Sen. Ted Cruz called for the U.S. to arm Iranian protesters Tuesday as unrest continues inside the nation and Iran-backed militias issued threats against Washington.

‘We should be arming the protesters in Iran. NOW,’ Cruz wrote in a post on X.

‘For the Iranian people to overthrow the Ayatollah — a tyrant who routinely chants ‘death to America’ — would make America much, much safer,’ the Texas Republican added.

Cruz was responding to another post from Tehran Bureau, which cited a source inside Iran detailing what was described as a rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground as security forces continued to crack down on demonstrations.

‘From trusted source in Tehran: Tell all of your friends [abroad] — everyone you know: there is absolutely nothing else we can do here inside Iran,’ the post read.

‘They are killing people in such ways, they’ve descended upon people so brutally, they’re attacking us in such ways… We’ve lost so many lives that no one dares go out anymore. They shoot directly with bullets. They kill outright. And even after killing, they come and behead you, and do countless other violent things to you,’ it continued.

‘Going out into the streets is literally suicide. It’s not about bravery anymore. It’s madness. You go out and they shoot you point-blank. They don’t even ask why you came. They just kill you,’ the post continued. ‘There is absolutely no way for us to gather unless we had weapons, unless we were armed like them. Otherwise they have weapons everywhere.’

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, activist groups estimate that more than 6,000 people have been killed in Iran, with additional cases still under review.

The protests began in late December amid widespread anger over economic hardship, political repression and corruption, according to reports.

Cruz’s post came after armed militias aligned with Iran warned the U.S. they would retaliate against any American attack on the Islamic Republic, as the Trump administration moved forces into the region.

Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq said it was prepared for ‘total war’ if the U.S. attacked Iran, according to The Associated Press.

Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, the group’s leader, said the ‘enemies’ of the Islamic Republic would face ‘the bitterest forms of death.’

‘You will taste every form of deadly suffering, nothing of you will remain in our region, and we will strike terror in your hearts,’ the statement read.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis also threatened to restart attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, releasing a video Monday showing a ship engulfed in flames, captioned: ‘Soon,’ The Associated Press reported.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, President Donald Trump said Iran appeared to be seeking negotiations with the U.S. amid the growing military buildup, telling Axios, ‘They want to make a deal. I know so. They called on numerous occasions. They want to talk.’

The USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Middle East on Monday as unrest inside Iran continued to escalate.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Sen. Ted Cruz for comment.

A pair of Senate Republicans are demanding that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem lose her job in the wake of a pair of fatal shootings in the midst of the agency’s immigration operations in Minnesota. 

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., are no strangers to being critical of the Trump administration, and have again broken from their party in calling for Noem to either step aside or be fired by President Donald Trump. 

They join several Senate Democrats who have demanded accountability for the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in the midst of DHS’ immigration operations in Minneapolis, Minn. It also comes as Senate Democrats are threatening to shut the government down in their bid to sideline the DHS funding bill. 

When pressed on whether Noem should resign, Murkowski noted that she voted for her confirmation last year.

‘I think the President needs to look at who he has in place as the Secretary of Homeland Security. I would not support her again, and I think it probably is time for her to step down,’ she said. 

Trump on Tuesday said that Noem was doing a ‘very good job.’ When asked if she would be stepping down, he said ‘no.’ 

Tillis, who has made a habit of going after Trump officials in the last several months and accusing them of giving the president bad policy advice, was more biting in his assessment of Noem’s performance, and extended that breakdown to White House Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who similarly accused Pretti of being a domestic terrorist. 

He charged that ‘people like Noem are squandering’ Trump’s ability to codify policy and open the door to a discussion on immigration reform — something both sides of the aisle have desired for some time. 

‘I don’t know if it’s lost yet, but if it is an opportunity lost, I put it squarely on the shoulders of people like Noem and Stephen Miller,’ Tillis said. ‘Those two people told the president, before they even had any incident report whatsoever, that the person who died was a terrorist. I mean, that is amateur hour at its worst.’

When asked about Noem’s choice to label Pretti as a domestic terrorist, Murkowski said that the DHS head has an ‘obligation to control these situations that are under her jurisdiction, and she has not done so.’ 

Murkowski contended that accountability in the situation goes all the way to the top rung of leadership. 

‘I think you have a secretary right now who needs to be accountable to to the chaos and some of the tragedy that we have seen,’ Murkowski said. 

And Tillis, when asked if Noem should be removed from her position, said ‘100%,’ but stopped short of supporting impeachment. 

‘I’m not going to get into impeachment,’ Tillis said. ‘I think it should be a management decision. She needs to go.’

Fox News Digital reached out to DHS.

A Minnesota fraud scandal is a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for how easily swindles can seep into government systems — including election administration — Republican election attorney Justin Riemer told Fox News Digital. 

‘What you’ve seen happen in Minnesota and now similar fraudulent schemes in other states, this should be very much a canary in the coal mine for other governmental processes,’ Riemer told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview in January. ‘Which would include our voter registration and election processes. And it’s not somehow immune to the type of corruption that we’ve seen in Minnesota and in other places.’

Riemer leads Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), a legal nonprofit that fights court efforts from a ‘well-funded network of activists’ working to ‘undermine elections and democracy.’ He previewed that RITE is readying an investigation into Minnesota’s election system to see if it has potentially faced fraud similar to the sweeping multiyear, COVID-19-era schemes currently under scrutiny. 

Riemer framed Minnesota as an early test case for broader concerns he believes are building ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, particularly around noncitizen registration and voting safeguards. 

‘They’ve definitely opened up opportunities for noncitizens to register. And honestly, there’s times where noncitizens are being unwittingly registered,’ Riemer said, before pointing to an instance that unfolded in 2025 in the Last Frontier State — Alaska. 

 ‘It’s happened in Alaska, actually, where you have two noncitizens who, by no fault of their own, were registered through some sloppy state automatic voter registration process, which essentially sucks in anyone that goes to the DMV into the registration system without any sort of voluntary registration on the part of the noncitizen,’ he said. 

The election attorney argued that the fastest-moving battles are increasingly being fought in court — including disputes over voter roll maintenance, documentary proof of citizenship requirements and ballot deadlines.

‘Look at what the Supreme Court is reviewing right now,’ Riemer said, pointing to litigation challenging whether states can accept ballots that arrive after Election Day. He also cited ongoing legal fights involving state efforts to remove noncitizens from voter rolls and require documentary proof of citizenship.

‘There are also various cases winding their way through the courts on state efforts to remove noncitizens and to require documentary proof of citizenship,’ he continued. ‘So I think a lot of the action you’re going to see is going to be in the courts.’

RITE says its mission is to defend state election laws in court and prevent what it calls efforts to dilute the votes of eligible citizens.

Riemer told Fox Digital that Democratic-aligned legal groups are a major force opposing stricter election rules, describing them as heavily funded and aggressive in litigation.

‘The boogeyman is the left-wing lawyers and interest groups that are funded by basically unlimited amounts of money that sue a state for doing anything that increases the integrity of their elections,’ he said. ‘They claim that some of these laws disenfranchise or suppress the vote. But they have a very hard time proving that in court. But I would point to the left-wing lawyers and to the donors who fund them with essentially unlimited amounts of money to file ridiculous and frivolous lawsuits.’

RITE points to recent court wins it says strengthened election safeguards, including a federal ruling in Maryland requiring public access to certain voter-roll maintenance records under the National Voter Registration Act. The group also assisted in cases in Colorado and Pennsylvania that preserved mail-ballot authentication requirements, including signature verification and envelope-signature and dating rules.

‘RITE is out there fighting to stop these things from happening,’ he said. ‘We’re out there fighting in the courts to try and make sure that states, especially those who are unwilling, are being forced to perform more checks at the front end, because the registration process is really where it all begins. And states need to be doing more than they are.’ 

On the national level, President Donald Trump’s administration has made it easier for states to verify voter eligibility, notching some wins in the Republicans’ election integrity battle ahead of the midterms. 

‘The Trump administration has really emphasized election integrity as a priority,’ he said. ‘And one of the big things I would point to is what they have done to allow states to verify the citizenship of those who are registering to vote. They’ve opened up databases at the Department of Homeland Security that state election officials can use to determine whether or not voters on their registration lists are actually citizens or otherwise eligible to vote. That’s been key.’ 

The Minnesota fraud case unfolding in the Twin Cities has continued since December 2025, when it hit the nation’s radar in earnest that officials were uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars in state-administered funds allegedly lost to fraud that could exceed $9 billion. 

The investigations have been underscored by federal immigration law enforcement presence in the Twin Cities, which has led to violent protests and two fatal shootings of Americans by federal police officials. 

The White House appears to be rejecting Democrats’ demands in the burgeoning government funding fight, as the chances of a partial shutdown grow larger by the day.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is threatening that Democrats will vote against the massive federal spending bill set to get a vote this week unless funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is stripped out and renegotiated.

Republicans have already signaled they’re not inclined to do so, which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reaffirmed during her Monday afternoon press conference.

Leavitt also pointed out that all the bills wrapped into the massive spending package are the product of bipartisan negotiations between the House and Senate — meaning Democrats already had a say in the legislation they are now rejecting.

‘At this point, the White House supports the bipartisan work that was done to advance the bipartisan appropriations package, and we want to see that passed,’ President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman said. 

‘Policy discussions on immigration in Minnesota are happening. Look, the president is leading those discussions, as evidenced by his correspondence with Governor Walz this morning. But that should not be at the expense of government funding for the American people.’

Democrats are coming out against the DHS funding bill en masse in the wake of another deadly federal law enforcement-involved shooting in Minneapolis. A Border Patrol agent shot Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked with veterans at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, during a wider protest against Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city.

Both Republicans and Democrats have called for investigations into the fatal encounter, but only Democrats are threatening to put federal funding at risk.

Leavitt pointed out that the DHS funding portion would also allocate dollars to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), not just the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spending that Democrats object to.

‘We are in the midst of the storm that took place over the weekend, and many Americans are still being impacted by that. So we absolutely do not want to see that funding lapse,’ she said. ‘We want the Senate to move forward with passing the bipartisan appropriations package that was negotiated on a bipartisan basis.’

The legislation negotiated between Republicans and Democrats already includes guardrails for ICE, including mandating body-worn cameras and more training on public engagement and de-escalation.

But Pretti’s killing and DHS’s handling of it infuriated Democrats — at least several of whom will be needed to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to advance the legislation.

Senate Republicans had wanted to pass the package as early as Thursday and send it to Trump’s desk just before the Jan. 30 shutdown deadline.

Senate Democrats held a private, caucus-wide call on the matter on Sunday, after which a source familiar told Fox News Digital that Schumer’s plan was to reject any DHS bill without several reforms, but that the broader, five-bill funding package could move ahead. 

‘Basically, DHS is the problem and should be split from the package,’ they said.

But with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., taking the first procedural step to set up this week’s vote on the larger package on Monday, Democrats’ prospects of strong-arming the GOP are thin.

Even if Senate Democrats did prevail, it’s virtually guaranteed that Congress would miss the Friday shutdown deadline at this point.

Any changes to the spending package would require it to return to the House to be considered again, despite it passing the lower chamber last week.

But a House GOP leadership source told Fox News Digital of that prospect on Saturday, ‘We passed all 12 bills over to the Senate, and they still have six in their possession that they need to pass to the president. We have no plan to come back next week.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer’s office for a response.

President Donald Trump said Iran appears to be looking to negotiate with the U.S. amid a growing military buildup in the Middle East.

In a Monday interview with Axios, Trump suggested that Tehran had reached out on ‘numerous occasions’ and ‘want[s] to make a deal.’

‘They want to make a deal. I know so. They called on numerous occasions. They want to talk,’ the president told the outlet.

According to U.S. officials, also cited by Axios, any potential agreement would need Tehran to remove all enriched uranium, cap its long-range missile stockpile, a change in support for regional proxy forces, and cease independent uranium enrichment, terms Iranian leaders have not agreed to.

Trump also described the situation with Iran as ‘in flux,’ and pointed to the arrival of what he called ‘a big armada next to Iran. Bigger than Venezuela,’ referencing the recent deployment of U.S. naval assets.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier entered CENTCOM waters in the Indian Ocean on Monday amid increasing threats from Iran, a senior U.S. official said.

Trump had told reporters Jan. 21, ‘We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens. We have a big force going towards Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely.’

The U.S. military buildup comes amid widespread unrest inside Iran following protests that began Dec. 28.

According to a recent report from Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the confirmed death toll from the protests has reached 5,848, with an additional 17,091 deaths under investigation.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been sheltering in a fortified underground facility, according to Iran International.

Trump is expected to hold further consultations this week, Axios said, before adding that White House officials said an attack is still on the table.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.