Politics and views in the United States

A partial government shutdown is ending, but the GOP is refusing to bow to Democratic reforms for ICE and president Trump calls for nationalizing elections, raising questions about processes central to democracy.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2026 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

I'm thrilled to sign the Consolidated Appropriations Act to immediately reopen the federal government and fund the vast majority of operations through the rest of the fiscal year.

President Donald Trump signed legislation ending the partial government shutdown.

Senate Democrats blocked funds for Homeland Security due to the shootings of Rene Good and Alex Pretty in Minnesota by immigration officers.

But ICE's budget was fully funded through last year's Republican mega bill, which boosted it to an unprecedented $85 billion.

Senate Democrats held out for ICE reforms, including independent investigations into the shootings, an end to roving patrols, a uniform code of conduct, and no more masks.

DHS says agents will start using body cameras, but Republicans are pushing back on a requirement that ICE get warrants signed by a judge before going into people's homes.

Speaker Mike Johnson says the current practice of getting administrative warrants issued by the department itself is better.

Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant, an additional warrant, to go and apprehend people who we know are here illegally.

How much time would that take?

We don't have enough judges.

We don't have enough time.

It would take decades probably to do that.

The question is controversial.

Last year, ICE agents broke down the door of a Queens, New York family home without announcing themselves, searching for someone who didn't live there.

They didn't produce a warrant, but held a mother and four children at gunpoint.

An investigation found administration officials told officers they could use administrative warrants to enter homes if there was a deportation order.

Meanwhile, Trump is calling for elections to be taken over by the federal government rather than run by the states.

The White House says the president was referring to the SAVE Act, which would implement a nationwide voter ID requirement.

Trump and other national figures regularly promote conspiracy theories about non-citizen voting, but states like Utah say the SAVE Act would only complicate election administration.

Nat Williams with the nonprofit Stewardship Utah says state officials have found non-citizen voting just isn't a problem.

Our lieutenant governor put out an audit of our voter rolls to check to see if there were any non-citizens on our voter rolls, and she found one non-citizen registered to vote out of 1.76 million registered voters.

This comes after Trump himself was on the phone with FBI agents during a raid on a Georgia election office central to his oft-debunked claims of winning the 2020 election.

Democratic Virginia Senator Mark Warner denounced the raid and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard's participation in it.

The ranking member of Senate Intelligence says Trump and Gabbard's roles there raised numerous questions.

He says systemic dismantling of election safety makes this a scary time for democracy, even in a state with a reputation for clean politics.

I have deep concerns about the fairness of our elections in '26 and '28.

I have concerns about the elections in primaries in our country.

I have a lot of concerns about the elections may take place in Virginia in terms of a redistricting referendum.