Amendment

Dr Anthony Fauci, a former top United States public health official, has declined to answer questions at a Republican-led Senate committee hearing into the origins of COVID-19 and the handling of the pandemic.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Wednesday.

Fauci was called to testify by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who accuses him of misleading Congress and questions whether US-funded research in China played a role in the pandemic, allegations Fauci denies.

Although former President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon in 2025, Republicans claim it does not protect him from any alleged crimes committed after it was issued, such as perjuring himself at a Senate hearing.

Fauci’s lawyers advised him not to testify, arguing that anything he said under oath could expose him to new legal risks.

Here is what to know:

Who is Anthony Fauci?

Fauci, 85, is a physician and immunologist who led the US NIAID for 38 years, advising seven presidents, both Republican and Democratic.

He became the public face of the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, after helping lead the country’s response to health crises including HIV/AIDS, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks.

He became a target of conservative criticism over pandemic policies, including mask recommendations, vaccines and school closures.

During his last year in government, Fauci was also chief medical adviser to Biden until he retired in 2022.

During the pandemic, between 2019 and 2022, he kept more than 1,000 pages of diary entries documenting his work advising the White House and responding to the pandemic.

The notes chronicle his interactions with senior officials and the media.

Why is Fauci being questioned?

He was subpoenaed to testify over his handling of the pandemic and its origins before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The hearing, led by Paul, focused on several issues:

• COVID-19’s origins: Paul has long argued that the coronavirus that causes COVID may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and questioned whether US-funded research played a role in the outbreak.
• Gain-of-function research: Republicans say Fauci misled Congress about whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, involving modifying viruses to understand how they evolve and assess pandemic risks. Fauci says the NIH did not fund research that caused COVID-19.

• Allegations of a cover-up: Paul accused Fauci of making false statements to Congress and concealing the NIH’s involvement in research in Wuhan. Fauci denies that.
• Fauci’s diary: Before the hearing, Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s typewritten diary. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said the notes were government record because they were written by a federal employee on a government computer during a public health emergency and they were found on government property.
• Paul said the diary showed differences between Fauci’s private discussions and his public statements. Fauci’s supporters say the entries reflect the uncertainty scientists faced as they learned more about a new virus.

What happened at the hearing?

The tense hearing lasted about three hours.

After a brief opening statement, Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer more than 100 questions.

He accused committee chairman Paul of having an “obsession” with prosecuting him.

The hearing included several tense moments:

• Contempt vote: Paul said the committee would vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to answer questions, threatening “consequences for refusing to answer”.
• Lawyer removed: Paul directed Capitol Police to remove Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, after he tried to speak without being recognised by the committee. “This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers,” Paul said. Schertler later described the hearing as an “obsessive vendetta”.
• Democrats defend Fauci: Democratic senators said the hearing was politically motivated. Senator Gary Peters called it “a partisan exercise” designed to support “a predetermined conclusion” rather than offering legitimate oversight.

Closing the hearing, Paul asked rhetorically: “Did [Fauci’s] actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?”

Why did Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment?

Fauci said he invoked the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his lawyers because he believed his answers could expose him to new legal risks.

He argued that Paul was trying to build a criminal case against him rather than conduct legitimate congressional oversight.

Although Biden’s pardon protects Fauci from prosecution for actions before January 2025, Republicans say any false statements made under oath during this hearing could still expose him to perjury charges.

The Fifth Amendment protects people from being forced to give evidence that could incriminate them in a criminal case. Invoking it is a constitutional right and does not imply guilt.

What do scientists believe about COVID-19’s origins?

Most scientists believe COVID-19 likely spread naturally from animals to humans, known as zoonotic spillover, pointing to a wildlife market in Wuhan as the most likely place where it first spread.

Fauci has consistently said he believes that scientific evidence points to a natural origin, while remaining open to other possibilities.

Notes from his diary detail a January 2020 call with 11 top virologists and evolutionary biologists – only two were convinced the virus had a natural origin, while the rest debated whether it could have been engineered.

Today, most scientists favour a natural origin, while the US intelligence community is divided.

The FBI said in 2023 that a laboratory-related incident is the most likely origin of the pandemic. The CIA reached the same conclusion in 2025, but with low confidence. Other agencies and the National Intelligence Council continue to favour a natural origin or remain undecided.

Does Biden’s pardon protect Fauci?

Yes, but only what happened before the pardon was issued.

On January 19, 2025, Biden granted Fauci a full and unconditional pardon covering any federal offences he may have committed since 2014, saying the move aimed to protect Fauci from “politically motivated prosecutions”.

The pardon does not cover actions taken after it was issued. Fauci could face legal consequences if he were accused of committing a new crime, such as making false statements under oath during Wednesday’s Senate hearing.

Paul and other Republicans also argue that because Biden’s pardon shields Fauci from criminal liability for his past actions, he can no longer claim that his testimony about those actions would incriminate him and should not be able to invoke his Fifth Amendment.

The legal standing of this argument is not clear, and Paul has acknowledged that it is a novel “legal question that the courts may have to decide”.

Can Fauci be held in contempt or prosecuted?

Potentially, but it remains unclear whether either will happen.

Paul said the Senate committee will vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer more than 100 questions.

Being held in contempt means lawmakers believe a witness has refused to cooperate with a lawful investigation. It does not automatically lead to criminal charges, but can trigger further legal action.

If the committee approves the measure, it could refer the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, ask a federal court to pursue a civil action, or, in the rarest case, ask the Senate to use its powers to detain a witness through the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

Paul has not said which option, if any, he plans to pursue.

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators in a Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move injects new drama into the lingering tensions between Fauci and Republican lawmakers over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and accusations he lied about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

Fauci was set to answer lawmakers’ questions after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had a fraught relationship with the now-retired infectious-disease expert and led the charge seeking that he testify, again, under oath about his role in containing the pandemic.

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution if he is accused of lying at Wednesday’s hearing, part of a yearslong campaign for his arrest spearheaded by some Republicans in Congress. But it may also further inflame partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 response, has become a target of those frustrations. But to his supporters he is an emblem of sound scientific expertise.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that while it pains him to do so, he is following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.

Paul releases some of Fauci’s diary

Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.

“Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility,” Paul said.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking member, said that Paul’s hearing was a partisan exercise and that the hearing was looking backward instead of focusing on current national security challenges.

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

Some of the diary entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

Ahead of the hearing, President Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.

In a statement, Fauci’s attorney David Schertler said Paul’s accusations are “false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered public office, said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. He told a Fox News Channel host that he thought Fauci might lie before the committee, opening him to perjury prosecution despite his preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Scientists scrambled to Fauci’s defense ahead of the unusual hearing — the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.

Some disease experts criticize the accusations against Fauci

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are “urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.”

The expected crux of Wednesday’s hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain of function research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.

The NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain of function covers both general research and especially risky experiments to enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that “it would be molecularly impossible” for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.

Trump, a Republican, last year paused some federally funded gain of function research, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten oversight.

Neergaard and Swenson write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

California Democratic senators failed to advance a proposal Tuesday that would have barred registered sex offenders from running for office.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) voted against Assembly Bill 2753, while fellow Sens. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) and Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) abstained from a vote that ultimately failed 2-1-2 in the Senate Elections and Constitutional Committee.

The committee’s lone Republican, Steve Choi (R-Irvine), and Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) voted in favor of the bill, which is likely dead because it failed to get support from a majority of the five-member panel.

AB 2753 could be reviewed in a floor session Thursday, but staff from the office of Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria (D-Fresno), who authored the bill, are conceding that’s unlikely.

The defeat comes on the heels of unanimous support, including a 60-0 vote in favor on the Assembly Floor on May 7.

“I am deeply disappointed and disheartened after the Senate Elections Committee has failed to advance AB 2753, a bill that would have prohibited any registered sex offender in the State of California from running for local or state public office,” Soria said in a statement.

The bill’s wording said the legislation would “prohibit a person from being a candidate for, or elected to, any state or local elective office if the person has ever been required to register as a sex offender.”

Inquiries to the offices of Sens. Wiener, Umberg and Allen were not immediately returned.

Sex offenses in California are broken up into three tiers. First-tier offenses call for a minimum of 10 years placement on the sex offender registry. Second-tier offenses call for a minimum of 20 years and third tier crimes could result in a lifetime on the registry.

The types of offenses for each tier vary. Tier 1 offenses range from indecent exposure to misdemeanor child pornography and sexual battery. Tier 2 includes incest and penetration with a foreign object, and Tier 3 includes felony possession of child pornography, rape and pimping and pandering of a minor.

Wiener asked for amendments to the bill during the bill’s review and in the committee meeting, including that the lifetime ban only be applied to Tier 3 members.

He pointed to committee analysis of the bill that could affect so-called “Romeo and Juliet” couples — those close in age, for instance with one partner being 19 and the other being 17. If the younger partner sent sexually explicit digital content to the older partner (a misdemeanor), this law could ban the older partner from public office for life.

There were also concerns listed in the analysis that the registry, which dates back to 1947, could include LGBTQ+ offenders from decades ago who were convicted of offenses that are no longer crimes.

Wiener mentioned in the committee meeting civil rights strategist and fighter Bayard Rustin being placed on the California sex offender’s registry list after being arrested by Pasadena Police for having consensual sex with another man in 1953.

“Without the amendment contained in the analysis, I will be voting ‘no’ on this bill and recommending that the committee vote ‘no,’” Wiener said at the committee hearing.

He added that the sex offender list was “not punishment,” but instead “a tool for law enforcement to monitor who may potentially cause a risk.”

While Soria agreed to one bill amendment, she did not accept other provisions, including the elimination of lifetime bans on Tier 1 or 2 offenses.

“The bottom line is this: I was not willing to make additional amendments to this bill,” she said. “I made a promise to my community that I would do everything in my power to ensure they would never have to go through something like this again. Accepting additional amendments to this bill would have jeopardized that promise.”

Some of the impetus behind her bill revolved around the June 2 Fresno City Council election. Registered sex offender Rene Campos fell short of the necessary votes in his bid to run for Central Valley Council.

He was charged with possession of child pornography in 2018 and hosted his campaign kickoff in front of an elementary school.

Nelson Esparza, Fresno City Council President, spoke at the Senate Elections and Constitutional Committee meeting in favor of AB 2753.

“My office received dozens of calls from our residents asking how this could be allowed,” Esparza said of Campos’ candidacy. “AB 2753 closes this loophole.”

It’s unclear if this bill will be reintroduced next year at least at the Assembly level, as Soria is running for the state senate in November.

Constitutional amendment will keep President Mnangagwa in office until 2030 and allow parliament to elect the president.

Zimbabwe’s Senate has overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that will keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in office until 2030.

According to Senate President Mabel Chinomona, the controversial amendments were passed on Wednesday after 75 senators voted in favour and four against extending the term for Mnangagwa, 83.

The raft of sweeping changes, which critics have called a “constitutional coup”, includes a provision that extends presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years.

The bill also includes a provision for the president to be elected by parliament rather than by direct popular vote.

With parliament’s backing, the bill now has to be signed by Mnangagwa to become law.

Mnangagwa’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party holds a strong majority in parliament and has ruled since independence in 1980.

Last year, the ruling party resolved to change the constitution to prolong presidential terms, and the plan received cabinet backing in February.

The bill then passed through the National Assembly last week, with 216 lawmakers voting in favour of the draft legislation and 42 against it.

Mnangagwa came to power after a 2017 military coup ousted longtime leader Robert Mugabe, who had been in power since independence in 1980.

Still, the country’s opposition, which has been weakened by years of repression, charges that the measures would entrench ZANU-PF’s control over the country.

Moreover, activists who have tried to mobilise in the country have reported intimidation and violence, including arrests or assault by suspected agents of the state.

Legal challenges have also failed to stop or invalidate the amendment process.

In March, Human Rights Watch said that Zimbabwe’s authorities were using violence and intimidation against those who were opposing the amendments.

“Over the last few months, the police and unidentified armed men have threatened, harassed, and beat up several people who are opposed to the proposed constitutional amendment,” it said in a statement.

ATLANTA — Legislation to keep Georgia’s embattled vote-counting method in place for this year’s midterm elections faced strong opposition from state Democrats on Monday after Republicans in the Georgia Senate approved an amendment that would require a hand recount of ballots.

Georgia’s governor, Republican Brian Kemp, had called lawmakers into a special session in part to address a July 1 deadline that was set to ban the QR codes used for the official vote count. Legislators passed a law two years ago that set that deadline, but then failed to find a replacement for tabulating votes.

Some voting rights activists had warned that any changes so close to the midterm elections could create confusion at polling sites. Georgia is a political swing state where voters will decide high-profile races for U.S. Senate and governor in the fall.

State lawmakers last week appeared to have reached a deal on a bill to push the July 1 deadline back to 2028. But Republicans in the Senate approved an amendment over the weekend that would require a full hand recount of the two races at the top of ballot. In November, that would be the governor’s contest and a U.S. Senate election.

The amended bill passed the Senate on a party line vote, but the House did not immediately schedule it for a vote on Monday.

Georgia Democrats say a hand recount in November would create chaos that could sow doubt about the results. Research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. It has gained traction, however, with Republican lawmakers in some states amid President Trump’s repeated false claims about a stolen 2020 election.

“What we are experiencing is a Republican Senate who’s acting extraordinarily irresponsibly with Georgia’s elections and people’s votes,” state Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat, said Monday.

Republican state Sen. Max Burns defended the Senate bill, saying hand counts and machine counts can “coexist and confirm each other’s ultimate results.”

“This amendment to a good bill is to strengthen it so that the voters have confidence in election security,” he said.

Georgia’s current election system uses a QR code printed on ballots to tally the votes. It has drawn the ire of Trump, who claimed without evidence that voting machines in Georgia deleted or switched votes in the 2020 election. He narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden that year.

Georgia voting machines have been the subject of conspiracy theories, which manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems fought vigorously in court. But election integrity advocates also have raised concerns about the machines, arguing that they are vulnerable to hacking and that voters cannot be sure their selections are accurately reflected because people can’t read QR codes.

The Georgia Senate bill would extend the July 1 deadline to Jan. 1, 2028. It also would create a committee to recommend requirements for a new voting system. The committee would have until Jan. 31, 2027, to report its findings. State lawmakers would be responsible for funding, buying and implementing the new system for the 2028 election cycle.

The special session also was supposed to redraw Georgia’s congressional and legislative districts for the 2028 election, but state lawmakers postponed those plans.

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security, powering President Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term in the White House.

The nearly $70-billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote and now heads to the House, was declared a “rotten bill” by the Democratic leader and an “ATM for ICE” by pro-immigrant advocates.

But for those aligned with Trump’s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration’s immigration enforcement operations — and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump’s big tax breaks bill.

“We’re going to continue to arrest people, we’re going to continue to detain people and we’re going to keep deporting people,” Trump border advisor Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About 1 in 3 U.S. adults know someone who has been affected by Trump’s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it’s no longer a great place for immigrants.

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and billions for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department’s operations into 2029.

“Their options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America’s Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.

“That is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet healthcare costs, and have access to food and they’re paying so much in gas.”

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status or making it more difficult to secure green cards.

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, exposing them to potential deportation.

But protests on American streets continue, including over detention conditions at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey.

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents — it’s hosting an employment fair next month in Florida — build more detention facilities and partner with countries around the world to take people who are being deported from the U.S.

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin are “laser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women” of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress “will ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.”

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside the traditional appropriations channels.

It’s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump’s 2025 tax cuts bill.

“All this important oversight doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect “Dreamers” from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president’s first year numbers fell short.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises.

“Everyone’s talking about it like ICE is about to get another massive cash injection, and that’s not how I see it at all,” he said. “They’re getting like life-support money.”

“We’re not asking them to keep going,” Howell said. “We’re asking them to start.”

Howell said there’s little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president’s deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what they call the “worst of the worst.”

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain driver’s licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website that characterizes immigrants as “aliens” — with outer-space themes — and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Senate is beginning a long series of votes Thursday on legislation to fund President Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies, moving toward passage of a three-year fix as Democrats have blocked the money for months in protest.

The roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats who demanded policy changes after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents in January. The bill would fund the agencies for three years, through the end of Trump’s term.

First, though, Republicans must beat back a potential gauntlet of amendments that Democrats plan to offer, including to try and permanently ban Trump’s $1.776 billion settlement fund for allies who he believes have been politically persecuted. Democrats have said their first amendment Thursday morning will be to eliminate the fund and send the immigration spending bill back to committee.

Senate Republicans are using a complicated procedural maneuver to get around the filibuster and pass the budget legislation with no Democratic votes. But it has taken weeks to get the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to passage created by Trump and the White House — including a $1 billion proposal for White House security that they eventually scrapped and fierce bipartisan backlash to the settlement fund.

“The thing we’re trying to do here is to keep the focus on funding for ICE and CBP,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday evening, after the Senate voted to start debating the legislation. “This was narrow and targeted from the very beginning and clean, and we’re trying to maintain it that way.”

But it’s unclear if Republicans will have enough votes to fend off the Democratic amendments. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week that the fund would not move forward, and many GOP senators said Wednesday that they were satisfied with his remarks.

Yet Trump, who has been at odds with Senate Republicans in recent weeks, raised new doubts about the settlement’s future on Wednesday afternoon when he told reporters that the settlement is “very important” and said “I don’t know” whether it is dead or on hold.

“I’d have to ask the lawyers,” he said.

Democrats, Republicans plan to force votes on settlement

To pass legislation through the budget process called reconciliation, the Senate must first hold a long series of votes. Democrats are using that process to try and ban the settlement by law — and also kill the immigration spending bill.

After Trump’s comments about the fund, Schumer posted on X that “this is EXACTLY why” Democrats would be forcing votes to ban it.

Some Republicans also planned to try and put Blanche’s promise in writing. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he will offer an amendment to block any attempt at resurrecting the fund.

“We’ve got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear they’ve got concerns there,” said Tillis.

ICE and Border Patrol money has been long fight

Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the DHS funding lapsed in mid-February with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Congress eventually funded the rest of the Homeland Security Department at the end of April with Democratic support. But ICE and Border Patrol remained without regular funding, and Republicans launched a new effort to pass three years of funding for those agencies with no Democratic votes.

Security money for Trump’s ballroom dropped

Work on the legislation was also delayed by Republican opposition to $1 billion in security funding for the White House, including for Trump’s new ballroom, that was added to the original bill.

Democrats and some Republicans questioned using taxpayer money for the massive project, and Republicans did not include it in the final bill when it was released on Wednesday.

Thune said he was working with his GOP conference to try and fight off any amendments and ensure he has enough votes for a simple majority to pass the bill in the 53-47 Senate.

“Keep in mind, we’ve got to keep them all together, make sure we’ve got 50 votes for it,” he said.

Republican House leaders said Wednesday they would like to clear the legislation before the end of the week, if the Senate can finish it. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that House leaders were having internal conversations about the schedule.

“We just need to make sure everybody’s there,” Scalise said.

Jalonick and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

The ruling Democratic Party’s (DP) push to put a constitutional change to a national vote in the upcoming local elections fell through Friday as the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) continued to boycott a parliamentary vote on the proposal.

Shortly after Friday’s plenary session opened, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik announced that he will not put the amendment bill to a vote as the PPP warned it would launch a filibuster to block the proposal.

“I convened the plenary session again today in an effort to prevent the first constitutional amendment vote in 39 years from falling through,” Woo said. “But I believe further proceedings would be meaningless, seeing the (PPP) responding with a filibuster.”

The PPP boycotted a vote on the bill Thursday, leaving the unicameral parliament short of a quorum.

Cheong Wa Dae expressed regret over the National Assembly’s failure to pass the bill due to opposition from PPP lawmakers.

“The public will find it difficult to understand why they opposed even minimal constitutional changes aimed at safeguarding national security and democracy,” presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said in a written briefing, noting that there had been broad public consensus on the need to “reflect the lessons” of former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Dec. 3, 2024, martial law attempt in the Constitution.

“We urge the National Assembly to continue the discussions on the constitutional amendment with a greater sense of responsibility during the second half and to keep the promise it made to the people,” she added.

President Lee Jae Myung earlier highlighted the need to amend the constitution in “phases” if necessary, saying the Constitution, which has remained unchanged for nearly 40 years since 1987, may now be outdated.

The proposed bill aimed to tighten the rules for declaring martial law, requiring the president to obtain parliamentary approval without delay and stipulating that if the National Assembly rejects the declaration or fails to approve it within 48 hours, the martial law will be immediately nullified.

It also sought to include the 1980 pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju and the 1979 Busan-Masan pro-democracy protests in the preamble. It currently states that the country inherits the spirit of the April 19 revolution in 1960, which overthrew South Korea’s first president, Rhee Syng-man, over election fraud.

The bill was jointly proposed by 187 lawmakers from the DP and five minor parties.

A constitutional amendment requires two thirds of votes from sitting lawmakers to be put to a national referendum for final approval by a majority of ballots cast.

South Korea is set to hold its quadrennial local elections on June 3.

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SACRAMENTO — The debate over immigration issues has reached a fever pitch nationwide, and Angelica Salas said it’s putting her employees at risk.

Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said her staff experiences harassment and death threats.

“They ask themselves, what if someone who disagrees with our work can find where I live, will my family be safe?” Salas said, addressing state lawmakers at a recent legislative hearing.”People begin to self-censor; they step away from their work and some leave the field entirely.”

Salas was speaking in support of Assembly Bill 2624, which would provide privacy protections for those facing harassment for working or volunteering with organizations that offer legal and humanitarian aid to immigrants. The bill would create an address confidentiality program, like the one already offered to reproductive healthcare workers, and prohibit people and businesses from selling or posting images or personal information about the protected individuals on the internet.

The measure has drawn ire from Republicans, who argue it could have a chilling effect on free speech and the media. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” and said it would prevent right-wing social media influencers like Shirley from conducting immigrant-related investigations in California.

Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who authored the legislation, said the proposed law would help keep people safe — but several 1st Amendment experts this week told The Times the bill could have unintended consequences.

“There could be grounds for concern,” said Jason Shepard, a media law and communications professor at California State Fullerton. “It reflects a legitimate and important state interest in protecting people from harassment and threats. But at the same time, this bill punishes the publication of information.”

The legislation defines “personal information” as anything that identifies, describes or relates to the protected individuals, including their names, addresses, telephone numbers, physical descriptions, driver’s licenses, financial information, license plate numbers and places of employment.

Shepard said the potential new law could be applied unevenly, and the language could have a chilling effect on investigative journalism.

Given the polarized political environment, Shepard said the legislation also could prompt other groups to request similar protections, as those working in a range of professions are facing increasingly heated rhetoric or attacks.

“This is not unique to people who are working in immigration support services; this really could apply to anybody engaged in public debate today,” he said.

Carolyn Iodice, the policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE, said the organization has noted an uptick in laws nationwide implementing privacy protections for those in certain professions.

She pointed to a statute enacted a few years ago in New Jersey that protects the addresses of judges, prosecutors and police officers. The law was used in 2023 to block an editor with New Brunswick Today from publishing an article about the police chief living two hours outside of the city.

“It was obviously newsworthy, but this officer was able to wield the law against this journalist, and that is the kind of thing we are worried about,” Iodice said. “When you think about handing what could be a huge number of people the ability to just block anything from being posted about them online — it could easily be abused.”

David Loy, the legal director for the nonpartisan First Amendment Coalition, said the measure would censor the free speech of all citizens, not just those who defamed or threatened immigrant aid workers.

“Someone might have a legitimate dispute with them and wants to refer to it online,” he said. “But they could then basically silence [that person] from referring to them on a Yelp review or Facebook posts that has nothing to do with threatening them — and that is going way beyond the narrow exceptions of the 1st Amendment.”

Loy said the coalition reached out to Bonta’s office and hopes to help tweak the bill.

Meanwhile, the legislation continues to face scrutiny from Republicans.

“We exposed CA Democrats for the ‘Stop Nick Shirley’ Act that silences citizen journalists who expose their fraud and corruption,” DiMaio wrote this week on social media.

Shirley released a viral video last year alleging fraud in Somali-run immigrant daycare centers in Minneapolis. He recently shared videos of himself in Sacramento confronting Democrats who support Bonta’s bill.

“The enemy is truly within,” Shirley wrote on Instagram. “When our politicians would rather protect fraudsters and illegal migrants, it’s time for us to stand up or face mass oppression from the traitors.”

Bonta dismissed the assertion that the bill is intended to deter journalists, stating in a news release that “right-wing agitators” and “ineffective legislators” were intentionally spreading misinformation.

Bonta spokesperson Daniel McGreevy said the bill has a straightforward goal of protecting immigrant service providers. He said the office is working to refine the legislation to address concerns and welcomes good-faith dialogue.

The bill is progressing through the state Legislature and most recently was referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.