By MARY CLARE JALONICK, KEVIN FREKING and SEUNG MIN KIM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have begun tentative talks with the White House on their demands for “dramatic” new restrictions on President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, trading offers just days before funding for the Department of Homeland Security is set to expire.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that Democrats had sent the White House their list of demands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies. The White House said it had responded with a counterproposal. No details were immediately available.

Time is running short, with another partial government shutdown threatening to begin Saturday. Among the Democrats’ demands are a requirement for judicial warrants, better identification of DHS officers, new use-of-force standards and a stop to racial profiling. They say such changes are necessary after two protesters were fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis last month.

“Republicans, the clock is ticking,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We have sent you our proposals and they are exceedingly reasonable.”

There were some small signs of progress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there has been a “good back and forth” between the sides on substantive issues and Republicans would send a counterproposal “soon.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., center, arrives for a news conference after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Still, it was unclear if the two sides could find agreement on the charged issue of immigration enforcement — and as rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties were skeptical about finding common ground.

Many Republicans have balked at the Democrats’ requests and some have demands of their own, including the addition of legislation that would require proof of citizenship before Americans register to vote and restrictions on cities that they say do not do enough to crack down on illegal immigration.

And Democrats who are furious about ICE’s aggressive crackdown have said they won’t vote for another penny of Homeland Security funding until enforcement is radically scaled back.

“Dramatic changes are needed at the Department of Homeland Security before a DHS funding bill moves forward,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday. “Period. Full stop.”

Trump deals with Democrats

Congress is trying to renegotiate the DHS spending bill after President Donald Trump agreed to a Democratic request that it be separated out from a larger spending measure that became law last week. That package extended Homeland Security funding at current levels only through Feb. 13, creating a brief window for action as the two parties discuss new restrictions on ICE and other federal officers.

The funding issue came to a head after ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, and some Republicans suggested that new restrictions were necessary. Renee Good was shot by ICE agents on Jan. 7.

While he agreed to separate the funding, Trump has not publicly responded to the Democrats’ specific demands, and it is uncertain whether he would agree to any of them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said late last week that the Trump administration is willing to discuss some items on the Democrats’ list, but “others don’t seem like they are grounded in any common sense, and they are nonstarters for this administration.”

Democratic demands

Schumer and Jeffries have said they want immigration officers to remove their masks, to show identification and to better coordinate with local authorities. They have also demanded a stricter use-of-force policy for the federal officers, legal safeguards at detention centers and a prohibition on tracking protesters with body-worn cameras.

The Democrats say Congress should end indiscriminate arrests, “improve warrant procedures and standards,” ensure the law is clear that officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant and require that before a person can be detained, it’s verified that the person is not a U.S. citizen.

Republicans have said they support the requirement for DHS officers to have body-worn cameras — language that was in the original DHS bill — but have balked at many of the other Democratic asks.

“Taking the masks off ICE officers and agents, the reason we can’t do that is that it would subject them to great harm, their families at great risk because people are doxing them and targeting them,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday. “We’ve got to talk about things that are reasonable and achievable.”

Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said on “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats are ”trying to motivate a radical left base.”

“The left has gone completely overboard, and they’re threatening the safety and security of our agents so they cannot do their job,” Hagerty said.

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Consequences of a shutdown

In addition to ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the homeland security bill includes funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration. If DHS shuts down, Thune said last week, “there’s a very good chance we could see more travel problems” similar to the 43-day government closure last year.

Lawmakers in both parties have suggested they could separate out funding for ICE and Border Patrol and pass the rest of it by Friday. But Thune has been cool to that idea, saying instead that Congress should pass another short-term extension for all of DHS while they negotiate the possible new restrictions.

Many Democrats are unlikely to vote for another extension. But Republicans could potentially win enough votes in both chambers from Democrats if they feel hopeful about negotiations.

“The ball is in the Republicans’ court,” Jeffries said Monday.

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn sustained a “complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly” after her devastating crash in the Olympic downhill, the skier said in a social media post late Monday.

Vonn posted on Instagram about her left leg injuries following her fall in Sunday’s race.

“While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets,” Vonn said.

Nine days before Sunday’s crash, the 41-year-old Vonn ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.

Onlookers on social media wondered if Vonn’s ruptured ACL could have played a factor in her crash near the top of the Olympia delle Tofana course, where she has a World Cup record 12 wins. That maybe, on a healthy left knee, she would not have clipped a gate and been able to stave off a crash.

“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.

“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”

Vonn’s father said Monday that the American superstar will no longer race if he has any influence over her decision.

“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”

When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.

“I firmly believe that this has to be decided by the individual athlete,” FIS president Johan Eliasch said Monday in Bormio. “And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries on her body better than anybody else. And if you look around here today with all the athletes, the athletes yesterday, every single athlete has a small injury of some kind.

“What is also important for people to understand, that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky. It was a one in a 1,000,” Eliasch added. “She got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air in the gate and started rotating. No one can recover from that, unless you do a 360. … This is something which is part of ski racing. It’s a dangerous sport.”

The Italian hospital in Treviso where Vonn was being treated said late Sunday she had undergone surgery to repair a broken left leg. The U.S. Ski Team said that Vonn was “in good hands with a team of American and Italian physicians.”

Pierre Ducrey, the sports director for the International Olympic Committee, noted Vonn was able to train and had experts counseling her decision.

“So from that point of view, I don’t think we can say that she should or shouldn’t have participated. This decision was really hers and her team to take,” he said. “She made the decision and unfortunately it led to the injury, but I think it’s really the way that the decision gets made for every athlete that participates to the downhill.”

Teammate Keely Cashman also said Vonn’s ACL had nothing to do with her crash.

“Totally incorrect,” said Cashman — who was knocked unconscious in a serious crash five years ago. “People that don’t know ski racing don’t really understand what happened yesterday. She hooked her arm on the gate, which twisted her around. She was going probably 70 miles an hour, and so that twists your body around. That has nothing to do with her ACL, nothing to with her knee. I think a lot of people are ridiculing that, and a lot people don’t (know) what’s going on.”

The hours after her crash was filled with opinions, mostly of the second-guessing nature. Like, should someone have intervened?

“It’s her choice,” veteran skier Federica Brignone of Italy said. “If it’s your body, then you decide what to do, whether to race or not. It’s not up to others. Only you.”

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By DAVID KLEPPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The general counsel for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Monday warned the attorney for an anonymous government employee not to directly share a top-secret complaint about Gabbard’s handling of classified material with members of Congress.

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The letter to attorney Andrew Bakaj is the latest escalation in the back-and-forth accusations over the classified complaint, which alleges that Gabbard withheld top-secret material for political reasons.

Two inspectors general for the intelligence community reviewed the claim and found that particular allegation did not appear to be credible. Gabbard has denied any wrongdoing and said she did all she could to ensure the report reached Congress.

Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees have blasted Gabbard’s office over the handling of the complaint, questioning why it took eight months for it to be sent to select members of Congress as required by law.

Here’s what to know about the complaint and the next steps:

What is known about the complaint

The anonymous author of the complaint works for a U.S. intelligence agency and in May filed a report claiming that Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons. Gabbard oversees the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies.

The complaint made two allegations, according to a memo sent to lawmakers by the current inspector general, Christopher Fox: The first is that the “distribution of a highly classified intelligence report was restricted for political purposes,” while the second accuses Gabbard’s general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Justice Department.

In June, the inspector general at the time, Tamara Johnson, found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, Fox said in the memo to lawmakers. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote.

The watchdog said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, meaning it never would have been referred to lawmakers.

“If the same or similar matter came before me today, I would likely determine that the allegations do not meet the statutory definition of ‘urgent concern,’” Fox wrote.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported that the complaint stemmed from a call between two foreign nationals that mentioned someone close to President Donald Trump and was intercepted by the National Security Agency. The news reports, which cited anonymous sources, said the discussion involved Iran and that Gabbard notified the White House personally, while the complaint accused her of blocking the NSA from reporting the interaction to other agencies. The AP could not immediately confirm the reports.

The NSA declined to offer details about the complaint Monday, saying in a statement that it works closely with the FBI and others to investigate the mishandling or disclosure of classified information.

Gabbard’s office warns attorney

Bakaj, a former CIA officer and an attorney for the person making the complaint, offered to meet with certain lawmakers or their staffs to discuss the allegations and his concerns about Gabbard’s review.

ODNI’s general counsel warned against that in its letter Monday, noting that Bakaj or his client could face criminal charges if they improperly revealed classified material during the briefing.

“The highly classified nature of the underlying complaint increases the risk that you or your client inadvertently or otherwise breaks the law by divulging or mishandling classified information,” the general counsel’s office wrote. “You may have other means of appearing in front of Congress, but this is not it.”

Bakaj did not immediately respond to questions Monday about the letter.

Under federal law, intelligence whistleblowers are entitled to ask to refer their complaints directly to key lawmakers even if the inspector general finds them non-credible, so long as they deem the allegations urgent. That determination was made by the original watchdog, but the complaint didn’t reach lawmakers until last week.

Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered beginning last week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Additional meetings for the remaining members are tentatively set for Wednesday.

Democrats decry delay as GOP backs Gabbard

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he will push Gabbard for more answers about the underlying complaint and why it took so long to get the report to lawmakers.

The number of redactions make it hard to evaluate the allegations, he said.

“The fact that this sat out there for six, seven, eight months now and we are only seeing it now, raises huge concerns in and of itself,” Warner said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

The Republicans who lead the intelligence committees are backing Gabbard, making it less likely the panels take further steps to investigate the complaint.

“It seemed like an effort by the president’s critics to undermine him,” Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chairman, wrote Saturday on X.

Intelligence chief responds to critics

Gabbard noted in a lengthy social media post Saturday that Johnson was appointed interim inspector general for the intelligence community during President Joe Biden’s administration.

She included a detailed timeline that she said shows she acted quickly to ensure the complaint reached Congress. Gabbard wrote that she was aware of the complaint in June and believed the investigation had ended after it was found non-credible, only for the inspector general’s office to inform her in December that the complaint had to be reviewed, redacted and sent to members of Congress.

“I took immediate action to provide the security guidance to the Intelligence Community Inspector General who then shared the complaint and referenced intelligence with relevant members of Congress last week,” Gabbard wrote.

She also accused Warner and the media of trying to use the complaint to smear her name.

“To truly lower the cost of living, the city must start using automated compliance checks to approve housing, retrofit, and energy projects in real-time.”

A home under construction on Staten Island. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

On his first day in office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the launch of the Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (SPEED), a task force to remove bureaucratic and permitting barriers that drive up costs and slow housing construction. Less than two weeks later, in her State of the State address, Gov. Kathy Hochul called for modernizing permitting systems across state agencies to help tackle the affordability crisis.

To truly lower the cost of living, the city must start using automated compliance checks to approve housing, retrofit, and energy projects in real-time—a move that would rapidly speed deployment and save New Yorkers money. 

The existing permitting process is broken. While many municipal departments allow permits to be submitted online, the actual review of those documents remains a painfully slow process with long wait times and unpredictable outcomes. Many permits are kicked back to the applicant to correct minor errors, often taking months to complete the entire process. For a homeowner trying to install a heat pump or solar panels, these delays act as a hidden tax, making essential clean energy upgrades more expensive and difficult than they should be. There is a better way! 

The future of construction and renovation lies in automated compliance and fast, if not instant, project approvals. New technology can perform this task on virtually any clean energy upgrade and residential retrofit with 100 percent accuracy. Unlike basic digital portals that just store and distribute files, automated compliance technologies verify that a project meets every rule as the application is being filled out and ensures that every submission is correct and complete the first time around, effectively acting as a project prescreening service. This shift allows for immediate verification, ensuring that project outcomes are predictable from day one.

Automating permitting technology is already delivering results in cities across California and Colorado. For example, the city of Bakersfield has adopted automated permitting for nine permit types, including solar panels, residential re-roofing, and water heaters, slashing the time required for plan review from several weeks to just a few seconds. And in Colorado, the administration has adopted a state-level permit submission platform, which allows instant permitting for projects in dozens of cities, providing builders and homeowners with real-time feedback that allows them to fix errors instantly rather than waiting weeks for a rejection letter. This standardized approach also removes the inconsistencies inherent in human interpretation, ensuring the law is applied consistently to every applicant.

The New York State Legislature is currently considering S5781, which would require automated permitting for residential solar projects in jurisdictions across the state. If enacted, this bill will help property owners save more than $2,000 on the cost of installing a new residential solar system and between $1,300-$2,300 on electricity bills each year. What’s more, automated permitting systems can be set up at no cost to local governments, making this a win-win policy decision. 

Passing this measure will be a vital step, and it is important that the law remains technology-agnostic to allow for constant improvement. By focusing on automated compliance rather than a specific software platform, the state can encourage a competitive market that delivers the best possible tools for New Yorkers.

New York City has the power to lead on this issue right now, even before state intervention. The Mamdani administration can integrate automated compliance into the city’s existing building systems today. Starting with high-volume and high-value projects like renewable energy retrofits would provide an immediate win for the climate and a blueprint for fixing the broader housing crisis. This is a practical, scalable way to make the city more affordable.

Ultimately, an affordability agenda is only as strong as the system that implements it. Moving to automated permitting is more than just a technical fix; it is a way to make the government work more effectively for the people it serves while ensuring our regulations help build a sustainable and affordable future rather than standing in the way. 

Patrick McClellan is the policy director at NY League of Conservation Voters. Leila Banijamali is CEO at Symbium.  

The post Opinion: Automated Permitting is Vital to the Mamdani’s Housing Agenda appeared first on City Limits.