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Senate Minority Leader Schumer calls ICE “rogue, out of control” amidst DHS shutdown
01:58 • Source: CNN
Senate Minority Leader Schumer calls ICE “rogue, out of control” amidst DHS shutdown
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• DHS shutdown: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described ICE as a “rogue force” on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and called on Republicans to meet Democrats’ demands to rein in immigration enforcement agencies. His comments came after DHS shut down this weekend over the bitter policy fight on immigration reforms. The funding lapse will not affect nationwide ICE enforcement, border czar Tom Homan said.
• Rubio in Europe: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the White House wants Europe to reduce its dependence on American power and that Washington is “not asking Europe to be a vassal.” Rubio was speaking in Slovakia, a day after he offered some reassurance to uneasy European leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
• Iran talks: Rubio also said President Donald Trump prefers diplomacy in dealing with Iran and the administration is currently focused on negotiations. The US is planning to meet with Iranian officials again on Tuesday in Geneva, sources tell CNN.
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Kentucky Governor Beshear pushes back against Trump Administration midterm election plans
01:52 • Source: CNN
Kentucky Governor Beshear pushes back against Trump Administration midterm election plans
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Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky today described President Donald Trump’s messaging on the 2026 midterm elections as “anti-democracy.”
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has amped up calls for measures he’s said would ensure election integrity and security. The FBI searched an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, and Republicans introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in Congress.
“Well, it is my job to be worried,” Beshear told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if he’s concerned about the upcoming elections.
President Donald Trump earlier this month called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting,” telling Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI, in a podcast that “Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.”
“The president talking about, not federalizing elections, he first said Republicans should take over elections in certain states. That is anti-democracy,” Beshear added.
President Donald Trump said today that his newly formed “Board of Peace” will unveil a multibillion-dollar humanitarian and reconstruction package for Gaza, along with a major international security commitment at its inaugural meeting in Washington set for Thursday of this week.
The gathering marks the first formal meeting of the “Board of Peace,” as the multinational organization tasked with resolving global conflicts faces lingering questions about its broader mission.
Trump framed the initiative as a turning point for Gaza’s future, while also underscoring a firm condition directed at Hamas.
“Very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarization. The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman,” Trump wrote.
The US sent invitations for the February 19 event earlier this month. It is slated to be held at the US Institute of Peace, which Trump has renamed after himself.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons said today there are bipartisan efforts underway to negotiate reforms in the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement operations, insisting that lawmakers should be able to make progress on putting new standards into law “soon.”
Coons’ comments come as Democrats continue their push for reforms amid a partial government shutdown that began on Friday. Lawmakers left town Thursday without any agreement on how to fund DHS, but Coons appeared optimistic today about finding a path forward towards resolving the dispute.
“This isn’t a big government shutdown. It is a hopefully, temporary disagreement over the standards of conduct of the officers who operate under the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said he does not plan to attend the annual bipartisan governor meeting at the White House, after confusion about whether all Democratic governors are invited.
CNN previously reported that National Governors Association Chair GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma told members the organization would no longer facilitate the White House meeting, citing a decision to only invite Republicans and to exclude from a White House dinner two governors who have publicly quarreled with Trump: Maryland’s Wes Moore, who co-chairs the NGA with Stitt, and Colorado’s Jared Polis.
The NGA then said the meeting was back on after invitations were extended to all of its members. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has maintained that invitations were sent to all governors all while criticizing some Democratic governors and Stitt.
Beshear did not directly respond to comments asking to clarify if all governors are now invited.
“This meeting is an annual bipartisan tradition where we try to push our differences aside and talk about how we move forward in those areas, yet the president has just turned it into drama, inviting and disinviting others,” Beshear told CNN’s Tapper. “It no longer looks like it’s going to be productive at all.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just touched down in Budapest, Hungary, as part of his two-day trip to Central Europe, following a visit to Slovakia.
Earlier today, Rubio met with Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and President Peter Pellegrini in Bratislava. You can take a look back here at what Rubio and Fico said during a joint press conference.
He departed the city a short while ago, traveling to Budapest by plane.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie excoriated President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for their reticence to release the files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigations.
Massie has been a thorn in Trump’s side in large part because of his push to compel the Department of Justice to release the files, with the president regularly insulting the lawmaker on social media.
“Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people in New York City and West Palm Beach that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration,” Massie said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Massie, who wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, questioned Bondi during a hearing on Capitol Hill over the Department of Justice’s failure to release all the files by the deadline Congress outlined and their initial redaction of some of the names associated with Epstein. Massie said he has no confidence in the attorney general after her appearance.
“I don’t think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi. She wasn’t confident enough to engage in anything but name calling in a hearing and so no, I don’t have confidence in her. She hasn’t got any sort of accountability there at the DOJ,” he said.
Border Czar Tom Homan said the lapse in funding for the Department of Homeland Security after Congress failed to pass a funding measure by Friday’s deadline will not impact immigration operations nationwide.
“The ICE officers won’t be getting paid, but they’re getting used to that, seems like. So no,” Homan said to CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
The partial government shutdown comes amid a bitter standoff over federal immigration enforcement, with Senate Democrats demanding reforms to rein in agencies in exchange for their support of a funding package.
Context: More than 90% of DHS’ 272,000 employees will continue working during the lapse, according to the agency’s September shutdown plan covering the first five days of an impasse. More than 93% of ICE and CBP workers will remain on the job.
White House border czar Tom Homan said he increased the presence of internal affairs officers in Minnesota since arriving in the Twin Cities to address misconduct allegations among immigration enforcement officers, noting the claims are under investigation as the surge of immigration officers winds down.
“In any instance where there have been allegations of misconduct or working outside the policy, it has been referred to internal affairs,” Homan told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Asked whether there are officials within the administration who may undermine the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security amid increased scrutiny, Homan pointed to the ongoing internal investigations but dismissed division.
Homan said he doesn’t agree with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “on everything,” but added that the pair regularly have discussions, and he described the administration’s efforts as “one team one fight.”
“We have discussions and different opinions. That’s what makes it a strong team. We bring different ideas to the table and then agree on a mission,” Homan said.
“I’m not going to divide this administration…. I’m going to just keep doing what the president wants me to do as the border czar,” Homan added.
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin indicated little movement on the shutdown talks as he held to his position and blamed Democrats for the lapse in funding to the Department of Homeland Security.
Mullin said while he supports making ICE agents wear body cameras, he is against visible identification or them not wearing masks – two conditions Democrats have required to fund the department along with the use of judicial warrants.
He also questioned the efficacy of the shutdown as it only applies to non-ICE parts of the Department of Homeland Security including FEMA, TSA and the Coast Guard.
“They’re shutting down thousands of workers for nothing,” he said.
We’ve been bringing you updates from the joint press conference held by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, which ended a short while ago.
The pair discussed a wide range of topics, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US’ relationship with Iran and Syria and NATO.
Catch up on what was said in the press conference below:
- President Donald Trump “prefers diplomacy” when dealing with Iran, Rubio said. The US is “postured in the region for one simple reason, and that is that we understand that there could be threats to our forces in the region,” he told reporters.
- Rubio also said that he does not “have any reason” to question the assessment of several European governments that Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was poisoned by a rare frog toxin. “Sometimes countries go out and do their thing … based on the intelligence they’ve gathered. We obviously are aware of the report,” he said, calling it “troubling.”
- The White House wants Europe to reduce its dependence on American power, Rubio said, adding that Washington is not asking the continent “to be a vassal.” The US is not threatened by NATO growing “in its own capabilities,” he said, adding that this is “not independent of the United States,” but “in conjunction” with it.
CNN’s Dalia Abdelwahab contributed to this reporting.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the White House wants Europe to reduce its dependence on American power, and that Washington is “not asking Europe to be a vassal.”
His comments at a news conference in Slovakia came the day after he gave a speech at the 2026 Munich Security Conference in which he struck a conciliatory tone to uneasy European allies, but without backing away from the underlying US demand that they change course on a number of fronts.
The top US diplomat also seemed dismissive of widely-reported concerns and shell-shock by Washington’s counterparts in Brussels on the direction US foreign policy has been taking under the second Trump administration.
“I saw it reported yesterday in some places, ‘oh, the Europeans are very upset. They’re going to be less dependent on America’,” Rubio said, seeking to downplay Trump’s overall dismay with NATO by suggesting Trump had simply wanted the military alliance to take on a stronger form since he first assumed office in 2016.
Rubio had notably characterized the United States as a “child of Europe” to widespread applause during his Munich Security Conference remarks – an analogy he circled back to in reference to “cultural ties, historical ties, religious ties,” among others.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a “rogue force.”
“They need to be reined in. They need to stop the violence,” Schumer told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about Democrats’ demands for changes to the law enforcement agency in order to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
His comments comes after DHS shut down this weekend as Congress failed to resolve a bitter policy fight over immigration enforcement reforms. Schumer told Tapper that he believes Republican lawmakers will “have no choice but to go along” with the the Democrats’ list of demands, which includes a new system for accountability for immigration enforcement and body camera requirements, among other things.
Schumer added that ICE officers should not do roving patrols, should not go to churches, schools or polling places and that they should not wear masks.
“These are common-sense proposals,” he said, adding that Democrats’ proposed changes for ICE are in line with other police departments.
“That’s what the American people are asking Republicans (for), and that’s why they’re going to have to go along with us,” he said.
This post has been updated with additional information.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that President Donald Trump prefers diplomacy in dealing with Iran and the administration is currently focused on negotiations.
Speaking during the news conference in Bratislava alongside Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, Rubio said, “the president’s made clear he prefers diplomacy.”
He also noted that the US is “postured in the region for one simple reason, and that is that we understand that there could be threats to our forces in the region.”
Rubio said that US special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be traveling “to have important meetings, and we’ll see how that turns out.”
Witkoff and Kushner are due to hold talks in Geneva on Tuesday with an Iranian delegation through Omani mediators on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and its stocks of highly enriched uranium.
Asked whether the administration would inform Congress of any intent to carry out strikes against Iran, Rubio said: “We’ll always comply with the applicable laws of the United States in terms of involving Congress in any decisions.”
US military forces stopped and boarded a Venezuelan-linked oil tanker overnight in the Indian Ocean, according the Pentagon.
Veronica III, which flies under the Panama flag, per the Department of Treasury, is the latest oil tanker the US says it has targeted for being in defiance of President Donald Trump’s quarantine meant to pressure Venezuela, US Southern Command wrote in a news release.
Since the January ousting of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, Trump has said that the US will control Venezuelan oil. In January, he signed an executive order which authorized force against narcoterrorists and ordered the blockage of oil tankers traveling in and out of the country.
Venezuela, which faces US sanctions on its oil, has relied on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The US tracked the vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, “closed the distance, and shut it down. No other nation has the reach, endurance, or will to do this,” the Department of Defense wrote in its release.
It’s the second time in as many weeks the US says it has pursued a Panama-flagged tanker from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, after US forces boarded the Aquila II on Feb. 9.
“The only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully,” Southern Command said in its press release today.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just been speaking during a press conference with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.
He said he has no reason to question or dispute the assessment of several European governments that Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was poisoned by a rare frog toxin.
“Sometimes countries go out and do their thing … based on the intelligence they’ve gathered. We obviously are aware of the report. It’s a troubling report,” Rubio said during a visit to Slovakia.
Navalny was killed while in prison by a lethal toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America, five European countries said in a statement yesterday.
Analyses of samples taken from Navalny’s body have “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” the statement said. The substance is not found naturally in Russia, it added.
The five countries – UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands – said Moscow “had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison” to Navalny while he was held in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Bratislava, the capital city of his country and they are both currently holding a press conference. We’re monitoring and will bring you any significant lines as and when we get them.
Fico, a populist and reported to be a loyal Trump ally, also has warm relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He served as prime minister of Slovakia twice before returning to power once more in 2023, running on a campaign against further military aid for Ukraine
Fico has since worked closely with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in attempting to veto financial support from being offered to Kyiv by the European Union.
He has blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Putin into launching Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, repeating the false narrative Putin has used to justify his invasion.
In May 2024, Fico was shot five times after an off-site government meeting in the central Slovak town of Handlova. The country’s defense and interior ministers called the shooting “politically motivated.”
Months later, the prime minister met with Putin in Moscow. Last September, the pair met again in Beijing.
During these talks, Fico said that he was “very interested in standardizing relations between the Slovak Republic and the Russian Federation,” according to a Kremlin readout of the meeting.
CNN’s Ivana Kottasová, Sophie Tanno, Heather Chen, Sugam Pokharel and Zahid Mahmood contributed to this reporting.
It’s the final day of the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Here’s what we’ve learned so far from the gathering of world leaders over the past two days:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure uneasy European leaders that the US remains committed to their partnership during his high-profile address, but he didn’t back down from its underlying demand that they change course on a number of fronts.
Rubio’s tone was also in stark contrast to that used by Vice President JD Vance a year ago, when he criticized Europe for relying too heavily on US support.
After Rubio proclaimed that the United States and Europe “belong together” in his Munich address, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi took to the stage with his own pitch.
“China and the EU are partners, not rivals,” Wang told his audience, speaking from the same stage.
Trump is seeking an end to the Russia-Ukraine war “once and for all,” said Rubio after the US diplomat met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the conference.
In his address at the conference, Zelensky said his counterpart Vladimir Putin “cannot let go of the idea of war.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for “closer economic alignment” with the European Union and said London would “move closer to the single market” in certain areas.
Since leaving the EU after the Brexit referendum in 2016, the UK has been excluded from the bloc’s single market, although it has sought to reduce trade barriers.
Several European countries accused Russia of fatally poisoning Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny with a lethal toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America, a substance that they say is not found naturally in Russia.
Russian officials have repeatedly denied being responsible for Navalny’s death.
While Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be spending the next two days in Europe, President Donald Trump has less international diplomacy on his calendar today.
Trump is currently staying his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he is also set to spend Presidents’ Day tomorrow.
Today, the president is scheduled to participate in private meetings at 4 p.m. ET.
These meetings are closed to the press, but we will make sure to bring you any relevant developments as soon as we get them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has begun a two-day trip to Slovakia and Hungary, whose right-wing prime ministers have close relationships with the Trump administration.
Rubio arrived in the Slovakian capital Bratislava today and will meet Prime Minister Robert Fico, who met Trump in Florida last month.
Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are critics of EU policies supporting Ukraine, as well as the bloc’s migration policy.
Fico has sought to strengthen Slovakia’s ties with Moscow and has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin several times since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Fico suspended Slovakia’s military assistance to Kyiv in 2023, saying that it was “unnecessarily prolonging the war.”
CNN chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh was in Munich yesterday during US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at a conference of world leaders.
He said there was a sense among those in the audience that, while Rubio took a less confrontational tone than other Trump administration officials, the underlying message was not substantially different:
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US Sec. Rubio gives speech at Munich Security Conference
CNN’s Chief International Security Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh says while many European allies were relieved by the positive messages in US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, it signalled a significant shift in the global order.
01:17 • Source: CNN
US Sec. Rubio gives speech at Munich Security Conference
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