Department of Homeland Security
DHS Funded
Plus: FISA reauthorization, driverless trucks in California, and an Epstein suicide note.
DHS funded. Congress has passed a spending bill that ends the monthslong shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). On Thursday, the House approved a bill that funds the department—except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.
The 76-day shutdown began in February, when Democrats refused to fully fund the department after immigration officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. Before they would send the agency money, the no voters wanted reforms, including requirements that immigration officers wear body cameras and get judicial warrants before entering private property.
To keep the lights on, the Trump administration continued to pay for immigration enforcement out of other pots of money. With that cash running low, the Senate passed a bipartisan funding bill in March that excluded immigration enforcement.
That measure stalled in the House under opposition from conservatives who opposed any DHS funding bill that did not include immigration enforcement money.
But yesterday, the House approved the measure, after Senate Republicans started a reconciliation process that will allow them to pass a DHS funding bill with their bare majority.
News reports invariably describe the DHS shutdown as the longest in the agency's history. It's worth noting that the American Republic survived some 200-plus years without a DHS at all.
The department has lived up to none of its promises in the decades following its creation, while fulfilling many of its critics' worst fears. We'd be better off without it. And that's how you knew Congress would eventually fund it without any changes or reforms.
Another FISA stopgap. Congress has approved a short-term extension of a major spying program that was set to expire Thursday.
The measure extends the life of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for another 45 days while they hash out a longer-term reauthorization.
Republican leaders in Congress, and in the White House, have been eager to pass a "clean" three-year reauthorization of Section 702, which allows warrantless surveillance of foreigners' communications outside the United States.
Critics of Section 702 argue it allows the authorities to evade the Fourth Amendment, since the law lets intelligence agencies snoop on Americans' communications with targeted foreigners. A transpartisan collection of privacy hawks in Congress have been demanding that warrant requirements be added to the law.
Yesterday's short-term extension gives them until June to hash out a deal.
California allows driverless trucks. Earlier this week, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced that it was lifting its blanket ban on autonomous heavy trucks.
The new rules allow autonomous vehicle companies to deploy driverless trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds on the state's roads for commercial operations, provided the manufacturer first complete 1 million miles of test driving. The first 500,000 miles would be with a human safety driver and the second 500,000 would be autonomous. Not all the test miles would have to be driven in California.
The new regulations also allow law enforcement to issue tickets to AV companies when their vehicles commit moving violations.
Industry is pleased with the new rules.
"This is a long-overdue step forward for the state that pioneered self-driving tech," said Robert Singleton of the Chamber of Progress, a tech advocacy group, to The Robot Report. "California families and businesses will benefit from the lower costs, more resilient supply chains, and safer highways that autonomous trucks will deliver."
The Teamsters union, which represents human drivers, is not happy.
"These rules put our streets, our highways, and our jobs in jeopardy. This agency happily greenlit technology that companies still won't fully disclose safety data on, thereby threatening the livelihoods of the professional drivers who keep California's economy moving," said the Teamsters California leadership in an emailed statement.
It's understandable why a union would be interested in protecting its members' jobs from automation. But it's not clear why safety regulators should care.
Scenes from D.C.: Looks about right.
DC, Maryland, Virginia pic.twitter.com/UWPAzzo5v6
— ◥◤Kriston Capps (@kristoncapps) April 30, 2026
QUICK HITS
- Maine Gov. Janet Mills drops her Senate bid, meaning the controversially tattooed progressive Graham Platner will be the Democratic nominee.
- The New York Times is petitioning a federal court to unseal an alleged suicide note Jefferey Epstein left in his cell after a first, unsuccessful suicide attempt. The note was found by Epstein's cell mate and was sealed as part of his criminal case.
- At a minimum, AI has already replaced the job of writing social media posts about AI.
🚨BREAKING: Anthropic just published a study mapping exactly which jobs its own AI is replacing right now.
The workers most at risk are not who anyone expected. They are older. They are more educated. They earn 47% more than average. And they are nearly four times more likely to… pic.twitter.com/Re4xHrNGkT
— AI Highlight (@AIHighlight) April 28, 2026
- Donald Trump's new nominee for surgeon general is an anti-nicotine-pouch zealot. She wrote and op-ed that's an insanely disingenuous conflation of the effects of cigarettes and of the far safer smokeless alternative.
Nicole Saphier is a horrific pick for Surgeon General. When she attacked RFK Jr. last year, she casually conflated nicotine pouches, one of the safest ways to use nicotine, with cigarettes and promoted panic over youth nicotine use, which is at a 25-year low.
How can she be… pic.twitter.com/B2lLNd5BVx
— Guy Bentley (@gbentley1) April 30, 2026
- I don't hate it but the NIMBYs probably still will.
Many people do not seem to want data centres built near them, despite the fact that they don't cause that much traffic and often generate a lot of local tax revenue. I suspect it's partly because they're ugly! My proposal: pic.twitter.com/xxuvVe598P
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) April 30, 2026
- Indeed.
Imagining explaining to the Founding Fathers that the president imposed tariffs without an act of Congress and then removed them at the request of the King of England https://t.co/96ZNoxZ0sj
— Dominic Pino (@DominicJPino) April 30, 2026
