Former Detroit Mayor Duggan suspends his independent run for Michigan governor

May 21, 2026 12:19 PM ET / Associated Press

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is interviewed in December 2024 in Detroit.

Carlos Osorio/AP

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said Thursday he is suspending his campaign for Michigan governor, citing an increasingly “toxic” political climate due to President Donald Trump’s war with Iran and skyrocketing gas prices.

Duggan, a longtime Democrat, was running as an independent to replace Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who can’t run again due to term limits. He told The Associated Press that it was going to be “very hard to win” as the Democrats who would have supported him are galvanizing against what’s going on in Washington.

“Democrat anger against Trump and Republicans is extremely high,” Duggan said. “In 60 days, there’s been a huge change in the attitudes of this country. People are feeling the pain at the pump and are angry about it.”

An independent has never served as Michigan governor and third-party candidates typically don’t fare well in elections for the state’s top seat. To Duggan, who shunned partisan fighting while choosing to run as an independent, it was clear the odds were stacking against his campaign.

“As long as I knew there was a path for victory, I was going to fight,” he said. “I don’t see a likely path to win.”

Duggan believed he was trailing Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Republican US Rep. John James in the governor’s race. Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson also is running as a Democrat, while millionaire businessman Perry Johnson is running as a Republican.

Michigan’s primary election will be held August 4.

Tennessee stops execution after failing to find inmate’s vein for lethal drugs, attorney says

May 21, 2026 / 2:43 PM EDT / CBS News

Tennessee halted the execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers on Thursday, his attorney said, after the officers tasked with establishing an intravenous line through which to administer lethal drugs failed to do so for more than an hour.

“They tortured him,” said the attorney Maria DeLiberato, in a text message that CBS News obtained through the American Civil Liberties Union. “When they tried to do the central line, they put a shot of lidocaine in his chest and he told them he could still feel the puncture and they did the puncture anyway.”

In the text, DeLiberato said Carruthers, 57, was groaning and bleeding from his attempted injection sites. She said officers tried three times to establish the line in the inmate’s arms and feet, and also attempted to access a vein in his neck.

Carruthers’ defense team had asked a Tennessee district court judge to stop his execution in an emergency order, which alleged that the repeated attempts “constituted cruel and unusual punishment” and violated his constitutional rights. The judge denied that request on the grounds that his team had not met their burden of proof to demonstrate the state’s actions were “cruel and unusual.”

While Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a reprieve, pausing the execution proceedings, whether it would be temporary or permanent was unclear, according to an ACLU spokesperson.

Lee upheld the state’s death sentence for Carruthers in a statement responding to his clemency request on Thursday.

“After deliberate consideration of Tony Von Carruthers’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee,” the governor said.

Carruthers was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker.

But advocates have long called on Lee to halt Carruthers’ execution so that his legal team could more deeply evaluate DNA evidence that they believed might exonerate him. Throughout his 30 years on Tennessee’s death row, Carruthers has maintained his innocence.

In statements released alongside the emergency motion on Thursday, Carruthers’ attorneys described the state’s decision to move ahead with the execution despite blocking his efforts to run forensic analyses as “a grave injustice.” His defense team’s motion for a “post-conviction” DNA test on evidence taken from the victims was denied by the state, court filings show.

“This injustice turned barbaric when Tennessee’s efforts to set an IV line for the lethal drugs failed and the executioners continued to press forward anyway with the botched execution,” said attorney and Capital Punishment Project director Cassy Stubbs.

The ACLU, in a petition, accused Tennessee leadership for neglecting to address issues with Carruthers’ case. It said his conviction rested on the testimonies of “paid jailhouse informants,” and no physical evidence connects him to the crime.

The post-conviction forensic testing had sought to evaluate “unmatched fingerprints and DNA from the crime scene,” which “have never been compared” to an alternative suspect that Carruthers’ co-defendant identified more than a decade ago, according to the ACLU.

The Associated Press and Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.

5月21日，伊朗阿巴斯港附近霍尔木兹海峡的船只。 （路透社）

伊朗正与阿曼讨论建立某种永久性收费体系，以正式确立对霍尔木兹海峡海上通行的控制。

伊朗驻法国大使穆罕默德·阿明-内贾德（Mohammad Amin-Nejad）星期三（5月20日）在巴黎接受彭博采访时说：“伊朗和阿曼必须调动所有资源，才能做到既提供安全服务，又能以最适当的方式管理航运。”

他通过翻译用波斯语说：“这中间肯定涉及成本，这是不言而喻的，希望从这条航道获益的人必须承担自己的份额。该体系将是透明的。如果今天人们希望局势改善，就必须找到解决问题的办法。”

阿曼政府暂未回应置评请求。

霍尔木兹海峡北接伊朗、南临阿曼，连接波斯湾与印度洋，平时承担全球约五分之一的石油和液化天然气运输量，同时也是铝和化肥等大宗商品的重要运输通道。

阿明-内贾德坚称，海峡通行并未完全中断，他还在未提供证据的情况下声称，在伊斯兰革命卫队协助下，星期二至星期三总计有26艘油轮及其他船只完成通行。

这一数字对近几周而言已属异常高位，但仍远低于战前日均约135艘船的水平。

阿明-内贾德将通行减少归咎于高昂的保险成本，但航运公司指出，真正的问题在于导弹和无人机袭击风险，以及触碰水雷的危险。多数航运公司称，在战争结束前不会派船穿越海峡。

阿明-内贾德淡化了伊朗与阿拉伯联合酋长国和沙特阿拉伯之间的紧张关系。彭博此前报道称，在停火前，这两个国家曾分别秘密袭击伊朗，反击伊朗向它们以及卡塔尔、巴林等国发射数千架无人机和导弹的行为。

阿明-内贾德说：“对我们而言，最痛苦、最艰难的时刻是我们别无选择、不得不打击那些位于此类国家境内的军事基地时。一旦战争结束，长期积累的误解很容易得到解决。”

Acting head of US NIH infectious disease institute has left, senators say

2026-05-21T19:30:41.113Z / Reuters

United States National Institutes of Health logo and U.S. flag are seen in this illustration taken April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The acting director of the U.S. NIH’s infectious disease institute has stepped down, two Democratic senators said on Thursday during a Senate hearing, even as the United States ​scrambles to respond to Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks.

Jeffery Taubenberger became acting director of the National Institute ‌of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in April 2025 after President Donald Trump’s administration pushed out the previous head.

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Senator Tammy Baldwin opened the hearing on the National Institutes of Health’s 2027 budget by saying that Taubenberger had stepped down and would not testify as ​planned. Senator Patty Murray also mentioned Taubenberger’s departure.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, a Trump appointee, in his own ​testimony and responses to questions from lawmakers did not dispute the departure, saying that ⁠the institute needs new leadership because it will no longer focus on civilian biodefense.

The Department of Health and ​Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not respond to questions on Taubenberger’s exit or the NIAID’s role in ​Ebola response efforts.

“In the midst of an emerging Ebola outbreak, we have a leadership vacuum at the world’s premier infectious disease institute and across our health agencies. This is of great concern,” Baldwin said.

Under former director Anthony Fauci, NIAID played a leading role ​in the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Bhattacharya said NIAID ​had focused on civilian biodefense – meaning preventing and preparing for threats like biological attacks and pandemics – for years but that the ‌Trump ⁠administration wanted to shift its focus to infectious diseases when they emerge, such as Ebola and hantavirus, and also prioritize allergy and immunology.

“That shift means that we need some new leadership,” he said, adding that departing NIAID staff had been assigned to other roles at NIH.

Jeanne Marrazzo, who was fired as the head of NIAID by ​Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy ​Jr., said in an ⁠interview that it is very concerning that “the world’s premier biomedical research institute” does not appear to be working with researchers and industry to develop treatments to address the ​Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The exits add to the leadership ​vacuum at the ⁠world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with more than half of the NIH’s 27 institutes led by acting directors. NIAID is the agency’s second largest institute, with a budget of over $6.5 billion.

There are no confirmed cases in the ⁠United States ​of the Andes hantavirus that killed three people in an outbreak ​aboard a luxury cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean this month. But 41 people, including 18 quarantined in Nebraska, are being monitored for ​possible infection.

Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; editing by Caroline Humer and Will Dunham

Trump says he’s postponing AI executive order “because I didn’t like what I was seeing”

May 21, 2026 / 2:18 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington— President Trump on Thursday said he delayed the signing of an executive order on artificial intelligence expected that afternoon because he doesn’t want to “get in the way” of the United States leading the world in the development and advancement of AI.

The president was expected to sign an executive order Thursday afternoon concerning the federal government’s approach to AI, building on the administration’s efforts in championing AI advancement in the U.S. But early Thursday afternoon, the president told reporters in an unrelated Oval Office event that he is postponing that signing, saying he wants the U.S. to remain as competitive as possible.

“Because I didn’t like certain aspects of it, I postponed it,” Mr. Trump said when asked about the delay after a reporter for Punchbowl posted the news on X. “I think it gets in the way of, you know, we’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead.”

The president said AI is causing “tremendous good” and claimed it is creating many jobs in the U.S. “I really thought that could have been a blocker, and I want to make sure that it’s not,” he added.

“I postponed that meeting, it was a press conference, it was a signing, actually,” he said. “Because I didn’t like what I was seeing.”

It’s not clear what specific provisions in the executive order draft Mr. Trump feels would have potentially stifled that progress.

Earlier Thursday, a source familiar with the draft executive order told CBS News the current order included language to secure Pentagon systems, secure federal civilian systems and promote the use of AI tools. It also called for a voluntary framework with AI developers to engage the federal government over the release of covered models, including pre-public access to select technology.

Margaret Brennan and Emma Nicholson contributed to this report.

By Dana Bash, CNN

Published 2:44 PM EDT, Thu May 21, 2026

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CNN obtains long-private DNC ‘autopsy’ for the 2024 campaign. DNC Chair Ken Martin completely disavows the document

Inside Politics

CNN’s Isaac Dovere joins the Inside Politics panel to break down his reporting on the DNC’s 2024 “autopsy”. The document shares key insights into why some Democrats believe they lost the 2024 presidential race, but the clearly unfinished report also fails to address some of the major issues at play in the campaign.

5:44 • Source: CNN

Trump fires warning shot at SCOTUS as major citizenship showdown looms: ‘It will be a disaster’

May 21, 2026 2:23pm EDT / Fox News

Court expected to release a decision in coming weeks on whether Trump’s January 2025 executive order is constitutional

Trump rips Supreme Court ahead of blockbuster birthright ruling

President Trump said he predicts Supreme Court will rule against him in birth right citizenship case while speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday.

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President Donald Trump blasted the Supreme Court on Thursday as justices prepare to decide a major birthright citizenship case, predicting the court may rule against his effort to restrict automatic citizenship for some children born in the U.S.

“It would be a disgrace if the Supreme Court of the United States allows that to happen. Remember what I said, 20 to 25% of the people coming into our country will come in through birthright citizenship,” said Trump. “They’ll become citizens through birthright citizenship, and it will cost us numbers that are, I don’t even think they’re doable.”

The case centers on Trump’s January 2025 executive order seeking to limit automatic citizenship for some children born in the U.S., a move that has triggered a major constitutional fight.

Trump sat in on oral arguments in April as Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned whether the president’s executive order complies with the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. The visit marked the first known time a sitting president attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

SUPREME COURT’S SHOWDOWN ON BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP DECISION COULD RESHAPE AMERICA

Trump predicts the court will rule against him, noting he is “not happy” with recent rulings.(Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images; David Hume Kennerly via Bank of America/Getty Images; Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Barrett warned at the time that investigating citizenship would create chaos, while Jackson asked, “Are we bringing pregnant women in for depositions?”

Trump predicted on Thursday that the court will rule against him, noting he is “not happy” with recent rulings, pointing to the recent tariff decision he said will cost the U.S. $149 billion.

“This decision by the Supreme Court is a very big one. They’ll probably rule against me because they seem to like doing that,” said Trump. “You know, frankly, I’m not happy with some of the decisions.”

The administration has argued that birthright citizenship has created incentives for illegal immigration and has been exploited by so-called “birth tourism” operations, in which foreign nationals travel to the U.S. to give birth so their children can obtain American citizenship.

“This was not meant for Chinese billionaires to have their children become citizens of our country. This was meant, or other rich people, poor people. This was meant for the babies of slaves,” said Trump.

“This was signed… right after the Civil War. You look at the dates, the dates alone, immediately after, this was having to do with the babies of slaves, and people have used it. And if this is allowed to stand, it will be a disaster economically for our country,” he added.

The nation’s highest court is expected to rule on the executive order in the coming weeks.

The case has drawn national attention, with protesters arguing that birthright citizenship is a fundamental American right.

CHINA EXPLOITING ‘BIRTH TOURISM’ TO GAIN LONG-TERM POLITICAL INFLUENCE IN US, AUTHOR WARNS

“It would be a disgrace if the Supreme Court of the United States allows that to happen. Remember what I said, 20 to 25% of the people coming into our country will come in through birthright citizenship,” said Trump.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

University of California Berkeley law professor John Yoo previously told Fox News Digital he believes the Supreme Court will overrule the Trump birthright order.

“The better way to operate under the current constitutional rule of birthright citizenship is to more vigorously enforce visas and to shut down businesses that encourage and enable birth tourism,” said Yoo.

JOHN YOO: SUPREME COURT SHOWDOWN EXPOSES SHAKY CASE AGAINST BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on April 1, 2026.(Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A Fox News Poll found that 69% of voters support birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants — which is up from 45%, when Fox News first asked in 2006.

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Fox News Digital reached out to the Supreme Court for comment.

Ashley J. DiMella reports on politics for Fox News Digital.

Defenders of Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund are few. And they’re struggling

2026-05-21T19:28:25.630Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/21/politics/defenders-trump-anti-weaponization-fund

• Trump’s $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund is facing skepticism on Capitol Hill, with few willing to defend it.
• People who are vouching for it are defending the concept of a settlement, rather that the terms of this one.
• And even the rare Republicans offering defenses are doing so with caveats.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

President Donald Trump’s settlement with his own government to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund appears to be going over like a lead balloon on Capitol Hill.

Many Republican senators have offered skeptical or even outright critical comments about the fund, which could be used to pay convicted criminals, including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The administration has even left open the possibility of compensating people who assaulted police that day, as long as they are viewed as having been mistreated by the Biden administration.

“Stupid on stilts,” said retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis on Thursday, shortly before the situation derailed the Senate’s consideration of a major immigration enforcement package and lawmakers left town.

The Senate has even flirted with placing limits on the fund in what would be a remarkable rebuke of Trump.

But what’s as telling as the rebukes is how limited and strained the defenses have been. Relatively few have stepped forward to vouch for the fund, and nearly all of them have been from the administration rather than Congress. And even those who have ventured defenses have struggled to produce cogent ones.

Mostly, they appear to be defending the concept of a settlement, rather than the terms and process of this settlement.

To recap, the fund would give Trump’s Justice Department great latitude to dole out the $1.776 billion, with little in the way of accountability. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former defense lawyer, gets to appoint the five members of the commission who will run the fund, with congressional leaders getting to weigh in on one appointee. Those members would be answerable to Trump personally in that he could remove them without cause. The fund’s reports would also be confidential.

All of this is the result not of litigation involving these people, but of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS for the illegal leaking of his tax returns. (Trump withdrew that $10 billion lawsuit and reached the settlement, despite effectively being on both sides of the negotiations.)

We also learned Tuesday that, in a late addition to the settlement, the DOJ was also giving Trump, his sons and his business effective immunity for past tax issues, up to the date of the settlement this week — a move that could greatly benefit a president who has previously been found liable for fraud.

Put plainly, it’s difficult to explain why all of this is an appropriate response to the unauthorized leaking of Trump’s tax returns.

But some have stepped forward to try.

On Thursday morning, US Attorney Jay Clayton, who runs the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York, cast the settlement as a legitimate resolution to a situation in which government officials “intentionally leak your tax returns to embarrass you in the public.”

“They tried to name and shame him. They tried to destroy him,” Clayton said on CNBC. “Okay, we resolved that.”

But there is no evidence that a government official “intentionally” leaked Trump’s tax returns to hurt him. Instead, it was a government contractor who worked for a consulting firm and had access to the returns of Trump and others.

Even if Clayton’s summary of the situation were accurate, it’s not clear why this arrangement would involve compensating third parties who had nothing to do with the leaked tax returns.

While defending the fund on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance spotlighted Tina Peters as an example of someone who would be an appropriate recipient of the money. Peters is the former Colorado elections clerk who recently got clemency from Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

“This is a woman who, at worst, if you believe everything that the prosecutor said about her, committed misdemeanor trespassing,” Vance said. “And somebody threw the book at her.”

But Peters wasn’t convicted of trespassing; she was convicted of conspiring with Trump’s allies to breach voting systems in her county to try to validate Trump’s false claims of mass 2020 voter fraud.

What’s more, she isn’t even the kind of person the fund has been advertised for, given she was prosecuted by local authorities, not the Biden administration. (The Trump administration has said the fund is for victims of the “weaponization” of past administrations, but Peters was prosecuted in part by a Republican local district attorney.)

The most frequent defender of the fund has been Blanche, who testified about it on Tuesday. And he continued to make the case in an interview with CNN’s Paula Reid on Wednesday.

The acting attorney general said that “the outrage is (over) us doing something that is completely legal, allowed under our laws, and has been done before.”

The administration and its allies have compared the “anti-weaponization” fund to previous funds to compensate victims of the government. Most-cited has been the Keepseagle v. Vilsack case, in which the federal government created a fund to compensate Native American farmers and ranchers over discrimination by the Agriculture Department.

But there are key and hugely important differences. The biggest one was that the settlement in that earlier case was approved by a court as part of litigation that actually involved the parties that would benefit.

The settlement that resulted in Trump’s fund, however, was reached by his side negotiating with the government he leads. The case never involved the parties that will now benefit, and a judge wasn’t involved in approving the settlement or the parameters of the fund.

“That really is the critical issue,” Joseph Sellers, a lawyer who represented the Native Americans in the Keepseagle case, told CNN. “You have to serve the same community whose interests were at stake in the litigation that was brought.”

What’s more, despite Blanche’s assurances that the settlement is legal, just because it might be legal for Trump to reach a settlement with the government he leads, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. There are many things that are legal but are immoral or unethical.

And finally, even one of the rare Republican lawmakers to vouch for this settlement did so while hedging a bit.

“I think that there’s a unanimous understanding that the federal government shouldn’t be … used for political weaponization against your political enemies, whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said when talking about the fund, according to the Iowa Gazette.

The Iowa Republican also noted that former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page benefitted from settlements with the government over the leaking of their text messages in 2024.

“I didn’t see Democrats complaining about that clearly illegitimate payout,” he said.

But again, Strzok and Page were involved in the litigation, and their settlement was approved by a judge.

What makes Trump’s gambit so extraordinary is that this fund is being created to benefit people who haven’t bothered to file lawsuits seeking money from the government. Trump is effectively trying to make it a lot easier to pay them — largely only subject to the approval of people he controls.

Given this is a president who 16 months ago decided to blanket pardon nearly all January 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police, that would seem a recipe for some potentially problematic payouts.

Which might be why even Grassley is also invoking his oversight.

“First of all, don’t forget that this is subject to congressional oversight,” he said.

“My judiciary committee has the attorney general in frequently for oversight hearings. I’m sure this is going to be a big subject of discussion with them.”

Congress delays votes on reconciliation bill amid GOP opposition to new DOJ fund

Updated on: May 21, 2026 / 3:04 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — The House and Senate will both leave Washington for their Memorial Day recess without voting on a reconciliation package to fund federal immigration agencies, after the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization” fund earned strong pushback from Republican members.

The Senate had been prepared to take up a revised version of the $72 billion reconciliation bill on Thursday, with the House set to do the same on Friday. But the plans fell apart after a meeting between GOP senators and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who had been dispatched to the Hill to convince skeptical members about the DOJ fund.

The $1.776 billion fund was established as part of a settlement of a suit by President Trump against the IRS, which he controls. Pro-Trump allies, including those charged for their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have said they are eager to submit claims.

Democrats have criticized the arrangement as blatantly corrupt, with no meaningful congressional oversight of how the funds would be distributed or who would receive payouts. Several GOP senators also indicated they had reservations and would work to place guardrails around the use of the money in the reconciliation package. Democrats vowed to bring amendments targeting the fund.

Blanche met with senators for nearly two hours. Several emerged from the meeting without commenting, a signal that their concerns had not been adequately addressed. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top appropriator in the Senate who has expressed opposition to the DOJ fund, told CBS News that she did not feel better about the fund after the meeting.

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said the meeting included “a healthy discussion on the settlement.”

“[Blanche] made clear that the Anti-Weaponization Fund announced Monday has nothing to do with reconciliation, indeed not a single dime from the money the President is seeking in reconciliation would go toward anything having to do with the Fund,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to get critical reconciliation funds approved.”

Soon after the meeting concluded, GOP senators said the Senate would adjourn after Thursday’s session without taking up the reconciliation package. House leaders quickly canceled their plans to remain in town after Thursday’s votes, and a meeting between Speaker Mike Johnson and the president was called off, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The developments mean lawmakers will all but certainly miss a deadline imposed by Mr. Trump to get the reconciliation bill on his desk by June 1. The legislation, which would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for three years, originated from the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. Democratic opposition to funding the agencies prompted Republicans to pursue the bill via reconciliation, which doesn’t require Democratic votes in the Senate.

The plan had already hit a snag earlier in the week over the inclusion of $1 billion for Secret Service security funding, including for the president’s overhaul of the East Wing, which calls for the construction of a massive ballroom. The Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that including that funding violates the chamber’s rules for what can be in a reconciliation bill, and skeptical Republicans had been expecting the funding to be stripped in a revised version of the legislation. That new version has not yet been released.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the chamber “will pick up where we left off” when senators return from recess on June 1. Asked whether a resolution can be reached, he replied, “That’s what I’m counting on.”

Thune said the package was “something that was supposed to be very narrow, targeted, focused, clean, straightforward, and it got a little bit more complicated this week.” Asked whether he was frustrated that the funding plan was derailed by the new DOJ fund, Thune said “it makes everything way harder than it should be.”

One senior GOP Senate aide, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, laid the blame for the impasse at the administration’s door.

“The administration created this problem, and it’s up to them to fix it. The DOJ didn’t need to settle the case when they did, which means they didn’t need to announce this settlement,” the aide said. “Members rightly have questions that so far the DOJ has failed to answer. Senators are still focused on the core functions of funding ICE and Border Patrol.”

The breakdown in the Senate came against the backdrop of the president taking aim at sitting GOP senators. On Tuesday, he endorsed Ken Paxton in Texas’ GOP Senate primary, choosing him over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. On Saturday, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy failed to advance in a runoff for his seat after the president endorsed his Republican challenger.

Asked whether that dynamic played a role in Thursday’s scrapped plans, Thune said that “it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us.”

The majority leader said “it would have been nice” if the White House consulted Senate Republicans on the DOJ fund, but he called it “water under the bridge now.”

“You play the hand you’re dealt, and we’ll sort it out from here,” he said. “But, you know, obviously it became a more complicated and bumpy path than we had hoped for.”

The DOJ fund and ballroom money also ran into pushback in the House.

In a letter to Blanche on Wednesday, GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania expressed “urgent concern” about the anti-weaponization fund, saying it “represents a dangerous backsliding in the transparency of our institutions and our commitment to the American taxpayer.”

Fitzpatrick has also said he will not support funding for the ballroom.

Some House Republicans were already open to pushing a vote past the Memorial Day recess.

“If they drag their feet, there’s no reason we have to do it before the Memorial Day break. We can do it when we come back,” GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters as he left Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.

“There’s no emergency about moving it by June 1, except the president has thrown it out there,” Harris said.

Alan He and Jaala Brown contributed to this report.

DOJ puts blue states on notice as ICE fight barrels toward next constitutional showdown

2026-05-21T13:17:31-04:00 / Fox News

Letters warn governors of Maine, Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon they are violating the supremacy clause

By Robert Schmad Fox News

Published May 21, 2026 1:17pm EDT

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Democrats push ICE to unmask agents as critics cite doxxing threat

Fox News’ Chad Pergram reports on Democrats’ calls for transparency and accountability as Republicans express safety concerns for agents.

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The Justice Department is threatening to sue four Democratic-led states for denying undercover license plates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, opening a new constitutional front in the immigration fight.

At issue is whether the blue states are simply refusing to help ICE carry out civil immigration enforcement, or whether withholding confidential plates interferes with the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law.

Charles “Cully” Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the states are playing a “dangerous game” by refusing to help protect ICE agents, but he also questioned whether DOJ’s supremacy clause argument is as straightforward as the department suggests.

“Federal law preempts state law when state law conflicts with a supreme federal law. And when it does, the state law is preempted, meaning that the state law cannot be given legal effect in those instances of conflict,” Stimson told Fox News Digital. “There is no law in my mind that is conflicting with federal law. You simply have state actors refusing to issue these types of license plates.”

DOJ DEMANDS SANCTUARY STATES END ‘BLATANTLY UNLAWFUL’ ANTI-ICE POLICY AS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

A federal agent from commander Greg Bovino’s team looks on during a stop at a gas station in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 21, 2026, amid ongoing immigration enforcement following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.(Seth Herald/Reuters)

Stimson said DOJ’s challenge is establishing that the states are doing more than just refusing to help ICE. The department would likely need to show that the plate restrictions conflict with a specific federal law.

“So as much as I think that the DOJ is putting forth a plausible argument, I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘there’ there in this argument,” he continued.

DOJ Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate warned on May 12 that the governors of Maine, Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon that they were running afoul of the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law supreme over conflicting state laws, by refusing to provide immigration enforcement officers with license plates that conceal their identities as federal agents.

“By refusing to issue standard and undercover registrations and plates to federal agencies, including federal law enforcement agencies, while continuing to issue them to similarly-situated state and local agencies without restriction, Oregon’s DMV has directly run afoul of the supremacy clause by discriminating against the federal government,” Shumate wrote to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek.

He used similar language in his letters to the three other Democratic governors.

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., on April 7, 2026.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

An official in the Massachusetts governor’s office told Fox News Digital that the commonwealth does issue undercover plates to federal agents, but only when they are investigating criminal offenses. Immigration enforcement typically involves civil infractions.

The official added that state and local law enforcement are also barred from receiving undercover plates if they’re investigating civil offenses. They also claimed that fears of “doxing” of ICE officers, which were mentioned by Shumate, are unfounded, as non-confidential plates offered by the state to ICE only disclose that the agency owns the car, not the name of the individual agent.

ICE claimed in January 2026 that agents and their families have experienced an 8,000% increase in death threats.

A federal law enforcement agent stands outside a home during a raid in south Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 13, 2026.(Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

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“Massachusetts is not going to allow state resources to be used to help ICE operate in secret while they are violating people’s rights and making us all less safe,” a spokesman for the governor’s office told Fox News Digital. “Any federal, state or local agency engaging in legitimate criminal law enforcement work can receive a confidential plate. We all know that’s not what ICE is doing. This is an agency that can’t and won’t even tell us who they are arresting and why. We are not going to enable their tactics.”

Oregon and Maine, however, appear to have issued broader suspensions of the issuance of undercover plates to federal agencies. The governor’s offices of Oregon, Maine and Washington did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

Stimson explained that there is an underlying assumption that, by virtue of being in the union and as implied under the Constitution’s separation of powers, states will help the federal government enforce laws.

“Every one of these states is part of the union. It is assumed that when the federal government is enforcing federal law, the states are going to play ball,” Stimson said. “And it’s assumed when the states are enforcing state law, and it bumps up against federal agents, that the feds are going to cooperate with the states.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche meets with reporters as the Justice Department releases documents, videos and images related to Jeffrey Epstein in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30, 2026.(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

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Stimson did also question the motivations of the states in not issuing undercover plates.

“On immigration, because they don’t like Trump and they don’t like ICE, even though apparently they loved ICE in the Obama administration, they are playing this very dangerous game. And it’s despicable, by the way, because it puts lives in danger, not only of the people they’re trying to pick up, but the agents themselves,” he told Fox News Digital.

Tony Pham, former ICE director and current senior fellow at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, believes the DOJ is well within its rights to compel the four states into issuing undercover plates using the supremacy clause.

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Federal agents clashed with anti-I.C.E. protesters at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 12, 2025.(Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)

“The Justice Department’s position is firmly grounded in the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits individual states from discriminating against the federal government or interfering with lawful federal operations,” Pham, who is also a lawyer, told Fox News Digital.

“The State of Washington and Commonwealth of Massachusetts admit to the legitimate safety and operational needs for confidential license plates when issuing them to their respective state and local law enforcement agencies,” Pham continued. “When their policies openly discriminate against the federal government, by denying federal law enforcement agents the same protections, this creates an unequal standard that directly undermines federal officers carrying out congressionally authorized law enforcement duties.”

Shumate made similar arguments in his letters to the governors. When reached for comment on Thursday, the DOJ referred Fox News Digital to the letters posted by the assistant attorney general.

U.S. federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain immigrants and asylum seekers at the U.S. Immigration Court in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York, N.Y., on July 24, 2025.(Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP)

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Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the right-of-center Manhattan Institute who holds a law degree, questioned the distinction between civil and criminal enforcement drawn by the blue states.

“These states can try to draw distinctions between criminal and civil enforcement to obfuscate basic realities; but they know full well that many of the individuals who would be subjected to civil immigration enforcement actions also pose real criminal threats in their communities,” he said. “This reality is illustrated all too often by the stories of sometimes heinous offenses committed by those unlawfully present in the United States. Making it easier to track and identify law enforcement vehicles will expose federal agents on the ground in those jurisdictions to the kind of harassment we saw in jurisdictions like Minneapolis and Chicago, which makes all involved less safe.”

“Federal agencies such as ICE and CBP are enforcing immigration laws that have been on the books for decades and enforced by both Republican and Democratic administrations,” he added.

Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis on Feb. 5, 2026.((AP Photo/Ryan Murphy, File)

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Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, was unimpressed with both sides of the debate, remarking it’s not a “slam dunk for one side or the other.”

“I think this is the type of case where you have one side that says we’re obviously right, and the other side that says we’re obviously right, and I think the answer is actually that they’re both wrong,” he told Fox News Digital.

Fox said in cases where “the state’s imposing conditions on how federal law enforcement officers operate,” such as the attempted ban on masked federal agents in California, that “pretty clearly violates the supremacy clause.” Congress, he said, could and should mandate that agents identify themselves, but that such a rule-change is out of bounds for state legislatures.

“This, though, is different, and the reason I think this is different is because the state issues license plates, right?” Fox continued. “It’s not like the state is only issuing license plates to ICE and are withholding them. They issue license plates to you and to me and to everyone else, and it’s also the case that most federal law enforcement, if they’re not operating, you know, undercover, they have U.S. government license plates.”

“There’s nothing barring ICE from using vehicles with federal license plates,” he added.

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