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Partial shutdown seems increasingly likely as Democrats demand ICE changes
Legal Business |
2026/01/28 21:13
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With a partial government shutdown looming, Senate Democrats laid out a list of demands Wednesday for the Department of Homeland Security, including an enforceable code of conduct for federal agents conducting immigration arrests and a requirement that officers show identification as the country reels from the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.
It remained unclear if President Donald Trump and Republicans would be willing to meet those demands, even as funding for DHS and a swath of other government agencies was at risk of expiring Saturday. Irate Democrats have pledged to block a spending bill unless their demands for reforms are met.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the legislation won’t pass until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “reined in and overhauled.”
“The American people support law enforcement, they support border security, they do not support ICE terrorizing our streets and killing American citizens,” Schumer said.
With an uncertain path ahead, the standoff threatened to plunge the country into another shutdown just two months after Democrats blocked a spending bill over expiring federal health care subsidies, a dispute that closed the government for 43 days as Republicans refused to negotiate. That shutdown ended when a small group of moderate Democrats broke away to strike a deal with Republicans, but Democrats are more united this time after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents.
There’s a lot of “unanimity and shared purpose” within the Democratic caucus, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said after a lunch meeting Wednesday.
“Boil it all down, what we are talking about is that these lawless ICE agents should be following the same rules that your local police department does,” Smith said. “There has to be accountability.”
As the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement surge goes on, Schumer said Democrats are asking the White House to “end roving patrols” in cities and coordinate with local law enforcement on immigration arrests, including requiring tighter rules for warrants.
Democrats also want an enforceable code of conduct so agents are held accountable when they violate rules. Schumer said agents should be required to have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification, as is common practice in most law enforcement agencies.
The Democratic caucus is united in those “commonsense reforms” and the burden is on Republicans to accept them, Schumer said. He has asked Republicans to separate out the Homeland Security bill from the others to avoid a broader shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he was waiting for Democrats to outline what they want, and he suggested that they need to be negotiating with the White House. He indicated that he might be open to some of their demands, but encouraged Democrats and the White House to talk and find agreement.
It was unclear whether Trump would weigh in, or how seriously the White House was engaged — or whether the two sides could agree on anything that would satisfy Democrats.
The White House had invited some Democrats for a discussion to better understand their positions and avoid a partial government shutdown, a senior White House official said, but the meeting did not happen. The official requested anonymity to discuss the private invitation.
With no serious negotiations underway, a partial shutdown appeared increasingly likely starting Saturday.
The House passed the six remaining funding bills last week and sent them to the Senate as a package, and that makes it difficult to strip out the homeland security portion as Democrats are demanding. Republicans could break the package apart with the consent of all 100 senators, which would be complicated, or through a series of votes that would extend past the Friday deadline.
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Minneapolis shooting scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump
Headline Legal News |
2026/01/24 21:25
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Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.
The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ Second Amendment stances.
If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.
“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”
That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.
Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.
“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”
Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon -– which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began. |
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A federal judge is set to hear arguments on Minnesota’s immigration crackdown
Court News |
2026/01/20 21:27
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A federal judge will hear arguments Monday on whether she should at least temporarily halt the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that has led to the fatal shootings of two people by government officers.
The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month, five days after Renee Good was shot by an Immigration and Customs officer. The shooting of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol officer on Saturday has only added urgency to the case.
On Monday, President Donald Trump said he is sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota. The president’s statement comes after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who had become the public face of the administration’s crackdown, answered questions at news conferences over the weekend about Pretti’s shooting. Trump posted on social media that Homan will report directly to him.
Since the original court filing, the state and cities have substantially added to their original request in an effort to restore the order that existed before the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota on Dec. 1.
Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said he plans to attend.
The lawsuit asks U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez to order a reduction in the number of federal law enforcement officers and agents in Minnesota back to the level before the surge and to limit the scope of the enforcement operation.
Justice Department attorneys have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous” and said “Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement.” They asked the judge to reject the request or to at least stay her order pending an anticipated appeal.
Ellison said during a news conference Sunday that the lawsuit is needed because of “the unprecedented nature of this surge. It is a novel abuse of the Constitution that we’re looking at right now. No one can remember a time when we’ve seen something like this.”
It is unclear when the judge might rule.
The case has implications for other states that have been or could become targets of ramped-up federal immigration enforcement operations. Attorneys general from 19 states plus the District of Columbia, led by California, filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Minnesota.
“If left unchecked, the federal government will no doubt be emboldened to continue its unlawful conduct in Minnesota and to repeat it elsewhere,” the attorneys general wrote. |
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A South Korean court sentences former President Yoon to 5 years in prison
Court Watch |
2026/01/16 08:41
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A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations.
Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster.
The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb. 19.
Yoon has maintained he didn’t intend to place the country under military rule for an extended period, saying his decree was only meant to inform the people about the danger of the liberal-controlled parliament obstructing his agenda. But investigators have viewed Yoon’s decree as an attempt to bolster and prolong his rule, charging him with rebellion, abuse of power and other criminal offenses.
In Friday’s case, the Seoul court sentenced Yoon for defying attempts to detain him and fabricating the martial law proclamation. He was also sentenced for sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting, which deprived some Cabinet members who were not convened of their rights to deliberate on his decree.
Judge Baek Dae-hyun said in the televised ruling that imposing “a heavy punishment” was necessary because Yoon hasn’t shown remorse and has only repeated “hard-to-comprehend excuses.” The judge also said restoring legal systems damaged by Yoon’s action was necessary.
Yoon’s defense team said they will appeal the ruling, which they believe was “politicized” and reflected “the unilateral arguments by the independent counsel.” Yoon’s defense team argued the ruling “oversimplified the boundary between the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and criminal liability.”
Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law, said there is little chance the court would decide Yoon should face the death penalty in the rebellion case. He said the court will likely issue a life sentence or a sentence of 30 years or more in prison.
South Korea has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1997 and courts rarely hand down death sentences. Park said the court would take into account that Yoon’s decree didn’t cause casualties and didn’t last long, although Yoon hasn’t shown genuine remorse for his action.
South Korea has a history of pardoning former presidents who were jailed over diverse crimes in the name of promoting national unity. Those pardoned include strongman Chun Doo-hwan, who received the death penalty at a district court over his 1979 coup, the bloody 1980 crackdowns of pro-democracy protests that killed about 200 people, and other crimes.
Even if Yoon is spared the death penalty or life imprisonment at the rebellion trial, he may still face other prison sentences in the multiple smaller trials he faces.
Some observers say Yoon is likely retaining a defiant attitude in the ongoing trials to maintain his support base in the belief that he cannot avoid a lengthy sentence but could be pardoned in the future.
On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised speech, saying he would eliminate “anti-state forces” and protect “the constitutional democratic order.” Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly, but many apparently didn’t aggressively cordon off the area, allowing enough lawmakers to get into an assembly hall to vote down Yoon’s decree.
No major violence occurred, but Yoon’s decree caused the biggest political crisis in South Korea in decades and rattled its diplomacy and financial markets. For many, his decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought back harrowing memories of past dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed leaders used martial law and emergency measures to deploy soldiers and tanks on the streets to suppress demonstrations.
After Yoon’s ouster, his liberal rival Lee Jae Myung became president via a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to look into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.
Yoon’s other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor. |
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Investigation is opened into managers of Swiss bar where fire killed 40
Legal Interview |
2026/01/12 08:41
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Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year’s party left 40 people dead, authorities said Saturday.
The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters. She said the investigation was opened on Friday night and that it would help “explore all the leads.” The announcement of the investigation did not name the managers.
More than 100 other people were injured in the blaze that broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday at Le Constellation bar in the Alpine resort town of Crans-Montana. Police have said many were in their teens to mid-20s.
The process of identifying the dead and injured continued on Saturday, leading to an agonizing wait for relatives.
Investigators said Friday they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.
Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. Officials said they also would look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.
The Valais region’s top security official, Stéphane Ganzer, told SRF public radio Saturday that “such a huge accident with a fire in Switzerland means that something didn’t work — maybe the material, maybe the organization on the spot.” He added: “Something didn’t work and someone made a mistake, I am sure of that.”
Nicolas Féraud, who heads the Crans-Montana municipality, told RTS radio he was “convinced” checks on the bar hadn’t been lax, the broadcaster reported.
Asked whether the tragedy could have been avoided, Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans replied that officials could not yet answer and “we know that the world needs an answer on this question.”
The severity of burns has made it difficult to identify the dead and injured, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside were turned to ash.
On Saturday, regional police said the bodies of four victims — a boy and a girl, both 16, an 18-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, all of them Swiss — had been identified and handed over to their families.
Several injured people still haven’t been identified.
Laetitia Brodard, whose 16-year-old son, Arthur, went to Le Constellation to celebrate the New Year, held out hope that he might be one of them.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Brodard told reporters Friday evening. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
On Saturday, she told French broadcaster BFM TV that “we, parents, are starting to get tired ... and anger is starting to rise.”
“It’s a wait that destroys people’s stability,” said Elvira Venturella, an Italian psychologist working with the families. “And the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to accept the uncertainty, not having information.”
Swiss officials said Friday that 119 people were injured and 113 had been formally identified.
On Saturday, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told reporters he had just been briefed by local authorities that the number of injured stood at 121, with five not yet identified. He said 14 Italians were being treated in hospitals.
Cornado acknowledged “a lot of stress,” but said it was right for authorities to share information only when it is “accurate and 100% sure.”
Ganzer, visiting the site along with Jans, called the families’ wait “unbearable,” and said officials’ top priority was providing them the “legitimate answers they are waiting for.”
Swiss police have said the injured included more than 70 Swiss nationals and over 10 each from France and Italy, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland.
Mourners and well-wishers bearing flowers flowed to makeshift memorials outside Le Constellation, some consoling one another with hugs as they shed tears. “RIP you are all our children” one handwritten note said.
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