Government - federal, state, local | Homeland Security Newswire

DHS Threatens to Halt Customs Processing at Airports in Sanctuary Cities
Major airports across the country could soon freeze customs processing and cancel all international flights if sanctuary cities continue bucking federal immigration enforcement operations.
- Read more
DHS Quits Granting Green Cards—Almost Entirely
DHS announced Friday that it will cease granting green card applications except in extraordinary circumstances. Every legal immigrant must leave the country—that is, self-deport—even if they are qualified for a green card and even if leaving would disqualify them.
- Read more

How Much Should Politics Influence Science, and Vice Versa? National Science Board’s Ousting Resurrects an Existential Debate
President Trump’s 24 April 2026 firing of the National Science Board has brought back the old question that President Harry Truman thought he had answered in 1950: how much politics should intervene in science. Now, that question is shaking the very foundations of U.S. science.
- Read more
Trump’s New Conditions on DEI, Immigration Could Cut Off States’ Wildfire Funding
A new effort to force states to affirm the Trump administration’s views on DEI, transgender athletes and immigration when signing contracts with the U.S. Forest Service is threatening millions of dollars in wildfire grant funding and fire reduction projects on federal lands. Liberal states may be barred from Forest Service grants and projects if they don’t sign the new terms.
- Read more

The Homeland Security Shutdown and the Power of the Purse
The current Department of Homeland Security shutdown shows that the effects of a shutdown in appropriations are not fixed by Congress alone. They depend on executive choices about which functions to sustain, which funds to deploy, and where disruption will be felt. Without clearer constraints on that discretion, Congress’s power of the purse becomes increasingly illusory in the very moments it is meant to matter most.
- Read more
Pushback Leads Homeland Security to Compromise on Some Warehouse Detention Centers for Immigrants
Some of the Trump administration’s controversial new warehouse immigration detention centers are getting scaled back and postponed as states and cities fight back — one city even cut off the water to one of the centers — and new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reviews actions taken by his ousted predecessor, Kristi Noem.
- Read more

The Federal Government Is Rushing Toward AI. Our Reporting Offers Three Cautionary Tales.
I’ve studied how the federal government has handled — and mishandled — the AI transition over the past two decades, and my reporting offers some cautionary tales and valuable lessons as policymakers encourage the use of AI and federal agencies adopt the technology.
- Read more
Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases.
- Read more

Trump’s $1B Payoff to Stop Offshore Wind Is Even Stranger Than It Sounds
Last week, President Trump’s Department of the Interior announced that it will refund almost $1 billion to a French multinational oil company. The government is paying TotalEnergies to halt a wind farm it isn’t building, in exchange for fossil fuel investments it’s already making.
- Read more
DHS Shutdown to Continue After House Rejects Senate Deal
Republicans in the U.S. House quashed any hopes that the 42-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would end Friday. The Senate’s last-minute deal early Friday to fund all DHS agencies except ICE and parts of Border Patrol hit a wall with House Republicans, who viewed it as a capitulation to Democrats.
- Read more

Senate Funds DHS without ICE or Border Patrol, Heads to House
The U.S. Senate agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security early Friday, without including funds for ICE and Border Patrol.
- Read more
How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues
The U.S. took a half century to build a vaccination system that shielded children from deadly diseases. Its success depended on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Both are now in peril, thanks to the man steering America’s health policy. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a founder of an antivaccine group who likened the immunization of children to a holocaust, is transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of shots into one that spreads doubts about their safety here and abroad.
- Read more

Trump Is Forcing Coal Plants to Stay Open. It Could Cost Customers Billions.
In an unprecedented use of federal authority, President Donald Trump’s administration has invoked emergency powers to force a series of retiring coal plants to stay open. Utilities, states and grid operators have said the aging plants are expensive, in bad repair and no longer needed to meet regional energy needs. But Trump is determined to save the dwindling coal industry — an expensive move resulting in billions of dollars in added costs for customers in dozens of states.
- Read more
Study: Texas’ Controversial Migrant Busing Program Helped Trump in 2024 Election
Texas busing programs that transported newly-arrived immigrants to Democratic-led cities boosted President Donald Trump’s vote share in affected counties during the 2024 election.
- Read more
Blue States Push to Ban ICE at the Polls Amid Federal Voter Intimidation Fears
Several Democratic states are moving to bar federal immigration agents from being near polling places and other election sites, amid persistent worries that President Donald Trump will use federal law enforcement or the military to disrupt the midterm elections. DHS says it has no plans to target voting locations.
- Read more

Government - federal, state, local