Senate blocks surveillance bill in dispute over Trump’s intelligence pick
Seven Republican senators joined Democrats early this morning to block the extension of a powerful government surveillance program, a rebuke to Donald Trump for choosing an inexperienced ally as the country’s top intelligence official.
The renewal had been in question amid bipartisan concern over the US president’s appointment of Bill Pulte, a major Republican donor and heir to a home construction fortune, to serve as acting director of national intelligence.
Pulte, who has no intelligence experience, was tapped controversially earlier this week by Trump days after Tulsi Gabbard announced her exit from the role.
The Senate majority leader, John Thune said following the 47-52 vote that the chamber “will take another run at it” next week, but expressed little confidence the measure would pass.
Democrats, he said, had taken a “terribly irresponsible position” by opposing the extension to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). The program permits US intelligence agencies to collect communications of foreign targets operating outside the country without a warrant.
Critics say that a wide array of domestic communications can be also be swept up without a warrant ever being sought because they may pass through US servers or involve US contacts.
The program is set to expire next week, and this morning’s procedural measure, if it had passed, would have set up a final Senate vote on the extension before a 12 June congressional deadline.
“The naming of Pulte to that position, although the timing arguably wasn’t the best, I still don’t think it ought to derail something that’s this important,” Thune said.
He did not mention the Republican senators who crossed the aisle to join Democrats to vote against the Fisa extension pathway.
More on this story here:
US added 172,000 jobs in May as labor market shows signs of resilience
US employers added 172,000 jobs in May while the country’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, a sign of a resilient labor market despite rising inflation and economic uncertainty brought on by continued conflict in the Middle East.
Economists initially predicted there would be about 80,000 new jobs and a steady unemployment rate of 4.3%. Job figures for March and April were also revised up 29,000 and 64,000, respectively, a 93,000 boost compared to initial figures.
The new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the latest in a number of reports that have pointed to strong hiring in recent months, despite a strained economy and an increase in inflation.
The labor department announced earlier this week that the number of job openings in April increased to 7.6m, while the number of people quitting, laid off and discharged changed little.
Private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, according to payroll firm ADP, which found that employers of all sizes and most industries – with the exception of the information and natural resource sectors – were hiring.
“Hiring was more broad-based in May than we’ve seen in the last few years,” Dr Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement. “The labor market continues to show sustained momentum going into the summer hiring season.”
Friday’s report was the first monthly jobs data released under the Federal Reserve’s new chair, Kevin Warsh, who was appointed by Trump in January and sworn in last month.
The Fed typically cuts rates in response to a weak labor market, which can boost the economy but also raise prices. Raising interest rates would cool spending and inflation, but risks higher unemployment.
Economists are predicting that the Fed will hold rates steady at its meeting June 16 and June 17, but Trump and his advisers have made it clear they expect Warsh to be receptive to their continued calls for rate cuts.
“We’ve got a Warsh Fed now,” the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said at a news conference last week.
It’s a new day at the Fed … I had my first breakfast with Chair Warsh this morning, and I believe that he will do the right thing to balance inflation and growth.
Economists say even if the chair supports a rate cuts, it’s unlikely that a majority of the Fed’s 12 voting members would agree. At the Fed’s last meeting in April, just one member voted for lowering the target range for rates.
My colleague Graeme Wearden over on our business live blog has more:
Updated
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees say guards deny them food and clean water until they sign English documents
in Miami
Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.
In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.
During the call, all the detainees identified themselves by name and the section and cage number they are being held in. The Guardian is withholding those details because of the men’s stated fear of reprisals.
“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families.
“They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says.
“They’ve taken reprisals with us for not taking that paper, not signing that paper. They took away the water and medicine to people who need medication. Today the medicine came very late, but here we have people here who are diabetic, one here with high blood pressure.”
The detainee said he and others had been complaining for several days about the quality of the water they had been given, and on Thursday morning chants of “agua, agua” broke out when it was withheld altogether.
“The water has pests, the water has a bad taste, [you] open the water tubs and they have mosquito larvae,” he said.
Another detainee said the water was “stinky and rotten”, and that he saw mosquitoes emerging from a substance contained within it.
He said nobody in his cell had yet signed any document.
Reports last month said “Alligator Alcatraz”, operated by the state of Florida as an immigration jail on behalf of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, would wind down operations in June, leading to its eventual closure.
In its almost one year of operation, the tented facility, built on a little-used training airport deep in the Florida Everglades, has developed a reputation for the brutal treatment of undocumented detainees kept in metal cages, and a succession of alleged human and civil rights abuses.
Among the claims are a denial of access to immigration lawyers, frequent and sudden movement of detainees to other detention facilities, and pressure to consent to agree to deportation without legal representation.
Donald Trump will be heading to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin today for a round-table discussion on American agriculture – and to throw his support behind another Republican seeking reelection to Congress in a competitive race.
Derrick Van Orden, a retired US Navy Seal who attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol and shouted “lies” during Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address, is running to keep his seat in the US House of Representatives for a third term.
Though his rural district – Wisconsin’s third congressional district – has gone for Trump every time he’s been on the ballot – Van Orden only narrowly won by less than three points in 2024.
The Democratic candidate then was Rebecca Cooke, a moderate who launched her campaign for the 2026 election last year.
Read more about Cooke here:
Senate Republicans narrowly block bid to bar Trump’s $1.8bn fund to pay allies
Senate Republicans on Thursday narrowly scuttled an attempt by Democrats to stop Donald Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies, even as signs emerged that dissent over the proposal was spreading inside the US president’s own party.
Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had proposed inserting language barring the payouts into Republican-backed legislation to fund Trump’s mass deportation campaign through the duration of his term.
After a vote that stretched for three hours as groups of senators were spotted huddling on the chamber’s floor, the amendment failed by a 49-50 vote. Three Republican senators, all of whom are seen as vulnerable in November’s midterm elections, broke with their party to join all Democrats in support.
Though Schumer’s amendment failed, the matter is likely to come up again before Congress. The president’s plan for an “anti-weaponization” fund that could issue financial settlements to people connected to the January 6 insurrection has riven Senate Republicans, and complicated their efforts to settle for good a standoff with Democrats over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies the president has tasked with implementing his hardline immigration policies.
More here:
Here’s some more reaction from the marathon vote-a-rama session in the Senate overnight:
Amy Klobachur, Democratic senator from Minnesota:
“I voted until 5 a.m. today to block Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund,” Klobluchar wrote on X. “Your tax dollars should not be going to Jan. 6th rioters who went after officers. And why give MORE money to ICE when they’re already bigger than the FBI? The extra 70B could instead fund yrs of health care!”
Alex Padilla, Democratic senator from California:
“Let me remind us all of the deaths of Americans like Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Ruben Ray Martinez,” Padilla said in a speech on the floor. “Let me remind us all of how this administration is using children like 5-year-old Liam Ramos as bait. Let me remind our colleagues about the price gouging that is happening – mothers and children at Dilley Detention Center (in Texas) having to pay so much just to access clean water – and letting thousands of children languish in detention, jailing more than 6,200 chilren since the beginning of this administration. That’s a shame.
“And now they (Republicans) want to shield them from more than 425 judges appointed by both Democrat and Republican presidents, including some appointed by Donald Trump himself, who have isseud more than 10,000 rulings finding that ICE has violated the Constitution of the United States.”
Kevin Cramer, Republican senator from North Dakota:
“For 76 days, Democrats kept the Department of Homeland Security in limbo,” Cramer posted on X. “Then they made it crystal clear that they’d rather defund law enforcement than defend law enforcement…Republicans refuse to go backward or sacrifice the safety of our law enforcement personnel to Democrats’ open border fantasies.”
Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican senator from Mississippi:
“Senate Democrats just can’t seem to understand that after four years of the Biden admin’s catastrophic open border policies – including a record 12,600 encounters in a single day – Americans want secure borders and safe communities,” Hyde-Smith posted on X.
Senate Republicans pass bill authorizing $70bn for immigration enforcement in vote-a-rama
Senate Republicans early Friday passed a bill that would provide the Department of Homeland Security with nearly $70 billion in new funds for immigration enforcement.
The vote came after a more than 18-hour “vote-a-rama”, a process by which senators offer amendments to bills passed using the reconciliation procedure. The Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had said earlier this week that he would use vote-a-rama to force Republicans into publicly defending the policies of Donald Trump, a move that ultimately forced Senate Republicans to drop their attempt to spend $1bn on security improvements for Trump’s White House ballroom.
Among the amendments voted on in this marathon session was an attempt introduced by Schumer to kill the “anti-weaponization fund” and stop Trump from creating a $1.8bn fund to pay his allies. The measure was narrowly defeated in a 49-50 vote after three Republican senators broke with their party to join all Democrats in support.
“Tonight, Senate Republicans passed a rotten bill that makes their priorities painfully clear: more money for Donald Trump, more power for Donald Trump, and nothing to lower costs for working families,” Schumer said in a statement posted on X after the immigration reforcement funding bill passed.
He continued: “…The Republican agenda is now written in black and white: A slush fund for Trump, tax dodges for Trump, a ballroom for Trump, and a private militia for Trump. For hard-working Americans? Nothing.”
On X, Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he was “very proud of my Republican colleagues for sticking together and making sure that Border Patrol and ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) are fully funded”. “Well done to President Trump and my Republican colleagues,” Graham said.
Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican senator to vote against the new immigration enforcement funding.
In other developments:
-
New abuse allegations have emerged against Greg Platner, a Democratic candidate for the Senate. Platner, a progressive running for election in Maine, has rejected the new report published on Thursday in the New York Times that included an interview with a Republican operative who accused him of womanizing, physical misconduct and making troubling comments about rape.
-
Trump has suggested that his controversial ally Bill Pulte will investigate “rigged elections” while serving as the country’s top intelligence official. Pulte, whom Trump appointed as acting director of national intelligence earlier this week, is a “very smart guy,” Trump claimed on Thursday, “and you may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc”.
-
Pam Bondi on Thursday told lawmakers before the House oversight and reform committee that Todd Blanche, the man Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
