Trump Refuses to Answer Key Question on Insurrection Act in Chicago

Invoking the Insurrection Act is still very much on the table, according to the president.

Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to enforce a nineteenth-century law that would let him utilize the military for domestic purposes, allowing the troops to police and arrest citizens. If invoked, Trump would be able to deploy active duty forces in order to enact his agenda, which involves federalizing the law enforcement agencies of Democratic cities.

“I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump has claimed that the troops are a necessary precaution to safeguard federal buildings and agents enacting his administration’s immigration agenda.

“If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe,” Trump continued.

The law has not been invoked since 1992, when President George H. W. Bush used it to subdue riots in Los Angeles after the local police force brutalized Rodney King.

Trump has floated the idea of leveraging the Insurrection Act for years, though the idea has picked up steam since his inauguration.

But the president has so far not aligned his desire for militaristic order with quelling real violence in the country. After mass shootings devastated communities in Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Illinois late last month, the president decided to order the National Guard to the hipster paradise of Portland. His rationale for sending them, according to the president himself, was not informed by statistics or data, but because of something he saw on TV.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said at the time, referring to a phone call he had with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place.… It looks like terrible.”

So far, federal judges have temporarily staved off Trump’s efforts to force the National Guard into Oregon. In the meantime, though, the president has directed the Guard to deploy to Chicago and Memphis. He has already federalized the law enforcement of Washington, D.C., as well as areas of Los Angeles.

“What President Trump is trying to do is an abuse of power,” Kotek told PBS News Hour Monday. “And it is a threat to our democracy. Governors should be in command of their National Guards, our citizen soldiers who sign up to stand up in an emergency to deal with real problems.

President Donald Trump came off unintelligibly Tuesday while comparing the Democratic Party to Somalia.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump appeared to brag that he didn’t even know the names of the Democratic lawmakers hoping to speak with him about ending the government shutdown.

“I’m getting calls from Democrats wanting to meet. I never even heard their names before. And they’re claiming to be l—the Democrats have no leader. They remind me of Somalia,” Trump said.

Appearing pleased with his weirdly racist analogy, Trump continued babbling.

“And I met the president of Somalia, told him about the problem it’s got. I said ‘You got somebody from Somalia that’s telling us how to run our country, from Somalia.’ I said, ‘Would you like to take her back?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want her!’” Trump ranted incoherently.

Trump was referring to Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, who has previously been targeted with threats of deportation by racist Republicans. The president, who has a tendency to repeat himself, was rehashing a joke he made earlier this month at Omar’s expense when he claimed he’d asked Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud if the Michigan lawmaker could be “taken back” to her home country.

Trump’s insistence that he doesn’t know who the Democrats are, and that they have no leaders, tells you everything you need to know about how seriously Trump is taking efforts to end the government shutdown. His own spokesperson revealed Monday that she wasn’t aware of any efforts the president had taken to speak with Democrats directly, but he is instead working through his own proxies in the House and Senate.

Trump previously met with very real Democratic leaders House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (whom Trump has repeatedly called a “Palestinian,” as another form of racist insult) ahead of the shutdown last week. But the president used the meeting as a meme photo op before proceeding to blame Democrats for the shutdown, as well as his administration’s efforts to enact massive layoffs and illegally withhold back pay from furloughed workers.

President Donald Trump gave the least reassuring answer Tuesday about ensuring federal workers receive backpay after the government shutdown.

During a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump was asked about the White House’s position on paying back furloughed federal workers for the shutdown. While federal law requires the government to provide backpay for federal workers sent home during the shutdown, the Trump administration is reportedly making preparations to renege on its obligation to pay up once the government reopens.

“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump replied.

“I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you’re talking about,” Trump continued. “But for the most part, we’re gonna take care of our people. There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’re gonna take care of them in a different way.”

Trump limply attempted to blame the Democrats for his potentially lawless acts—but it’s Russell Vought’s White House Office of Management and Budget that is behind the newest threat.

A drafted memo from OMB reportedly offered a wild new interpretation of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act Trump signed during a previous shutdown in 2019, undermining assurances that federal employees will eventually get paid. OMB also 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.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday morning that paying federal workers was something he hoped for—but not something he could promise. Meanwhile, the Louisiana Republican’s own website states: “Under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening.”

When asked why only some people would receive backpay, Trump simply replied, “You’re gonna have to figure it out.”

But it’s not clear who exactly the president believes will receive pay, or why. During a shutdown, government employees are either furloughed or “excepted” from furlough, meaning they continue to work and earn pay, but their pay is postponed until appropriations are authorized. And Trump has already picked some convenient projects to keep federal employees working on, ensuring that immigration enforcement and tariff offices are fully staffed, while threatening to gut Democrats’ “favorite” programs. Trump could potentially plan to pay those working on his own pet projects, and illegally withhold funding from everyone else.

It’s also not clear how the president intends to deal with those he believes do not deserve pay. The president could potentially be referring to the scores of federal employees OMB has instructed agencies to lay off amid the shutdown, in an unprecedented move he certainly appears to be enjoying.

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.”