Chuck Schumer says Democrats will not support ‘partisan’ Republican funding bill to avoid shutdown – live

At a news conference in lower Manhattan, Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a staff attorney with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (Clear) project at Cuny School of Law, read a statement from Mahmoud Khalil’s wife, who does not wish to be named. The project was founded and is co-directed by Ramzi Kassem, one of Khalil’s lawyers.

Here is the complete statement:

My husband was kidnapped from our home, and it is shameful that the US government continues to hold him because he stood for the rights and lives of his people. I demand his immediate release and return to our family.

His disappearance has devastated our lives. Every day without him is filled with uncertainty – not just for me, but for our entire family and community. Our loved ones are struggling with the pain and fear of his sudden absence.

And yet, we are not alone. So many who know and love Mahmoud have come together, refusing to stay silent. Their support is a testament to his character and to the deep injustice of what is being done to him.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority’s leader, said this afternoon that Democrats will not provide the necessary votes to adopt the stopgap funding bill passed by House Republicans, which includes cuts to vital services and programs.

Senate rules mean that 60 votes are needed to move legislation forward, and Republicans only have 53 seats – and 52 votes, given Rand Paul’s stated opposition to to the House bill.

Here are Schumer’s remarks:

Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input, any input, from Congressional Democrats.

Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR.

Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11^th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that.

I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.

The federal judge Beryl Howell has blocked an executive order that Donald Trump signed last week directing agencies to terminate contracts and no longer interact with Perkins Coie, a law firm that worked with Democrats during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

Howell handed down a temporary restraining order against Trump’s executive action, which cited Perkins Coie’s involvement in the Steele dossier, a compendium of rumors and unverified allegations that sparked a political firestorm when it became public just before Trump’s first inauguration, but has since been discredited.

Since taking office, Trump has targeted law firms that assisted the former special counsel Jack Smith’s aborted prosecutions of him, and dismissed government lawyers who were involved in the cases. Here’s more on that:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) has condemned Donald Trump’s comment that the Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is “a Palestinian”.

“President Trump’s use of the term ‘Palestinian’ as a racial slur is offensive and beneath the dignity of his office. He should apologize to the Palestinian and American people,” said the Cair national executive director, Nihad Awad, who is of Palestinian heritage.

“It is the continuing dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in horrific hate crimes against Palestinian-Americans, the US-enabled genocide in Gaza, and decades of denial of Palestinian human rights by successive presidential administrations.”

Earlier in the day, Donald Trump went on a lengthy diatribe against Democrats in the Oval Office, which included him labeling the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer “a Palestinian”.

“Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish, he’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian,” Trump said, as he met with the taoiseach of Ireland, Micheál Martin.

Schumer, who served as Senate majority leader when Democrats held the majority during the previous four years, is considered the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US government.

House Democrats are urging Senate Democrats to vote against a Republican-led stopgap funding bill that would avert a partial government shutdown.

With 60 votes needed for passage in the upper chamber, the support of eight Democrats is needed to advance the legislation, if all 52 Republicans back it, as is expected.

From their annual party retreat at Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Virginia, House Democratic leaders called their unified opposition to the seven-month funding measure, which passed the House on Tuesday, a “strong show of force”.

“I don’t know why anyone would support that bill,” the California representative Pete Aguilar, the Democratic caucus chair, told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday. Democrats have raised concerns about the discretion the measure gives to the Trump administration on spending decisions, as the president and Elon Musk lead an effort to dismantle major pieces of the federal bureaucracy.

“It’s going to be one of those things where people are going to look at this vote and every bad thing that now happens with Doge and Donald Trump and Elon Musk, it can go back to this vote,” the California representative Ted Lieu, vice-chair of the Democratic caucus, said.

“We’re asking Senate Democrats to vote no on this continuing resolution,” Lieu said.

The representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, slammed the Republican bill as “reckless” and argued that his caucus’s opposition was “crystal clear” irrespective of what Senate Democrats do.

He also accused Trump and Republicans of “crashing the American economy in real time and leading us toward a possible recession”.

Even the millionaires – or some of them – think Senate Democrats should not help Republicans pass a continuing resolution and thereby stop a government shutdown this weekend.

“In normal times, lawmakers should avoid a shutdown,” says Erica Payne, founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, which describes itself as a “collection of wealthy Americans” seeking “a vibrant and equitable economy, built on the foundation of a fair tax system, a livable wage floor, and equal access to political power”.

Payne continues:

These are not normal times. We have been to this movie before. Democrats refuse to stand up, they offer concessions that further break our democratic system and allow for Republicans to escape unscathed from the social and fiscal damage they have caused our society. Republicans have handed Democrats an embarrassingly bad deal, and those who are considering voting for this bill are accepting a truth to expand the unelected powers of Elon Musk and his allies.

“Let me be clear: American democracy is worth a government shutdown.”

We stand to find out if Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats he leads agree. The deadline for the Senate to act after a funding resolution made it through the Republican-run House is midnight on Friday. Republicans hold the Senate too, 53-47, but 60 votes are needed.

This puts Senate Democrats in a horrible bind, of course: do they withhold the votes and see the government shut down, and hope the public blames Republicans and Donald Trump instead, or do they swallow and vote to keep everything open?

According to Payne, bailing out the GOP will “sacrifice the needs of working people at the altar of the ultra-wealthy as [Republicans] continue to reap the benefits of our broken system.

If Senate Democrats provide the votes that Republicans need to pass their continuing resolution, they will continue to be trampled by an empowered Elon Musk and Doge. Meanwhile, ultra-wealthy tax cheats will have a green light to continue to commit tax murder, as the bill strips the last remaining $20bn in enforcement funds that the Internal Revenue Service received through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“… When the continuing resolution comes before the Senate, Democrats have no other option but to offer an emphatic ‘no’ vote. They have the power, and it is on them to use it to save American democracy. Anything less than that is a betrayal to the public who are dependent on their elected officials to protect their interests and livelihoods and save them from the oligarchy forming before us.”

Baher Azmy, director of Center for Constitutional Rights, said that the Trump administration aimed to retaliate against Mahmoud Khalil for activism that is protected by the constitution.

“Mr Khalil’s detention has nothing to do with security. It is only about repression,” Azmy said.

“The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident exclusively because of his peaceful constitutionally protected activism, in this case activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.””

Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil warned that the attempt to deport the pro-Palestinian activist is a sign that Donald Trump’s administration plans to crack down on speech it disagrees with.

Addressing reporters outside the courthouse where his case is being considered, Khalil’s attorney Ramzi Kassem said the deportation effort is based on vague reasoning and “essentially… a form of punishment and retaliation for the exercise of free speech”.

Diala Shamas, a lawyer with the progressive legal advocacy group Center for Constitutional Rights, warned the Khalil’s case could be a sign of worse to come.

“Speaking out against what the Trump administration is doing does not give them the right to disappear our people,” Shamas said.

“We need to fight as hard as we can for Mahmoud because of what this portends. The invocation of these draconian provisions in the law that say simply ‘we will deport somebody because we disagree with their opinions, that their opinions that do not align with our foreign policy views’ is terrifying. It should scare us all.”

Shamas said she believed hostility to Palestinian activism transcends administrations, and accused Joe Biden for setting the stage for Khalil’s arrest:

To be clear, this starts with speaking out for Palestinian rights but we know Palestine is and functions as a canary in a coalmine. It is because of the previous administration and longstanding anti-Palestinian bipartisan support that we find ourselves here today.

Protesters call for Mahmoud Khalil’s release outside court in New York – in pictures:

Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil spoke to the press outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

One lawyer spoke about the legal justification the Trump administration and federal government tried to use to detain and deport Khalil.

He said: “The government, as far as we understand it, are relying on a rarely used provision that determines a noncitizen’s presence or activities in this country poses a serious risk of adverse foreign policy conflict.

“Of course, that provision is not only rarely used, it is certainly not intended by Congress to silence dissent.”

He added: “For that reason, we believe this case is not going to set the precedent that the government wants it to set, whether it’s in federal court or immigration court.”

Actor and activist Susan Sarandon spoke to the Guardian outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

She said: “No matter where you stand on the genocide, freedom of speech affects everyone and this is a turning point in our history.”

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Foley Square on Wednesday, just outside the Manhattan federal court holding the hearing for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who was arrested by immigration officials on Saturday over his role in the college’s encampment protests of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Khalil, who is a legal permanent US resident and green card holder, sits in Ice detention in Louisiana. Free speech advocates have expressed outrage at his arrest. His lawyers hope to secure his release.

Margaret Jay Finch, a protester, told the Guardian she is “so upset that Mahmoud is in the darkness in Louisiana. I can’t tell you.”

“I feel so bad for his wife. I am so worried that this is against the first amendment and we’re going to lose our rights,” Finch, 83, said. “This is such a dictatorship.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has maxed out its ability to hold suspected undocumented migrants, and will seek out bed space from other federal agencies, Reuters reports.

A senior Ice official speaking on condition of anonymity said the agency has 47,600 people in custody, but is funded to hold an average of 41,500. Ice has asked for help expanding its capacity from the defense department, the US Marshalls Service and the Bureau of Prisons.

Republicans in Congress have vowed to soon pass legislation that will pay for Donald Trump’s plan to remove the United States of undocumented immigrants through mass deportations.