Group of Dems Continue To Side With Republicans, Want Govt. Reopened
A previously united front of Democratic opposition in the U.S. Senate began to break this week as three Democrats crossed party lines to back a Republican proposal aimed at reopening the federal government.
The shutdown, now in its seventh day, is nearing the point when federal workers will begin missing paychecks, intensifying pressure on both parties to reach an agreement before furloughed employees face financial hardship.
As recently as Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had urged his caucus to “fight” to preserve Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Republicans have proposed addressing in separate legislation.
Ongoing gridlock has so far prevented Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) from securing the 60 votes required to advance a short-term government funding measure. However, signs of potential compromise emerged Tuesday when Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), and Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, continued to side with Republicans in supporting a clean spending plan, Politico reported.
Several rounds of voting have produced a 55–45 outcome, leaving Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) still five votes short of the 60 needed to advance the funding measure.
Fetterman has backed the Republican plan since the first vote on the proposal was held on September 19.
“Shutting our government down isn’t a ‘game.’ Democrat or Republican, regardless of the reason— America loses. ‘Blame’ is on anyone that picks party over country,” Fetterman said on X on Friday.
That same day, Cortez Mastro said Republicans “need to come to the negotiating table and fix the health care crisis they’ve created.”
However, on Tuesday, the Nevada Democrat explained why she changed her stance, saying her party “should not be swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”
And though her party is responsible for blocking passage of a clean spending bill, thereby reopening the goverment, she nevertheless tried to pin it on President Donald Trump and Republicans.
“President Trump and Congressional Republicans are already hurting Nevadans who are dealing with high costs, an economic slowdown, and a looming health care crisis. This administration doesn’t care about Nevadans, but I do,” she wrote on X.
“That’s why I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration. We need a bipartisan solution to address this impending health care crisis, but we should not be swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another,” she claimed.
Tuesday’s vote was the first time that King has sided with the GOP, a vote he said was “one of the most difficult” he has made since being in the Senate.
“I did not want to hand Donald Trump and Russell Vought and Stephen Miller additional power to decimate the federal government, to decimate the programs that are so important to so many people,” King said in a video posted to X.
Meanwhile, the sole Republican to oppose the spending bill, unsurprisingly, is Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
On Tuesday, as the shutdown continued, Trump set a deadline for when his administration would begin implementing cuts to federal workers and programs if the ongoing government shutdown is not resolved.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump said that if the shutdown continues for four to five more days, his administration could move forward with mass layoffs and reductions across multiple federal agencies.
“How many permanent jobs are you talking about eliminating?” a reporter asked Trump during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days. If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back,” Trump responded. “You’re going to have a lot closer to a balanced budget.”
The reporter also questioned Trump about any programs he wished to cut during the shutdown.
“Oh, sure. We have a lot, I’m not going to tell you, but we’ll be announcing it pretty soon. But we have a lot of things that we’re going to eliminate and permanently eliminate,” Trump said.
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
