Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is likely when the clock strikes midnight on Friday, due to a lack of agreement with Democrats on funding the agency.

“We don’t have a solution yet,” Thune, R-S.D., told reporters outside the Senate floor Thursday afternoon. “The Democrats, at least at the moment … have no interest in funding the Department of Homeland Security.”

Thune said leadership had been seeking unanimous consent to pass yet another funding extension for the department, but Democrats would not provide the votes.

At the end of the week, funding from the current short-term stopgap funding extension will expire, leaving the Coast Guard, national disaster response teams, and cybersecurity infrastructure unfunded.

The budget reconciliation bill passed in July 2025 has already provided billions in funding for border security and deportation operations under DHS’ umbrella.

Democrats have demanded restrictions on immigration law enforcement officers in the wake of the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

The White House and Senate Republicans have engaged with Senate Democrats’ demands for concessions such as prohibiting mask-use and requiring judicial warrants for deportations.

“The White House made, I think, what was a good faith effort … to try to get to an answer here … that will allow the government to stay open, and that was rejected by Democrats today,” said Thune. 

“The idea of not even allowing us to have an extended amount of time to negotiate this suggests to me, at least, that there isn’t a high level of interest in actually solving this issue.”

Thune added that the White House had provided legislative text the night before to Democrats that attempted to address their concerns, but “so far they’re not getting any kind of response from Democrats, even allowing us to continue this and allow the government to stay open.”

The Senate will recess next week, but Thune says he has told senators to “be available to get back here if there’s some sort of a deal they strike.”

On an optimistic note, Thune added, “I’m encouraged to hear that they [Democrats] are actually going to put together … a counterproposal” for DHS funding.

The post THUNE: DHS Shutdown Very Likely appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A partial government shutdown appears imminent as Democrats are standing firm and refusing to provide funding to the Department of Homeland Security.

There is only one day left to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the lone department awaiting appropriations from Congress through the rest of the fiscal year. The White House has attempted to negotiate but the proposal doesn’t seem to be enough for Democrats. 

The department encompasses TSA, FEMA, and ICE, whose deportation efforts are funded under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.  

The Senate Homeland Security Committee hosted the second DHS hearing of the week on Thursday morning. The White House sent Democrats a proposal to fund the department on Wednesday night.  

Many senators on the committee told The Daily Signal they had not yet seen the official proposal, but from what they know about it, the deal is not sufficient. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told The Daily Signal he hasn’t yet seen the text, but it has been described to him.  

“I think they’re just more of the same window dressing and cosmetic proposals,” said Blumenthal. “They [The White House] failed to do the kind of rigorous, far reaching, overhaul that is necessary to rein in and reform this out of control agency,” Blumenthal claimed.  

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced a series of demands that needed to be met for Democrats to vote to keep the government open. The extensive list included items such as requiring judicial warrants for immigration enforcement and banning identity-protecting masks for immigration officers.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday that the offer “falls short” of Democrats’ demands.

“My preliminary assessment of it is that it falls short of the type of dramatic changes necessary in order to change ICE,” Jeffries said in a press briefing of the “so-called offer.”  

Schumer echoed this messaging on the Senate floor claiming that “the administration doesn’t actually want to reform ICE.”  

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., told reporters as he left Thursday’s hearing that he doesn’t know where he stands on negotiations with Democrats on the funding bill, “because even some of the reforms that are going to be proposed by the Democrats, I think, aren’t concrete enough for me to know yet exactly what those reforms are.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal outside the hearing room that he has also not seen the proposal from the White House.  

“Chuck Schumer wants to shut down ICE, and he doesn’t care that TSA is not going to get paid, and the Coast Guard is not going to get paid,” Scott said.

“It seems like all the Democrats want to do is support criminals that are coming into this country,” Scott continued.

“They want open borders, and then whenever ICE or CBP, and Border Patrol wants to do their job, all the Democrats do is attack them,” the Florida Senator concluded.

Democrat Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Ruben Gallego of Arizona also said they have not seen the White House proposal.

Slotkin told the Daily Signal that while she is not on the negotiating team, she is aware conversations are still happening.

“I am not supporting additional money for ICE until and unless they have significant reforms, and we haven’t seen that,” said Slotkin.

“From the top lines we’re seeing, it’s not sufficient, at least for me to have to vote for it,” Gallego confirmed.  

The post Democrats Stand Firm on ICE Demands as FEMA, TSA, and Coast Guard Funding in a Lurch appeared first on The Daily Signal.

HEAVEN — In a shocking revelation that falls in line with a common suspicion online over the last year, several of the men who authored books of the Bible finally admitted that they were all paid $7,000 for every reference they made to Israel.

The housing bubble that burst during the Great Recession was enormous, but it was nothing compared to what we are facing now.  Two decades ago, the average price of a home in the United States was about $140,000.  Today, the average price of a home in the United States is above $500,000.  We have literally never seen anything even close to a housing bubble of this magnitude.  Unfortunately, what comes up must eventually come down.

Just like we witnessed during the Great Recession, home sales have started to crash.

In January, sales of previously owned homes were 8.4 percent lower than they were in December…

Sales of previously owned homes in January dropped a much wider-than-expected 8.4% from December to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.91 million, according to the NAR. Sales were 4.4% lower than January 2025. That is the slowest pace since December 2023 and the biggest monthly drop since February 2022.

This count is based on closings, so contracts that were likely signed in November and December, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage didn’t move much before dropping slightly in January. That rate is now 6.1%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Regionally, sales fell across the nation month to month but were down the most in the South and West.

Sales of previously owned homes have been at a depressed level for years, and now things are getting even worse.

It is a really bad time to be a real estate agent in America.  So many really good agents are deeply struggling right now.

One of the primary reasons why home sales are so low is because home prices are way too high.

Over a 20 year period, the average price of a home in the United States increased from about $140,000 to more than $503,000…

While there have been periods of rising and falling home values, the end result is this: In the past 20 years, the average home price in the U.S. has grown from about $140,000 to about $503,800 as of 2025.

That is what a bubble looks like.

If you can believe it, the median value of a home in Montana grew by two-thirds in just four years…

Montana’s typical home value has increased by two-thirds in four years, according to new valuations published this month by the Montana Department of Revenue.

The department estimates that the median residential property in Montana was worth $378,000 as of the beginning of last year. Four years previously, before the state housing market blew up during the COVID-19 pandemic, the median value was $228,000 — meaning values have increased 66%.

What we have witnessed this decade has been absolutely insane.

As a result, 64 percent of all single Americans are now struggling to make their monthly rent or mortgage payments…

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of single people struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments, compared with 39% of married people, according to a recent Redfin survey conducted by Ipsos.

These survey results in this report are from a Redfin survey conducted by Ipsos in November 2025, fielded to 4,000 U.S. residents. We consider survey respondents to struggle with housing payments if they selected “I struggle greatly to afford them,” “I regularly struggle, but sometimes okay,” or “I sometimes struggle, but generally okay.”

This state of affairs couldn’t persist indefinitely.

It was just a matter of time before something started to give, and now we are being told that home prices are falling in 26 of the 50 largest metro areas in the United States…

The sales slump comes as home prices are now falling in 26 of the country’s 50 biggest metro areas, according to recent report from Realtor.com..

This reminds me so much of what we experienced just before the crash of 2008.

And as I discussed yesterday, last month the number of foreclosure filings was 32 percent higher than it was during the same month one year earlier…

With the number of Americans losing their homes to banks rising for an eleventh straight month, it’s clear the housing crisis is getting worse rather than better. US foreclosure activity jumped again in January 2026, with a total of 40,534 properties facing foreclosure filings – a 32 percent increase from the same time last year. Foreclosure filings cover every stage of the process, from the moment a lender issues a legal warning to the point a home is formally seized after missed mortgage payments.

Do you remember what happened the last time that foreclosures spiked dramatically?

It is starting to happen all over again.

Every economic bubble bursts eventually.

Sadly, we live at a time when multiple bubbles appear to be bursting simultaneously.

Former U.S. Representative Ron Paul is warning that the entire system is on the verge of collapsing…

Former Texas Representative Ron Paul said the U.S. economic order rests on “fraud” rooted in the 1971 break from gold and warned that the current system is nearing its end, in a wide-ranging 90th-birthday interview on The Tucker Carlson Podcast released Thursday.

Paul, a Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Republican, tied his warning to the end of dollar convertibility into gold under President Richard Nixon, calling it the nation’s “first declaration of bankruptcy,” and argued that persistent money printing and deficits have created a brittle order primed for a severe correction.

In 1971, the median price of a home in the United States was $25,200.

In those days, just about anyone that was willing to work hard could afford a home.

At the end of 1971, the U.S. national debt was sitting at 398 billion dollars.

Now it is sitting at 38.5 trillion dollars.

Do you understand what that means?

The size of our national debt will soon be 100 times larger than it was in 1971.

Just think about that for a moment.

We really are in the end game.

We have destroyed the value of our currency and we are absolutely drowning in debt.

Now the economic bubbles that we have inflated are starting to burst all around us, and the days ahead are going to be filled with a tremendous amount of pain.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post The Biggest Housing Bubble In The Entire History Of The United States Is In The Process Of Bursting appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

A federal judge stopped War Secretary Pete Hegseth–at least temporarily–from censuring Sen. Mark Kelly for his role in a video telling American soldiers to refuse illegal orders.

Judge Rich Leon, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, on Thursday ruled in favor of Kelly, D-Ariz., a retired Navy captain, who had joined five other Democrat members of Congress telling service members to refuse “illegal” orders, without giving a clear definition of illegal.  

Hegseth had moved to reduce Kelly’s Navy rank and retirement pay as a consequence. Judge Leon issued the order in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., blocking the move.

“Today a federal court made clear Pete Hegseth violated the Constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said,” Kelly said in a post on X.

“This is a critical moment to show this administration they can’t keep undermining Americans’ rights. I also know this might not be over yet, because Trump and Hegseth can’t admit when they are wrong.”

President Donald Trump slammed the Democrat video as “seditious behaviors, punishable by death.” He called them “traitors.” 

Leon’s opinion said Kelly had the First Amendment right to make the comments in the video.  

Leon acknowledged, “military service members enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces.” 

The post Judge Weighs in on War Department Censure of Sen. Mark Kelly Over Video appeared first on The Daily Signal.

U.S. — Following his inspiring appearance at TPUSA's All-American Halftime Show and increased popularity among Christian conservatives, musician Kid Rock was notified that his 1999 hit song "Bawitdaba" would be added to hymnals in churches across the country.