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7 House Democrats break with Jeffries to pass DHS funding despite ICE backlash

7 House Democrats break with Jeffries to pass DHS funding despite ICE backlash

Seven Democrats voted with Republicans on Thursday to pass a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill, despite opposition from their own leadership over unmet demands for additional guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. The DHS bill will be bundled alongside three other spending bills, totaling a combined $1.2 trillion in federal spending. The entire package’s passing is a significant step toward averting a government shutdown come Jan. 30. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted on two separate packages on Thursday afternoon. One groups together three spending bills to fund the departments of War, Education, Labor, Transportation and Health and Human Services. The second is a standalone bill funding DHS, which includes ICE. ILHAN OMAR VOWS ‘NOT TO GIVE ICE A SINGLE CENT’ IN HEATED CONGRESSIONAL FUNDING FIGHT The DHS bill passed by a 220-207 vote with the help of seven Democrats. Only one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted in opposition. The larger package passed with much broader bipartisan support in a 341-88 vote, with 149 Democrats joining Republicans to pass it. Most Democrats bucked the DHS funding legislation after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other top Democrats said they were opposed to the bill due to insufficient restrictions against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. With the legislation in the rearview mirror, the House advanced the last pieces of the puzzle needed to avoid a government shutdown by the end of the month. It’s also the first time in nearly 30 years that Congress has avoided funding the government through one massive spending bill known as an “omnibus” or through short-term incremental funding extensions called “continuing resolutions” (CRs). CONGRESS UNVEILS $1.2T SPENDING BILL AS PROGRESSIVE REVOLT BREWS OVER ICE FUNDING With the passage of Thursday’s package, lawmakers will have advanced four small bundles of two to three of their 12 annual appropriations bills. While some conservatives still called for the 12 bills to be passed as individual pieces of legislation, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., framed the GOP effort as a step toward returning Congress to the way the process is supposed to work on paper. “This is a big thing,” Johnson told Fox News Digital. “We will be making history this week, having moved 12 [appropriations] bills through the process. A lot of people thought it would be impossible. But we stuck to it, stuck together — it’s a big thing.” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., echoed Johnson’s framing. REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: PROGRESSIVES EYE SHUTDOWN LEVERAGE TO REIN IN ICE, VENEZUELA OPERATIONS “We aren’t here for just another stopgap temporary fix,” Cole said on the House floor. “We are here to finish the job by providing full-year funding. This measure is a product of sustained engagement and serious legislation.” If passed by the Senate, the bills will eliminate the possibility of a government shutdown for the remainder of FY 2026. Despite eventually drawing support from Democrats, the final DHS bill faced fierce opposition from most of the party. In their view, the bill failed to shore up safeguards against ICE abuses in the wake of a fatal confrontation between an ICE agent and a woman named Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Good was shot and killed in her car and was accused by Republicans of impeding ICE operations just before her killing. “Kristi Noem and ICE are out of control. Taxpayer dollars are being misused to brutalize U.S. citizens, including the tragic killing of Renee Nicole Good. This extremism must end,” Jeffries said in a statement ahead of the vote. While the final bill does include some new safeguards — such as requiring ICE agents to adopt body cameras and to undergo additional training on how to interact with the public — Democrats said those measures fell woefully short. HOUSE PASSES NEARLY $180B FUNDING PACKAGE AFTER CONSERVATIVE REBELLION OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD FEARS “All the guardrails in the world don’t make sense if the administration isn’t going to follow the law and the language that we pass. Members have to take that into account,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., the No. 3 Democrat in the House, said. “Ultimately, members are going to vote [for] what’s in the best interest of their districts.” The Senate will move on the package next week, with the deadline to avert a partial government shutdown fast approaching at the end of this month. Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a tenuous truce in the upper chamber after having just exited the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, with neither side inclined to once again shut the lights off in Washington, D.C. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the bulk of his caucus, contend that the best way to rein in some of the administration’s actions, particularly with Trump’s usage of ICE, was through the government funding process. But despite the four-bill package being constructed with a bipartisan touch, its passage in the upper chamber isn’t guaranteed.   That’s because there is a cohort of Senate Democrats frustrated with the restrictions in the DHS funding bill who contend, like their colleagues in the House, that they do not go far enough. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, signaled that he would not support the package once it comes to the Senate despite being a part of negotiations on the final product. He argued in a lengthy statement that the bill lacked “meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE, and increases funding for detention over the last appropriations bill passed in 2024.” “Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that not only funds the dystopian scenes we are seeing in Minneapolis but will allow DHS to replicate that playbook of brutality in cities all over this country,” Murphy said.

US formally exits World Health Organization, locking in Trump’s break from global health body

US formally exits World Health Organization, locking in Trump’s break from global health body

The United States has formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday.  Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in 2025 announcing the intention of the U.S. to withdraw from the WHO due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a host of other issues the president took issue with, such as “onerous payments” that didn’t match contributions from other member states.  A year later, nearly to the day, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of State announced that the withdrawal from the health organization is complete.  The U.S. has been a member of the WHO since its establishment in 1948. The WHO is a specialized agency within the United Nations responsible for coordinating global public health efforts, including disease surveillance and outbreak response.  FORMER BRITISH PM URGES TRUMP TO DISMANTLE UN, CITING INTERNATIONAL BODY’S ‘BAD DECISIONS’ At the heart of the withdrawal is the Trump administration’s dissatisfaction with the agency for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its ties to China.  “The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread,” HHS said in a press release on the official withdrawal. “During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China’s response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission.”  TRUMP FLOATS ‘BOARD OF PEACE’ TO REPLACE UN, SIGNALS MAJOR GLOBAL POWER SHIFT A senior HHS official stressed to the media during a call Thursday previewing the withdrawal that the U.S. will remain a global leader on public health following the change.  The senior HHS official said that despite the U.S. funding up to 25% of the WHO’s operations, there has never been a U.S. director of the organization, while citing other nations that have provided far less funding to the organization.  The U.S. is “walking away” from organizations that “fail the United States,” the official said, and is not walking away from “being a global health leader,” pointing to the Department of State inking multiyear bilateral agreements on Global Health Cooperation with dozens of countries in December 2025. The official said more updates on the agreements are forthcoming.  Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a fiery prerecorded speech for the World Health Assembly in May 2025, slamming the WHO for becoming “mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics.” UN CHIEF ACCUSES US OF DITCHING INTERNATIONAL LAW AS TRUMP BLASTS GLOBAL BODIES “While the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding historically, other countries such as China have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public,” he said.  “Not only has the WHO capitulated to political pressure from China, it’s also failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance,” he continued. “The WHO often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests.”  Trump formally initiated a WHO withdrawal under his first administration in 2020, sparking sharp criticisms from Democrats who argue leaving the organization weakens global disease surveillance and leaves the United States less prepared to respond to future pandemics. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi described the withdrawal as “true senselessness” in 2020, arguing “millions of lives” were at risk. The withdrawal from the WHO comes as President Donald Trump is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, which has been underscored by Trump’s pressure on Europe to strike a deal for the U.S. to control Greenland. 

Flooding causes widespread damage across southern Africa

Flooding causes widespread damage across southern Africa

NewsFeed Severe flooding across southern Africa has submerged roads, homes, schools and businesses, forcing evacuations and disrupting daily life. In Mozambique, the death toll has risen to at least 112 people after weeks of heavy rain. Published On 22 Jan 202622 Jan 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Adblock test (Why?)

Video shows severely damaged building in Ukraine from Russian attack

Video shows severely damaged building in Ukraine from Russian attack

NewsFeed A Russian drone strike hit a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, injuring seven people and causing significant damage, according to local officials. Residents said the blast shattered windows and sparked a fire in the apartment block. Published On 22 Jan 202622 Jan 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Adblock test (Why?)

Real Madrid remain football’s top earners but Liverpool overtake Man Utd

Real Madrid remain football’s top earners but Liverpool overtake Man Utd

Real Madrid remain the top earner in world football but Liverpool leap in ranking, while Manchester United slide. Liverpool have overtaken Manchester United for the first time as the Premier League’s biggest-financial earners, but Real Madrid remained top performers in world football during the 2024-25 season, according to an annual financial list. The Spanish club topped Deloitte’s Football Money League, published on Thursday, with ⁠1.16 billion euros ($1.36bn) of revenue despite not winning either La Liga or the Champions League. The only club to make more ​than $1bn in the past two seasons, Real Madrid benefitted in 2024-25 from a whopping 23 percent rise ‍in commercial revenue – driven by merchandise and corporate partners – to 594 million euros ($696.6m), the Deloitte figures showed. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Perennial rivals and reigning La Liga champions Barcelona were the second highest earners with 975 million euros ($1.14m), back in the top three for the first time in five years. Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich ranked third with 861 million euros ($1.09bn), ⁠ahead of Champions League winners Paris St-Germain on 837 million euros ($981.5m). Liverpool’s fifth place in the global money list, with 836 million euros ($980.4m) of revenues from the season they won the Premier League, was the strongest performance of any English club in the 29-year history of the rankings. Manchester City dropped to sixth with 829 million euros ($721.3m), followed by this season’s Premier League leaders Arsenal on 822 million ($1.1bn). Manchester United’s demise Manchester United, who finished a lowly 15th in the Premier League last season, fell from fourth to eighth in revenues with 793 million euros ($929.7m) – their lowest-ever position in the Money ​League that they have topped 10 times in the past. Advertisement Deloitte noted that United’s revenue outlook ‌for the current season will worsen due to their absence from European competition and early exits from the FA Cup and League Cup. “If you went back 10 or 15 years, Manchester United’s matchday revenue was the industry leader,” said Tim Bridge, lead partner at Deloitte’s Sports Business Group. “Their ability to generate ‌commercial revenue was the benchmark for the market. I don’t think that remains the case.” Six Premier League sides made the global top 10, with Tottenham ninth on 673 million euros ($789.1m) and Chelsea ‌10th on 584 million euros ($684.8m). Overall, revenue for the top 20 clubs rose 11 percent to ⁠a record 12.4 billion euros ($14.5bn). Commercial income increased to 5.3 billion euros ($6.2bn), driven by expanded stadium usage on non-matchdays, rising sponsorship deals and improved retail operations. Matchday revenue grew the fastest, up 16 percent to 2.4 billion euros ($2.8bn), while broadcast revenue rose 10 percent, helped by the expanded FIFA Club World Cup in the United States ‌last year. Deloitte said the rise of some Saudi Pro League clubs and Inter Miami from Major League Soccer could challenge the financial hegemony of Europe’s major sides in the future. “Squads filled with star players have had a major impact on the global ‍profile of clubs and both leagues,” it said. “For the MLS in particular, capitalising on this opportunity following the 2026 FIFA World Cup could be the key to unlocking a new market of football fans in the United States.” Adblock test (Why?)