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Pablo Morales has nothing against Donald Trump, and when the US president promised mass deportations, he was not worried because as a legal migrant from Cuba, he thought they would only affect criminals.But then immigration officers arrested his son, Luis — a rideshare driver who has never broken the law and was also in the US legally.”He has all his papers, he has his social security number, his work authorization,” Morales told AFP, displaying the documents.The two men were visiting friends in Denver when they were woken by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. When agents knocked on the door, they calmly presented their papers thinking they had nothing to fear — until Luis was handcuffed and sent to an administrative detention center.He has yet to be released.Luis filled out paperwork to apply for residency in 2023 but, the agents told his father, he did not have a hearing date for his application.Immigration lawyers say the blame lies with the backlog in the US immigration system, where cases often drag on for years because of a shortage of judges.Luis has lived in New York for almost four years and is married to an American citizen. “He is not a criminal,” insists his father.”He’s a hardworking boy like me; we came to this country… to work,” explains this former employee of a Las Vegas casino.ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the case when contacted by AFP.The agency said on social media that it had conducted several raids in Aurora, a Denver suburb, on February 5.”100+ members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were targeted for arrest and detention in Aurora, Colo., today by ICE,” it posted.According to a report by Fox News, around thirty people were arrested, of whom only one was a gang member.”I don’t understand,” said Morales. “They were looking for Venezuelans who are part of a criminal gang.”If he is Cuban and he shows them his papers, I don’t know why they are coming to take him away.” Local media reported an asylum seeker was also among those rounded up in that particular raid.- ‘Photo ops’ – Trump rode back into the White House on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping America.He pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in history.”However, data shows ICE deported fewer people in February — Trump’s first full month in office — than it did under Joe Biden in the same month last year, according to a report by NBC.But its actions have been very visible, with military jets used to ostentatiously deport handcuffed people to Latin American countries, or to detention at Guantanamo Bay.Colorado knows it is in the crosshairs.Its capital, Denver, is a sanctuary city, where Democratic authorities limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration police.And Aurora has been cast by Trump and conservative media as a symbol of an “occupied America,” because of a viral video showing armed men breaking into an apartment there.City police point out that crime has fallen in Aurora over the last two years.Last month’s raids were little more than “photo ops” says Laura Lunn, an immigration lawyer. “I think that the focus on Aurora was a fabricated story to begin with. They’re trying to solve a problem that never existed,” says Lunn, a member of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.”The rhetoric that the government is using — conflating immigration and criminals — is really damaging, because those two things are not the same.”ICE says that while its agents are targeting criminals, they are content to make “collateral arrests.”During the first month of the Trump presidency, the proportion of people without criminal records detained by ICE increased from six to 16 percent, according to the New York Times.Lunn says no one is safe anymore, even immigrants who are just awaiting their day in court but who have everything in order.She advises her worried clients to always have photocopies of their files. “People are being detained today that I would never have guessed even a month ago that they would be detained,” she says.”It’s really hard for us to predict who might be at risk.”

Stargazers across a swathe of the world marvelled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of Friday morning.The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa.The phenomenon happens when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite.But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the Moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the Moon glowed a reddish colour.This is because the only sunlight that reaches the Moon is “bent and scattered” as it goes through Earth’s atmosphere, said Daniel Brown, an astronomer at Britain’s Nottingham Trent University.It is similar to how the light can become pink or red during sunrises or sunsets on Earth, he added.The more clouds and dust there are in Earth’s atmosphere, the redder the Moon appears.Brown called the lunar eclipse, which will last around six hours, “an amazing way to see the solar system in action”.The period when the Moon is completely in Earth’s shadow — called the totality — lasts just over an hour.This event has been dubbed the “Blood Worm Moon”, after one of the names given to March full moons by some Native Americans.- ‘Inspire us’ -In North America, the moon started to look like a bite was being taken out of it from 1:09 am Eastern Time (0509 GMT), with the totality from 2:26 am to 3:31 am, according to NASA.In France, the totality is from 7:26 am to 8:31 am local time (0626-0731 GMT), according to the French Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation.Only the most western parts of Europe, such as France’s Brittany region, will get any chance to see the totality before the Moon sets.People in New Zealand have the opposite problem, with the eclipse only partially visible as the Moon rose.Brown dislikes the term “Blood Moon”, saying it has a negative connotation and “originates from a misinformed theory of the end of the world”.But not all societies took a negative view of these celestial shows.Some people in Africa traditionally viewed a lunar eclipse as a conflict between the Sun and Moon that could be resolved by people “demonstrating on Earth how we work together” and laying old feuds aside, Brown said.He called it “an amazing story that should inspire us all”.- Solar eclipse soon -It is the first total lunar eclipse since 2022, but there will be another one this September.Thursday’s event is a “Micromoon”, meaning the Moon is the farthest away it gets from Earth, making it appear about seven percent smaller than normal, according to the website Earthsky. This is the opposite of a “Supermoon”, as was seen during 2022’s lunar eclipse.Some stargazers will be in for another treat later this month — a partial solar eclipse, which is when the Moon blocks out the Sun’s light on Earth.This eclipse will be visible on March 29 in eastern Canada, parts of Europe, northern Russia and northwest Africa.Viewing even a partial solar eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous, and people are advised to use special eclipse glasses or pinhole projectors.

The US government was hours from shutting down Friday as Democrats smarting over President Donald Trump’s spending cuts threatened to block his federal funding plans — although hopes were high for a resolution to the impasse.Facing a Friday night deadline to fund the government or allow it to start winding down, the Senate is set to vote ahead of the midnight cut-off on a Trump-backed bill passed by the House of Representatives.The deal would keep federal operations going for another six months, but Democrats are under pressure from their grassroots activists to defy Trump and reject a text they say is full of harmful spending cuts. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer — who has long insisted that it is bad politics to shut down the government — said he would support the bill, a move seen as improving its chances of success.”President Trump and Republicans leaders would like nothing more than to pull us into the mud of a protracted government shutdown. For Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.”It would be the best distraction he could ask for from his awful agenda. Right now, Donald Trump owns the chaos in the government.”He was joined by Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, while other Democrats — worried that they would be blamed over a stoppage with no obvious exit ramp — also appeared ready to back down.But Schumer has not explicitly told his troops which way to jump, telling reporters “each is making his or her own decision” and adding to the suspense of a vote that could still go either way.- ‘Fish or cut bait’ -There have been four shutdowns where operations were affected for more than one business day, with the last occurring during Trump’s first term.During the disruption, up to 900,000 federal employees can be furloughed, while another million deemed essential workers — from air traffic controllers to police — work without pay. Social Security and other benefits are protected, but there are typically delays in a variety of services while parks shut and food-safety inspections are halted.The latest tussle is focused on Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), unofficially spearheaded by tycoon Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.DOGE aims to cut federal spending by $1 trillion this year and claims to have made savings so far of more than $100 billion, although verified cost savings amount to less than a tenth of that figure.Grassroots Democrats, infuriated by what they see as the SpaceX and Tesla CEO’s lawless rampage through the federal bureaucracy, want their leaders to fight hard to defy DOGE and Trump.The Senate has rules to encourage bipartisan working, meaning the funding bill is likely to need support from eight members of the Democratic minority.This looked like a bridge too far earlier in the week for Democrats furious that the legislation contained no language to rein in Musk. But several top party figures have warned that a shutdown could play into Musk’s hands, distracting from DOGE’s most unpopular actions and making it easier for him to announce more lay-offs.Republicans voiced confidence that the needed Democratic support would be available, with several opposition senators facing challenging reelection fights in the 2026 midterms and wary of being blamed for chaos in Congress.One of the most vulnerable, Georgia’s Jon Ossof, said however that he was a firm no, berating Republican authors of the bill for failing to “impose any constraints on the reckless and out-of-control Trump administration.”But John Thune, the Republican leader of the Senate, put Democrats on notice that it was “time for Democrats to fish or cut bait.””Democrats need to decide if they’re going to support this funding legislation, or if they’re going to shut down the government,” he said.

An American Airlines Boeing jet caught fire after landing at Denver International Airport in Colorado on Thursday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.There were 172 passengers and six crew members aboard, the airliner said, according to local media.All passengers were safely evacuated from the plane but 12 people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, Denver International Airport said in a post on social media platform X. Dramatic video images widely shared on social media showed billowing smoke around the jet on the ground near the terminals and passengers standing on a wing as emergency services arrived.The FAA said the Boeing 737-800, flying from Colorado to Dallas-Fort Worth, diverted to Denver International Airport after the crew reported experiencing “engine vibrations.””After landing and while taxiing to the gate an engine caught fire and passengers evacuated the aircraft using the slides,” the FAA said in a statement. The latest incident comes amid safety concerns after a series of incidents and attempts by US President Donald Trump’s administration to cut costs at US aviation agencies.The FAA said it will investigate the latest incident.

Social media giant Meta on Thursday announced it would begin testing its new “Community Notes” feature across its platforms in the United States next week, as it shifts away from third-party fact-checking toward a crowd-sourced approach to content moderation.Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new system — popularized by the Elon Musk-owned platform X — in January as he appeared to align himself with the incoming Trump administration, including naming a Republican as the company’s head of public policy.The change of system, which Meta will start testing on Tuesday, came after years of criticism from supporters of President Donald Trump, among others, that conservative voices were being censored or stifled under the guise of fighting misinformation, a claim professional fact-checkers vehemently reject.Meta has also scaled back its diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, particularly regarding certain forms of hostile speech.AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking scheme.The initiative will allow users of Facebook, Instagram and Threads to write and rate contextual notes on various content.Meta said approximately 200,000 potential contributors in the United States have already signed up across the three platforms. The new approach requires contributors to be over 18 with accounts more than six months old that are in good standing.During the testing period, notes will not immediately appear on content and the company will gradually admit people from the waitlist and thoroughly test the system before public implementation.- ‘Arbiter of truth’ -Studies have shown Community Notes can help dispel some falsehoods such as vaccine misinformation, but researchers caution that it works best for topics where there is broad consensus.Research also shows that Community Notes on X often rely on the findings of professional fact-checking programs, which Meta has scrapped in the United States.”Meta has long said it doesn’t want to be an ‘arbiter of truth,’ but it has funded those arbiters for the past several years, and it’s not clear whether anyone will step up to replace it,” tech writer Casey Newton wrote in an online commentary. “If no one does, Community Notes will suffer both on X and on Meta’s platforms.”Meta’s new approach ignores research that shows Community Notes users are often spurred by “partisan motives” and tend to over-target their political opponents, according to Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech.Meta, however, emphasized that the notes will only be published when contributors with differing viewpoints agree on their helpfulness.”This isn’t majority rules,” the company said.Moreover, unlike fact-checked posts that often had reduced distribution, flagged content with Community Notes will not face distribution penalties.Notes will be limited to 500 characters, must include supporting links and will initially support six languages commonly used in the United States: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Portuguese.”Our intention is ultimately to roll out this new approach to our users all over the world, but we won’t be doing that immediately,” the company said.”Until Community Notes are launched in other countries, the third party fact checking program will remain in place for them,” it added.Meta said that it would not be “reinventing the wheel” and will use X’s open-source algorithm as the basis of its system.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month warned that the rollbacks to fact-checking and moderation safeguards were “reopening the floodgates” of hate and violence online.

Canada called Thursday on the Group of Seven powers to back Ukraine against Russia’s “aggression” as US President Donald Trump’s more conciliatory approach toward Moscow split the club of wealthy democracies.Canada, the current G7 president, is gathering foreign ministers for three days of talks inside a rustic hotel in snow-dusted Charlevoix, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Once broadly unified, the G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — has been rattled since the return of Trump, who has reached out to Russia and slapped punishing trade tariffs on close allies and competitors alike.Before the full talks, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly sat down with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the highest-level US official to visit since the inauguration of Trump who has taunted the United States’ northern neighbor as the “51st state.”Canada put its maple-leaf flag next to the US Stars and Stripes in a meeting room where Joly and Rubio exchanged French-style pecks on the cheek and shook hands. They did not respond to questions and issued no statements.Joly, opening the formal session of the G7, said she hoped to find ways to “continue to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal aggression.””We all want to see just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” she said.Rubio has called for the G7 to avoid “antagonistic” language toward Russia, saying it would hinder US diplomacy that could end the war that has killed tens of thousands of people.Since Trump took over from president Joe Biden, US statements have switched from referring to Russia’s “invasion” or “aggression” against its neighbor since 2022 to speaking of the “Russia-Ukraine conflict.” Ukraine, under heavy pressure from Trump who briefly cut off aid, agreed with Rubio in talks Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia.Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday voiced general support for a ceasefire but suggested he wanted to speak to Trump about it.- Compromise emerging on statement -German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that “peace in Europe will only come through strength.””What good is a ceasefire that would then lead to even more suffering, destruction and war in Europe after two or four years?” she said on the sidelines of the G7 talks.Diplomats said the G7 statement may paper over broader differences on Ukraine by focusing on backing the ceasefire plan.If the G7 cannot put together a common statement, “it only benefits countries like China and Russia and sends a message to the Global South,” Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Toshihiro Kitamura said.A diplomat from another country, speaking on condition of anonymity, expected a statement to come together and said it was no small feat considering the level of disagreement.”Everyone is sticking to their positions, although not in a way that seeks to attack others,” he said.Just as Rubio was meeting in Quebec, Trump doubled down in his rhetoric by saying that Canada “only works as a state” of the United States.”This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it between Canada and the US,” Trump told reporters in Washington.Baerbock sported a white suit and European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas a red dress — leading the two to say that they chose their colors to show solidarity with Canada.- Trade war -The G7 meeting came just as Trump’s sweeping 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports came into effect Wednesday, leading the European Union and Canada to unveil billions of dollars in counter-tariffs. Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said he raised concerns about the steel and aluminum tariffs in a meeting with Rubio, warning that Americans would be economically hurt.Kallas said that China — identified by Trump as the top competitor to the United States — gained from the trade war Washington was waging on its allies.”Laughing at the side is China. It’s definitely benefiting from this. So there are no winners. Eventually, the consumers end up paying more,” she told CNN from the talks.

An American Airlines jet caught fire Thursday after landing at Denver International Airport in Colorado, dramatic images on social media showed.According to statements from the airline and the US Federal Aviation Administration reported by local media, the flight was diverted to Denver after experiencing engine trouble.”The 172 customers and six crew members deplaned and are being relocated to the terminal,” American Airlines said, in a statement published by Denver broadcaster KDVR.Neither the FAA, the airline nor Denver International Airport responded immediately to AFP requests for comment.The latest incident comes amid concerns about safety after a series of incidents and attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to cut costs at US aviation agencies.The plane was reportedly en route from Colorado Springs to Dallas-Fort Worth when it was diverted to Denver.Video footage widely shared on social media showed billowing smoke around the jet on the ground near the terminals and passengers standing on a wing as emergency services arrived.

Prestigious US university Johns Hopkins said Thursday it will lay off more than 2,000 employees around the world in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s massive reduction in foreign aid funds.”This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work,” the leading scientific institution said.The university is based in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city an hour’s drive north of the US capital, but is eliminating at least 1,975 jobs in projects across 44 countries and 247 jobs in the United States.New US President Donald Trump and his senior advisor, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, have embarked on a campaign to slash federal spending, targeting in particular support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for foreign aid, research and development.Johns Hopkins University is one of the institutions hardest hit by these drastic reductions. In early March, its president Ronald Daniels explained in a message to students and professors that federal money accounted for nearly half of the backing it funds received last year.Referring to a “historical relationship” between the “first American research university” and the government, he warned that students, researchers and professors would see damage to programs designed to improve health, hygiene and medicine across the world.- Drinking water -Thursday’s announcement confirmed that the cuts hit the university’s medical school and school of public health as well as Jhpiego, a global non-profit organization founded more than 50 years ago and which works to improve health in countries worldwide.”Johns Hopkins is immensely proud of the work done by our colleagues in Jhpiego, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Medicine to care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world,” the university said.The university receives roughly $1 billion annually in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is currently running 600 clinical trials, according to The New York Times, which added that Hopkins is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging such cuts.USAID, the largest funding agency for Jhpiego, distributes humanitarian aid around the world, with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries.Trump, whose appointees are dismantling the humanitarian agency, signed an executive order in January demanding a freeze on all US foreign aid to allow time to assess expenses. Critics warn that slashing USAID work will endanger millions of lives.

Construction worker Maoro has lived happily in Colorado for almost four decades, but for the last month he has hardly left his house, afraid that US immigration officials will swoop and deport him.”It’s worse than a prison,” the undocumented migrant tells AFP at his home in the city of Aurora, a major focus of Donald Trump’s heated anti-immigrant rhetoric in the presidential election campaign.”I already feel sick from not going to work,” said Maoro, 59. Unable to pay his rent and dependent on his daughter — an American citizen — Maoro has never been so afraid as he is now, living under a Republican administration that has promised mass deportations of anyone without the right paperwork.When three men in uniform knocked on his door recently, the middle-aged Mexican, who, like other undocumented migrants in this story insisted on using a pseudonym, followed the advice of well-wishers and rights activists in his neighborhood and didn’t answer.His terror is widely shared in Aurora, a suburb of Denver that is home to around 100 nationalities according to local non-profit groups.Churches and mosques are emptying, the intersection where day laborers wait for casual work is sparsely populated, and a shopping center filled with Latin-American food outlets says it got 10,000 fewer visitors than usual in February. On February 5, heavily-armed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers carried out raids in Denver and Aurora, using battering rams and armored vehicles and making a number of arrests.- ‘Operation Aurora’ – The city of Aurora was propelled into the national immigration debate last year when viral video circulated showing armed Latin American men bursting into an apartment.Then-candidate Trump seized on the footage as proof that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had “taken control” of Aurora.The city’s Republican mayor rejected the claim, insisting the video showed an isolated incident peculiar to that particular building and a neglectful landlord, and pointing to a drop in the city’s crime rate over the previous two years.Trump pressed on, claiming Aurora was a symbol of an America under attack from dangerous migrant criminals, and pledging he would deport millions of people when he got back to the White House.The city’s immigrant population say they are being used as scapegoats for wider societal problems.”Everything that’s going wrong in the United States now is because of Tren de Aragua,” quips Alexander Jimenez, a Venezuelan who fled Nicolas Maduro’s regime a year ago. “That’s not possible.”Jimenez, a grandfather, limits his travel and is hiding with ten members of his family, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed. Since the raids, his grandchildren have refused to go to school, for fear that the police will be waiting for their parents outside. “They see on television what is happening, that they are taking away Venezuelans and all those who are not from here, from this country,” he sighs, pointing out that last month’s ICE raids netted people with no criminal record.A social media posting at the time insisted “100+ members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were targeted for arrest and detention in Aurora, Colo., today by ICE.”According to a report by Fox News, around thirty people were arrested, of whom only one was a gang member.Officials contacted by AFP refused to give details about those who had been taken into custody.- Separated from children -“This targeting of criminals by ICE is being used as a pretext to pick up other people that are innocent, that don’t have criminal records,” said Nayda Benitez, a member of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. Her association offers legal advice classes in Spanish, Arabic and English, educating all-comers on their rights.Attendees at classes learn that they do not have to open their door if the police do not have a judicial warrant, that they can remain silent, and that they do not have to sign any papers. This simple advice was balm for Susana an undocumented Mexican who was deported in 2017, at the beginning of Donald Trump’s first term, and spent five years separated from her children before finally getting back to Colorado.”When you discover that you have rights, it’s a powerful thing, because you say to yourself: ‘if only I had known’,” the 47-year-old said.Susana says she now regrets having spoken too much during her interactions with the authorities last time around. “I knew there was a constitution,” she sighs. “But I didn’t know that this constitution protected me as a migrant.” 

The US government, already shaken by Donald Trump’s radical reforms, could begin shutting down entirely this weekend as Democrats grapple with the politically risky option of opposing the president’s federal funding plans.With a Friday night deadline to fund the government or allow it to start winding down, the Senate is set for a crunch vote ahead of the midnight cut-off on a Trump-backed bill passed by the House of Representatives.The package would keep the lights on through September, but Democrats are under immense pressure from their own grassroots to defy Trump and reject a text they say is full of harmful spending cuts.”If there’s a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it will be their fault,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer — who has long insisted that it is bad politics to shut down the government — indicated he would vote for the bill, raising hopes for its success.Others in the minority party — worried that they would be blamed over a stoppage with no obvious exit ramp — also appear ready to incur the wrath of their support base by backing down.But Schumer has not explicitly told his troops which way to jump, telling reporters “each is making his or her own decision” and the vote remains on a knife edge.- ‘Do the right thing’ -Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voted against a bill to avert a shutdown as recently as 18 months ago, urged the minority party to “put partisan politics aside and do the right thing.” “When the government shuts down, you have government employees who are no longer paid, you have services that begin to lag. It brings great harm on the economy and the people,” he told Fox News.The funding fight is focused on opposition to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by tech mega-billionaire Elon Musk, which is working to dramatically downsize the government.DOGE aims to cut federal spending by $1 trillion this year and claims to have made savings so far of more than $100 billion through lease terminations, contract cancellations and firing federal workers.Its online “wall of receipts” accounts for less than a fraction of that total, however, and US media outlets have found its website to be riddled with errors, misleading math and exaggerations.Grassroots Democrats, infuriated by what they see as the SpaceX and Tesla CEO’s lawless rampage through the federal bureaucracy, want their leaders to stand up to DOGE and Trump.The funding bill is likely to need support from at least eight Democrats, but Republicans ignored the opposition’s demands to protect congressional control over the government’s purse strings and rein in Musk.- ‘Carte blanche’ -Washington progressive representative Pramila Jayapal told CNN there would be a “huge backlash” against Senate Democrats supporting the bill.Several top Democrats have warned, however, that a shutdown could play into Musk’s hands, distracting from DOGE’s most unpopular actions, which just this week has included firing half the Education Department’s workforce.”It’s not really a decision, it’s a Hobson’s choice: Either proceed with the bill before us, or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.The Democratic leader claimed that Musk and Trump were hoping for the government to grind to a halt.”A shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now… with nobody left at the agencies to check them,” he said.Republicans control 53 seats in the 100-member Senate.Legislation in the upper chamber requires a preliminary ballot with a 60-vote threshold — designed to encourage bipartisanship — before final passage, which only needs a simple majority.Schumer and Pennsylvania Senator Fetterman are so far the only Democrats committed to allowing the bill to move forward, as no other Democrats have indicated publicly they would be willing to cross the aisle.