Bondi Refuses to Answer One Easy Question on Trump Deploying Troops

During a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi chose to verbally attack Senator Dick Durbin rather than answer his basic question regarding the legal justification for sending the military into U.S. cities.

“Were you consulted by the White House before they deployed National Guard troops to cities in the United States?” Durbin asked.

“I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House,” Bondi responded.

“You won’t even say whether you talked to the White House about this?”

“I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House with you,” Bondi repeated.

“I noticed that,” Durbin replied. “What’s the secret? Why do you wanna keep this secret so the American people don’t know the rationale behind the deployment of National Guard troops in my state? The word is, and I think it’s been confirmed by the White House, they are going to transfer Texas National Guard units to the state of Illinois. What’s the rationale for that?”

This set Bondi off.

“Yeah, chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid, they’re out there working to protect you. I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” Bondi said, staring down Durbin. “And currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”

Durbin was unphased.

“I’ve been on this committee for more than 20 years. That’s the kind of testimony you expect from this administration,” he said. “A simple question as to whether or not they had a legal rationale for deploying National Guard troops becomes grounds for a personal attack. I think it’s a legitimate question, it’s my responsibility. She refuses to answer as to whether she had any conversation with the White House about deploying national troops to my state. That’s an indication, I’m afraid, [of] where we are politically in this place.”

The fact that the attorney general can not give a basic justification for the president’s decision to flood American streets with the military suggests either her own incompetence or complicity, likely both.

“We’re here to make America safe,” Bondi later said to Durbin. “Whether or not you want us to.”

In an awkward end to his Fox News appearance on Monday night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was shown a video of him being ridiculed by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday held an hour-long livestream on Instagram, during which she at one point noted the political effectiveness of mocking Republican villains like Miller, the architect behind Donald Trump’s barbaric mass deportation campaign.

“Laugh at them,” she urged her viewers. “Stephen Miller is a clown. I’ve never seen that guy in real life, but he looks like he’s like 4’10”, and he looks like he is angry about the fact that he’s 4’10”, and he looks like he is so mad that he is 4’10” that he’s taking that anger out at any other population possible.”

Mockery, AOC said, is “one of the most powerful cultural things that you can do” to “dismantle” a movement like MAGA that is “predicated on the puffery of insecure masculinity.”

The following evening, Fox News host Laura Ingraham decided to show the clip to the subject of the congresswoman’s derision in a remote interview.

Setting up Miller for a chance to respond, Ingraham made fun of Ocasio-Cortez for wearing a sweatshirt during the livestream: “I wish I had a hoodie on. I mean, are we trying to play sorority sister as elected official?”

Stephen Miller laughed along, before offering what he must have thought was a witty riposte: “Well, we knew that her brain didn’t work. Now we know their eyes don’t work. So—” he trailed off, awkwardly chuckling. “The, I mean she is just, she is a mess, right? What a train wreck. What a train wreck. It’s great, it’s great—”

Cutting in, Ingraham homed in again on Ocasio-Cortez’s sweatshirt. “You should just wear a hoodie from now on and respond to her in a hoodie,” she joked. The host then tried to end the segment, thanking Miller, but was interrupted by her guest, whom she prompted to “go ahead” and “wrap it up.”

“I think the important point,” Miller added, “is that every time she’s on TV, Republican approval ratings go up. Democratic approval ratings go down. That lady is a walking nightmare.”

The Fox host assured her viewers—and perhaps Miller himself—that, in person, he appears to be “about 5’10”, 11.”” Five-foot-10-inches, the White House deputy chief of staff confirmed for the record.

Ocasio-Cortez was delighted that Miller had seen the clip. “I cannot believe they aired this and made him listen to it live,” she wrote on X with a crying-laughing emoji. “I am crying.”

Pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell is apparently back on the table, per the president.

The Supreme Court tossed out the convicted sex trafficker’s appeal request Monday, unanimously declining to hear Maxwell’s attempt to reverse her 20-year prison sentence for aiding Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump, however, is still willing to hear her out.

During an Oval Office presser Monday afternoon, Trump outright pretended not to know who Maxwell was, claiming he hadn’t heard her name in a long time while simultaneously insinuating his administration would consider clemency for her.

“Her only chance for getting out of prison is a pardon from you. Is that something—” started CNN’s Kaitlin Collins before Trump interrupted to ask who was being discussed. “Ghislaine Maxwell,” Collins clarified.

“You know, I haven’t heard the name in so long,” Trump said. “I can say this: that I’d have to take a look at it. I’d have to take a look.”

“Did they reject that?” he asked, referring to the Supreme Court decision.

“She wanted to appeal her conviction and they said they were not going to hear her,” Collins said.

“I see, well, I’ll take a look at it. I will speak to the DOJ. I wouldn’t consider it or  not consider it, I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said.

“Why would she be a candidate for clemency, sir?” pressed Collins.

“I don’t know, I mean I’d have to speak to the DOJ,” Trump said.

“But she was convicted of child sex trafficking,” Collins said.

“Yeah, I mean, I’d have to take a look at it,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was even asking for it, frankly.”

But that last detail would mean the president has an incredibly short memory. Trump not only acknowledged in July that Maxwell was seeking a pardon, but emphasized at the time that he was technically “allowed” to give her one. 

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now.

Trump was photographed with Maxwell several times over his long friendship with Epstein: they partied together, attended fashion shows together, and went “out on the town” together, according to a 1997 postcard.

“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach,” Trump told reporters in 2020, when the charges against Maxwell were first announced. “I just wish her well, frankly.”

In an attempt to quell MAGA’s ravenous demand for progress on the Epstein files, the Justice Department chose to conduct an interview with Maxwell in July regarding details of Epstein’s potential associates. At the time, questions abounded about why the DOJ would give Maxwell a second chance, and why her answers would differ from her first go around with law enforcement. 

It was also unclear why the Trump administration would want to procure another list of Epstein’s associates, particularly when they already had (but refused to release) files pertaining to his investigation.

Regardless, the information exchange resulted in a very convenient transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”

President Donald Trump called Portland a war zone last week, and now state Republicans are trying to deliver one—by sharing fake photos of a fake riot.

The official social media accounts of the Oregon Republican Party shared an image Sunday showing a crowd of protesters looking at a plume of red smoke from a flare, with a line of riot gear-clad police officers standing in the midst of the cloud, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

“President Trump on Sunday deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon after a judge ruled that the Oregon National Guard could not be deployed to keep federal facilities and personnel in Portland safe,” the accounts captioned the photograph on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

But the images posted by Republicans didn’t show Portland at all, according to The Guardian.

The image of shield-carrying police officers was from Getty Images, showing “South American riot police” in 2008. Their shields clearly read “Policia,” which is Spanish or Portuguese. Other images taken by the same photographer around the same time indicate that these police were in Ecuador.

Similarly, the protesters aren’t from a wartorn Portland, either. That photograph can be found on the free image website Pexels and shows “anonymous people standing on street among smoke during protests at night” in August 2017.

When a Guardian reporter pointed this out on X, the Oregon GOP account replied: “We’re not reporters, just bad memers”—a shocking abdication of accountability for spreading blatant disinformation. The original posts, and the account’s reply have since been removed.

If the situation in Portland were really so dire, why would Republicans have to manufacture images of a city “under siege from attack by Antifa,” as the president claims? It seems that if the city were as “war-ravaged” as Trump says, then Republicans could just go outside and snap a photo.

Public officials have pushed back on the president’s wild characterization of Portland as a hotbed of violent clashes. Actual reporting of the protests outside of Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facility details generally small daily protests, with a larger demonstration occurring over the weekend, that law enforcement fired at using tear gas and rubber bullets.

A draft White House memo, reported by Axios Tuesday, lays out a plan to stiff federal workers on furlough during the ongoing government shutdown.

The memo reinterprets the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, or GEFTA, a federal law signed into law by Donald Trump in 2019, amid the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

GEFTA is typically interpreted as guaranteeing furloughed government workers automatic backpay.

But Axios’s Marc Caputo reports that the memo, from the Office of Management and Budget, “argues that GEFTA has been misconstrued or, in the words of one source, is ‘deficient,’” in light of an amendment made nine days after it was signed into law.

The amended law includes language providing that furloughed employees will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the [shutdown].”

As interpreted by the White House, this means backpay is not automatic, but requires explicit approval by Congress. As Semafor reporter Dave Weigel put it, the White House believes you can simply “not appropriate” the backpay, “or appropriate it and impound it.”

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does,” a senior White House official told Axios. “Our view is: No, it doesn’t.”

Legal experts told Axios that interpretation is misguided. “The law here is quite clear,” said Sam Berger, senior fellow at the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities. “The caveat is, if you follow the law.”

Notably, the OMB memo contradicts shutdown guidance issued by Office of Personnel Management last month.

The guidance, which was updated on September 28, says that employees who are furloughed will get paid. “After the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods,” the document states. “Retroactive pay will be provided on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

The plan comes as the OMB under Russell Vought seizes on the shutdown to try to cull the federal workforce and fulfill Trump’s threat to punish Democrats by “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Democrats have gained an unlikely ally in their fight to extend expiring Affordable Care Act funding: MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I was not in Congress when all this Obamacare, ‘Affordable Care Act’ bullshit started. I got here in 2021. As a matter of fact, the ACA made health insurance UNAFFORDABLE for my family after it was passed, with skyrocketing premiums higher than our house payment. Let’s just say as nicely as possible, I’m not a fan,” Greene wrote on Monday night. “But I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.”

“And I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year. Also, I think health insurance and all insurance is a scam, just be clear!” Greene continued. “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”

It isn’t just Greene’s adult children who will be slammed by raising premium costs if tax credits aren’t extended. Millions of Americans will have to fork over thousands of additional dollars to make sure they can get basic, often life-saving care in this country if the Obamacare subsidies expire. Greene joins Representative Thomas Massie as the highest profile GOPers to criticize the shutdown, as Massie called the shutdown a distraction to avoid voting on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Our country sent $30 billion to Israel in 2024 alone killing countless innocent children and sent HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS to Ukraine in the past few years,” Greene added in her statement Monday. “By the way, I voted NO to all of that murder! America has funded the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian, pensions, and Ukrainian businesses during this entire stupid war that America should have nothing to do with.”

“All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people!!! It is absolutely shameful, disgusting, and traitorous, that our laws and policies screw the American people so much that the government is shut down right now fighting over basic issues like this … You don’t HATE your government enough.”

This kind of talk from Greene should make Democrats feel more confident in holding out on the shutdown while allowing Republicans to gradually tear each other apart from within.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been desperate to cast blame for the government shutdown onto Democrats, but one House Republican is calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Representative Thomas Massie claimed on X that the real reason Congress isn’t in session is because Johnson hopes to fend off a floor vote to release the government’s complete files on Jeffrey Epstein.

“The government is shutdown, but the House refuses to go back in session. Why are we in recess? Because the day we go back into session, I have 218 votes for the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Massie wrote on X Sunday afternoon, adding that Johnson “doesn’t want that to be the news.”

The following day, the Kentucky Republican responded to Johnson’s comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where the speaker claimed that he was in favor of “maximum disclosure” of the so-called Epstein files. “I want every page of this out,” Johnson said Monday morning, while insisting that Trump couldn’t possibly be implicated by the materials.

But Massie wasn’t convinced. “Contrary to what he says, @SpeakerJohnson is doing everything he can, including delaying the swearing in of the most recently elected member of Congress and spreading misinformation about the legislation, to block a vote in Congress on legislation to release the Epstein files,” he wrote Monday afternoon.

As the shutdown deadline loomed last week, Johnson canceled votes in order to pressure Senate Democrats into acceding to a Republican stopgap funding measure, and postponed the swearing-in of Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is poised to provide the deciding signature on Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s petition for a vote. (Notably, the Louisiana Republican has previously sworn in special election winners during pro forma sessions, but he has refused to do so with Grijalva.)

Other Republicans who signed Massie’s petition didn’t seem quite on the same page as their contrarian counterpart. Last week, Representative Nancy Mace said that she’d refuse to take her paycheck during the so-called “Schumer Shutdown,” while Representative Lauren Boebert said the whole thing was a ploy by Democrats so they’d have something to write in their fundraising emails. Six days into the shutdown, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t seem to have a clue what the stakes of closing the government actually were.

The Trump administration is continuing to pretend as if the January 6 insurrection never happened.

“When in our history have we tolerated unlawful riots and assemblies night after night around FBI buildings, or ATF buildings, or DEA buildings?” Trump adviser Stephen Miller said Monday on CNN, referring to protesters at ICE facilities in Chicago and Portland. “This is the textbook definition of domestic terrorism!”

If Miller’s definition of domestic terrorism is “unlawful riots and assemblies” at government buildings, then the insurrection his boss started absolutely qualifies.

“I kinda remember Trump pardoning a bunch of people for this, many of whom beat up cops and put them in the hospital,” Ron Filipkowski wrote on X. “I think they were yelling something about the Vice President as they stormed the building.”

But the administration that is labeling anything vaguely critical of America as domestic terrorism will never admit that they incited, supported, and pardoned hundreds of domestic terrorists—even as virtually all of it was caught on camera.

“We’re drawing a blank, let us get back to you Stephen,” the House Homeland Security Committee Democrats wrote in response to Miller’s ridiculous question. They attached one of the many images of January 6 insurrectionists breaking into the Capitol Building.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday lashed out at a federal judge and then the press in order to deflect from a question about the Trump administration’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, over the objections of local officials.

Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut temporarily blocked the National Guard’s deployment to Portland. While Donald Trump hysterically claims the city is “under siege from attack by Antifa,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote that the president’s assessment that conditions in the city warrant National Guard deployment is “simply untethered to the facts.”

Given Immergut’s ruling, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Leavitt a straightforward question: “Which local officials in Portland have said that the National Guard is needed there?”

Leavitt dodged the question by attacking Immergut’s ruling. “With all due respect to that judge, I think her opinion is untethered in reality and in the law,” the press secretary said. “The president is using his authority as commander-in-chief, U.S. Code [Section] 12406, which clearly states that the president has the right to call up the National Guard in cases where he deems it’s appropriate.”

The statute to which Leavitt referred does not allow the deployment of the National Guard whenever the president “deems it’s appropriate,” but rather to “repel” an “invasion,” “suppress” a “rebellion,” or execute laws that he is unable to “with the regular forces”—criteria that Immergut ruled were not met in Portland (hence her point about the untetheredness of his decision).

Having received no answer from Leavitt, Collins pressed on: “But no local officials that you can point to that have said we need the National Guard?” she asked, citing her recent interview with Portland Police Chief Bob Day, who told her the federal government’s descriptions of conditions in Portland are “not lining up” with reality.

“I would encourage you as a reporter to go on the ground and to take a look for yourself,” Leavitt said, urging Collins to cover the “anarchy” that purportedly grips the city “night after night.”

Collins again mentioned the insights of local officials, to which Leavitt said, “Yeah, but you’re probably talking to partisan Democrat officials who are opposed to everything this president does.”

Portland’s police chief, of course, is a nonpartisan official.

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.”