

Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, has become a flashpoint between the judicial branch and the administration as President Donald Trump pursues an immigration crackdown. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the administration must facilitate  Abrego Garcia’s return, and immigration officials brought him back to the U.S. to face criminal charges lodged against him in June.

Shortly after his return, the Trump administration tried to remove him to a third country to comply with removal protections from his home country of El Salvador. The administration has continued efforts to remove Abrego Garcia to Uganda and Eswatini, though Costa Rica has also agreed to accept him as a refugee. 

The Tennessee criminal charges stem from a traffic stop in 2022 that included Abrego Garcia and several people. No charges were filed at the time.

The Department of Justice has alleged that Abrego Garcia took part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants without legal status across the United States for money. He’s pleaded not guilty to those charges. 

Asylum denied in 2019

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization in 2011 when he was 16. He applied for asylum in 2019, but because he did not apply for asylum within his first year in the U.S. – the legal deadline for such claims – authorities denied the application. 

Instead, an immigration judge granted him deportation protections, known as a withholding of removal, because the judge found it likely that Abrego Garcia would face gang violence if he were returned to El Salvador. 

Federal immigration officials at the time didn’t object to the judge’s withholding of removal order and didn’t find a third country to deport Abrego Garcia.

Earlier this year, Abrego Garcia was picking his son up when immigration officials detained him and said his status changed. Days later, he was deported along with hundreds of men to the mega-prison in El Salvador where he later said he experienced psychological and physical torture.

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has again petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court regarding birthright citizenship, this time on the merits of the administration’s effort to rewrite the constitutional right afforded to children born on U.S. soil. 

In two cases brought to the high court, lower courts kept in place a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order that ended birthright citizenship. 

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer petitioned the court Friday to reverse those decisions. The high court case was docketed Monday. Responses from both parties are due by Oct. 29.

Sauer is asking the justices to revisit the 14th amendment, arguing that it was meant to grant citizenship to newly freed Black people after the Civil War, not for the children of immigrants with temporary visas or in the country without legal authorization. 

“The mistaken view that birth on U.S. territory confers citizenship on anyone subject to the regulatory reach of U.S. law became pervasive, with destructive consequences,” Sauer wrote.

Sauer did not ask the court to fast-track the petition, so if the justices decide to take up the case the earliest they would do so would be the summer of next year. 

One case is from Washington state on behalf of attorneys general in that state, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon. The other case is from New Hampshire, where a national of Honduras is due to give birth in October and fears her child will not be granted U.S. citizenship.

Immigration policy stymied

Sauer said the president’s executive order aimed to advance his immigration policy and that lower courts’ decisions to block that agenda harms the U.S.

“The government has a compelling interest in ensuring that American citizenship—the privilege that allows us to choose our political leaders—is granted only to those who are lawfully entitled to it. The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the President and his Administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” he wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

The Trump administration in March brought the issue to the high court on an emergency basis, but did not ask the justices to determine the constitutionality of birthright citizenship. Instead, the administration asked the court to address the issue of nationwide injunctions from the lower courts. 

In June, the Supreme Court reined in nationwide injunctions by some lower courts that had blocked the executive order rewriting birthright citizenship.

Executive order rewrote 14th Amendment

The order Trump signed in January directs the federal government to not recognize or issue citizenship documentation to any child born after Feb. 19 to parents who are in the country without proper authorization, or if the parent is in the United States on a temporary visa and the other parent is a noncitizen or green card holder. 

Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the U.S. are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status, except for the children born to foreign diplomats. 

The administration interprets that phrase in the 14th Amendment that confers birthright citizenship to people “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” to exclude people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status. Those people are subject to the laws of their home country, the administration argues.

The Supreme Court has ruled on birthright citizenship many times, including a 1898 decision in which the justices upheld birthright citizenship in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

Ark was born in San Francisco to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had visas giving them legal authority to be in the country. Ark’s citizenship was not recognized when he left the U.S. and he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act — a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.

The high court ruled in Ark’s case that children born in the U.S. to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congress’ failure to pass a short-term government funding bill before midnight Tuesday will lead to the first shutdown in nearly seven years and give President Donald Trump broad authority to determine what federal operations keep running — which will have a huge impact on the government, its employees, states and Americans. 

A funding lapse this year would have a considerably wider effect than the 35-day one that took place during Trump’s first term and could last longer, given heightened political tensions. 

The last shutdown didn’t affect the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Veterans Affairs, since Congress had approved those agencies’ full-year funding bills.

Lawmakers had also enacted the Legislative Branch appropriations bill, exempting Capitol Hill from any repercussions. 

That isn’t the case this time around since none of the dozen government spending bills have become law. That means nearly every corner of the federal government will feel the pain in some way if a compromise isn’t reached by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1. 

States Newsroom’s Washington, D.C. Bureau offers you a quick guide to what could happen if Republicans and Democrats don’t broker an agreement in time.

How does the White House budget office determine what government operations are essential during a shutdown?

Generally, federal programs that include the preservation of life or property as well as those addressing national security continue during a shutdown, while all other activities are supposed to cease until a funding bill becomes law. 

But the president holds expansive power to determine what activities within the executive branch are essential and which aren’t, making the effects of a shutdown hard to pinpoint unless the Trump administration shares that information publicly. 

Presidential administrations have traditionally posted contingency plans on the White House budget office’s website, detailing how each agency would shut down — explaining which employees are exempt and need to keep working, and which are furloughed. 

That appears to have changed this year. The web page that would normally host dozens of contingency plans remained blank until late September, when the White House budget office posted that a 940-page document released in August calls for the plans to be “hosted solely on each agency’s website.”

Only a few departments had plans from this year posted on their websites as of Friday afternoon.

The White House budget office expects agencies to develop Reduction in Force plans as part of their shutdown preparation, signaling a prolonged funding lapse will include mass firings and layoffs.

While the two-page memo doesn’t detail which agencies would be most affected, it says layoffs will apply to programs, projects, or activities that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

Trump will be paid during a shutdown since Article II, Section 1, Clause 7 of the Constitution prevents the president’s salary from being increased or decreased during the current term.

No one else in the executive branch — including Cabinet secretaries, more than 2 million civilian employees and over 1 million active duty military personnel — will receive their paycheck until after the shutdown ends. 

Are federal courts exempt from a shutdown since they’re a separate branch of government?

The Supreme Court will continue to conduct normal operations in the event of a shutdown, according to its Public Information Office. 

The office said the court “will rely on permanent funds not subject to annual approval, as it has in the past, to maintain operations through the duration of short-term lapses of annual appropriations,” in a statement shared with States Newsroom. 

As for any impact on lower federal courts, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the federal judiciary was still assessing the fiscal 2026 outlook and had no comment. 

The office serves as the central support arm of the federal judiciary. 

During the last government shutdown from late 2018 into early 2019, federal courts remained open using court fee balances and “no-year” funds, which are available for an indefinite period. 

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has said that if those funds run out, they would operate under the terms of the Anti-Deficiency Act, which “allows work to continue during a lapse in appropriations if it is necessary to support the exercise of Article III judicial powers.” 

Supreme Court justices and appointed federal judges continue to get paid during a government shutdown, as Article III of the Constitution says the judges’ compensation “shall not be diminished” during their term.

What happens to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

The three programs exist largely outside of the annual appropriations process, since lawmakers categorized them as “mandatory spending.” 

This means Social Security checks as well as reimbursements to health care providers for Medicare and Medicaid services should continue as normal.

One possible hitch is the salaries for people who run those programs are covered by annual appropriations bills, so there could be some staffing problems for the Social Security Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, depending on their contingency plans. 

The first Trump administration’s shutdown guidance for the Social Security Administration showed 54,000 of 63,000 employees at that agency would have kept working. The CMS plan from 2020 shows that it intended to keep about 50% of its employees working in the event of a shutdown. Neither had a current plan as of Friday.

Will the Department of Veterans Affairs be able to keep providing health care and benefits?

Veterans can expect health care to continue uninterrupted at VA medical centers and outpatient clinics in the event of a shutdown. Vets would also continue to receive benefits, including compensation, pension, education and housing, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs contingency planning for a funding lapse that is currently published on the department’s website. It’s unclear if the plan will be the one the Trump administration puts into action.

But a shutdown would affect other VA services. For example, the GI Bill hotline would close, and all in-person and virtual career counseling and transition assistance services would be unavailable.

Additionally, all regional VA benefits offices would shutter until Congress agreed to fund the government. The closures would include the Manila Regional Office in the Philippines that serves veterans in the Pacific region.

All department public outreach to veterans would also cease.

Will Hubbard, spokesperson for Veterans Education Success, said his advocacy organization is bracing for increased phone calls and emails from veterans who would normally call the GI Bill hotline.

“Questions are going to come up, veterans are going to be looking for answers, and they’re not going to be able to call like they would be able to normally, that’s going to be a big problem,” Hubbard said.

“Most of the benefits that people are going to be most concerned about will not be affected, but the ones that do get affected, for the people that that hits, I mean, it’s going to matter a lot to them. It’s going to change the direction of their planning, and potentially the direction of their life,” Hubbard said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for current VA shutdown guidance.

What happens to immigration enforcement and immigration courts? 

As the Trump administration continues with its aggressive immigration tactics in cities with high immigrant populations, that enforcement is likely to continue during a government shutdown, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s March guidance for operating in a government shutdown.

Immigration-related fees will continue, such as for processing visas and applications from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

And DHS expects nearly all of its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees to be exempt — 17,500 out of 20,500 — and continue working without pay amid a government shutdown. 

That means that ICE officers will continue to arrest, detain and remove from the country immigrants without legal status. DHS is currently concentrating immigration enforcement efforts in Chicago, known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Other employees within DHS, such as those in Transportation Security Administration, will also be retained during a government shutdown. There are about 58,000 TSA employees that would be exempt and continue to work without pay in airports across the country.  

DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for a contingency plan if there is a government shutdown.

Separately, a shutdown would also burden the overwhelmed immigration court system that is housed within the Department of Justice. It would lead to canceling or rescheduling court cases, when there is already a backlog of 3.4 million cases.

The only exceptions are immigration courts that are located within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention centers, but most cases would need to be rescheduled. The partial government shutdown that began in December 2018 caused nearly 43,000 court cases to be canceled, according to a report by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.

And 28 states have an immigration court, requiring some immigrants to travel hundreds, or thousands, of miles for their appointment. 

States that do not have an immigration court include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Will people be able to visit national parks or use public lands during a shutdown? 

Probably, but that may be bad for parks’ long-term health.

During the 2018-2019 shutdown, the first Trump administration kept parks open, with skeleton staffs across the country struggling to maintain National Park Service facilities.

Theresa Pierno, the president and CEO of the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association, said in a Sept. 23 statement the last shutdown devastated areas of some parks.

“Americans watched helplessly as Joshua Trees were cut down, park buildings were vandalized, prehistoric petroglyphs were defaced, trash overflowed leading to wildlife impacts, and human waste piled up,” she wrote. “Visitor safety and irreplaceable natural and cultural resources were put at serious risk. We cannot allow this to happen again.”

The National Park Service’s latest contingency plan was published in March 2024, during President Joe Biden’s administration. It calls for at least some closures during a shutdown, though the document says the response will differ from park to park. 

Restricting access to parks is difficult due to their physical characteristics, the document said, adding that staffing would generally be maintained at a minimum to allow visitors. However, some areas that are regularly closed could be locked up for the duration of a shutdown.

But that contingency plan is likely to change before Tuesday, spokespeople for the Park Service and the Interior Department, which oversees NPS, said Sept. 25.

“The lapse in funding plans on our website are from 2024,” an email from the NPS office of public affairs said. “They are currently being reviewed and updated.”

Hunters and others seeking to use public lands maintained by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will likely be able to continue to do so, though they may have to make alternative plans if they’d planned to use facilities such as campgrounds. 

Land Tawney, the co-chair of the advocacy group American Hunters and Anglers, said campgrounds, toilets and facilities that require staffing would be inaccessible, but most public lands would remain available.

“Those lands are kind of open and they’re just unmanned, I would say, and that’s not really gonna change much,” he said. “If you’re staying in a campground, you’ve got to figure something else out.”

As with national parks, access to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges and other hunting and fishing sites will differ from site to site, Tawney said. The Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t require permits for hunting on its lands, but access to some refuges is determined by a staff-run lottery drawing. If those drawings can’t be held, access to those sites will be limited, Tawney said.

What happens to the Internal Revenue Service?

How the Internal Revenue Service would operate during a government shutdown remains unclear. 

When Congress teetered on letting funding run out in March, the nation’s revenue collection agency released a contingency plan to continue full operations during the height of tax filing season. 

The IRS planned to use funds allocated in the 2022 budget reconciliation law to keep its roughly 95,000 employees processing returns and refunds, answering the phones, and pursuing audits. 

Ultimately Congress agreed on a stopgap funding bill to avoid a March shutdown, but much has changed since then.

The new tax and spending law, signed by Trump on July 4 and often referred to as the “one big beautiful bill,” made major changes to the U.S. tax code. 

Additionally, the agency, which processes roughly 180 million income tax returns per year, has lost about a quarter of its workforce since January. Top leadership has also turned over six times in 2025.

Rachel Snyderman, of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said workforce reductions combined with a string of leadership changes could factor into how the agency would operate during a funding lapse.

“It’s really difficult to understand both what the status of the agency would be if the government were to shut down in less than a week, and also the impacts that a prolonged shutdown could have on taxpayer services and taxpayers at large,” said Snyderman, the think tank’s managing director of economic policy.

Do federal employees get back pay after a shutdown ends?

According to the Office of Personnel Management — the executive branch’s chief human resources agency — “after the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods.” 

The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 requires furloughed government employees to receive back pay as a result of a government shutdown. 

That law does not apply to federal contractors, who face uncertainty in getting paid during a shutdown. 

What role does Congress have during a shutdown?

The House and Senate must approve a stopgap spending bill or all dozen full-year appropriations bills to end a shutdown, a feat that requires the support of at least some Democrats to get past the upper chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., control their respective chambers’ calendars as well as the floor schedule, so they could keep holding votes on the stopgap bill Democrats have already rejected or try to pass individual bills to alleviate the impacts on certain agencies.   

Neither Johnson nor Thune has yet to suggest bipartisan negotiations with Democratic leaders about funding the government. And while they are open to discussions about extending the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, they don’t want that decision connected to the funding debate.  

Democratic leaders have said repeatedly that Republicans shouldn’t expect them to vote for legislation they had no say in drafting, especially with a health care cliff for millions of Americans coming at the end of the year. 

Members of Congress will receive their paychecks regardless of how long a shutdown lasts, but the people who work for them would only receive their salaries after it ends. 

Lawmakers must be paid under language in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution as well as the 27th Amendment, which bars members of Congress from changing their salaries during the current session. 

Lawmakers have discretion to decide which of their staff members continue working during a shutdown and which are furloughed.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Capitol Police, which is tasked with protecting members amid a sharp rise in political violence, said a shutdown “would not affect the security of the Capitol Complex.” 

“Our officers, and the professional staff who perform or support emergency functions, would still report to work,” the spokesperson said. “Employees who are not required for emergency functions would be furloughed until funding is available.”

A police officer stands watch as activists protest outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 5, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois. Immigrants without legal status who have been detained undergo processing at the facility.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Attorneys on behalf of a dozen U.S. House Democrats Thursday pushed for a federal judge to force the Trump administration to comply with an appropriations law that allows for unannounced oversight visits at Department of Homeland Security facilities that detain immigrants.  

“We don’t know what detention will look like in the future,” said Christine Coogle, a senior staff attorney for the group Democracy Forward, which represents the lawmakers.

Coogle argued before federal Judge Jia Cobb that because of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, the number of immigrants detained has ballooned. Coogle said that Democrats’ ability to conduct oversight visits without preapproval is not only needed, but already signed into law.  

The suit, filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, charges that the Trump administration has overreached its authority in creating a policy to require members of Congress give DHS seven days’ notice, plus approval from an agency official, before visiting a facility where immigrants are detained. 

The suit also argues that the DHS policy is unlawful due to the appropriations law.  

DOJ argues against Dems

Appearing on behalf of the Trump administration, Department of Justice attorney Alexander Resar said that the entire case will be moot in three business days, citing the looming government shutdown by next week. He argued that because the appropriations law will expire, lawmakers will not have the authority to conduct oversight provided under that provision. 

Coogle pushed back and said that even the House’s seven-week continuing resolution to avoid a partial government shutdown, passed last week, contained the oversight provision.

“We expect it to be included,” in the fiscal year 2026 appropriations, Coogle said. 

Resar also argued that because that provision is attached to appropriations law, the administration views it as not as enforceable as a separate law passed by Congress.  

He added that Congress has multiple tools to conduct oversight of DHS facilities, such as withdrawing funding from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or impeaching officials. Republicans control both chambers in Congress as well as the White House. 

Cobb questioned why two administrations, that of Biden and the first Trump administration, signed the appropriations bills into law for the past five years if they had an issue with the provision.

Resar said because the provision is attached to an appropriations bill, the Trump administration argues that it doesn’t reach the level of statutory authority. 

Blocked from entry

Democrats detailed in their suit that since June, DHS officials have blocked them from entering facilities that detain immigrants. 

Coogle said members of Congress being able to show up unannounced is an important tool, as in the past lawmakers have detailed how DHS has quickly made changes in preparation for planned visits. 

She said some of those changes include painting facilities and moving detainees.

Resar argued that “if the facilities are being changed for the better,” then planned visits seem beneficial overall. 

The oversight policy that allows members of Congress to show up unannounced at DHS facilities that detain immigrants, including ICE field offices, stems from the first Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the southern border in 2018. 

At that time, Democrats such as Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, who represents the border town of El Paso, were unable to conduct interviews with separated immigrant families and often denied entry into the facilities. 

That led to the inclusion of a provision in the fiscal year 2019 appropriations law that codified a member of Congress’ ability to conduct in-person oversight visits at DHS facilities where minors were detained. 

The provision later was expanded to include all immigrants detained at DHS facilities, not just children, and allowed for unannounced visits by members and the inclusion of congressional staff to enter with their members during oversight visits.

Twelve Democratic House members are part of the suit including Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, J. Luis Correa of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Jimmy Gomez of California, Raul Ruiz of California, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Norma Torres of California. 

A woman is detained by federal agents after exiting a hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on Sept. 3, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued in a major case earlier this month that U.S. citizens face few problems in having their immigration status verified if federal agents apprehend them.

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go,” Kavanaugh wrote in concurrence with an opinion in a case on the emergency docket. 

In reality, the Trump administration’s aggressive drive to carry out mass deportations of people without legal status already has led to U.S. citizens being swept up in raids and detained, according to news reports from around the country as well as immigration experts. Such detainments now will increase, experts predict.

Once in detention, it can take time to verify citizenship. A passport is considered the gold standard for proof that an individual is a citizen, but fewer than half of Americans hold passports, according to the State Department’s most recent data from 2024. Even fewer are likely to carry the bulky document around.

Kavanaugh’s remarks came in a 6-3 Supreme Court decision that gave the go-ahead, for now, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to use racial profiling in enforcement raids in Los Angeles, while a case on the issue proceeds through the courts. A district court’s order had barred federal immigration officers from using racial profiling to detain immigrants without legal status.

Two of the five plaintiffs at the center of the case are Latino men who repeatedly informed federal immigration officials they were U.S. citizens, but were still arrested and detained. 

All three liberal justices on the high court dissented with the ruling that authorized racial profiling. Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a scathing opinion said Kavanaugh’s reasoning “blinks reality.” 

John Sandweg, an attorney who served as the acting director at ICE during the Obama administration, said in an interview with States Newsroom that the outcome is clear.

“There’s a high likelihood, based on this opinion, that somebody who is a United States citizen could be detained for days, if not weeks, while ICE goes out and tries to confirm … that they are in fact a U.S. citizen,” said Sandweg.

“It’s not something you can figure out in the parking lot of a Home Depot,” he said, referring to locations targeted by ICE because day laborers, typically lacking legal status, wait there to find work.

Proving you are a citizen

There is no national database of U.S. citizens and no requirement to carry around a national ID, meaning it can take ICE significant time to verify citizenship status, Sandweg said.

There is an exception for naturalized citizens, something ICE officers can quickly check in a database. But more complex situations such as Americans born abroad to U.S. citizen parents, known as derivative citizenship, can be more problematic.

Obtaining a passport is an answer but it is expensive, costing up to $160 to renew or get one for the first time, and takes weeks for processing.  

Even carrying a form of identification like a driver’s license doesn’t guarantee proof of citizenship, as 19 states and the District of Columbia approve driver’s licenses regardless of citizenship status. 

It’s unclear how often ICE mistakenly arrests U.S. citizens, but the most recent data comes from a 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, an independent federal watchdog agency. 

The report found that ICE arrested 674 “potential” U.S. citizens, detained 121 and deported 70 from fiscal year 2015 to six months into 2020 — long before the current crackdown.

ICE did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for comment about the process for immigration officials to verify citizenship.

‘Apparent ethnicity’

The order from the high court, for now, will allow federal immigration officials to use “apparent ethnicity” as one factor in determining reasonable suspicion that a person is violating U.S. immigration law, as long as it is not the only factor. 

Before the district court issued a restraining order on the practice, immigration agents used a broad variety of factors to determine someone’s apparent ethnicity, including speaking Spanish or accented English, certain types of work like landscaping and day labor and locations such as bus stops or car washes.

The case stemmed from the administration’s mass raids this summer on Los Angeles-area Home Depot stores and other sites where day laborers gather, sparking massive protests in the city. President Donald Trump cited the protests in deploying National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to the city, over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections. 

Those two plaintiffs in the case are not the only U.S. citizens swept up in ICE raids during the second Trump administration.

In Florida, police detained a 20-year-old for days following a traffic stop, even though he told officers he was a U.S. citizen and provided his Social Security card. In New Jersey, ICE detained a U.S. citizen who was a military veteran for hours before releasing him. 

And in Southern California, a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran was detained for three days by federal immigration officials, The Atlantic reported. 

Members of Congress have also expressed concern about federal immigration officials arresting and detaining U.S. citizens, and 50 Democratic lawmakers have pressed the Department of Homeland Security internal watchdogs to investigate if the agency is violating Americans’ civil rights.

“We are increasingly concerned by reporting that U.S. citizens are being detained as a result of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions,” they wrote in a letter last month to the DHS  Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of Inspector General and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman.

Supreme Court ‘signaling to ICE’

The ruling, while based on immigration raids in Los Angeles, could have effects nationwide, said Sophia Genovese, a clinical teaching fellow and supervising attorney at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Legal Studies. 

The Trump administration launched an immigration crackdown in Chicago and Boston this month, two cities with large immigrant populations. They were also the frequent target for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to send buses of newly arrived migrants from the southern border. 

Genovese said while Kavanaugh’s concurrence is not a binding majority opinion, “it’s still signaling to ICE that they can engage in this racial profiling,” for a warrantless arrest. 

ICE agents are allowed to make warrantless arrests if an officer has probable cause or reason to believe a person is in the United States without legal authorization and can escape before a warrant is obtained.   

“The situation that we’re seeing play out in L.A. and across the country is a warrantless arrest, and the reality on the ground is they’re being quite violent and physical with people,” she said. “They’re quite literally snatching people off the street.”

Genovese, who specializes in immigration and asylum law, said that even when a U.S. citizen produces their documents, it can take weeks to be released for detention or to have a case closed in immigration court. 

“People are scared, and people have been saying they feel like they need to carry their ‘papers,’ whether that’s a passport or a green card or something else, to prove that they have a right to be here,” Genovese said. “That isn’t required under the law, but that’s nevertheless the impact it’s having on communities.”

She added that the burden to prove citizenship should be on the federal government, not the individual. 

It’s a consequence that Sotomayor warned in her dissent would fall on the Latino community, arguing that it creates a second-class citizenship status and violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment that bars unreasonable search and seizure.

“The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” she wrote. 

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate deadlocked Friday over how to fund the government past a deadline at the end of September, escalating the odds of a shutdown and heightening tensions on Capitol Hill. 

Democrats on a 44-48 vote blocked a seven-week stopgap spending bill that had passed the House just hours earlier, refusing to aid Republican leaders in getting the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both Republicans, voted against the bill, while Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman voted for it. 

Republicans on a 47-45 vote blocked a Democratic counter-proposal, a one-month stopgap bill that included several health care provisions. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters ahead of the votes that Democrats can either accept the GOP-drafted stopgap bill or shut the government down. President Donald Trump told Republicans they did not need to negotiate with Democrats on the legislation.

“The choice is pretty clear. It’s going to be funding the government through a clean, short-term continuing resolution or a government shutdown,” Thune said. “And that’s the choice the Democrats have. The House has acted. The president’s ready to sign the bill.”

Complicating matters is the congressional calendar, which has both chambers out next week for Rosh Hashanah. The Senate’s not scheduled to return until Sept. 29, with less than 48 hours to broker a deal and get it to Trump’s desk. 

Thune said he’s not inclined to bring senators back early, despite the impasse.  

“I’d say it’s unlikely we’ll be in next week but, obviously, you never completely shut the door,” Thune said. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters following his chamber’s vote on the stopgap he hadn’t decided whether to reconvene the House earlier than planned.

“There’s a lot of discussion about it,” Johnson said. “The members have a lot of work to do in their districts as well, and so we try to balance those interests.”

House Republicans announced later in the day the chamber wouldn’t come back until Oct. 1, essentially jamming the Senate with the GOP bill. 

Shutdown appearing more likely

Democratic leaders have vowed not to help Republicans get the votes needed on their current stopgap — a stark contrast from March, when Senate Democrats did just that, leading to significant frustration from their House colleagues.

The stalemate and congressional calendar have ratcheted up the odds of a protracted, deeply political government showdown that could last for weeks or even months. 

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said during floor debate the only path away from a shutdown runs through bipartisan negotiations. 

“Why aren’t they willing to just meet and actually start charting a course on how we move forward? I think the main reason is Donald Trump,” Murray said. “He told Republicans, ‘Don’t even bother dealing with Democrats.’ It seems like Republican leaders are just afraid to cross the aisle and have a simple meeting, a mere conversation, if it risks losing Donald Trump.” 

Murray said that approach to governing will have significant consequences for major legislation, which requires the support of at least some Democratic senators to advance in a Senate with 53 GOP members. 

“So to get things done for our families back home, Republicans need to work with Democrats,” Murray said. “And if Republican leadership cannot find the courage to do that on what should be low-hanging fruit here, if they can’t sit down with our Democratic leadership to talk about a short-term CR, what does that mean for the work that we’ve been doing for our full-year spending bills? What does it mean for extending those health care tax credits? And what does it mean for any of the other challenging issues we would all like to work on together to address?”

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters it’s “malpractice” and “bananas” that GOP leaders don’t plan to shorten or cancel the break. 

“What I’m hearing is that we’re not here next week. Like, are you kidding me?,” Murphy said. “You have all the evidence you need that Republicans want a shutdown — A, they refuse to negotiate and B, they’re sending us home for the week before the government shuts down. This seems like a planned shutdown as far as I can tell. 

“There’s zero effort — zero — by Republicans to try to solve this.” 

House passes bill

U.S. House Republicans passed the seven-week stopgap government funding bill earlier Friday.

The 217-212 vote represents the second time this year the House approved what’s called a continuing resolution on a predominantly party-line vote. 

Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden was the only member of his party to support the bill. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz were the only Republicans to vote no. 

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the stopgap spending bill is needed to give lawmakers more time to pass the dozen full-year government spending bills and called it the “responsible path.”  

“We are certainly moving forward productively and a bipartisan, bicameral agreement is firmly within our grasp,” Cole said. “We just need more time to sustain negotiations and complete our work. That’s why we’re here today.”

Cole said that not approving a stopgap bill before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1 would lead to a shutdown and hinder those talks.  

“Let me be very clear, a shutdown would do nothing to help our work on full-year bills or to support the American people,” Cole said. “So if you want stability for the American people, if you want time to negotiate in good faith and if you want regular order, you’ll support this CR. Any other vote would be reckless, not just for both parties but for the entire nation.” 

A ‘broken political system’

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the committee, said Republicans’ decision to write the stopgap bill on their own signaled they weren’t actually interested in bipartisanship and that it “reflects a broken political system.” 

“They would rather shut down the government than sit down and talk with Democrats about lowering costs for millions of Americans, preventing people from getting kicked off their health care and stopping President Trump and budget director Russ Vought from stealing from our communities and from our constituents,” DeLauro. 

The Trump administration’s unilateral actions on spending, she said, are making work on government funding more complicated, since Democrats cannot trust the White House budget office to implement the laws as written. 

“This administration continues to freeze, to terminate and cancel $410 billion in commitments to families, to farmers, to children, to small businesses and communities in every part of our country,” DeLauro said. “Billions of these commitments will soon be lost forever if Congress refuses to rein in this administration’s illegal actions.”

Republican and Democratic alternatives

Republicans’ 91-page stopgap spending bill would fund the government at current rates through Nov. 21, giving lawmakers more time to complete work on the full-year appropriations bills. 

That bill, which was released Tuesday, includes $30 million to reimburse local police departments that provide security for lawmakers when they’re back in their home states, $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service for “Executive Branch protective services” and $28 million to bolster security for U.S. Supreme Court justices.  

Democrats’ counter-proposal, released Wednesday, would fund the government through Oct. 31 and permanently extend the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

The legislation would reverse many of the health care proposals Republicans included in their “big, beautiful” law, including substantial changes and funding cuts to Medicaid. 

Democrats’ 68-page bill would bolster security funding considerably more than the GOP proposals. An additional $30 million would go toward mutual aid agreements with local and state police departments that provide security for members in their home states, $90 million would be provided for House security programs, and $66.5 million for the Senate Sergeant at Arms. 

There would be an additional $140 million for the federal courts, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Marshals Service.

No negotiations

Stopgap spending bills have been a relatively routine and bipartisan part of funding the government for decades, until this year when Republican leaders drafted the legislation on their own.

Democrats have said consistently that if GOP leaders don’t work with them to draft a bipartisan stopgap, they cannot expect Democrats to vote for the final product. 

The stalemate, which has to do with the process as well as significant policy differences, appears likely to lead to the first government shutdown since 2019. 

A funding lapse this year, however, will impact much larger swaths of the federal government than that 35-day shutdown. 

When that impasse began, Congress had passed five of the dozen full-year government funding bills, meaning that anyone working for Congress or in the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Veterans Affairs wasn’t impacted. 

Lawmakers have yet to pass any of the appropriations bills for the upcoming fiscal year, meaning every department and agency that makes up the federal government will have to decide which employees work without pay and which are furloughed if a shutdown begins. 

Those plans have been public in the past and appeared on the Office of Management and Budget’s website, but no guidance was posted as of Friday afternoon.  

The White House budget office did not respond to a request from States Newsroom about whether it intends to post agency contingency plans. 

Senators depart the Capitol

After Friday’s final vote, senators rushed out to catch flights back home. 

“That’s a wrap,” GOP Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said as he walked off the Senate floor.

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin brushed past reporters and declined to answer questions, saying she had to catch a flight back to Michigan. 

GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota exited the Capitol together. 

As the two walked to cars waiting for them just outside the Senate, Ernst told Klobuchar to enjoy her break and the Minnesota Democrat added that she hoped Republicans and Democrats could work together during the brief recess.

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a press conference that he was dumbfounded by Republicans’ actions. 

“I’m still a little flabbergasted that they couldn’t generate a majority for their own proposal and that we’re just over a week from a potential government shutdown,” Schatz said. “And I am more than a little flabbergasted that the House just decided after a six-week recess to take another recess and come back after the end of the federal fiscal year.”

Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines said during a separate press conference with GOP leaders that Democrats were bending to the demands of their voters. 

“Think about where we were the last time there was a CR to keep the government open, and Chuck Schumer voted for it,” Daines said. “What happened? The radical left attacked Chuck Schumer, and now today, he has yielded to the radical left that seeks a government shutdown.” 

The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, pictured on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom) 

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting unaccompanied children to Guatemala, finding that the administration’s claim of reuniting the children with their parents there “crumbled like a house of cards.”  

District of Columbia Judge Timothy Kelly issued a preliminary injunction to extend last month’s temporary block to prevent the rapid removal of hundreds of Guatemalan children, who were woken in the middle of the night and rushed onto deportation planes over Labor Day weekend.

Kelly, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2017, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the move was to reunite the children at the request of their parents, a claim that Department of Justice attorneys walked back during last week’s hearing.

“But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later,” he wrote in his opinion. “There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.”

Advocates and immigration attorneys for the children rushed to file an emergency block in the middle of the night of Labor Day weekend, which narrowly prevented the removal of 10 Guatemalan children, ages 10 to 17. But hundreds of Guatemalan children would have been removed if not for the temporary restraining order.

600 children identified for removal

Attorneys from the The National Immigration Law Center, which brought the suit, tried to include the class certification to also apply to children from Honduras, but Kelly narrowed the class to only apply to children from Guatemala. 

The Trump administration has identified up to 600 Guatemalan children in the Office of Refugee Resettlement custody and foster care to be removed, according to the court filings. 

Separately, a federal judge in Arizona issued a temporary restraining order until Sept. 26 to bar the Trump administration from removing Honduran and Guatemalan children in federal custody and foster care from being removed from the United States.

The National Immigration Law Center’s Efrén C. Olivares, lead attorney on the District of Columbia case, said in a statement that it’s a relief that “hundreds of children … are now safe from the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to expel them from the United States.” 

“This decision should send a clear message to the administration that they have no legal authority to circumvent the law to expel unaccompanied children without due process,” he said.

A DOJ record ‘barren of evidence’

Kelly criticized the Trump administration for its claim that the parents of the Guatemalan children had requested they be returned to their home country. 

“In any event, the record here is barren of evidence that any child in the proposed class wants to return to Guatemala, even if their parents can be found,” he wrote.

He added that such a move violated the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

“While Defendants plunged ahead in the middle of the night with their “reunification” plan and then represented to a judge that a parent or guardian had requested each child’s return, that turned out not to be true,” Kelly wrote. “Such a rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries is one of the things that the TVPRA’s process prevents.”

In court declarations, many of the parents said they were unaware their children were being returned. One parent, referred to as B.M.R.P., asked for her daughter to remain in the U.S. for her safety.

“I think she is in danger if she does return to Guatemala,” B.M.R.P. said. “All I ask is that you help my daughter stay safe – help her stay safe by not returning her to Guatemala.”

Attorneys for the children argued that if they were returned to Guatemala, they could face violence and the Trump administration’s move to deport them violated immigration procedures for unaccompanied minors. 

Congress has carved out special legal protections for immigrant children, such as the 2008 TVPRA law that requires minors be placed in immigration proceedings and have access to legal counsel.

DACA supporters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019. (Photo by Robin Bravender/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Advocates Thursday raised alarm over immigrants with special deportation protections facing detainment across the country, as the Trump administration continues its aggressive mass deportation campaign. 

Home is Here, a coalition of advocates for immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status, has documented a pattern of immigration agents targeting DACA recipients. At least 18 DACA recipients are detained, according to a Home is Here tracker. 

So far, Home is Here has pinpointed DACA recipients detained in Alabama,  Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia.

The immigrant advocates were joined at a press conference by congressional Democrats and family members of DACA recipients currently detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawmakers included Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Alex Padilla of Carlifornia and Reps. Sylvia Garcia of Texas and Delia Ramirez of Illinois. 

“The Trump administration is killing DACA piece by piece,” Garcia said. 

DACA tied up in court

The Trump administration tried to end DACA during President Donald Trump’s first term, but the Supreme Court blocked the effort. Republican-led states have challenged the legality of DACA and its fate is tied up in an appeals court.

There are roughly 550,000 DACA recipients, a program created under the Obama administration for undocumented children brought into the country without legal authorization by their parents. 

DACA allows that group to be shielded from deportation and obtain work authorizations and driver’s licenses. DACA recipients have to reapply every two years for a renewal fee of $520 and pass a background check.

Ramirez said the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign is indiscriminately targeting immigrants and has instilled fear in Latino communities. 

“The whole (Trump) administration are waging a campaign of terror against our neighbors, against our own families, against our loved ones as they advance their fascist agenda and they try to cast immigrants as a public enemy,” said Ramirez, who is married to a DACA recipient and is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. 

The Democrats said they would continue to speak out against the detention of DACA recipients and provide assistance in litigation for families. A handful of Democrats have sued ICE over blocked access to detention facilities to conduct oversight. 

An arrest, and detainment

The wife of a DACA recipient in ICE detention, Alejandra, who spoke at the press conference, said that she saw through a home security camera her husband, Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira, being arrested by masked men in the driveway of their Texas home.

Alejandra said their children were in the car and they could be heard screaming on the video. Her husband remains in detainment. The ACLU of New Mexico said in a statement he is 28 years old and the father of four U.S. citizen children.

“No family should ever have to endure that kind of terror,” she said. “For more than a decade, Paulo has been able to renew his status without issues. He has always followed the rules, done everything this country asked of him, and yet, under this administration, it feels like none of that matters anymore.”

Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, left, administers the oath of office to Lisa Cook, right, to serve as a member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve System during a ceremony at the William McChesney Martin Jr. Building of the Federal Reserve May 23, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — An appeals court late Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to move ahead with firing Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, as the president tries to pressure the independent board to lower interest rates. 

The 2-1 decision will allow Cook to partake in Tuesday’s Federal Reserve meeting, where the board will vote on whether to adjust interest rates. 

The Trump administration is likely to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. 

If Trump is successful in removing Cook and is able to nominate a replacement, he could have a majority of Fed members who are aligned with his desire to lower interest rates to boost the economy.

Trump nominee approved

Cook, appointed by former President Joe Biden, is the first Black woman appointed to the Fed, and she has consistently voted against lowering interest rates since joining the board in 2022. Her term ends in 2038. 

Late Monday, the U.S. Senate also approved Trump’s nominee for an open spot at the Fed, Stephen Miran, in a 48-47 vote.

While the Fed is an independent agency, Miran will continue to serve as the head of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers.

In a social media post Monday, the president called out Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and pressed that he “MUST CUT INTEREST RATES, NOW, AND BIGGER THAN HE HAD IN MIND. HOUSING WILL SOAR!!!.”

Appeals court splits

In the appeals court decision on Cook, D.C. Circuit Judge Gregory G. Katsas, whom Trump appointed in 2017, split with Judges J. Michelle Childs and Bradley N. Garcia, both appointed by Biden.

Last week a federal judge ruled to keep Cook in her position, determining that Trump administration allegations of mortgage fraud lacked evidence and did not meet the threshold for removing Cook under “just cause.”

Katsas agreed with the Trump administration’s argument that the president has the right to remove a Fed member for “just cause.” 

“This broad definition ‘give[s] the President more removal authority than other removal provisions’ imposed by Congress or reviewed by the Supreme Court,” Katsas wrote in his dissent. 

Childs and Garcia did not address the “just cause” argument but said the lack of due process Cook received in her removal warranted blocking Trump’s attempt to fire her.  

“Because Cook’s due process claim is very likely meritorious, there is no need to address the meaning of ‘for cause’ in the Federal Reserve Act in this emergency posture,” the majority wrote in the opinion.

A Trump official referred Cook to the Department of Justice, accusing her of improperly filing paperwork about her residence that allowed her to get a more favorable mortgage rate. Reuters obtained Cook’s paperwork and found no evidence of tax rule violations. 

President Donald Trump signs a presidential memorandum in the Oval Office on Sept. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Also pictured from left to right are Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Monday directed Tennessee’s National Guard deployed to the Democratic-led city of Memphis, following similar actions in the District of Columbia that Trump has said were needed to tackle crime. 

“We’re going to make Memphis safe again,” Trump said.

It’s the latest test of Trump’s presidential powers in using the U.S. military domestically, despite a law that bars soldiers from partaking in local law enforcement. Trump said his efforts in the district – using the National Guard – would be replicated in cities across the country.

In the Oval Office, flanked by Tennessee’s GOP Gov. Bill Lee and the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, the president signed a presidential memorandum to establish a “Memphis Safe Task Force” to address violent crime using federal law enforcement and agencies. 

“We’re sending in the big force,” Trump said. 

Multiple federal agencies

In addition to the National Guard, the task force will include the U.S. Marshals Service, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It’s unclear how many Guard members or members of federal law enforcement will be sent. 

“This task force will be a replica of our extraordinarily successful efforts here, and you’ll see it’s a lot of the same thing,” Trump said of using the National Guard in the district. 

It’s the first time Trump has sent the National Guard into a red state, after seizing control of the California National Guard from the state’s governor — a Democrat — for deployment in Los Angeles, and then sending Guard members to the district, another Democratic stronghold. 

While homicide rates remain high in Memphis compared to the nation, murders overall from 2023 to 2024 have decreased by 14%, according to the most recent data from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

The Memphis mayor’s office could not immediately be reached for comment. 

Trump added that St. Louis, Missouri, could also see similar action. 

Other cities

The dispatch of the National Guard to Tennessee comes after Trump has threatened to send troops to other cities including New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker pushed back and the president had backed off his threat, though he mentioned the city again on Monday. 

Governors have control over their state National Guard except in rare circumstances where the president can seize control. Pritzker has repeatedly rejected the idea of sending the National Guard into Chicago.

“If we don’t have the governor’s help we’re doing it without him,” Trump said of Pritzker. 

With Memphis, Lee welcomed the intervention and thanked Trump for directing federal resources to the city. 

“We are very hopeful and excited about the prospect of moving that city forward,” Lee said. 

The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, pictured on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom) 

WASHINGTON — A Friday lawsuit from a civil rights group accused the Trump administration of bypassing deportation restrictions on immigrants slated for removal by sending them to Ghana and having the West African nation deport them to their countries of origin, despite credible findings they could face harm there.

The move violates not only the due process rights of immigrants, but circumvents deportation restrictions placed by immigration judges who determined those immigrants could not be returned to their home country, attorneys from the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, wrote in their suit. 

“Defendants know that they may not, consistent with U.S. immigration law, directly deport non-citizens to countries from which they have been granted fear-based protection,” according to the brief. “As an end-run around this prohibition, Defendants have enlisted the government of Ghana to do their dirty work.”

The Department of Homeland Security and government of Ghana did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.  

Ghana President John Dramani Mahama confirmed to Business Insider Africa this week that the country struck a deal with the U.S. to accept a group of 14 deportees and send some back to their countries of origin. 

The attorneys argued that immigration judges granted their five plaintiffs fear-based deportation protections to their home country under the Immigration Nationality Act and Convention Against Torture. 

They are asking U.S District Judge Tanya Chutkan to require the return of the plaintiffs to the U.S. 

Chutkan sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was appointed by former President Barack Obama. 

The plaintiffs are nationals of Nigeria and The Gambia.

Third-country removals

A deportation protection, such as a “withholding of removal,” doesn’t create blanket protections from removal. It requires the U.S. to find what is known as a third country that will accept the deportee. 

Certain other requirements do apply. The government must notify the deportee of the country of removal and give them a chance to object if they fear persecution there. 

The U.S. government must ensure that a third country that accepts a deportee won’t then conduct a removal to their home country, where U.S. immigration officials have found they could face harm.

The suit says that none of the plaintiffs were notified they would be removed to Ghana and instead they were placed on a U.S. military plane and none were given a credible fear interview of being sent to the West African country. 

They were placed in straitjackets and remained on the plane for 16 hours, according to the suit. 

The plaintiffs are referred to by initials in court documents. 

One, referred to as K.S., “is hiding and fears for his life” in The Gambia.

K.S. was granted protections under the Convention Against Torture, a United Nations treaty, because he is bisexual and fears returning to The Gambia where he could face harm, according to court records. The Ghanaian government deported him to The Gambia on Wednesday, according to the suit. 

Four others are detained in Ghana. They are referred to as D.A., T.L., I.O., and D.S in court documents. 

Ghana is planning to remove them to their countries of origin by Friday, according to court records. 

“The comments by U.S. officials on the plane on the way to Ghana, combined with news reports about Ghana’s involvement in a deal with the U.S. about repatriating non-citizens to their countries of origin in Africa, indicate that the U.S. is deporting people to Ghana with the intention that they be deported to their countries of origin,” according to the suit. 

File photo of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which is among the nation's largest Hispanic-serving institutions. Hispanic-serving institutions and other colleges and universities serving students of color will lose funding under a recent U.S. Education Department decision. (Photo by Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education announced it will withhold $350 million of congressionally approved funds to minority-serving colleges and universities and divert the funds elsewhere, saying that the institutions’ admissions quotas are discriminatory.  

The move eliminated fiscal 2025 discretionary funding for institutions that serve students who are Asian, Black, Indigenous and Hispanic, as well as a program for students of color pursuing careers in science and engineering. It’s consistent with President Donald Trump’s longstanding objective to eliminate programs that center on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“To further our commitment to ending discrimination in all forms across federally supported programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.

McMahon cited a July opinion from the U.S. Justice Department that it was unconstitutional for federal funds to go to Hispanic-serving institutions based on the student body makeup.

That opinion reversed a decades-long record of the federal government setting aside funding for higher education institutions that have a significant portion of students from racial or ethnic minority backgrounds. 

The schools affected by Wednesday’s announcement are Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions; Black institutions; Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions; Native American-serving nontribal institutions; and institutions receiving Minority Science and Engineering Improvement grants. 

The announcement was vague about where the money would go instead, saying only it would be diverted “into programs that do not include discriminatory racial and ethnic quotas and that advance Administration priorities.”

Up to 800 schools affected

Democrats swiftly condemned the move, which is likely to face legal challenges.

Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the ranking member on the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee, said in a statement that the move undercut efforts to help students of color reach financial stability.

“These institutions are effective engines of economic mobility because they meet students where they are and are dedicated to educating the whole person,” Scott said in a statement.

Roughly 5 million students are enrolled in the more than 800 minority-serving institutions across the country. The schools aim to help students of color and students from low-income backgrounds pursue higher education. 

Most of the minority-serving schools receive funding based on racial quotas, except for Black institutions and tribal colleges, whose designations are based on their historical missions to educate Black or Native American students.

The Department of Education will also reprogram funds from a program to develop Hispanic-serving institutions and from a program promoting postbaccalaureate opportunities for Hispanic Americans.

McMahon argued that because most minority-serving institutions require that a percentage of the student body reflect the racial background the institutions serve, it violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protections. 

Administration cites equal protections

McMahon pointed to the Justice Department’s July memo saying it would not defend a suit brought by the state of Tennessee against Hispanic-serving institutions. 

The Supreme Court has explained that ‘[o]utright racial balancing’ is ‘patently unconstitutional,’” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson. 

“And its precedents make clear that the government lacks any legitimate interest in differentiating among universities based on whether ‘a specified number of seats in each class’ are occupied by ‘individuals from the preferred ethnic groups,’” Sauer wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court case that Sauer cited in his letter to Johnson is the 2023 decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions that found two prominent universities’ consideration of race in acceptances violated the U.S. Constitution.

Most minority-serving institutions, about 70%, are Hispanic-serving institutions, according to Rutgers University’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

David Mendez, the head of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, an advocacy group, said in a statement that the loss in funding is “an attack on equity in higher education.”

“Cutting this funding strips away critical investments in under-resourced and first-generation students and will destabilize colleges in 29 states,” Mendez said. “The funds granted to HSIs have never supported only Latino students. These funds strengthen entire campuses, creating opportunities and resources that benefit all students, especially those pursuing (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, as well as enhancing the communities where these colleges and universities are located.”

The front entrance of the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 3, 2023. (Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for a group of 10 Guatemalan children who were nearly deported late last month asked a federal judge during a hearing Wednesday to grant protections for all unaccompanied minors in the care of a Department of Health and Human Services agency handling refugee resettlement.

Efrén C. Olivares, the lead attorney of the National Immigration Law Center representing the unaccompanied Guatemalan children, told U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly that President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to remove children from other countries “under the guise of reunification” with their parents.

The administration’s actions did not comply with federal law or constitutional due process rights, Olivares said. The government also backtracked on its initial claim that the parents had requested their children’s removal.

The attorney asked Kelly to bar the removal of all children in the care of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement who are not subject to final orders, removal or voluntary departure. The group should be certified as a class, he said.

“We believe the entire class is at risk (of removal),” he said.

At a minimum, Olivares said, the court should bar the removal of all Guatemalan children who met those criteria. 

Nearly deported

A flurry of legal action over Labor Day weekend halted the removal of the 10 children, who were woken up in the middle of the night and put on planes to Guatemala before a federal judge issued an emergency restraining order.

Olivares said the move appeared to be part of an administration initiative to deport children in the agency’s care.

“We did not hear a denial that there are plans… to get out of the country children from other nationalities,” he said of the U.S. Department of Justice’s position.

He also told Kelly that some children were pulled out of foster homes.

If a preliminary injunction is granted, Olivares asked if it could also direct ORR to place those children back in their foster homes, rather than agency-run shelters. 

‘Unfortunate’ incident

Congress has carved out special legal protections for immigrant children, such as a 2008 law that requires minors be placed in immigration proceedings and able to access legal counsel.

Olivares said in court Wednesday that the Trump administration broke that law over Labor Day weekend when officials tried to whisk the children out of bed for deportation to Guatemala. 

Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, asked DOJ attorney Sarah Welch if the government has the right to wake children in the middle of the night on the weekend to remove them from the country. 

“I think everyone can agree it’s unfortunate that the children were frightened and woken up in the middle of the night,” she said. 

Welch objected to class certification because there could be children in the class who want to return to Guatemala. But she acknowledged that the government had no record in the case of a child wishing to return. 

She added that in general, non-U.S. citizens facing removal could not be considered irreparably harmed because they could return to the U.S. 

Kelly said he would make a decision as soon as possible. 

Parents were unaware, court records show

After immigration attorneys asked the court for emergency relief in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who heard the emergency request, blocked the government from deporting the roughly 2,000 Guatemalan children in ORR’s care.

DOJ attorneys initially argued that the parents of the children being removed had requested their children be returned to Guatemala. 

However, in court documents, the children said their parents were unaware. 

A declaration from one parent, referred to as B.M.R.P., detailed how she was not notified by either government of her child’s removal.

“I think she is in danger if she does return to Guatemala,” B.M.R.P. said. “All I ask is that you help my daughter stay safe – help her stay safe by not returning her to Guatemala.”

Kelly pressed Welch on those declarations and information from Guatemala’s government that the parents of the children were not notified they would be returned to the country. 

Welch said that the Trump administration would withdraw its claim that the parents of the Guatemalan children had requested the return of their children.

However, she said the Trump administration’s position is that a parent’s request is not required for a child to be deported. 

‘I feel traumatized’

Court filings also detailed the children’s experience. They said after being woken in the middle of the night, they were rushed to buses where they waited for hours without food. 

One 17-year-old, referred to as H.D.C.R., said the stress of being removed and potentially returned to Guatemala caused them to faint and be hospitalized for three days. 

“I suffered so much that I will never forget the bad time I had that weekend,” H.D.C.R. said, adding that they wish to remain in the U.S. to fight their immigration case.

Many of the children also expressed their fear of returning. A 16-year-old girl, A.J.D.E., said her sister was murdered in Guatemala and she feared the same would happen to her. She said she felt relieved when she learned she was not going to be deported to Guatemala because of Sooknanan’s order.

“The impact is real. I feel totally traumatized. I don’t even know how to explain it,” A.J.D.E. said. 

Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador.  (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration paid El Salvador $4.76 million to detain up to 300 immigrant men for up to a year at a notorious mega-prison and barred the funds from being used to help asylum seekers, reproductive care or diversity initiatives, according to a court document filed Tuesday. 

It’s the first time the financial agreement has been made public after the White House initially said the deal amounted to $6 million. 

The payments were part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown and decision to invoke a wartime law to remove Venezuelan nationals. 

The four-page agreement between the United States and El Salvador verifies that the funds came out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law, which gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to a human rights law known as the Leahy Law. 

That human rights law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations. 

“The purpose of this grant is to provide funds to be used by the Salvadoran law enforcement and corrections agencies for its law enforcement needs, which includes costs associated with detaining the 238 TdA members recently deported to El Salvador,” according to the agreement.

Those who drafted the law raised concerns that those payments violated human rights laws, as more than 250 Venezuelan men were removed from the U.S. to the brutal prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, despite a federal judge’s order barring such action.

Congressional Democrats have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House for a copy of the financial agreement for months, over concerns the funds were being used in violation of human rights. 

March flight to El Salvador

On March 15, the Trump administration sent 238 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua. 

The agreement, dated March 22, noted the men could be detained up to a year. 

It also bars any of the $4.76 million to be used to help asylum seekers seek legal counsel for the U.S. asylum process, for access to abortion, funds for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinians or for programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

The men were released back to Venezuela as part of a prison swap in July, but they remained at CECOT for four months. Some of those detained, including Kilmar Abrego Garica, of Maryland, whose mistaken deportation captured national attention, detailed psychological and physical torture. 

No protection from torture

The document was obtained through a lawsuit by Democracy Forward, which specifically argued the financial agreement between El Salvador and the U.S. “was created without any legal basis.” 

“The correspondence between the U.S. State Department and El Salvador confirms what we have long suspected: the Trump-Vance administration did nothing to meaningfully ensure that individuals disappeared from the U.S. to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison were protected from torture, indefinite confinement, or other abuses,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “The agreement did, however, go to lengths to ensure that the funds the U.S. provided to El Salvador not be used to provide reproductive health care or to assist asylum seekers in accessing resources and counsel.”  

That case is being overseen by District of Columbia Judge James Boasberg, who also ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes carrying men removed under the wartime law. Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador. 

Federal agents block people protesting an immigration raid at a licensed cannabis farm on near Camarillo, California, on July 10, 2025 . (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s ban on immigration agents’ racial profiling of Latinos in Southern California, backing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The order is temporary as the suit continues in lower courts, but it indicates a majority of the court is likely to side with the Trump administration’s defense against a complaint that targeting Latino and Spanish-speaking workers for immigration enforcement violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment that bars unreasonable search and seizure.

The high court ruled that the officers could use “apparent ethnicity” as one factor in determining reasonable suspicion, as long as it is not the only factor.

“Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

“Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English,” he continued.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latin American member of the court, wrote a scathing dissent that the two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined.

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote. 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also slammed Monday’s decision from the Supreme Court. 

“Today, the highest court in the country ruled that the White House and masked federal agents can racially profile Angelenos with no due process, snatch them off the street with no evidence or warrant, and take them away with no explanation,” she said in a statement. “This decision will lead to more working families being torn apart and fear of the very institutions meant to protect – not persecute – our people.” 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the decision from the high court will cause “racial terror in Los Angeles.” 

“Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target — but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians,” Newsom, a Democrat, said.

Temporary ruling

The ruling responded to an emergency appeal the administration made to the court last month, seeking to put on hold a temporary restraining order from Central California U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. 

The case in the lower court is ongoing.

The lower court blocked immigration agents from using “apparent ethnicity” as a method for determining if an individual violated immigration law. 

Agents used a broad variety of factors to determine someone’s apparent ethnicity, including speaking Spanish or accented English, certain types of work and locations such as bus stops or car washes.

Kavanaugh also said that the civil rights groups and individuals targeted by immigration agents who brought the suit against the Department of Homeland Security lacked legal standing for the challenge “to seek a broad injunction restricting immigration officers from making these investigative stops.”

‘Fair game to be seized at any time’

Sotomayor penned the dissent, criticizing Monday’s order for violating Fourth Amendment rights and allowing Latinos to be racially profiled.

“The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” she continued. 

And she questioned Kavanaugh’s assumption that anyone who is a U.S. citizen and is questioned by an immigration officer will simply be let go once their citizenship is explained.

“That blinks reality,” she wrote, noting that two U.S. citizen plaintiffs in the suit tried to explain their citizenship status to an immigration officer. 

“One was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning,” she wrote. 

Sotomayor said the decision would create a second-class citizen status and require people to carry around proof of citizenship or legal status.

She added that the Fourth Amendment “prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that ‘describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.”

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she wrote. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

National Guard responds to protests over tactics

The administration’s mass raids this summer on Los Angeles-area Home Depot stores and other sites where day laborers gather sparked massive protests in the city that were the basis of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines deploying to the city, over Newsom’s objection. 

A federal judge last week said the military members’ conduct violated a law against military personnel conducting domestic law enforcement.

The president has also deployed the National Guard of the District of Columbia and has directed thousands of federal law enforcement officers to set up checkpoints in the city to inquire about immigration status. 

Thousands in the district on Saturday protested the deployment. 

Further deployments?

The president has threatened to send National Guard members to more predominantly Democratic cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and Portland, Oregon. He has said those deployments would  help contain crime — despite violent crime in those cities decreasing in recent years — while also highlighting immigration enforcement.

Trump over the weekend posted an artificial intelligence-generated image that referenced the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.” 

The image is of Trump in a military uniform in front of the Chicago skyline with flames in the background. 

The caption read: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” referring to the new secondary name Trump gave the Defense Department on Friday. 

Speaking at an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Monday morning, Trump said that he “would love to go into Chicago” but was waiting on a request from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker before he sent troops there. Pritzker, a Democrat, has been adamant that the city did not need or want National Guard troops.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Wednesday ended temporary protections for more than 250,000 Venezuelans, opening them up to deportation. 

Temporary Protected Status for a group of Venezuelans dating from 2021 was set to expire Sept. 10. However, DHS said the designation will end in 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. 

Initially, Venezuelans with TPS were granted protections until October 2026 under the Biden administration, but Noem revoked that extension.

DHS is currently being sued over Noem’s decision to revoke the extension granted under the Biden administration for TPS for two groups of Venezuelans, people who arrived in 2021 and those who arrived in 2023. 

DHS has already terminated TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans who arrived in 2023, which is still being challenged in courts. 

“Given Venezuela’s substantial role in driving irregular migration and the clear magnet effect created by Temporary Protected Status, maintaining or expanding TPS for Venezuelan nationals directly undermines the Trump Administration’s efforts to secure our southern border and manage migration effectively,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. 

During the last day of President Donald Trump’s first term, he granted deportation protections for that group of Venezuelans who arrived in the U.S. before Jan. 20, 2021, citing unstable conditions with the country’s government. 

“The deteriorative condition within Venezuela, which presents an ongoing national security threat to the safety and well-being of the American people, warrants the deferral of the removal of Venezuelan nationals who are present in the United States,” according to Trump’s 2021 proclamation. 

After that designation, under the Biden administration in March 2021, then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas created a TPS designation for Venezuelans who entered the U.S. before March 9, 2021.

Mayorkas created a second TPS designation, for another group of Venezuelans who arrived in 2023, about 350,000. 

TPS is designated when a country is deemed too dangerous for return, due to violence or a major disaster. A national from a country under the TPS designation has to go through vetting and is granted work permits and deportation protections for up to 18 months before having their TPS renewed. 

Prisoners look out of their cell as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT, on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. The Trump administration deported 238 alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organizations 'Tren De Aragua' and Mara Salvatrucha.  (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, finding there is no “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign government and therefore President Donald Trump cannot invoke the wartime law to quickly expel Venezuelan nationals without due process. 

The 2-1 ruling rejected the administration’s argument that the Venezuelan migrants were part of an “invasion” to the United States and represents a setback for the president, who invoked the wartime law in March as a pillar of his mass deportation campaign to deport people without permanent legal status. 

The decision out of the conservative-leaning 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas is likely to head back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Appeals Court Judges Leslie Harburd Southwick, nominated by former President George W. Bush, and Irma Carrillo Ramirez, nominated by former President Joe Biden, made up the majority in the case. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated by Trump, dissented.

“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States,” according to the majority in the175-page opinion. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”

The lead attorney on the case, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the ruling. 

“This critical decision makes clear that the president cannot invoke whatever powers he wants,” Gelernt said in a statement. “This is a huge victory for the rule of law.”

Oldham dissented with the majority, arguing that a president’s authority to make the “declaration of an invasion, insurrection, or incursion is Conclusive. Final.” 

“And completely beyond the second-guessing powers of unelected federal judges,” Oldham wrote in his dissent.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Tuesday’s decision is not final. 

“President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem will not allow criminal gangs to terrorize American citizens,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Unelected judges are undermining the will of the American people. This ruling will not be the final say on this matter. We are confident in our position, and we have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”

Trump’s use of Alien Enemies Act

In March, President Donald Trump applied the Alien Enemies Act to Venezuelan nationals ages 14 and older who were accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang. 

He used the proclamation to send more than 200 Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where they remained for months before being released to the Venezuelan government in a prison exchange this summer.

Trump also designated the Venezuelan gang as a foreign terrorist group earlier this year. 

Prior to March, the Alien Enemies Act had been invoked only three times – in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. The Trump administration applied the law to quickly expel Venezuelan nationals and argued the proclamation allowed for the skirting of due process rights, which judges have rejected. 

In April the Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Trump administration to use the wartime law but said those subject to the proclamation needed to have adequate notice to challenge their removal. 

In May, a separate Alien Enemies case was sent to the high court, which instructed the 5th Circuit to determine if the Trump administration’s declaration of the wartime law was legal. Tuesday’s decision stemmed from that case.

The decision only applies to the use of the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration can continue to remove people who are not U.S. citizens deemed as foreign threats. 

The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, pictured on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom) 

WASHINGTON — A pair of federal court rulings over the Labor Day weekend invalidated aggressive actions the Trump administration had taken on immigration enforcement.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ordered an unknown number of planes carrying unaccompanied Guatemalan children temporarily halted on Sunday, two days after Judge Jia Cobb struck down a policy used to bypass judicial review in quick removals of migrants far from the southern border. Both judges are of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The rulings are part of an ongoing clash between President Donald Trump and the federal judiciary over the administration’s immigration crackdown. Judges have raised concerns that immigrants’ due process rights are being violated.

On Sunday, Sooknanan voiced concern for unaccompanied children’s due process rights, and temporarily halted planes carrying the minors from taking off. 

The administration had planned to deport 10 children to their home country of Guatemala. 

The case resembled one earlier this year in which a judge ordered planes carrying Venezuelan men removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grounded. Despite the order, multiple planes landed in El Salvador where more than 200 Venezuelans were sent to a notorious mega-prison.

The 10 children, nationals of Guatemala, on the planes ranged in age from 10 to 17 and crossed the southern border alone. Attorneys in court filings stressed that the children had immigration cases pending before a judge and that the children expressed fear of returning to Guatemala. 

‘Everyone would be at risk’

The order followed Cobb’s order Friday granting a request from immigration rights groups to halt the implementation of a new policy that expanded expedited removal.

The administration has expanded the use of expedited removal, which allows for the quick removal of migrants, as a pillar of its aim to carry out mass deportations of people without permanent legal status. 

For decades, administrations have applied expedited removal to immigrants apprehended at the southern border who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years. If they cannot produce that proof, they are subject to a fast-track deportation without appearing before an immigration judge.

The Trump administration in January expanded expedited removal to apply nationwide, rather than only within 100 miles of the southern border.

In Cobb’s Friday opinion, she wrote that the administration likely violated the rights of immigrants and approached a universal violation of the constitutional right to due process. Former President Joe Biden appointed Cobb in 2021.

“In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,” she wrote. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.” 

Flights of Guatemalan minors grounded

In a flurry of action Sunday, Sooknanan temporarily halted the deportation of the children for 14 days while the case continues after an emergency request from the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group.

Attorneys from NILC argued that if the children were returned, they could face violence and the administration’s move to deport them violated immigration procedures for unaccompanied minors.

“Defendants are imminently planning to illegally transfer Plaintiffs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement … custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture, against their best interests,” the attorneys wrote in their emergency filing.

The 10 children on the planes were taken off and put back into the custody of  the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to a status update filed Monday by NILC lawyers.

The Trump administration has identified up to 600 Guatemalan children to be removed under a pilot program created through an agreement with Guatemala, according to the court filings. 

Sooknanan’s order applies to all roughly 2,000 Guatemalan unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Biden also appointed Sooknanan.

Carlos Ramíro Martínez, Guatemala’s minister of foreign affairs, told the New York Times in an interview that the initiative began when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala in July. He added there is an agreement for Guatemala to accept more than 600 children. 

DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

The State Department’s 2024 report on Guatemala details human rights concerns such as violence, and advises against traveling to the country. 

The case involving the unaccompanied children was reassigned to judge Timothy James Kelly, whom Trump appointed in 2017.