A cohort of Senate Republicans broke ranks with their leadership on Thursday to help Senate Democrats tank a massive funding package, and most aren’t planning on changing their minds. 

Seven GOP lawmakers joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and all Senate Democrats to torpedo the six-bill funding package geared toward averting a partial government shutdown. 

The gang of seven have varying issues with the package, including billions in earmarks, lack of legislation to prevent future shutdowns and the fact that the White House and Republican leadership are leaning toward splitting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill from the broader funding bunch. 

Among the group was Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Rick Scott, R-Fla., Ted Budd, R-N.C., Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.

Johnson told Fox News Digital, ‘There’s a bunch of reasons, [I] don’t even want to get into it,’ on why he voted no. When pressed, he said that billions in earmarks were a major problem and noted that the GOP conference had an agreement to not include any in funding bills.

‘Here we are in the majority,’ Johnson said, ‘and we’re loading it up.’ 

He was also unhappy with the DHS bill likely being stripped out from the package and angered over his legislation, the No Shutdown Fairness Act, not being included or even considered on the Senate floor.

‘I mean, we haven’t taken care of that yet,’ Johnson said. ‘Without addressing the root cause here, it’s like, you know, why do we continue to allow these shutdowns to even occur?’

‘I’m tired of it,’ he continued. 

Scott was similarly incensed over earmarks, as was Budd.

A spokesperson for Budd told Fox News Digital that the lawmaker ‘has expressed longstanding concerns with earmarks in the Labor-HHS title, including multiple earmarks for both abortion providers and facilities that perform gender transitions on children.’

While some stew over the current state of the funding package, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans are going back and forth on the length of a possible short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR), specifically for the DHS bill. 

Sources familiar with negotiations told Fox News Digital that Republicans are looking for a longer, six-week patch for the agency, while Democrats want a two-week CR. The hope is negotiations between Schumer and the White House land somewhere in between.

If a deal is struck, that means that the funding package would come back to the floor at some point on Thursday. From there, lawmakers could procedurally fast-track the process and wrap up late Thursday night, well ahead of the funding deadline.

But, that requires agreement from everybody, and the GOP rebels may not allow the process to move swiftly in order to strike deals on amendment votes.

Paul, who perennially votes against funding packages big and small, signaled he may slow down any momentum, unless he gets a vote on an amendment to carve out millions in ‘refugee welfare money.’ 

‘If we get at least a vote on that, we’ll agree to condense time,’ Paul said.

A likely emerging deal in the Senate aimed at averting a prolonged government shutdown could face significant headwinds in the House of Representatives.

Senate Democrats are demanding that funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) be removed from a larger package of six spending bills needed to finish funding the government for fiscal year (FY) 2026. A growing number of senators on both sides appear to be warming to do so, while passing a short-term extension of current funding levels for DHS called a ‘continuing resolution’ (CR).

Any changes to the current legislation would need to pass the House again. With lawmakers there not expected back in Washington until Feb. 2, three days after the Jan. 30 funding deadline, a brief partial government shutdown is all but certain.

Meanwhile, a number of House Republicans are already balking at the prospect of funding DHS through a short-term CR.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus sent President Donald Trump a letter earlier this week signaling that its members would reject attempts to get DHS funding through the House again.

Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital via text message on Thursday, ‘THE HOUSE DID OUR JOB BY PASSING THE REMAINING SIX APPROPRIATION BILLS TO THE SENATE AND THERE IS NO RATIONAL REASON TO REMOVE DHS FROM THE APPROVAL PROCESS.’

Norman accused Democrats of trying to ‘demonize’ and ‘bludgeon’ DHS, adding, ‘IF THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN, ‘DO IT’!!’

Two sources told Fox News Digital that Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are trying to bridge the divide between a two-week CR for DHS, which Democrats want, and Republicans’ preference for six weeks.

But House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital, ‘The Democrats’ desire to keep millions of illegal aliens in the United States will not suddenly disappear in a week or a month with a Continuing Resolution. Delaying full year funding for the Department of Homeland Security any further is a bad idea.’

And a senior GOP aide close to House conservatives said a two-week CR ‘hands more leverage to Democrats to derail immigration enforcement’ and that ‘we’d be right back here again in two weeks with more crazy demands from the radical Left.’

It’s not just the House’s rightmost flank criticizing the emerging deal, however.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that a CR, though he did not specify length, ‘would be very unlikely to pass the House.’

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., another appropriator and a member of the pragmatic Republican Main Street Caucus, said Thursday that spinning the DHS bill off from the larger package as a CR was the ‘wrong strategy.’

‘We’ve negotiated these bills in a bipartisan fashion. They should pass the [legislation] as packaged by the House. And again, we can negotiate changes that they feel are necessary if that’s their demand. But not funding,’ Bice said.

Democrats have been up in arms over Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, demanding stricter guardrails on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of DHS, in any federal funding bill. The original DHS funding bill, which passed the House, included some of those wins for Democrats, like mandating body-worn cameras on ICE agents and enhanced training for crisis management and public engagement.

But Democrats balked at that bipartisan deal after federal officers in Minneapolis shooting and killing nurse Alex Pretti caused an uproar among progressives. He’s the second of two U.S. citizens killed by federal law enforcement during demonstrations in the Midwest city.

Bice pointed out that risking the fate of the DHS funding bill would risk more than just funding for ICE — which Republicans’ ‘big, beautiful bill’ injected billions of dollars into last summer — and affect other agencies in DHS’ purview.

‘They are threatening to potentially not fund [Transportation Security Administration] agents again, not fund our air traffic controllers again. These folks have already spent 43 days not getting paid under the last shutdown. Holding them hostage because you’re upset about how DHS is operating is not, is, is, it’s ridiculous in my opinion,’ Bice said.

Air traffic controllers are under the purview of the Department of Transportation, one of the five other bills being held up during Senate negotiations.

House Democrats, on the other hand, could be willing to back a short-term CR for DHS.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital on Thursday that such a bill would ‘have to be evaluated’ but said his caucus would reject anything that did not put DHS ‘on a path for dramatic, immediate, transformative change.’

Jeffries also told Fox News Digital that he’s been in ‘close communication’ with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as he’s been negotiating with the White House.

‘The White House also knows that the only group of people who speak for House Democrats are House Democrats,’ he said.

The current circumstances put any compromise out of the Senate on shaky ground in the House. Even if the Senate did pass something before the Jan. 30 federal funding deadline, how long any shutdown goes on will heavily depend on how long it takes Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to corral House lawmakers on a vote.

And while the legislation itself could likely survive a House-wide vote, Johnson could run into trouble with a procedural mechanism called a ‘rule vote’ needed to allow for debate and final consideration of a given measure.

Rule votes traditionally fall along partisan lines, and Johnson wields just a razor-thin majority of House Republicans. Appropriators like Bice and Cole have not shown any willingness to vote against their own party on rule votes, but House Freedom Caucus members have done exactly that on multiple occasions in recent years in order to block legislation they did not deem conservative enough.

The other option would be to fast-track the bill via a process called suspension of the rules, though it would require raising the threshold for passage from a simple majority to two-thirds, meaning significant support would be needed from House Democrats.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to not open fire on Kyiv, Ukraine, for one week due to the freezing weather rocking the region. 

‘I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this,’ Trump said. ‘It’s extraordinary cold, record-setting cold. Over there too, they’re having the same conditions. It’s a big it’s a big pile of bad weather. The worst. But it was, it really they said, they’ve never experienced cold like that.’ 

The president held his first Cabinet meeting of 2026 Thursday, where he welcomed special envoy Steve Witkoff to the table to provide updates on his negotiations with Russia to end the war on Ukraine. 

Trump continued that he’s happy he made the call to Putin despite warnings to not ‘waste’ a call to the Russian leader. 

‘I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,’ Trump said. ‘And I have to tell you, I was very nice. A lot of people said, don’t waste that call. You’re not going to get that. And he did it. And we’re very happy that they did it.’

Trump added that the agreement was a ‘very good thing.’ 

Russian strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine, have hobbled the city’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks, with Reuters reporting Monday that more than 1,300 apartment buildings in Ukraine’s capital have been without heat in the chilling temperatures. The strikes also have left much of the population without electricity and running water. 

Witkoff said Thursday during the Cabinet meeting that negotiations have moved along productively and that the people of Ukraine are ‘hopeful and expecting that we’re going to deliver a peace deal sometime soon.’ 

Witkoff and fellow administration envoy Jared Kushner joined trilateral peace talks earlier in January with Ukraine and Russia as the nations inch toward a hopeful peace deal. 

‘We had five Russian generals last Sunday in Abu Dhabi with Jared and I and Dan Driscoll. We think we made a lot of progress,’ Witkoff said. ‘The talks will continue in about a week, but lots of good things happening. … We have a security protocol agreement that’s largely finished. A prosperity agreement that’s largely, largely finished.’ 

A monthly chart of the weather in Kyiv, Ukraine, shows it has been brutally cold similar to temperatures rocking many parts of the U.S., as winter storm Fern careened across much of the United States Saturday and Sunday. The month of January in Kyiv, Ukraine, shows the highest temperature reaching 34° Fahrenheit and the lowest hitting -5° Fahrenheit, according to weather data.

The war in Ukraine has raged since the Biden administration as Russia looks to take hold of the nation and expand its footprint in Europe. The war will notch its four-year anniversary Feb. 24. 

Trump campaigned in part on ending the war in Ukraine, arguing it never would have unfolded if he had been re-elected during the 2020 campaign cycle. 

The president has noted that the war in Ukraine has been more difficult to solve than he anticipated, while touting he has ended eight other wars since he was sworn back into the Oval Office just more than one year ago. 

President Donald Trump announced that the commercial airspace over Venezuela would reopen after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released an emergency notice earlier in January to block civil flight operations of U.S. aircraft in Venezuela airspace. 

The notice came as the U.S. conducted strikes in Venezuela and captured dictator Nicolás Maduro. 

The Trump administration has said that the U.S. would run Venezuela until a peaceful transition could occur and is currently working to restore diplomatic relations with Caracas, Venezuela. 

‘I just spoke to the president of Venezuela and informed her that we’re going to be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela,’ Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting. ‘American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela, and they’ll be safe there and be safe. It’s under very strong control.’ 

Trump said that he’s instructed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the U.S. military to open the airspace over Venezuela by the end of Thursday. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. is attempting to revitalize diplomatic relations with Venezuela following Maduro’s ouster. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. is planning to re-open its embassy in Venezuela. 

‘We have a team on the ground there assessing it, and we think very quickly we’ll be able to open a U.S. diplomatic presence on the ground,’ Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday.

The U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, as well as flights between the U.S. and Venezuela, have been shuttered since 2019.

Following the raid to seize Maduro, hundreds of U.S. flights to the Caribbean were canceled, including flights between the U.S. and Puerto Rico and Aruba.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Supreme Court justices are set to hold a private conference on Feb. 20 to consider a slate of petitions for review, including one from President Donald Trump. The president is requesting a review of the 2023 verdict against him in a civil lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.

The justices could act on Trump’s petition as soon as Feb. 23, but they generally consider petitions at two or more conferences before granting them, meaning they might not announce a decision until March 2 or later, according to SCOTUS Blog.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, previously downplayed the likelihood the Supreme Court will intervene.

‘We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court,’ Kaplan said, according to The Associated Press.

In the petition, Trump’s attorneys described Carroll’s allegations as ‘facially implausible’ and ‘politically motivated.’ They also argued the accusations were ‘propped up’ by a ‘series of indefensible evidentiary rulings’ that allowed Carroll’s attorneys to present certain evidence that the Trump team found objectionable. 

‘President Trump has clearly and consistently denied that this supposed incident ever occurred. No physical or DNA evidence corroborates Carroll’s story. There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation… Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th President, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself,’ Trump’s attorneys wrote in the petition.

Trump’s attorneys also suggested that Carroll’s allegations mirror the plot of a ‘Law & Order’ episode, which they say is one of her favorite TV shows.

They also argued that lower courts should not have admitted testimony by Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who alleged that the then-real estate mogul assaulted them. Leeds claimed that her assault happened on an airplane in 1979, while Stoynoff said her attack occurred at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. The attorneys say both women’s allegations present credibility issues, citing inconsistencies. They also objected to the inclusion of the infamous 2005 ‘Access Hollywood’ tape in which Trump made lewd remarks, which became a flash point of the 2016 election.

Carroll, a journalist and advice columnist, sued Trump twice after she released a book in 2019 in which she claimed that he raped her in 1996 in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store across the street from Trump Tower. Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s claims and said the case was ‘a complete con job.’ He also said that Carroll was ‘not my type.’

‘I don’t know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social in October 2022.

Trump’s repeated criticisms of Carroll and denial of her claims led to the journalist’s defamation allegations.

In May 2023, a jury found Trump was not liable for rape but was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Carroll was awarded a total of $5 million in damages.

House Republicans are rolling out a massive election overhaul package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, including new voter ID requirements as well as limitations on how and when votes are cast.

The Committee on House Administration is unveiling new legislation on Thursday called the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which would impose new federal standards on national elections across the U.S.

The sprawling bill includes key portions of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a measure that was led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, in the House. It comes as the Senate sees a renewed pressure campaign led by Elon Musk and others to take up that legislation.

‘Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity — including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification,’ Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said in a statement.

He said the bill’s guardrails ‘will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.’

Like the SAVE Act, the legislation would include mandatory proof of citizenship when a person registers to vote for the first time. 

Casting a ballot in federal elections would also require a photo ID. Progressive Democrats and groups like the League of Women Voters have argued that photo ID laws disenfranchise minority voters, while the Heritage Foundation pointed out that it’s shown to be popular across multiple public polls.

Steil’s elections bill would also ban ranked-choice voting in federal races, require states to use auditable paper ballots rather than electronic slips, and impose stronger requirements on voter list maintenance to ensure rolls are up to date.

New guardrails on mail-in ballots include a ban on universal mail-in ballots — meaning voters would have to specifically request one to receive it — while also requiring mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day to count and banning ‘ballot harvesting’ by third parties aiming to deliver them to poll centers.

The new legislation comes ahead of what’s expected to be a difficult midterm election season for Republicans.

Historical trends dictate that the first midterms after power changes hands in Washington normally see that party in power suffer losses, but GOP leaders are publicly optimistic that they can reverse that trend.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House to ask whether it supports Steil’s bill but did not hear back by press time.

A gold-standard guide used by judges nationwide to address subjects they are not particularly versed in is drawing criticism over the latest edition’s inclusion of purported ideological bias focused on its climate section.

Critics have said the fourth edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence – which includes a foreword by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan – appears to blur the line between neutrally educating judges and indoctrinating them with left-wing advocates’ prose.

The approximately 1,600-page guide was released at the beginning of the year and includes several citations and footnotes to climate change activists and proponents, including climatologist Michael Mann and environmental law expert Jessica Wentz.

Wentz is the topline expert at the Climate Judiciary Project at the Environmental Law Institute — an entity currently under federal investigation, as Fox News Digital recently reported.

‘The Committee on the Judiciary is investigating allegations of improper attempts by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and its Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) to influence federal judges,’ read a statement from House Judiciary Committee members Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Jordan and Issa found evidence of efforts to ‘influence judges who potentially may be presiding over lawsuits related to alleged climate change claims… [which] appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs alleging injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products.’

A spokesperson for the institute told Fox News Digital at the time that CJP’s curriculum is ‘fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process’ and that suggestions otherwise are ‘without merit.’

Wentz, who is also a senior fellow at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Law, is listed as chief author of the section, along with fellow university faculty Radley Horton, on page 1561.

She served as a witness for the plaintiffs in Juliana v. U.S., where youth activists accused the U.S. government of violating their constitutional rights by failing to implement their preferred climate change policies.

She also signed an amicus brief supporting the Obama administration’s environmental regulations after multiple states filed lawsuits against the EPA in 2016.  

Nonetheless, legal experts warned of the potential repercussions down the line of having such prominent contributors in what is supposed to be an apolitical anthology.

‘It is alarming to see how far the Left has gone in its blatant effort to capture the judiciary. Its feeding of trial lawyers’ climate ‘science’ to sitting judges who will decide contentious litigation in this area short-circuits our system of justice,’ said Carrie Severino, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and president of the Judicial Crisis Network.

‘When they can’t pass their extreme policies into law, they are attempting to use the courts as an end run around the legislative process,’ said Severino, whose organization has helped vet judicial nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Michael Fragoso of Torridon Law, former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed that there is rank bias throughout the climate section of the anthology.

‘The whole section of the guide is shockingly inappropriate—and if you look at the organizational meeting at the National Academies, intentionally so,’ Fragoso said.

‘But when you dig into it, it only gets worse. The section on attribution ‘science,’ for example, was lifted in large part by a previous article written by the two authors and Michael Burger, who is himself a climate-plaintiff lawyer.’

‘Given that attribution is at the heart of these lawsuits, it’s shocking that the Judicial Center would let a plaintiff lawyer ‘explain’ it to judges. It’s even worse that it’s hidden in a random footnote,’ said Fragoso, who recently analyzed a key energy-related suit in Louisiana.

The House Judiciary Committee previously alleged CJP’s efforts appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs involved in climate litigation.

Mann, a climate change academic in Pennsylvania, authored a book called ‘The New Climate War,’ and the judges’ guide cites the book to claim the energy industry has sought to deceive the public.

He resigned from a role at the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 after disparaging social media comments about Charlie Kirk that invoked the Hitler Youth movement, and previously successfully sued conservative commentator Mark Steyn for $1 million over aggressive criticism of his famous ‘hockey stick graph’ that resulted from his study of human influence on global warming over the centuries.

When asked about criticisms of her role in crafting the guide, Wentz told Fox News Digital, ‘no comment.’ Mann did not respond to a request for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

Senate Democrats stayed true to their threat by blocking a behemoth funding package, but in a surprising turn of events, they were joined by several Senate Republicans to derail the legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus made it no secret that they would obstruct the government funding process over the last several days, demanding that Republicans strip the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill from the six-bill package. 

But the defection of seven GOP lawmakers – Sens. Ted Budd, R-N.C., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R- Utah, Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. – was an unexpected development on Thursday. 

Senate Democrats are willing to support the five other bills in the package, however, and have reiterated that bundle would easily pass if given the chance. 

‘Democrats are ready to avert a shutdown,’ said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

‘We have five bills we all agree on. About 95% of the remaining budget. It is ready to go,’ she continued. ‘We can pass those five bills, no problem. All Leader Thune has to do is tee them up for a vote.’

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., sought to call their bluff and barreled forward with the key test vote, which would have opened up several hours of debate and eventually a final vote to send the package to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Ahead of the vote, Thune said he hoped that conversations between the White House and Senate Democrats would produce the ‘the votes that are necessary to get it passed.’

Thune threw cold water on Senate Democrats’ several demands for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) making their way into the current package, too. 

‘That’s not going to happen in this bill, but there are, I mean, there’s a path to consider some of those things and negotiate that out between Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate, White House,’ Thune said. ‘But that’s not gonna happen in this bill.’ 

With the six-bill package, which included major funding bills for the Pentagon and other agencies, now scuttled, Senate Republicans and the White House are looking for a plan B to keep the government open or to at least minimize the damage from a partial shutdown. 

One option gaining momentum among Republicans would be to strip the DHS funding bill from the broader package, advance the smaller, five-bill bundle and then turn to a short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR), for just Homeland Security. 

And there are ongoing negotiations among Senate Democrats and the White House on that particular idea. 

A White House official told Fox News Digital in a statement, ‘President Trump has been consistent — he wants the government to remain open, and the Administration has been working with both parties to ensure the American people don’t have to endure another shutdown.’ 

‘A shutdown would risk disaster response funding and more vital resources for the American people,’ the official said. 

But taking that route presents several hurdles and challenges, particularly with the House out until next week.

That’s because any modification to the current six-bill package would require the lower chamber to agree to it. The same is true for any CR that the Senate produces for DHS. 

Schumer pinned the possibility of a shutdown on Thune, arguing that if he just put the five-bill package on the floor, Senate Democrats would support it. 

‘Well, let me tell you first, if funding lapses, it’s all because of Leader Thune,’ Schumer said. ‘It’s on his back.’

House Republicans have already signaled their unwillingness to support a modified funding package, and turning to a CR is a simmering taboo that many Republicans in the lower chamber aren’t likely to be happy with.

But it’s an option that could be gaining steam with Schumer and the White House, despite Trump administration officials blaming the top Senate Democrat for canning a meeting among rank-and-file Senate Democrats and the administration on Wednesday. 

Turning to a CR would be an about-face for Senate Democrats, too. Last week they argued that a short-term extension for DHS would amount to a ‘slush fund’ for Trump and the administration to use in their immigration operations with no guardrails.

A Muslim activist who served a prison sentence for his role in an overseas terror plot is now seeking elected office in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, as local elections approach amid heightened communal tensions.

Shahid Butt was convicted by a Yemeni court in 1999 and sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of forming an armed gang and conspiring to bomb the British consulate in Aden, an Anglican church and a Swiss-owned hotel in Yemen. At the time, Yemeni prosecutors said the group had been sent to carry out violence by Abu Hamza, the extremist preacher who was the father of one of the convicted men.

He is now standing as a candidate for the newly formed Independent Candidates Alliance in the May 7 Birmingham City Council elections.

Butt maintains his innocence, claiming his confession was coerced through torture, and that evidence against him was planted, The Daily Telegraph reported.

He will contest the Sparkhill ward, an area where nearly two-thirds of residents are of Pakistani background, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Butt’s candidacy comes as Birmingham — home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the U.K. — has faced renewed strains over foreign policy, identity politics and public order. Those tensions came into sharp focus last November when Israeli soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv played Aston Villa in a Europa Conference League match.

Ahead of the game, Butt used social media to call on Muslims from around the country to travel to Birmingham to show solidarity with Palestinians and to prevent the Israeli team’s supporters from, in his words, ‘desecrating’ and ‘dirtying’ the city. In one post, he referred to the visiting fans as ‘IDF babykillers,’ according to Birmingham Live.

Authorities ultimately barred Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending the match, citing security concerns, after large-scale protests were planned.

In a video posted from a protest connected to the fixture, Butt made comments that critics say crossed from political speech into the endorsement of violence. ‘Muslims are not pacifists,’ Butt said in the video. ‘If somebody comes into your face, you knock his teeth out — that’s my message to the youth.’

Emma Schubart, a researcher at the Henry Jackson Society, said the developments reveal deeper fractures within British society. ‘Shahid Butt, a convicted terrorist, is standing for election in a ward that is around 80% Muslim. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from the second-largest city in the U.K. which is now nearly a third Muslim,’ Schubart said.

‘Politically,’ she added, ‘These events foreshadow a likely Muslim sectarian sweep in the local elections, since candidates like Butt are poised to erode Labour’s hold on seats throughout Birmingham.’

The Independent Candidates Alliance was founded by activists Akhmed Yakoob and Shakeel Afsar, both of whom ran unsuccessfully in Birmingham constituencies during the 2024 general election on a pro-Gaza platform. The group is expected to field candidates in around 20 wards across the city.

Longtime Democratic consultant James Carville says Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker could potentially be his party’s best choice to lead Democrats to victory in the 2028 presidential election.

And Carville, who first gained national attention over three decades ago as the chief strategist for former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 White House victory, argues that former Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have a shot at winning the next Democratic presidential nomination.

The 2028 Democratic nomination battle in the race to succeed term-limited President Donald Trump is expected to draw a crowded and competitive field.

‘If I had to say one guy… I’d take JD Pritzker,’ Carville said this week in a sit-down interview with Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo on his ‘Arroyo Grande’ podcast. Carville was asked which Democrat he could see carrying the flag into 2028.

The billionaire governor, a member of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain and who has started several of his own venture capital and investment startups, is running this year for a third term to steer Illinois.

And Pritzker, who has become a leading voice in the Democrats’ opposition to Trump and has taken steps to Trump-proof his solidly blue state, has made a handful of trips in recent years to the key early voting states in the race for the White House.

Carville noted that Pritzker ‘campaigns hard.’

Asked about whether he could see Harris as the party’s standard-bearer in 2028, Carville responded, ‘She has no chance.’

Harris replaced then-President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee after Biden dropped his bid in July of that year, a month after a disastrous debate performance against Trump. Harris ended up losing the general election to Trump, who narrowly swept all seven key battleground states.

‘No Democrat wants anything to do with anybody that had anything to do with 2024,’ Carville emphasized, as he reasoned why Harris couldn’t win the 2028 nomination. He also questioned whether Harris, the nation’s first female and first Black vice president, had the ability to energize the Black community if she launched another White House run.

Carville said that the Democrats’ mantra heading into 2028 is ‘just win,’ and argued that ‘if we nominate two white males, nobody’s going to give a s—.’

He also doubted whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York would be a good 2028 nominee for the party.

Carville said the progressive champion and rising Democratic Party star ‘has talent, and she’s very smart.’

But he said that ‘the reason she is not going to work’ is because ‘there’s a large part of the Democratic Party that like to feel smug.’ Carville argued that Ocasio-Cortez and others on the progressive left of the party have alienated male voters.

‘Democratic culture became very feminized and very judgmental and that’s why we pushed so many of the males away,’ Carville said.

Asked by Fox News Digital if there’s anyone else he thinks is worth watching as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, Carville mentioned former Louisiana Lt. Gov. and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Landrieu mulled but ultimately decided against a 2020 White House and later served in the Biden administration.

Carville, pointing to ‘two huge mistakes that the Democratic Party made,’ also blamed former President Barack Obama and Biden for Trump’s 2016 and 2024 White House wins.

Obama continued and implemented the unprecedented $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, which was initiated by then-President George W. Bush at the very end of his White House tenure to stabilize the nation’s financial system after the 2008-2009 crisis.

The program prevented a total economic collapse, but was widely unpopular with voters.

‘The mistake they made was not going after these bankers,’ Carville said in the podcast, as he pointed to moves by Obama and his administration. ‘We bailed them out.’

And Carville emphasized that ‘there is one person who is responsible for the election of Donald Trump in 2024, and it’s not Donald Trump, it’s Joe Biden.’

Carville argued that if Biden ‘would have gotten out in September of 2023, it wouldn’t have been close.’