Karoline Leavitt Says It’s OK to Target Americans Repped by Democrats

The Trump administration is doubling down on its shutdown ultimatum to Democrats: Surrender to our backward austerity bill, or we’ll rip more funding and resources from the hands of your constituents.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Thursday about Trump’s promise to work with Office of Management and Budget Director (and Project 2025 architect) Russ Vought to ax so-called “Democrat Agencies” in the government. “Is that real?” a Fox News host asked Leavitt. “Or is that a negotiating tactic?”

“Oh it’s very real. And the Democrats should know that they put the White House and the president in this position,” Leavitt replied. “And if they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government. It’s very simple: Pass the clean continuing resolution, and all of this goes away.”

This language reads like a hostage letter, and it essentially is. The Trump administration has already frozen $18 billion in infrastructure projects in New Jersey and New York, and announced cuts to $8 billion in energy funding from 16 blue states as well. The limits of this wanton retribution are unclear, as the Trump administration seems giddy to do real harm to American citizens and communities represented by Democrats who refuse to silently fall in line.

President Donald Trump’s new scheme to transform the federal government into a pharmacy is already raising red flags for legal and health experts.

Earlier this week, Trump announced the launch of TrumpRx, a strangely socialist-sounding service where consumers can procure cheap prescription drugs from the U.S. government—just days before Trump’s 100 percent tariff on pharmaceutical products is set to cause prices to skyrocket. Pfizer has agreed to provide prescription medicine through the purchasing platform at a “significant discount” of on average close to 50 percent, according to a press release from the company.

But not everyone is convinced.

Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told Mandatory that TrumpRx was “more of a gimmick” to make drug companies happy. In reality, the site is likely “not going to help the average person” who purchases medications through their insurance. Even with the discounts, prescriptions could still cost thousands of dollars, likely much higher than a typical insurance co-pay.

The White House did not clarify how exactly prices would be determined, and Pfizer’s press release noted that the “specific terms of the agreement remain confidential.”

It’s not just consumers who would be sold short. Independent pharmacists have voiced concerns that the service could hurt their businesses. And The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board excoriated Trump’s move Wednesday as “political extortion” of drug companies, threatening them with gargantuan tariffs if they failed to cut a deal with his administration.

Eliza Orlins, a career public defender and former candidate for Manhattan district attorney who produces social media news explainers, posted a video Wednesday in which she begged her followers not to enter their personal information into the TrumpRx website. “This is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in 2025—and that’s saying a lot,” she said.

“In order to use the site, you’d have to tell the government exactly what medications you take, what conditions you have, when you refill them,” she explained, noting, “And the White House hasn’t said data they collect, how it will be stored, who gets access, or what happens when the program ends.”

Orlins argued that the discount Trump had promised came at a cost. “That cost is your privacy. Because once you hand over this information, it is theirs forever, and you will never know where it went,” she said.

The Trump administration has a history of playing it fast and loose with Americans’ private information. In August, a whistleblower revealed that DOGE employees had uploaded a copy of a Social Security database onto a cloud server, making the information vulnerable to leaks and hackers. It could also be unwise to let the government know your medical information considering the administration’s attitudes about vaccines and antidepressants.

The copy-and-paste shutdown message broadcast by several executive branch agency chiefs earlier this week affected more parts of the government than previously understood.

Treasury Department employees and workers at the IRS also received near mirror images of the ethics-violating directive, according to an internal email shared with The New Republic.

The email, headed, “Planning for Potential Lapse in Funding,” issued guidance for Treasury Department workers on the eve of the government shutdown, including staff furloughs and continued work plans. But it also overtly blames the shutdown on Democrats, in apparent violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch.

It was signed by the assistant secretary for management at the Treasury, John York, a former policy analyst for the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation.

“President Trump opposes a government shutdown, and strongly supports the enactment of H.R. 5371, which is a clean Continuing Resolution to fund the government through November 21, and already passed the U.S. House of Representatives,” the email reads. “Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands. If Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse.

“A funding lapse will result in certain government activities ceasing due to a lack of appropriated funding,” it continues. “In addition, designated pre-notified employees of this agency would be temporarily furloughed. P.L. 116-1 (which provides for furloughed employees to be paid for the period of furlough at their normal rate of pay once appropriations are restored) would apply.

So far, 1,736 Treasury Department employees have been furloughed, according to The New York Times’ shutdown monitor. Until Congress passes a resolution to continue funding the government, the agency will not issue regulations or guidance. The IRS will continue to operate for the first five business days of the shutdown.

“The agency has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats. Further information about those plans will be distributed should a lapse occur,” the email says.

Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration received a similar message.

Ethics experts have argued that the message could also be in violation of the Hatch Act, which is designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

York was caught in another internal email drama earlier this year when he issued an OPM-related memo from the official “Treasury Secretary” inbox, failing to sign as the assistant secretary for management while apparently filling the shoes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

World leaders laughed at President Donald Trump on Thursday, as Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama mocked Trump for repeatedly mistaking his country with Armenia.

Trump has, time and again, falsely claimed to have brokered peace between Azerbaijan and “Albania,” while attempting to brag about a peace declaration he helped arrange between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Standing beside Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at a summit for European leaders in Denmark, Rama jokingly reprimanded French President Emmanual Macron for failing to congratulate him and Aliyev on their peace deal.

“You should make an apology … to us, because you didn’t congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan,” Rama said dryly, as Macron and Aliyev laughed, per a video of the interaction.

“I’m sorry for that,” said Macron with sarcastic contrition.

“He worked very hard,” Rama said of Trump, smiling, as the French leader gave him a playful pat on the cheek.

Another clip shows Rama continuing the bit: “You are obsessed about Armenia and you didn’t thank Trump for Albania,” he told Macron, before the two embraced.

Last month, Trump made the mix-up on Fox News, as well as during a press conference in England, where the president also struggled to pronounce Azerbaijan, saying, “To think that we settled … uh … Aber … baijan and Albania, as an example.” In August, he similarly told a conservative radio host, “You saw the Aber … baijan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that.”

In a recent speech, Trump was finally able to recall the name of Armenia, but this time erroneously said it had been in conflict with Cambodia, rather than Azerbaijan.

The Trump administration is making colleges and universities promise to stop being “woke” if they want to gain priority access to special federal funding.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the White House released a 10-point memo making “multiple positive benefits,” like “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” contingent upon schools capitulating to Trump in his right-wing culture war. The memo demanded universities institute colorblind admissions, cap international student acceptance at 15 percent, standardize testing requirements, and freeze tuition for the next five years. The memo also orders schools to create a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” that is kinder to the right-wing, and even eliminate entire departments if they “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

The memo was first sent out to Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. None of them have responded publicly yet.

This is an absolute, all-out crackdown on any speech that the Trump administration deems left-wing. Dangling federal funding in the face of schools unless they cave to your demands, while at the same time designating anything vaguely anti-American as “domestic terrorism,” is a recipe for authoritarianism.

“Who decides if the intellectual environment is vigorous and open-ended? This is not something the federal government should be involved in and adjudicating,” American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell told the Journal. “The implications for free speech are horrifying.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that President Donald Trump has become “unhinged” and “unwell” when confronted by a House Democrat on Capitol Hill.

Pennsylvania Representative Madeline Dean approached Johnson off the House floor on Tuesday to sound the alarm about Trump’s erratic behavior ahead of the government shutdown—and the speaker didn’t push back.

“The president is unhinged. He is unwell,” Dean said.

“A lot of folks on your side are too. I don’t control him,” Johnson shrugged.

“Oh my God, please,” Dean scoffed. “That performance in front of the generals?”

“I didn’t see it,” Johnson sighed.

“That is so dangerous. You know, I serve on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations. This is a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing,” Dean warned.

Trump delivered a radical far-right screed at Quantico on Tuesday, begging his audience of top U.S. military brass to clap for him as he directed them to use the U.S. armed forces against immigrants and American citizens.

CNN’s Manu Raju reported on X Tuesday that Dean and Johnson also had argued about Trump’s first post about Hakeem Jeffries, showing the House minority leader wearing a sombrero, with an exaggerated handlebar mustache, while mariachi music played in the background. Trump has since posted a second.

“I think it wasn’t my style,” Johnson admitted about the stunt the New York Democrat had called “racist.”

“Not your style? It’s disgraceful. It’s negative. It’s racist. You should call it out!” Dean hit back.

Dean later told Raju that Johnson had asked rhetorically, “Is that really racist?”

“Is it racist?” Dean exploded in the video. “You put a sombrero on a Black man who’s the leader of the House? You don’t see that as racist? We need you desperately to lead!”

But Johnson has been a steadfast defender of Trump and isn’t likely to fold now. The House speaker spent the following few hours doing interviews on every network being brutally fact-checked for claiming that Democrats had shut down the government because they wanted to lavish undocumented immigrants with free health care.

There was a time on the campaign trail when Donald Trump was trying to distance himself from Project 2025, but that has long since passed.

The president is now openly bragging about having Project 2025 officials in his administration—and carrying out their goals. Trump announced in a Truth Social post Thursday morning that he’d be meeting with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who he boasted was tied to the Christian nationalist agenda—to discuss which “Democrat agencies” would be getting the ax in the coming days.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Several senior Trump administration officials have said that mass layoffs are on the horizon for federal employees, now that Congress has initiated a government shutdown.

In a private call Wednesday with members of the GOP, Vought said that “consequential” layoffs would begin in “a day or two,” reported NOTUS’s Reese Gorman.

Hours before the government shutdown began, over a bipartisan disagreement on funding Trump’s agenda, the president warned that it would be Democrats in executive branch agencies who would face the consequences for the congressional failure—even though it is Republicans who currently control every branch of the federal government.

The White House has so far issued internal agency emails and changed the official White House website to place the blame for the bipartisan shutdown fully on Democrats. That kind of divisive and partisan language not only defies long-standing presidential tradition but is in violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, according to ethics experts. It could also be in potential violation of the Hatch Act, which is designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary completely contradicted the Trump administration’s official story on Jeffrey Epstein during an appearance on a New York Post podcast published Wednesday.

The late notorious sex criminal was “the greatest blackmailer ever,” Howard Lutnick told the Post, after detailing a skin-crawling experience in 2005, when he moved in next to Epstein and was shown the disgraced financier’s “massage room.”

Lutnick expressed his belief that Epstein blackmailed powerful individuals in his social circle by videotaping them during massages: “They get a massage, that’s what his MO was. ‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever, blackmailed people. That’s how he had money.”

The commerce secretary speculated that Epstein used blackmail to secure a controversial 18-month sentence in 2008 (which he notably got in a plea deal negotiated by then–U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who eventually served as labor secretary in Trump’s first term).

“How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade,” Lutnick speculated. “So, my assumption, I have no knowledge, but my assumption is there was a trade for the videos, because there were people on those videos.”

Lutnick’s remarks are at odds with the administration’s official narrative on Epstein. Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel told a Senate committee “there is no credible information” that Epstein trafficked victims “to other individuals.”

In a July memo, the FBI and Justice Department also said their investigation into Epstein yielded “no credible evidence … that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” Nor did they uncover a “client list” or “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

The memo challenged what had become an article of faith among Epstein conspiracy theorists (many of them Trump supporters) and thus ignited a still-simmering scandal for Trump. The rest is history: The president disowned his Epstein-concerned supporters, news reports have revealed additional details about his former relationship with Epstein, and his allies are still fighting against pressure from the public and Congress to release the “Epstein files” in full.

Pro-Israel MAGA conservatives are fuming as the Trump administration offers protections to longtime U.S. ally Qatar in the wake of Israel’s bombing of their capital, Doha, last month. 

“Over the years, the United States and the State of Qatar have been bound together by close cooperation, shared interests, and the close relationship between our armed forces,” the administration said in an executive order. “In recognition of this history, and in light of the continuing threats to the State of Qatar posed by foreign aggression, it is the policy of the United States to guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the State of Qatar against external attack.

“The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” it stated further. 

This set off a very interesting group of people on the online far right. 

“What about assuring our own safety from Qatar?” wrote the raving far-right commentator Laura Loomer. “Every single day, Qatar floods our country with billions of $ of funding for radical left, communist, & Islamist causes on college campuses and major institutions. Qatar also financed Iran before they tried to assassinate Trump.

“Terror-funding Qatar, which has been running an elaborate anti-Israel and pro-Qatar disinformation campaign in the United States, has now succeeded at being the most effective investment in foreign influence history,” said January 6 insurrectionist defense attorney Marina Medvin. “The White House just pledged American lives to protect Qatar.” 

“Our new protectorate, Qatar,” Fox News host (and hard-core Zionist) Mark Levin opined dramatically. “If the leadership of Hamas in Qatar is killed by Israel, are we going to war with Israel?  Wouldn’t it have been better to condition any military defense of Qatar on some basic requirements? For example: Turnover the Hamas leaders; no more funding of terrorists worldwide: no more funding of Marxist-Islamist groups in the United States. This is the bare minimum.”

The United States is showing protection (for whatever reasons Trump has) to an ally that just got unilaterally bombed by Israel, and the initial reaction of these people is fear for Israel instead.

“By the way, there is no similar guarantee for Israel. American troops have never died for Israel,” another right-winger posted on X. “Are you ready to die for Qatar?”

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday refused to explain President Trump’s seeming threat that federal firings during the government shutdown would be based on political affiliation.

A day earlier, CBS’s Weijia Jiang had asked the president why he’d said government employees would have to be let go during a shutdown, given the massive reductions to the federal workforce enacted earlier in the year by his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.”

In response, the president said many people will be laid off, and “they’re going to be Democrats,” leading Jiang on Wednesday—the first day of the shutdown—to ask Vance whether terminations would be ideologically motivated.

“Has the administration asked agencies to target federal workers who they believe to be Democrats in these reductions of forces?” Jiang asked.

Vance denied that the administration is “targeting federal agencies based on politics,” and said federal workers would be fired only if the shutdown “drags on” long enough.

“So what did he mean by, ‘They are going to be Democrats’?” Jiang asked, quoting Trump. Vance, taking the next question, did not answer.

Whether or not possible layoffs will be explicitly politicized, the Trump administration has already used the shutdown as a cudgel against Democrats.

On Wednesday, White House budget director Russell Vought said he was freezing $18 billion earmarked for infrastructure projects in New York—the state represented by both of the top-ranking Democrats in Congress. Shortly after, Vought announced the cancellation of nearly $8 billion in climate projects across 16 states, each of which just happen to be blue states that did not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

In doing so, the budget director was simply following through on Trump’s threat to punish Democrats during the shutdown by “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”