Republican-led House narrowly passes Trump’s $70bn bill to fund DHS and ICE – as it happened

This concludes our coverage here, but join us as we teleport over to our election-night live blog where we will be providing updates on primaries in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina, and anything else of note in US politics. Readers can also follow our Iran war live blog for the latest on the conflict Donald Trump has assured us 37 times since March is just about to end.

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Here are the day’s developments so far:

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  House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.

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  At nearly the same moment, the US struck Iran again, in retaliation for teh downing of a US helicopter near the strait of Hormuz.

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  JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, “could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”

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  Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades, testified before the House oversight and reform committee.

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In a statement posted on social media minutes ago, the US military announced that US forces “began launching self-defense strikes against Iran at 5 p.m. ET today at the Commander in Chief’s direction, in response to yesterday’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter. The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

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House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.

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The final vote was briefly tied, because Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, originally voted No, which would have killed the measure in a 213-213 tie. After being surrounded by House Republican leaders, he changed his vote and the measure passed.

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It will become law with Trump’s signature.

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In an interview with CBS News posted online Tuesday, JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, and assuage concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, could “absolutely” be struck before the midterm elections in November.

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“I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections”, Vance said. “I think he deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”

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House Republicans have narrowly passed a hard-fought rule to advance Trump’s $70bn immigration enforcement reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP through to the end of Trump’s term.

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The rule, passed 213-211 along party lines, tees up a debate and final vote on the GOP measure later today.

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Donald Trump has posted on Truth Social that he had been informed “that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the strait of Hormuz.”

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While the pilots were uninjured, “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

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For live coverage of the Middle East, follow along here.

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Lesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, is testifying today before the House oversight and reform committee as lawmakers on the panel continue their investigation into the late convicted sex offender.

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Groff worked for Epstein for almost 20 years, beginning in 2001 and ending in July 2019 when he was arrested.

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Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House committee, told Good Morning America this week that Groff is “really central to Epstein’s organization, we want to know what she saw”.

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“We have a lot of questions,” Garcia added.

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Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, arrives for a behind-closed-doors transcribed interview before the House oversight committee.”,”caption”:”Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, arrives for a behind-closed-doors transcribed interview before the House oversight committee.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Notes from a 2021 FBI interview with Groff, which was included in the millions of documents related to Epstein released by the Department of Justice earlier this year, state that she told agents that she began working for Epstein after she was contacted by a headhunter, who found her résumé and told her that there “was a job to organize one man’s life”.

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The man turned out to be Epstein, and Groff told agents that she had not previously heard of him. She said that she interviewed with several people for the position, including Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes. According to the FBI document, Groff said that she signed a non-disclosure agreement.

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The document states that Groff told agents her responsibilities included scheduling meetings, making phone calls, coordinating with Epstein’s driver and chef and other people, and managing much of his daily schedule and appointments.

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According to the FBI notes, Groff told investigators that “from the beginning, massage was a part of Epstein’s day; they were normal appointments” .

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“Groff’s job was to make appointments” the FBI notes say. “To Groff, making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make for Epstein,” adding that Epstein would call Groff “in the morning and say something like, ‘Call and see if she can do a massage at 4.’”

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Representative Yassamin Ansari, another Democrat on the committee, told CNN this week ahead of her testimony that Groff “managed every aspect of Jeffrey’s life for around 18 years” and noted that Groff was mentioned in the Epstein files “more than pretty much anybody else”.

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“And she was the one setting up appointments with all of these girls to provide massages to Jeffrey Epstein,” Ansari said. “I wanna know everything that she has to share.”

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In recent years, Groff has faced public scrutiny after it emerged that she was among four women identified as possible “co-conspirators” and granted immunity from prosecution under Epstein’s controversial 2007 plea deal with federal prosecutors in Florida. Groff, through lawyers, has always maintained that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, and that she never engaged in any misconduct. No criminal charges have ever been brought against her.

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When asked last month about Groff’s knowledge of details surrounding Epstein’s 2008 conviction, her attorney Michael Bachner told the Guardian that “after Epstein’s arrest in 2008, he continuously lied to Lesley and other members of the staff, insisting that he had been blackmailed and set up.”

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Bachner added that Epstein “angrily said that the allegations against him were simply false, and he had no idea that the ‘prostitute’ he had contact with was a minor”, adding that “in Lesley’s mind, that was the reason that he was treated so leniently by law enforcement before and after he was sentenced.”

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Here’s Anna’s full report:

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Speaking of JD Vance, the vice-president is pressing federal prosecutors to investigate Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz and state attorney general Keith Ellison over allegations that they failed to stop widespread social services fraud, amplifying concerns that the White House will use a new DOJ division to target political rivals.

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Vance, who has been tapped to lead the Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts, cited a letter to the justice department a report from the Republican-led House oversight committee that alleges Walz and Ellison were aware of, failed to prevent, and enabled pervasive misuse of government programs for years.

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In his referral, Vance wrote that officials in Minnesota or anywhere else in the country “must be held accountable” if they facilitated fraud, prevented officials from stopping it or retaliated against whistleblowers who tried to report it.

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“Minnesota state officials are not above the law,” Vance wrote in a post on X.

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JD Vance holds a press conference to discuss ‘anti-fraud initiatives’ at the White House on 13 May.”,”caption”:”Vice-president JD Vance holds a press conference to discuss ‘anti-fraud initiatives’ at the White House on 13 May.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Democratic Minnesota officials have characterized a separate DOJ investigation involving state leaders as politically motivated.

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A spokesperson for Walz didn’t immediately respond to a message from the Associated Press seeking comment.

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Ellison called the allegations unfounded and said there’s no evidence his office ignored wrongdoing or failed to act as required by law. He dismissed Vance’s referral as “a political stunt from an administration that uses the machinery of government to target its perceived opponents while extending leniency to those aligned with its interests”.

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n

It is deeply troubling to see official powers and public resources diverted away from serving the people and instead aimed at pursuing political adversaries. That is not what government is for, and it diminishes public trust in our institutions.

n

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Vance’s referral to the justice department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s stated “war on fraud” in government programs that officials have said would not be political or partisan.

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The new division has drawn intense scrutiny over the potential for political influence given its close relationship with the White House, which announced its formation in January and initially said its leader would answer directly to the president instead of the typical DOJ command.

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With the Associated Press.

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The House is set to vote today on the GOP $70bn bill to fund Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda for the remainder of his term.

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The House will first have to adopt a procedural rule for consideration of the bill during a series of votes starting at 1.30pm ET. If it is adopted, final passage would take place at a 4.30pm vote series.

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It comes days after the Senate passed the legislation 52-47, following a marathon session of votes to knock down proposed amendments – including those seeking to outlaw the Trump’s administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund – as GOP leaders scrambled to prevent the derailment of the wider funding package. Only one Senate Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against it.

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Lawmakers are using budget reconciliation to pass the bill, which requires only a simple majority. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said yesterday that Democrats will be a “hard no” on the legislation.

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“We believe that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not give ICE another $70bn blank check so they can unleash brutality on American citizens and violently target law-abiding immigrant communities,” he said in a statement. “House Democrats will be a hard no on the reckless Republican budget reconciliation bill this week.”

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As you will remember, Democrats have been demanding restraints and accountability measures for ICE and CBP since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.

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The funding would be used to hire and equip more immigration enforcement agents, ramp up deportations and detentions, and upgrade border security.

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Greetings from Bangor, Maine, where voters are going to the polls for primary elections that include a crucial Senate race involving the scandal-haunted Graham Platner.

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The oysterman and Marine veteran’s string of controversies, ranging from alleged “toxic” behaviour towards women to a tattoo recognised as a Nazi symbol, have plunged Democrats into debates about double standards, purity tests and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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There was a final twist yesterday when Genevieve McDonald, a former political director of Platner’s campaign, published a column denouncing Platner as unfit for office.

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“Graham Platner is not someone who would be good for Maine or for the country,” McDonald wrote in the Washington Post. “He exhibits a pattern of dishonest behavior that is impossible to ignore.

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“Despite being exposed by a series of scandals beginning last October, he kept assuring voters and the Democratic Party that there were no more skeletons in his closet. Then more emerged – the latest, in recent days, have involved former girlfriends’ serious accusations of physical mistreatment.”

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Even so, all the signs on the ground are that most Democratic voters are sticking with Platner. At a campaign event on Sunday, a supporter presented him with a hand-drawn card that included the message “we’ve got your back”.

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Polls close at 8pm ET.

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Graham Platner speaks at a campaign event on Sunday in Portland, Maine.”,”caption”:”Scandal-haunted Graham Platner speaks at a campaign event on Sunday in Portland, Maine. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/AP”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1781006849000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”08.07 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1781008587000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”08.36 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1781007073000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”08.11 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”08.11″,”title”:”Controversy-plagued Graham Platner looks to advance in Maine Democratic Senate primary”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”David Smith”,”imageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/05/25/David_Smith.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=96a67219643c746ee727051afdf7395a”,”largeImageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/05/25/David_Smith.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=8e678f807c7b80aae11b03fbc186f49b”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 9 Jun 2026 17.56 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 9 Jun 2026 06.54 EDT”},{“id”:”6a27d9ab8f087fac3c7e0833″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

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Left-wing candidate Nithya Raman said she was “incredibly honored” and would “fight for a healthier, safer” and “more joyful Los Angeles” as she edged out former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt in the city’s mayoral race.

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The progressive LA city council member, advanced to the November runoff for LA mayor, where she will face the incumbent Karen Bass.

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“I’m incredibly honored that voters have given us the opportunity to advance to the general election for Mayor of Los Angeles,” Raman said in a statement posted on X.

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“Now our fight for a healthier, safer, more affordable, and more joyful Los Angeles continues,” she added.

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She held 28.5% of the votes as of late Monday, advancing past Republican Spencer Pratt who was at 25.8%, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

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The incumbent Bass, who is seeking another term leading America’s second largest city, learned on 2 June’s primary election night she had secured enough votes to make it to the November election, but the race for second remained close for nearly a week.

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She announced the win in a post on X, saying that “LA rejected Spencer Pratt and the MAGA agenda.”

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However, Bass’s campaign released a statement on Monday night after hearing of Raman advancing. “A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Douglas Herman, a strategist.

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Read the full story here:

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In other developments:

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  Donald Trump was loudly booed when he was shown on the video screens at Madison Square Garden on Monday night before Game 3 of the NBA finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks.

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  Trump told supporters in South Carolina the end of the war with Iran is comming soon. “I think we are winning that battle, but you’re really going to win it over the next two weeks when we declare total victory. It’ll be a total victory,” said the president who routinely promises that things will happen in two weeks which never happen at all.

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  In an interview at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Monday, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, was asked if he still supports Graham Platner. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Graham Platner is the next senator from the state of Maine,” Sanders said.

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  Trump nominated Todd Blanche to serve permanently as attorney general, lining up his former personal lawyer to be the country’s ⁠top ⁠law ⁠enforcement officer.

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Key events

Closing summary

This concludes our coverage here, but join us as we teleport over to our election-night live blog where we will be providing updates on primaries in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina, and anything else of note in US politics. Readers can also follow our Iran war live blog for the latest on the conflict Donald Trump has assured us 37 times since March is just about to end.

Here are the day’s developments so far:

• House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.

• At nearly the same moment, the US struck Iran again, in retaliation for teh downing of a US helicopter near the strait of Hormuz.

• JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, “could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”

• Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades, testified before the House oversight and reform committee.

US strikes Iran, Pentagon says

In a statement posted on social media minutes ago, the US military announced that US forces “began launching self-defense strikes against Iran at 5 p.m. ET today at the Commander in Chief’s direction, in response to yesterday’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter. The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

House Republicans approve another $70bn for Trump’s mass deportation campaign

House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.

The final vote was briefly tied, because Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, originally voted No, which would have killed the measure in a 213-213 tie. After being surrounded by House Republican leaders, he changed his vote and the measure passed.

It will become law with Trump’s signature.

Striking a deal with Iran could take just days or ‘months’, JD Vance says

In an interview with CBS News posted online Tuesday, JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, and assuage concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, could “absolutely” be struck before the midterm elections in November.

“I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections”, Vance said. “I think he deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”

The House is currently debating the Republican bill to provide $70bn to the Department of Homeland Security to fund immigration enforcement for the remainder of Donald Trump’s term.

Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the 2022 select committee investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, just noted that this bill does not include a provision that failed in the Senate that would have prevented the Department of Justice from paying Trump supporters convicted of attacking police officers in that riot up to $1.776bn.

The upcoming vote is expected to be close in the narrowly divided House, where Republicans hold a slim majority, and have one member, Tom Kean Jr, who has been missing for months due to a health crisis. The vote just to open debate passed by just 213-211 along party lines.

Michael Sainato

Hospitality and food service workers in several US cities hosting World Cup matches are warning of looming labor disputes and possible strikes as the largest single sport tournament in the world gets ready to kick off on 11 June.

In Los Angeles, California, cashiers, dishwashers, cooks, bartenders, concessions workers and food attendants at the SoFi stadium reached a tentative agreement on Tuesday afternoon, but the union noted it has a contractual right to walk off the job if it determines that federal immigration enforcement is threatening worker safety during the World Cup. The US’s opening match, against Paraguay, is scheduled to take place at SoFi Stadium on 12 June.

About 2,000 workers at SoFi Stadium represented by Unite Here Local 11 had voted 96% in favor of a strike authorization before the agreement was reached on Tuesday. Workers are seeking a new union contract with wage increases and protections from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We’re just trying to make things fair,” said Eva Miles, a bartender at SoFi stadium since it opened in 2021. “Without us, they don’t have a stadium. Are they going to cook? Are they going to pour those drinks? Are they going to serve these people?”

Miles said she and her co-workers cannot afford to live near the stadium on the wages they’re currently paid. She commutes two hours to work every day and said some co-workers have even longer journeys.

“Let’s see them live on our wage, let’s see them raise a family,” added Miles. Workers are pushing for pay above $30 an hour. “I’ve been there since the beginning. I love meeting new people. I want my guests to be happy, and I want them to enjoy it and have a great experience. I know they spend a lot of money, and I know they’re spending a lot of money on this Fifa World Cup, so I don’t understand why we can’t get what we want and everybody be happy.”

More on this here:

For successive men’s World Cup tournaments, from Brazil to Russia to Qatar, Fifa has managed to bulldoze its way through costly immigration and entry requirements. Not so in 2026, where Fifa has found its tournament squarely caught up in the second Trump administration’s aggressive border restrictions.

My colleague Martin Belam has this explainer on some of the people that have been affected, including Omar Artan, one of 52 referees appointed by Fifa for the tournament, who has been refused entry to the US after arriving in Miami. Artan had been set to become the first person from Somalia to officiate at a World Cup.

For the vote, due to take place in the 4.30pm ET vote series, House speaker Mike Johnson will need near perfect GOP attendance and unity to finally push through the legislation, which would then go to Donald Trump for his signature to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the next three years.

The legislation has been sidetracked multiple times. The GOP initially sought to include $1bn for enhanced security on the White House grounds, including for Trump’s new ballroom. And the Trump administration recently tried to create a $1.8bn fund to compensate allies of the president who claim they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted.

Those politically toxic proposals were scrapped and now the bill is focused entirely on immigration enforcement. It will allocate $38bn to ICE, $26bn to the Border Patrol and another $5bn for unforeseen costs related to Trump’s immigration crackdown and mass deportation agenda.

That is in addition to the nearly $140bn that the Republican-controlled Congress gave ICE and CBP last year as part of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts bill.

Democrats have objected to giving the agencies more money without significant changes in the way they operate after the fatal federal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. Among those demands, Democrats have insisted that agents remove masks and be required to display their ID badges during enforcement operations and that they get a judicial warrant before entering private property.

But, after a monthslong standoff that resulted in the longest shutdown in the nation’s history after Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security over ICE operations in Democrat-led cities, negotiations with the White House ultimately failed.

Republicans then turned to a complicated procedural manouevre to get around the filibuster and pass the immigration funding package with no Democratic votes.

So essentially, the funding for ICE and CBP will now come with virtually no strings attached.

Per The Hill, the rule appeared briefly to be in trouble, with Republican representatives Chip Roy of Texas, policy chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, and Tim Burchett of Tennessee initially voting “no”.

They and a number of other hardliners, including members of the Freedom Caucus who were reportedly withholding their votes as they sought commitments on codifying more of Trump’s border policies, huddled with speaker Mike Johnson and majority leader Steve Scalise.

In the end, Roy and Burchett flipped their votes and other hardliners voted “yes”.

House advances $70bn immigration enforcement bill

House Republicans have narrowly passed a hard-fought rule to advance Trump’s $70bn immigration enforcement reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP through to the end of Trump’s term.

The rule, passed 213-211 along party lines, tees up a debate and final vote on the GOP measure later today.