Following another deadly shooting in Minneapolis by federal officers over the weekend, Senate Democrats are signaling that they are willing to shut down much of the federal government rather than vote to continue funding immigration enforcement absent meaningful reforms. But even if Congress fails to pass the measure before the Friday deadline, a shutdown is unlikely to significantly deter the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement in the short term.

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That’s because the massive domestic policy bill President Donald Trump signed last year, which he dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” made Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation. Under that law, ICE received a $75 billion supplement on top of its roughly $10 billion base budget, money it could potentially tap if its annual appropriations are interrupted. The measure, enacted with no support from Democrats, set aside roughly $30 billion for operations and $45 billion for expanding detention facilities, giving ICE a deep financial cushion as lawmakers clash over its conduct.

Federal funding expires at the end of the week—at 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 31—and the House is in recess until February, leaving the Senate with few options to avoid a shutdown if it can’t pass the current measure.  

The standoff intensified over the weekend after the shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and intensive care unit nurse. Multiple videos show Border Patrol agents spraying Pretti with a substance and pinning him to the ground before the shooting. Moments before the confrontation, Pretti was attempting to help a woman protester who was being pushed by a federal agent.

Following the incident, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats would block a sweeping funding package if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer said in a statement, arguing that the Homeland Security funding bill was “woefully inadequate” to rein in abuses by immigration officials. He said Democrats would not provide the votes needed to advance the broader spending package if the DHS bill remained part of it.

Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to move forward, leaving Republicans, who hold 53 seats, in need of some Democratic support to pass the measure, which covers about $1.3 trillion in annual government spending and includes funding for the military, social services, and several major departments. 

Read more: Here Are the States to Watch as Democrats Try to Flip the Senate

Democrats are demanding new constraints on immigration enforcement and more oversight of DHS. Some lawmakers have outlined specific demands: requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests, beefing up agents’ training, mandating agents wear visible identification, and strengthening accountability and transparency. 

Several senators who had previously broken with their party to keep the government open said the latest shooting shifted their stance. “I have the responsibility to hold the Trump administration accountable when I see abuses of power,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who voted last year to end the last shutdown. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, also of Nevada, said agents were “oppressing Americans” and could no longer be funded without new safeguards.

Yet even if Democrats succeed in blocking DHS funding, immigration enforcement may continue largely uninterrupted as ICE is permitted to spend the $75 billion it received under the Big Beautiful Bill over as long as four years. If disbursed steadily, that would amount to nearly $29 billion annually—almost triple its recent funding levels.

By comparison, the Trump Administration’s budget request for the entire Justice Department, including the FBI, stands at just over $35 billion.

The surge in funding has fueled a rapid expansion of ICE’s operations. The agency more than doubled its workforce last year, growing from about 10,000 to 22,000 officers and agents, and launched an aggressive recruitment drive that included signing bonuses and student loan repayment incentives. It has advertised deportation officer positions in at least 25 cities and sharply expanded its detention system.

The new law allocated $45 billion specifically to detention facilities, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying the agency would be able to hold up to 100,000 people in custody daily. As of mid-January, more than 73,000 people were being held in immigration detention, according to CBS News.

That growth has coincided with mounting criticism of ICE’s tactics, as viral videos have spread of masked agents detaining people in unmarked vehicles, and reports of a spike in deaths of people taken into custody. But it has also left the agency unusually insulated from the budget brinkmanship now gripping Congress.

Republicans have largely backed the Trump Administration’s approach, though cracks have emerged. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called the Minneapolis shooting “incredibly disturbing” and urged a joint federal-state investigation, saying the credibility of DHS and ICE was at stake. Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident.” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that the shooting “should raise serious questions within the administration about the adequacy of immigration-enforcement training and the instructions officers are given on carrying out their mission.” Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked top DHS officials to testify.

Still, voting against the DHS funding bill may do little to curb enforcement quickly. ICE operations are generally designated essential services, meaning agents would continue to work even if a funding lapse forced furloughs elsewhere in the government. And the massive supplemental pot of funding would allow it to continue arrests, deportations, and detention at current levels for months, if not longer.

Where the shutdown threat may have more impact is politically. By tying immigration enforcement to the broader funding fight, which also includes money for the military and social services, Democrats are attempting to raise the political cost for Republicans and the Trump Administration. The pressure could force negotiations over guardrails on ICE or prompt internal reconsideration of its tactics, particularly as public scrutiny grows.

If you had the chance to be beautiful, would you take it? We’re not talking about mere attractiveness, but a near-immediate physical metamorphosis into a perfect human specimen. Sounds tempting, but of course there’s a catch. That’s the premise of Ryan Murphy’s new FX show, The Beauty, co-created and co-written by Matt Hodgson. In the show, The Beauty is an STI that transforms a person into someone physically perfect, but with deadly consequences. Except nobody who has The Beauty knows that.

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It’s almost impossible not to draw comparisons to The Substance, the 2024 horror movie that became a breakaway box-office smash and multi-Oscar nominee. It also spawned countless reactions (positive and negative) about its depictions of what a woman (played by Demi Moore) will do in the pursuit of a younger, more beautiful version of herself. The Beauty gleefully leans into these comparisons with Coralie Fargeat’s film, even casting Demi Moore’s ex-husband, Ashton Kutcher, in a key role. 

But The Beauty is not a rip-off of The Substance. It’s actually based on a comic book of the same name by Image Comics, which ran from 2015-2021. Here’s what to know about the source material for the new series, which has drawn solid reviews since its three-episode premiere.

What happens in “The Beauty” comics?

At the start of the comics, created by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, two years have elapsed since The Beauty took over the world. It’s a rampant and sought after sexually transmitted disease, capable of transforming those infected with it into someone conventionally, well, beautiful. As the comic describes, changes to people with The Beauty include “fat melted away, thinning hair returned, skin blemishes faded, and their facial features slimmed.” Unlike other diseases, people covet The Beauty. It’s believed that half the world has the disease, including around 200 million Americans. 

The Beauty has caused enormous division between those who have it and those who don’t. For some, it’s the ultimate status symbol; for others, a complete and utter betrayal of humankind. Activist groups that are both pro- and anti-Beauty have emerged, with hate crimes, homicides, and bombings on the rise as divisions deepen. 

The disease doesn’t make a person impossibly attractive, as evidenced by one man who’s struggling to get a date. Because he is exceedingly naturally attractive, everyone he encounters wants to sleep with him, assuming he has The Beauty, but he doesn’t—he’s just a very handsome man. In Murphy’s show, it transforms you into a completely different person physically. And while there are people who do actively try to get infected with The Beauty, there are plenty more who wake up the next morning transformed, unaware that they had slept with someone who has it. 

How does the show differ from the source material?

The disease itself manifests differently in the television series. In both versions, getting the disease puts the person under extreme physical duress as they suffer a high fever. In the comic, people fall asleep and wake up transformed, but the TV version is much more intense. There, they go through frightening body contortions and secrete a sort of goo. They wind up in what can be best described as a mucus cocoon, before emerging as an entirely different—and more beautiful—person. In the show, people come out as a whole new actor (a clever move that ups the stakes on television), but in the comics, they are just a more attractive version of themselves.  

Similar to the show, the comic features a pair of detectives trying to connect the dots behind a strain of explosive deaths, and everyone who’s spontaneously combusted has The Beauty. Soon, it becomes clear that just about everyone who has The Beauty will die roughly two years after they get infected. The detectives discover a possible cure, but a ruthless masked enforcer, Mr. Calaveras, is out to stop them—no matter how many people he has to kill. He’s protecting the shadowy interests who created the disease and helped it go global, and a cure risks bringing their contributions to light.

After a violent clash, Mr. Calaveras is defeated, and those still alive begin to disseminate the cure to The Beauty across the world. In the final issue, published in 2021, The Beauty has been eradicated. Those who remain are left to process their new selves (the cure allows people to survive, but can leave them with severe scarring all over their bodies) while considering the cost of their pursuit of beauty. 

What happens in the first three episodes of The Beauty?

While the comics start with the disease in full swing and known worldwide, The Beauty is very much under wraps at the beginning of the show. The first episode opens with a model (Bella Hadid) wreaking havoc on the streets of Paris before she shockingly combusts. Two FBI agents, Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), are sent to investigate and uncover a string of models dying in a similar fashion across Europe. 

They discover that before these models died, they underwent extraordinary physical changes, and none of them are recognizable compared to photos taken a few years prior. That’s because they have The Beauty, a disease transmitted through sex, as in the comics, that turns you into a new, incredibly attractive person. 

The first episode largely focuses on the male perspective through the eyes of the angry, lonely, and depressed Jeremy (Jaquel Spivey). An incel, Jeremy is desperate for change and sick of feeling that he’s repulsive to women. On an online message board, he finds out about a plastic surgeon. But that surgery goes poorly, and he’s still unable to attract women. A furious Jeremy shoots up the surgeon’s office. But before he kills the surgeon, the latter offers Jeremy a miracle solution. The surgeon brings Jeremy a woman, who carries The Beauty, who has sex with Jeremy, turning him into a whole new man (literally, as he’s played by Jeremy Pope post-transformation). 

We also discover that The Beauty was never designed to be sexually transmitted—something entirely different than the comics. There’s another strain of The Beauty, one developed by an exorbitantly wealthy man who calls himself The Corporation (Ashton Kutcher). He created The Beauty, an injection that not only transforms people physically, but also seems to have stable long-term effects. He’s determined to do whatever it takes to stop the STI, as it threatens to destroy his vast profit margins. It doesn’t help that the sexually transmitted version of The Beauty seems to kill its victims in horrifying ways after just two years. So while the detectives are on a mission to figure out what The Beauty is, The Corporation is doing whatever he can (including using his assassin, played by Anthony Ramos) to get answers.

That’s what we know so far. As only three of the eleven episodes have aired, there’s plenty more mystery to unfold in The Beauty.

European leaders are bracing for an all-out trade war with the U.S. once again after President Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on imports from from countries that oppose his demand to take control of Greenland.

The potential tariff would put the U.S.-EU trade deal struck last summer in jeopardy. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in EU investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

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Read more: Trump Says No Need ‘To Think Purely of Peace’ in Letter to Norway About Nobel Prize Loss, Greenland Ambitions

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the EU’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said. 

Trump, however, remains adamant on taking over the Arctic island. In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump said he had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte regarding Greenland and told him that “there can be no going back.”

Here are five ways the European allies could respond to Trump’s threat to acquire the island:

Retaliatory tariff

The EU could respond by imposing a reciprocal tariff on a range of U.S. goods. 

During the trade negotiations last year, Brussels came up with a list of 4,800 types of U.S. exports to impose tariffs on, ranging from whiskey and soybeans to planes and cars, totaling $108 billion. The list will go into effect on Feb. 7 unless the European Parliament votes to freeze it.

Since Trump revived his interest in Greenland, the proposal to let the EU Parliament pass the tariffs has gained momentum. On Tuesday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France supports the European Parliament’s push to suspend the trade deal between the U.S. and EU.

Still, the European Commission Spokesperson Olof Gill said the current priority is still to engage and avoid the imposition of tariffs.

“This will ultimately harm consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” Gill said. 

Trade “bazooka”

Another measure that the EU could take is activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument, also known as the “trade bazooka.”

The policy, which was adopted in late 2023, aims to deter foreign countries from blackmailing European countries through economic pressure. The “trade bazooka” is much more expansive than reciprocal tariffs, because it can not only impose additional tariffs, but also restrict imports and exports through quotas and licenses, limit access to direct investment in the EU’s financial markets, or suspend intellectual property rights.

“Since the EU is America’s largest commercial partner, this would cause substantial damage to the U.S. economy, most likely generating a US recession and a global downturn, as well as raising costs on many everyday staples,” said Dan Hamilton, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center.

This is, however, the EU’s last resort for countermeasures for multiple reasons. For one thing, it would take up to 10 months for the European Commission to investigate and determine whether there is any coercion and retaliation from the concerned country. It would also need a supermajority of 27 Parliament members to back the measure after the investigation, which could take a maximum of 10 weeks to deliberate. The bazooka has also never been used before, and some European countries, like Germany, are still looking for ways to deescalate. 

“We simply want to try to resolve this problem together, and the American government knows that we could also retaliate,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday.

Dumping U.S. assets

European countries hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds and stocks. The EU could dump a huge amount of its assets to drive up the cost of borrowing and sink the U.S. financial market, adding more uncertainties to retirement account investments, running a business, and buying a home. But selling U.S. assets on a large scale is much harder to execute than it seems. 

Most of the U.S. assets owned by the European countries are owned by private entities and not the government, according to FT. Even if European governments can compel a sale of U.S. assets from their public wealth funds, it would also be hard to find a buyer who could absorb even a fraction of what the European countries own. 

More importantly, an abrupt sale of the U.S. assets would sink the value of the dollar and drive up the euro, which could quickly upend European countries’ own economies. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed off this idea on Tuesday in Davos as a “false narrative” that “defies any logic.” 

“I am sure that the European governments will continue holding it and as I said, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath,” Bessent said. 

The Supreme Court

Like many Americans, European leaders are also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to deliberate on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, with a ruling expected as soon as this week. 

The White House argued that a national security law dating back to the 1970s—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—gives the President the authority to declare an emergency and slap down tariffs on his own. 

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7-4 decision that none of the emergency powers granted the President under the IEEPA  law “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties or the power to tax.”

But regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Trump administration is determined to keep the tariffs. In an interview with the New York Times last Thursday, the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration plans to begin replacing them almost immediately with other levies if the high court strikes down Trump’s tariffs.

Defending Greenland by force

Despite Trump’s suggestion of seizing Greenland by force, a military option remains unlikely. Still, Denmark, a NATO ally, has been boosting its military presence in the Arctic island in response to Trump’s brinkmanship. 

Denmark’s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, announced that Denmark would increase military activity in and around Greenland, citing an increasingly unpredictable security environment. Several European NATO allies confirmed that they were also sending personnel to the island.

Asked on Monday whether he would use force to seize Greenland, Trump told NBC News “no comment.”