Shumita Basu

Sahil Kapoor is a senior national politics reporter at NBC News.

It's not only a question of time, though.

Republicans have real reservations about some of the conditions Democrats are pitching, including the ban on masks for ICE agents.

And Republicans have demands of their own.

Some members are calling for a crackdown on sanctuary cities in this legislation, which would pave the way toward penalizing local law enforcement who refuse to turn over people believed to be in the country illegally to federal law enforcement.

If no deal is reached, Kapoor said that it's not totally clear if DHS would be funded immediately.

As Congress enters intense negotiations in Minnesota, Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced they would be reducing the presence in the state by 700 officers.

While Democrats point out that still leaves 2,300 on the ground.

It has been the harshest Ukrainian winter for a decade, made worse by some of the biggest Russian attacks so far this year.

As the temperature plunged to freezing this week, Russian military targeted energy infrastructure and residential buildings, knocking out power and putting people out on the streets.

One European foreign minister has called it a war crime.

After an informal week-long ceasefire on attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine says Russian forces struck at power plants again on Tuesday, leaving more than 1,000 apartment buildings in Kyiv without heat.

The attacks come as Ukraine, Russia and the U.S.

met for peace talks yesterday, the first face-to-face meeting for months.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who recently declared a national energy emergency amid the strikes and the cold, has said he believes Russia's attacks are a strategy to force ordinary Ukrainians to accept an unfavorable deal.

Veronika Melkozerova is a reporter with Politico Europe who spoke to us from a dark apartment in Kyiv.

Mel Kozyrova wrote a piece recently that describes the steps she and other Ukrainians are taking to survive the winter.

She told us part of her routine these days includes walking up and down from her apartment on the 14th floor to retrieve liters of water and deliver them to her 80-year-old grandmother.

Some Ukrainians have resorted to taking shelter in malls or emergency tents for access to electricity.

Mel Kozyrova said how disheartening it was that Russia's war in Ukraine doesn't make headlines as it once did.