Karoline Leavitt Has Wild Excuse for Trump’s Shutdown Layoffs

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried Monday to blame Democrats for President Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to fire federal workers during the government shutdown.

During a press briefing, Leavitt was asked about Trump’s Sunday comments blaming Democrats for the sweeping layoffs he’s threatened as a result of the government shutdown.

“The president said yesterday that Democrats will be to blame if federal workers lose their jobs. Historically, though, in past shutdowns workers have been furloughed, but they have not been laid off en masse,” said CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “So, wouldn’t that be the president’s call to lay people off?”

“As I’ve said repeatedly, Kaitlan, this conversation about layoffs would not be happening right now if the Democrats did not vote to shut the government down,” Leavitt said.

But no one is forcing Trump to lay off workers: he’s using them as leverage to bring the Democrats to kneel.

Last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote to Congress warning that if lawmakers failed to pass a short-term funding measure through November, then federal agencies would prepare for another round of mass firings, with a focus on eliminating positions where funding has been discontinued or that do not align with Trump’s agenda.

By his own admission, Trump is taking the “unprecedented opportunity” to execute the sweeping cuts to programs and departments that he doesn’t like, as outlined in Project 2025, amid other large-scale firings that were already underway. So, Leavitt’s attempt to blame Democrats for Trump’s retaliatory decision has about as much logic as saying, “Look what you made me do.”

And the president doesn’t seem to be losing any sleep over his massive layoffs. In the trough of (often racist) AI slop Trump posted last week mocking Democrats for the shutdown, he cheerleaded the efforts of his “grim reaper” OMB Director Russell Vought. Leavitt struggled at the time to explain how the president was taking the shutdown seriously, while arguing that he was allowed “to have a little fun every now and then.”

Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn Sunday, Trump termed his efforts to reduce the size of the federal work force as “Democrat layoffs.”

“They’re Democrat layoffs. They’re causing it. We’re ready to go back,” Trump said, adding “It’s up to them. Anybody laid off—that’s because of the Democrats.”

An Illinois police chief has accused ICE agents of making fake 911 calls to local police.

Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills told CBS News that multiple officers responded to a call about someone trying to break into the gate of an ICE facility on Thursday. When they arrived, they just saw a CBS News cameraman and security guard taking pictures.

“It’s disturbing. It’s ridiculous,” Mills said.

“It sure doesn’t look like anyone’s forcing anything in any fence over here,” a Broadview officer said in bodycam footage obtained by CBS News.

According to an incident report, it was an ICE agent that made the call.

This is the very same ICE facility where masked agents shot a pepper ball inside CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei’s car completely unprompted. Mills said that what happened to Rezaei was “horrific” and said that he will be reviewing all 911 calls made from the detention center.

“We’re going to look at maybe reaching out to Cook County State’s Attorney for subpoenas, “ said Mills, who has vowed to get the name of every officer involved in the incident. “It’s actually a violation of law. It would be classified under disorderly conduct, filing a false official report.”

If what Mills says about the fake 911 calls is true, this would be yet another instance of ICE operating essentially as a private gestapo, finding time to tear-gas innocent people (and local officers), using extreme force, and making prank calls to police departments that already have their hands full.

This comes as Illinois and the city of Chicago on Monday sued the Trump administration over its decision to send hundreds of National Guardsmen into their city streets.

After a spate of appalling federal immigration operations in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday signed an executive order to curb abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the city—which has already incensed the White House.

The executive order establishes “ICE-free zones,” limiting ICE agents from using “city property and unwilling private businesses” as “staging grounds” for their raids, Johnson said at a press conference.

Under the order, private businesses can choose to display signage indicating that ICE cannot enter without a warrant—thereby designating “their property as part of a city-wide network of community spaces that stand together in affirming the safety, dignity, and belonging of all of our residents,” the mayor said.

Johnson touted the order for building “a broad civic shield that limits the reach of harmful enforcement practices. It strengthens neighborhood solidarity and it reaffirms Chicago’s role as a welcoming city.”

According to the mayor, while federal agents in violation of the order would not be arrested by Chicago police, the city will take the federal government to court if necessary.

“Our school parking lots are not for ICE to load their weapons,” Johnson said. “They are for Chicagoans who drop their kids off to learn. Our libraries are not for ICE to prepare for a raid. They’re for Chicagoans to read and relax. Our parks are not for ICE to set up checkpoints. They are for Chicagoans to play and enjoy.”

Donald Trump’s rapid-response White House X account decried the move. “This is SICK,” said the president’s team, accusing Johnson of “aiding and abetting criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, traffickers, and gang bangers.”

The order came after a series of high-profile instances of brutality by federal immigration agents in the city.

Last week, for example, some 300 agents conducted a massive raid on an apartment in the middle of the night, reportedly rappelling in from helicopters, deploying flash bangs, and tearing tenants—including naked children—from their units. Several tenants, including U.S. citizens, said they were zip-tied and held for hours. In a separate incident, agents detained a local elected official for peacefully inquiring about the due process rights of a detainee being treated in a hospital.

How can House Speaker Mike Johnson say this with a straight face?

Speaking at a press conference Monday, Johnson claimed that Democrats had created a “red herring” by choosing to “pick a fight” over health care.

“Let me look right into the camera and tell you very clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about health care,” the Louisiana Republican said. “Republicans are the party working around the clock everyday to fix health care. We’re not, this is not talking points for us: We’ve done it.”

Johnson claimed that a “big part” of President Donald Trump’s behemoth budget bill, which passed in July, would “fix health care.”

“The quality of care needs to rise. We need more access for more people, and we have lots of ideas to do that. But that issue is for debate in the next three months, it always was. We have members working on that,” Johnson said.

Last week, the federal government came to a partial standstill over a Democratic proposal to extend tax credits for the Affordable Care Act that were set to expire at the end of the year. An estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their insurance by 2034 if ACA funding expires at the end 2025, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Johnson and other Republicans have run themselves ragged claiming that extending the subsidies would grant undocumented immigrants access to federal funds—which they are not eligible for, and never have been.

In reality, the Republican plan to “fix health care” would leave millions of Americans without it. The GOP-crafted spending bill passed in July is projected to cut $1.1 trillion from the Medicaid and ACA marketplace by 2034, as well as impose higher work requirements for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid, increase the rate of Medicaid redeterminations, and eliminate eligibility for lawfully present immigrants such as asylum seekers and refugees. The CBO predicted that Trump’s “big beautiful bill” will leave an estimated 10 million more people without health insurance in 2034.

Last week, Johnson struggled to downplay just how much glee Trump was taking in preparing sweeping cuts to the federal workforce amid the government shutdown.

Stephen Miller’s own cousin called the White House deputy chief of staff “evil” and a disgrace to his family.

“I am living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil,” Alisa Kasmer, Miller’s cousin, wrote in a July Facebook post that resurfaced over the weekend.

Written in the weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement received a slush fund in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending plan—and as ICE raids ramped up against immigrants in Los Angeles, where Kasmer lives—her post lamented how the United States under Trump has directed its vast resources against “the hardest workers, the most vulnerable, the ones who carry this country on their backs.”

“This is not by accident,” Kasmer wrote, “but by design. Your design, Stephen.”

Kasmer, who used to babysit Miller, described now being estranged from her cousin, as she refuses to “knowingly let evil into my life.”

Immigrant communities in the entire country are “terrorized by the cruelty you have brought upon us all,” she told her cousin.

People “always” ask “what happened” to Miller, Kasmer noted. “I can only surmise it was a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition.”

Kasmer also expressed regret for having not intervened in her cousin’s political development. She and her sister would have done so, she said, if they had seen the “horrific videos of [Miller] in high school,” she wrote. (Clips from Miller’s high school days show him telling classmates that “torture is a celebration of life and human dignity,” and decrying “being told to pick up my trash when we have janitors.”)

Miller, Kasmer added, is guilty of betraying his background—both because “immigrants were a part of your upbringing” and because “we were raised Jewish.”

“We celebrated holidays each year with the reminder to stand up and say ‘never again,’” she wrote, referencing the lessons of the Holocaust. “But what you are doing breaks that sacred promise. It breaks everything we were taught. How can you do to others what has been done to us? How can you wake up each day and repeat the cruelty that our people barely escaped from?”

This isn’t the first time one of Miller’s family members has renounced him. During the first Trump administration, in which Miller spearheaded the president’s “Muslim ban” and family separations, his uncle David Glosser penned an editorial for Politico, recounting their family’s immigration history and describing how Miller had “become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”

“Dozens of family members “encouraged me to push forward with this,” Glosser said.

The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago sued the Trump administration on Monday over its decision to send hundreds of National Guardsmen into the streets of Chicago.

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor. To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril,” the suit reads.

The lawsuit—filed against President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Homeland Security Secretary Kritsi Noem—comes just two days after Trump announced he authorized 300 members of the Illinois National Guard to deploy to Chicago, a move Illinois Governor JB Pritzker likened to an “invasion.” An Oregon judge on Sunday blocked Trump’s National Guard deployment to Portland.

The Illinois lawsuit will be overseen by Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee.

“Trump and Noem have sent a surge of SWAT-tactic trained federal agents to Illinois to use unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement; federal agents have repeatedly shot chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers outside the Broadview facility; and dozens of masked, armed federal agents have paraded through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control,” the suit reads. “There is no legal or factual justification for Defendants’ Federalization Order.”

Trump himself has promised to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military. These legal challenges from governors may be the strongest anti-authoritarian tactic Democrats have right now, as both California and Oregon have put forth similar lawsuits.

This story has been updated.

Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen called out political commentator Van Jones for his grotesque “dead Gaza baby” joke on Real Time with Bill Maher.

“This is not about critical race theory on college campuses, this is about Iran,” Jones said while claiming that information about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is all just Iranian propaganda. “Iran and Qatar have come up with a disinformation campaign that they are running through TikTok and Instagram that is massive. If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see is ‘dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby—Diddy—dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.... That’s not DEI, that is a geopolitical adversary that is deliberately trying to divide the West against itself.”

The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

Jones was widely rebuked, perhaps most pointedly by Van Hollen.

“I’m glad Van Jones apologized for his sick joking about dead kids in Gaza. But the problem goes deeper: he spread Netanyahu propaganda that the mass killings of civilians in Gaza—including 20K+ kids—is Iranian fake news,” he wrote on X. “It’s not the students and young people who are fooled. It’s Van Jones.”

Calling Palestinians using social media to broadcast their own genocide a disinformation campaign is stupid and disgusting, especially given how hard it is to share that information in the first place. Jones later offered a half-hearted apology, but the damage was done.

“I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Gaza videos in the last 2 years, including content filmed by our brave teams inside the strip, and can confirm that the ‘dead Gaza baby’ images are quite real, not the product of a ‘disinformation campaign’ and that there is nothing funny about them,” NBC News’s Hala Gorani said.

“Turning ‘dead Gaza baby’ into a punchline is such an evil choice that I’m struggling to even engage with the outrageous lie that we only care about Gazan deaths because of an Iranian social media campaign,” Briahna Joy Gray chimed in. ​​

Others pointed to Jones’s history of leftist performance—making a 2003 pro-Palestinian rap album, starting a Maoist, Marxist-Leninist collective in San Francisco in the 90s—to show how spineless his current rhetoric is.

As for Van Hollen, his condemnation of Jones is unfortunately one of very few instances of U.S. leadership on either side showing any ounce of courage in speaking up against Israel’s genocide. And while words won’t make Israel’s bombs stop dropping on Gaza, Van Hollen shows that the bright line on fealty to Israel is deteriorating.

President Donald Trump lashed out at Democrats during a wildly political speech that made the U.S. Navy’s 250th anniversary all about him.

Speaking to a massive crowd at the Norfolk Naval base Sunday, Trump seemed to forget he wasn’t on the campaign trail anymore and veered off into attacks against his opposition.

Trump warned that, “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats.”

“They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens that pour into the country. And you know, I have a bigger heart than they do, but the problem is when you do that, they come in by the millions. Everybody wants that, so you can’t do it,” Trump said, before bragging about how much money he’d poured into the armed forces.

It almost goes without saying, but Trump’s highly political comments are out of step with the U.S. military’s tradition of nonpartisanship. And for the second time in a week, the president seemed intent on turning his armed forces against half of the country.

Last week, when speaking to a gathering of top U.S. military brass, Trump delivered a diatribe against the Democrats, which was met mostly by silence. He ranted that the United States was “under invasion from within.”

Now, calling the Democrats a “gnat” to be swatted away is just the latest in a long line of dehumanizing rhetoric from the president. He’s also called his opponents “vermin,” and “the enemy within,” and recently referred to Democrats as “The Party Of Hate, Evil, And Satan.” All while blaming the rhetoric of the left for a spate of political violence.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, who was hoping the court would reverse her convictions for her role in helping the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein abuse young girls.

Maxwell’s convictions and 20-year criminal sentence remain in place, after the Supreme Court declined certiorari, meaning fewer than four of the nine justices voted for the Supreme Court to review her case. The decision came with no dissent or explanation.

Maxwell and her legal team had argued that she should have been protected from federal prosecution because a 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida shielded his “potential co-conspirators” from charges.

“We’re, of course, deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s case,” said Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus. “But this fight isn’t over. Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done.”

In July, Markus requested that Maxwell receive clemency from President Donald Trump.

This story has been updated.