Mike Johnson Seems Uncomfy With Trump’s New Shutdown Plan for Backpay

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he hopes federal workers receive their back pay, making it seem possible that they won’t—even though he knows federal law requires that they be compensated.

Speaking on the House floor, the Louisiana Republican suggested that there was new analysis that showed that federal workers furloughed during the government shutdown might not be entitled to back pay.

“I hope that the furloughed workers receive back pay, of course,” Johnson said immediately after, claiming that was why he and President Donald Trump had begged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to spare federal workers from a government shutdown.

“We don’t want this to happen,” Johnson said.

But as Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer, noted on X, this was a blatantly dishonest gambit—and Johnson knew it. As Johnson’s own website states: “Under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening.”

It seems that Trump’s administration may be preparing to withhold back pay from federal workers in the president’s latest ploy to force Democrats to abandon their fight for health care subsidies.

Axios reported Tuesday that a draft of a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget claimed that federal workers may not be entitled to just compensation after the government reopens, under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act Trump signed during a previous shutdown in 2019.

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,” one senior White House official told Axios. OPM’s draft memo claimed that the law had been previously misconstrued to ensure back pay to furloughed workers.

The White House claimed that an amendment to the law assuring workers will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse” refers to when federal employees will be specifically appropriated funds by Congress, and not how it has always been understood as the completion of the shutdown. A joint resolution that accompanied the 2019 amendment said that the government would pay “obligations incurred.”

It seems OMB is preparing to move forward with holding federal employees’ pay hostage. Government Executive reported that OMB had quietly deleted a line from a document about Frequently Asked Questions During a Lapse in Appropriations that referred to the GEFTA rule that “employees will be paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

But OPM’s special instructions for agencies affected by a lapse in appropriations starting October 1, 2025, stated just the opposite. “The appropriate retroactive pay for periods of furlough and excepted work will be provided after the lapse ends, as required by law,” the instructions say.

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who helped write the 2019 back-pay measure, told Government Executive the meaning of the statute was clear.

“The law is the law,” he said. “After the uncertainty federal employees faced in the 2019 Trump Shameful Shutdown, Senator Cardin and I worked to ensure federal employees would receive guaranteed back pay for any future shutdowns. That legislation was signed into law—and there is nothing this administration can do to change that.”

This isn’t the only dirty trick the administration has pulled to intimidate Democrats into submission. Trump has also threatened to execute mass layoffs amid the government shutdown. Administration officials have insisted that the Democrats forced the president’s hand, but the move is entirely in line with Trump’s agenda as outlined in Project 2025, and the president has touted the “unprecedented opportunity” to make sweeping permanent cuts to programs and departments that he doesn’t like.

Attorney General Pam Bondi somehow managed to be smug and combative while offering an incredibly weak answer to a basic question about her department’s handling of the Epstein files. 

“So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?” Senator Dick Durbin asked Bondi during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. 

Bondi paused for a beat. 

“To flag records for President Trump?” she said, as if she was confused or unfamiliar with what Durbin asked. 

“To flag any records which included his name.” 

Bondi shook her head, smiling slightly. 

“I’m not going to discuss anything about that with you, senator.” 

“Eventually you’re going to have to answer for your conduct in this,” Durbin replied. “You won’t do it today, but eventually you will.” 

This all goes back to July, when Durbin’s office found that Bondi told personnel to flag any mention of Trump in the Epstein files. It was later revealed that once flagged, Trump’s name was redacted from the files.  

This is such a clear example of the attorney general—historically a politically neutral position (or at least meant to be such)—openly caping for her president. If she can’t be transparent and honest in a Senate hearing, how are we expected to take anything she says seriously? 

At least eight times during a Tuesday hearing, Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about what border czar Tom Homan did with the $50,000 cash bribe he received from undercover FBI agents in 2024.

Again and again, Bondi refused to answer.

“What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI paid to Mr. Homan, in a paper bag evidently?” the senator asked the attorney general, who slowly flipped to a page in a binder so she could quote a statement from her deputy attorney general.

“Senator,” she said, “as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently stated, the investigation of Mr. Homan was subjected to a full review by the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing.”

Nowhere in that response was an actual answer, Whitehouse observed, so he again asked what became of the $50,000. Bondi vaguely urged the senator to “look at your facts.”

“Are you saying that they did not deliver $50,000 in cash to Mr. Homan?” Whitehouse pressed. Bondi began reciting the statement she previously attributed to Blanche, which Whitehouse noted addresses a “different question.”

He repeated his question, asking if the FBI ever got the $50,000 back. Bondi told the senator to consult the FBI.

“They report to you,” Whitehouse pointed out. “Can’t you answer this question?” Bondi said he could talk to FBI Director Kash Patel, leading Whitehouse to ask if Homan kept the money. The attorney general, chuckling, began to repeat her previous spiel verbatim.

“I can see I’m not going to get a straight answer from you to a very simple question,” Whitehouse said. Out of the blue, Bondi leveled a personal attack, accusing Whitehouse of working with “dark money groups.”

Staying on track, Whitehouse asked whether the reported investigation looked into whether Homan declared the $50,000 on his tax returns, leading Bondi to make another unrelated accusation, this time that Whitehouse “pushed for legislation that would subsidize [his] wife’s company”—an imperfect telling of allegations first made by a conservative watchdog group and amplified by people like Elon Musk.

Whitehouse pointed out the irrelevance of that claim, promising to submit the questions Bondi failed to answer as “questions for the record,” or written, formal questions Congress provides witnesses after a hearing for inclusion in the record.

The questions about Homan were far from the only ones that Bondi avoided answering during Tuesday’s hearing, in which she frequently seemed more interested in verbally attacking Democratic senators attempting to conduct oversight.

The president has deployed the National Guard to multiple cities, rattled the economy with inconsistent tariffs, and frazzled the country’s longest international alliances. But late Monday, he also weighed in on the Super Bowl’s halftime pick.

In an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Donald Trump spoke out against the NFL’s decision to hire Latin superstar Bad Bunny to perform during the coveted slot.

“The NFL just chose the Bad Bunny Rabbit or whatever his name, this guy who hates ICE, he doesn’t like you, he accuses everything he doesn’t like of racism,” said Kelly. “Do you think maybe we should just kind of entertain blowing off the NFL, like a boycott or something along those lines?”

“This guy does not seem like a unifying entertainer, and a lot of folks don’t even know who he is,” he added.

“I never heard of him, I don’t know who he is, I don’t know why they’re doing it, it’s like crazy,” Trump said. “And then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment.”

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

But Bad Bunny wasn’t the only new development in the football league that upset Trump. After barely finishing his thought about the halftime show, the president also took aim at the NFL’s new “dynamic kickoff” rule, calling it “ridiculous” and “terrible.” The kickoff rule was made official this year after it drastically improved player safety in the 2024 season.

“The ball is kicked, and the ball is floating in the air and everyone’s standing there watching it,” Trump groused. “It’s ridiculous. It’s not any safer than the regular kickoff. I think it—it just looks so terrible. I think it really demeans football, to be honest with you.”

It’s almost impossible to escape Bad Bunny in 2025. His music plays everywhere from clubs to grocery stores across the country, and is near nonstop on the radio.

The 31-year-old is, as of now, one of the most dominant music artists in the world, topping the charts on multiple continents. Billboard crowned him the artist of the year in 2022, and he was the most streamed artist on Spotify between 2020 and 2022. He’s also elevated Puerto Rican music and culture to the global stage, highlighting the economic disparities present on the island.

But it’s not just his music that has made him an international phenomenon. His bombastic personality has helped establish him in American culture: Besides partaking in the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny found himself in the country’s pop culture spotlight during a three-year on-again-off-again relationship with the Kardashians’ Kendall Jenner. He has also hosted Saturday Night Live, a mainstay of American comedy for the last 50 years, twice.

Shortly after the NFL unveiled Bad Bunny as its halftime pick, the Trump administration fired back: Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that federal immigration officers would be in attendance at America’s most-watched annual television event. Days later, the White House appeared to backtrack on that, claiming that there was “no tangible” plan for agents to monitor the venue.

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 four [foot] 10, and he looks like he is angry about the fact that he’s four-10, and he looks like he is so mad that he is four-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 five-foot-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 Kaitlan 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 war-torn 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, which 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 back pay.

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 back pay 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 lifesaving 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.