standoff

WASHINGTON — A dispute over whether federal immigration agents should be allowed to wear masks during enforcement operations has become one of the biggest obstacles to keeping the Department of Homeland Security funded, pushing the government toward a partial shutdown early Saturday.

Democrats have described the practice as corrosive to public trust, arguing that masked agents create the appearance of a “secret police” force. Republican lawmakers, President Trump and his top advisors, meanwhile, have drawn a hard line against requiring officers to remove their face coverings, insisting that doing so would expose them to harassment, threats and online doxxing.

“They want our law enforcement to be totally vulnerable and put them in a lot of danger,” Trump said at a White House event Thursday. He added that it would be “very, very hard to approve” Democrats’ demands, such as unmasking federal officers.

The standoff over masking stalled negotiations as lawmakers raced to meet a funding deadline for the Department of Homeland Security at midnight Friday. Without a deal, key agency functions — from airport security to disaster relief coordination — could be affected if the shutdown drags on.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) rides the Senate subway Thursday ahead of the latest partial government shutdown.

(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

As with every shutdown, the agency’s essential functions will continue to operate, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant Homeland Security secretary for public affairs, said in a statement. But employees performing those functions at agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration could go without pay if the shutdown stretches for weeks.

The heads of those agencies told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that the shutdown is expected to create severe and lasting challenges.

Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, said a shutdown would delay maintenance for boats and aircraft, and halt pay for 56,000 active-duty reserve and civilian personnel. Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting administrator of TSA, recounted how the last government shutdown affected her workers and spiked wait times at airports.

“We heard reports of officers sleeping in their cars at airports to save money on gas, selling their blood and plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet,” she said, adding that some are still recovering from the financial impact.

Operations within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the agencies that are central to the budget impasse — are likely to be the least affected. That’s because both agencies still have access to $75 billion in funding approved last year as part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

By midday Friday, it remained unclear when the partial shutdown would end, as lawmakers left Washington for a security conference in Munich and progress between Democratic and White House negotiators remained nebulous.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Friday when asked about cutting a deal. “We always have to protect our law enforcement.”

The partial government shutdown comes at a moment of acute public anger at the agency’s approach to immigration enforcement, which has included the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Since the shootings, the Trump administration has tried to quell tensions. Border policy advisor Tom Homan said Thursday that the administration was ending its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced earlier this month that the agency would be acquiring and issuing body cameras to federal agents. Trump also said he wants to employ a “softer touch” to immigration enforcement after the killings of Good and Pretti.

But Democrats maintain that they need reforms written into law. Among their demands is requiring officers to wear and turn on body cameras, banning them from wearing masks, and ending the practice of “roving patrols” and instead requiring that they carry out only targeted operations.

“We will not support an extension of the status quo, a status quo that permits masked secret police to barge into people’s homes without warrants, no guardrails and zero oversight from independent authorities,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday.

Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE, told a Senate panel Thursday that he does not want to see federal agents masked either, but said he is hesitant to bar face coverings because the threats to agents are too severe.

“I would work with this committee and any committee to work with holding individuals accountable that doxx ICE agents, because ICE agents don’t want to be masked,” Lyons said. “They’re honorable men and women, but the threats against their family are real.”

Federal immigration officials are more supportive of body cameras.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott told a House committee on Tuesday that he supports expanding the use of body cameras, but said more funding is needed to hire personnel to oversee the rollout.

“Fund the entire program so that we can be transparent and that we can make sure America knows what we’re doing, because that trust is critically important,” he said.

Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that while the White House has made some “tweaks around oversight,” its actions continue to fall short.

The association, which represents 18,000 immigration attorneys, has urged Congress to refuse more funding for ICE and CBP before implementing reforms.

“The American public wants and deserves real, meaningful guardrails that are written into law that ensure this administration — and, quite frankly, any administration — will abide by the Constitution and respect fundamental principles of due process,” Johnson said Wednesday on a call with reporters.

“Congress has a critical opportunity right now to meet that demand,” he added.

Republican Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky talk during a hearing Thursday on oversight of federal immigration agencies.

(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

So far, Democrats maintain they will continue to bock funding bills without accountability measures in place.

California’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, were among the Senate Democrats who helped block passage of funding bills Thursday that would have averted a shutdown because they lacked accountability measures.

“I will not support more funding for ICE until there are new guardrails to rein in its lawless conduct,” Schiff wrote on X. “I’m a no on anything but real reform.”

Padilla said he would be a “firm no” until lawmakers agree that federal immigration officers need to be held accountable.

“Donald Trump and Republicans want Americans to forget about their lawless immigration roundup, but we won’t,” Padilla said.

L3Harris has highlighted the potential benefits of pairing its Red Wolf miniature cruise missile with the U.S. Air Force’s OA-1K Skyraider II. Standoff munitions like Red Wolf could help the OA-1K, originally designed for close air support and surveillance and reconnaissance in support of low-intensity operations, find a role in future high-end conflicts, but questions about the value of doing so remain. The U.S. Marine Corps is already acquiring the Red Wolf to provide a boost in capability for its AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters for the same general reasons.

L3Harris announced today that it had shown “the ability to integrate” Red Wolf on its Sky Warden aircraft. The Sky Warden is based on the Air Tractor AT-802 single-engine turboprop crop duster. In 2022, the Air Force declared the two-seat Sky Warden the winner of its Armed Overwatch competition, subsequently giving the plane the designation OA-1K and the official nickname Skyraider II. The Air Force is planning to eventually acquire 75 OA-1Ks, which will be operated by units under the umbrella of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).

L3Harris officially unveiled Red Wolf, as well as the companion Green Wolf (fitted with an electronic warfare payload instead of a high-explosive warhead), last July. However, the development of the “Wolf” family of systems dates back to 2020.

“Our customers demand a lean, agile aircraft that can fly, take off and land anywhere, anytime, outfitted with a wide range of payloads,” Jason Lambert, President for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Space and Mission Systems at L3Harris, said in a statement today. “Bringing together Red Wolf and Sky Warden demonstrates the rapid reconfiguration and customization of key L3Harris capabilities.”

The OA-1K can carry up to 6,000 pounds of munitions and other stores on as many as eight pylons, four under each wing. L3Harris has also said in the past that aircraft has a “robust suite of radios and datalinks providing multiple means for line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) communications.”

OA-1K Skyraider II Walk-Around Tour With Its Test Pilot

Adding Red Wolf to the Skyraider II’s arsenal would turn the aircraft into a true standoff weapons delivery platform. This, in turn, would help keep the aircraft further away from potential threats, reducing the risk to the crew.

The members of the “Wolf” family are all in the 250-pound class. They have a missile-like core design, powered by a small turbojet, and with at least a degree of low-observability (stealthiness). They are in the 250-pound weight class. “Their endurance has been proven in flight testing, demonstrating high subsonic speeds – 200+ nautical mile range at low altitudes and 60+ minutes duration,” per L3Harris.

Details about how Red Wolf or Green Wolf are guided are limited, but L3Harris says they are capable of “autonomous over-the-horizon engagements.” The Marine Corps, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, has used tablet-based control systems as part of the engagement process in past testing of Red Wolf.

L3Harris has also talked in the past about how members of the Wolf family could work together. The Green Wolves could help locate targets, especially hostile air defense assets, by zeroing in on their signal emissions, as well as clear a path for Red Wolves to actually strike them.

Red Wolf or Green Wolf are also only the start of what L3Harris hopes to be a larger family of configurations based around the central design. At least one Red Wolf was reportedly employed at the U.S. Army’s Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event in 2021 (EDGE 21) configured as an airborne signal relay node rather than a munition.

“We can adjust the size of the warhead, the fuel tank, we can even put a parachute on the back of it, and we have,” Matthew “Guicci” Klunder, Vice President for Business Development at L3Harris, said in a promotional video released last year, seen below. “It can be a kinetic effect, it could be a non-kinetic effect, it could even be a decoy.”

Meet the “Wolf Pack”

Changing the size of the warhead would have impacts on range and endurance, as well as the terminal effect on the target. This also opens up the possibility of fitting different types of warheads, including ones with increased penetrating capability. A parachute system would allow for recovery and, by extension, potential reuse.

Overall, L3Harris describes the “Wolf” family collectively as “launched effects vehicles.” The U.S. military uses the term “launched effect” to refer to a broad swatch of uncrewed aerial systems that can be deployed from platforms in the air, on the ground, and at sea, and that can be configured as one-way attackers or to perform other missions. The Wolf family is just one of a growing number of modular, relatively cheap, and small systems that fall under that broad umbrella. Many of them increasingly blur the line between uncrewed aerial systems, especially longer-range kamikaze drones, and cruise missiles, as well as decoys.

As mentioned, just integrating Red Wolf onto the OA-1K would give it a standoff strike capability it currently does not have. Adding Green Wolf to the mix would further expand its capability, including adding a valuable, if not potentially critical, way to suppress hostile air defenses that might suddenly pop up.

In general, standoff capabilities for the Skyraider II could open up important new avenues to employing the aircraft in the context of future large-scale conflicts, including across the broad expanses of the Pacific. When the Air Force first initiated the Armed Overwatch program, U.S. military operations globally were defined by counter-terrorism operations in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria with entirely permissive airspace. By the time the decision was made to acquire the OA-1Ks, a shift was underway across the U.S. military to reorient toward preparing for high-end fights.

“How could we support them [friendly forces] if it’s in the Pacific or anywhere else? The OA-1K certainly has some roles and missions that can [provide] support there. And then in a large-scale combat operation, we are looking at, in partnership with other components of SOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command], what are some of the things that it could do,” a high-ranking Air Force official told TWZ in an interview last year. “Can it employ air-launched effects, at range, at standoff, in a flexible way that would provide value?”

“The beauty of the OA-1K is that it’s modular, it’s adaptable, and for a relatively small aircraft can carry a lot of payload. And so in a perfect world, in a resource-unconstrained world, I want to be able to have as big a menu as possible of things that I could hang from a hardpoint on there, or attach as a sensor,” Air Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, head of AFSOC, also told TWZ later in the year on the sidelines of Air & Space Forces Association’s main annual ocnference. “I’d love to be able to use long-range standoff mission munitions on multiple airframes.”

Conley was responding to a question specifically about integrating Black Arrow, also known as the Small Cruise Missile (SCM), onto the Skyraider II. Leidos is developing Black Arrow for AFSOC now, but primarily as a new standoff capability for the AC-130J Ghostrider gunship. Questions have also been raised about how to ensure the future relevance of the Air Force’s AC-130 fleets in high-end fights.

Leidos completes successful test launch of a Small Cruise Missile

At the same time, exactly how great the benefit would be to making the OA-1K into a standoff shooter is a matter of debate. A key benefit the Skyraider II offers is its ability to operate with a very small logistical footprint from far-flung locales, including ones that are very austere and close to or even within contested areas. As such, an OA-1K would be able to launch munitions like the Red Wolf from within the enemy’s own weapon engagement zones or from other surprise vectors, and fly low and slow to literally stay out of the gaze of distant radars.

At the same time, the OA-1K’s range and speed are limited, with the aircraft said to have a combat radius of roughly 200 miles with six hours of loitering time once arriving on station. The Skyraider II’s ability to survive in a highly contested areas, even with a standoff capability like that offered by Red Wolf, is also questionable at best.

OA-1Ks could still provide useful support during a high-end fight, but in areas further away from hostile threats. As TWZ has pointed out in the past, in a Pacific scenario, the aircraft could provide force protection and surveillance on a localized level around forward operating locations, including island outposts.

AFSOC’s Conley, among others, has also stressed in the past that AFSOC will still continue to be called upon to conduct lower-intensity missions that require the kinds of capabilities that the OA-1K was originally designed for, as well.

Regardless, the market space for munitions like Red Wolf and Black Arrow is steadily growing, and includes many other designs already that might also find their way onto the OA-1K, as well as other platforms in the air, ground, and maritime domains.

Red Wolf does have the additional benefit of already being elsewhere in the U.S. military ecosystem. As noted, the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army have been testing it in recent years. In January, L3Harris announced that the Marine Corps (by way of the Department of the U.S. Navy) had chosen Red Wolf for its Precision Attack Strike Munition (PSAM) requirement for a new air-launched standoff weapon primarily to arm the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter. The Marines have been facing their own questions about how to keep the AH-1Z, as well as the companion UH-1Y Venom armed utility helicopter, relevant in future high-end fights.

Further orders for different members of the Wolf family from other branches of the U.S. military, and potentially foreign operators, could be advantageous when it comes to sharing the cost burden and driving down unit prices through economies of scale. There could be interoperability and other operational benefits from multiple services operating versions of the same platform, as well.

Whether Red Wolf or Green Wolf ultimately become part of the OA-1K’s arsenal, the demand for launched effects like this only looks set to grow across the U.S. military and globally. For the Skyraider II, some mixture of standoff capabilities increasingly looks to be in the plane’s future to expand its relevance beyond lower-intensity conflicts.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Feb. 5 (UPI) — Though still awaiting Senate confirmation, Jennifer Wicks McNamara is preparing to land in Hanoi not with a ceremonial bouquet, but with a tariff ledger in hand instead.

The ambassador-designate steps into a newly minted “comprehensive strategic partnership” now defined less by warship visits and more by a $144 billion trade gap, market-economy disputes and rising economic friction between Washington and one of its most pivotal Asian partners.

Her posting follows the Trump administration’s unusual mass recall of career diplomats, a move that rattled U.S. embassies worldwide and signaled the White House impatience with the slow, methodical pace of traditional diplomacy.

McNamara’s mandate appears blunt: recalibrate a relationship the administration views as fundamentally lopsided. While security cooperation has expanded in response to shared concerns over China’s maritime pressure in the South China Sea, trade has become the gravitational center of U.S.-Vietnam relations — and it is pulling both sides toward confrontation even as they speak of partnership.

At her December confirmation hearing, McNamara adopted a notably hard line. She told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the trade relationship is “imbalanced” and pledged to press for “equitable market access” for U.S. goods and services.

The phrasing echoed the administration’s “America First” doctrine, which treats tariffs not as economic distortions, but as instruments of leverage — diplomatic tools by other means.

“In my view, this rhetoric reflects McNamara’s political calculations and a sober recognition that she had better adapt to the administration she is being nominated to serve in order to succeed in her post,” said Hunter Marston, a foreign policy analyst at the Center For Strategic &International Studies Southeast Asia Program.

Marston said he believes this single-minded attention to the trade dispute risks eroding trust upending the extraordinary progress in bilateral relations which brought the United States and Vietnam to the level of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership under the Biden administration.

That philosophy is already in motion. Since August, most Vietnamese exports have faced a 20% tariff, with a 40% duty imposed on goods deemed to be transshipped from third countries such as China.

U.S. officials describe these measures as necessary to prevent Vietnam from becoming a backdoor for Chinese manufacturing, but in Hanoi, they are widely seen as collective punishment that risks undermining two decades of economic integration.

Yet, the coercive power of tariffs has, so far, produced little correction. Vietnam’s trade surplus with the United States surged to $144.2 billion between January and October 2025, at times rivaling — and even surpassing — China’s surplus in key sectors such as electronics, textiles and consumer goods.

The data suggest that U.S. demand for Vietnamese production remains stubbornly inelastic, a reflection of deeply embedded supply chains that cannot be easily rerouted.

“Vietnam and the U.S. will have to navigate the trade issue to propel the relationship forward,” said Khang Vu, a visiting scholar in the Political Science Department at Boston College.

For McNamara, the test will be whether she can translate tough rhetoric into tangible changes in market access, investment rules and industrial policy, or whether she will preside over a continuing cycle of tariffs, retaliation and rhetorical sparring that leaves the underlying imbalance largely intact.

“Jennifer Wicks is a very senior and respected official within the State Department. U.S. tariff policies have been central to the U.S.-Vietnam relations since President Trump announced tariffs last April, so [she] will likely continue efforts to complete a U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement,” said Ambassador Brian McFeeters, president & CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council.

At the core of the dispute lies Vietnam’s designation as a “non-market economy” by the U.S. Department of Commerce. That label allows Washington to calculate anti-dumping duties using surrogate prices from third countries — often higher-cost economies, such as Bangladesh or India — that inflates the “fair value” of Vietnamese shrimp, furniture and steel in the American market.

Hanoi has long argued that the classification is outdated and politically motivated. In September 2023, Vietnam formally requested a review of its status, pointing to reforms in pricing, competition policy and state enterprise governance.

But in August 2024, Commerce reaffirmed the non-market economy designation, citing continued “significant government involvement” in the economy despite acknowledging “substantive reforms.”

McNamara steps into an escalating legal and diplomatic standoff. While Hanoi has floated concessions on U.S. autos, medical devices and farm goods, Washington has made clear that limited tariff adjustments are not enough. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has called for broader structural reforms that would steer Vietnam toward a more market-driven system – a demand that challenges the core of its state-led economic model.

For Vietnam, shedding the non-market ecomony label is a matter of prestige and a multibillion-dollar economic imperative.

In practical terms, U.S. officials are expected to press Hanoi on several politically sensitive fronts. Currency policy is emerging as another point of tension. The officials question Vietnam’s management of the dong, citing limited convertibility and opaque reserve practices they say bolster export competitiveness.

Labor policy presents another fault line. A key metric for market economy status is whether wages are determined by free bargaining between independent unions and employers.

While Vietnam has introduced a revised Labor Code that allows more space for worker representation, U.S. officials question whether unions are truly independent from the ruling Communist Party. McNamara will almost certainly raise these concerns, even as Hanoi insists its model is evolving.

Equally contentious is the role of state-owned enterprises, which dominate sectors such as energy, telecommunications and transportation. Washington is likely to demand a faster pace of “equitization” — Vietnam’s term for partial privatization — along with tighter limits on state-backed financing.

U.S. negotiators also argue that government controls over land and energy prices distort production costs, giving Vietnamese manufacturers an unfair advantage. Addressing this would require Hanoi to relinquish a degree of control over core economic inputs — a politically fraught move that could unsettle domestic constituencies and state-linked elites.

Aware of the stakes, Vietnam appears to be preparing its own strategy: concessions rather than confrontation.

Diplomats in Hanoi say officials are preparing limited market-opening steps to ease pressure from Washington without reshaping Vietnam’s state-led economy. The measures could include selective tariff cuts and increased purchases of U.S. goods, offering visible trade concessions, while leaving core political and economic structures intact.

Vietnam is weighing major purchases of U.S. liquefied natural gas as it expands energy capacity to fuel industrial growth. Long-term LNG deals worth billions could help narrow the trade gap with Washington, while tying Hanoi more closely to U.S. energy supplies.

Agriculture could become another friction point. Vietnam enforces strict health standards on U.S. pork, poultry and grain imports, citing food safety concerns. McNamara is expected to press for science-based regulatory changes to expand access for American farm exports – a sensitive issue in a country where small farmers wield political influence.

Aviation is emerging as a highly visible battleground. Vietnam Airlines, VietJet and Bamboo Airways are all in the midst of fleet expansions. U.S. officials are keen for these multibillion-dollar orders to go to Boeing rather than European manufacturers, viewing aircraft sales as a concrete way to offset the trade deficit and demonstrate goodwill.

If Vietnam resists deeper reforms, it risks entrenching itself under punitive U.S. trade barriers that could discourage investment and slow export growth. If it moves too far, too fast, it could destabilize its own state-led development model and alienate domestic power centers that benefit from the current system.

For Hanoi, the challenge is even more delicate: proving it can behave like a market economy while remaining a one-party state — a contradiction that Washington is now probing with far sharper tools than before.

How McNamara navigates this dilemma will not only shape her legacy in Hanoi, but could redefine the future trajectory of U.S.-Vietnam relations in an era in which geopolitics and geo-economics are increasingly inseparable.