Mike Johnson and John Thune Can’t Keep Up With Trump on Shutdown

Fractures atop the Republican Party are further complicating negotiations to end the government shutdown.

President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have not only failed to conjure a resolution to the ongoing shutdown, but they have also failed to conceal the tension bubbling beneath the surface.

So far, Trump’s strategy—which prioritizes punishing his political allies—has only tripped up his congressional counterparts.

On Monday, Trump stepped over his allies’ messaging when he told reporters he was “talking to Democrats” about cutting a deal on health care. He quickly walked it back, posting to Truth Social: “I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open.”

On Tuesday, Johnson said that he had spoken with Trump “at length” about the urgent need to reopen the government—but Thune didn’t seem to be on the same page. That same day, the South Dakota lawmaker told reporters that there were “ongoing conversations” among party leadership.

Hours later, a draft White House memo reported by Axios revealed that the Trump administration was questioning the legality of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which guarantees back pay for furloughed federal workers. Both Thune and Johnson had voted for it, but the Senate majority leader struggled to contain his frustration at Trump’s attempt to undermine it now.

“All you have to do to prevent any federal employee from not getting paid is to open up the government,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t know what statute they are using. My understanding is, yes, that they would get paid. I’ll find out. I haven’t heard this up until now.

“But again it’s a very straightforward proposition, and you guys keep chasing that narrative that they’ve got going down at the White House and up here with the Democrats,” Thune added.

Johnson told reporters that he supported federal back pay and believed that the White House did, as well—but Trump quickly poured cold water on that.

“I would say it depends who we’re talking about,” Trump told reporters, just hours later. “For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people, but for some people they don’t deserve to be taken care of.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” Trump wrote in a brief Truth Social post. “Governor Pritzker also!”

The threat comes as National Guard troops have landed in Chicago at the direction of the president, over Pritzker’s and Johnson’s objections. Johnson also received the White House’s ire Monday for an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones” in the city.

Illinois sued the administration on Monday in hopes of halting the troops’ deployment. Scheduling a hearing for Thursday, U.S. District Judge Judge April M. Perry, who is overseeing the case, declined to immediately block the administration, but warned, “If I were the federal government, I would strongly consider taking a pause on this until Thursday.” The National Guard arrived this week nonetheless.

A Justice Department memo found that a key witness in the Trump-ordered prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey will actually undermine the entire case, reported ABC News Wednesday.

It was previously reported that prosecutors in a September memo warned Lindsey Halligan, Donald Trump’s hand-picked U.S. attorney leading the case, against pursuing it due to insufficient evidence. Defying that warning, Halligan got Comey indicted last month, including for allegedly misleading Congress when he denied having authorized others at the FBI to leak information anonymously to the media.

Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor, was supposed to be a major witness—apparently as someone Comey allegedly authorized to speak to reporters anonymously—but investigators found that his testimony would actually be “problematic” and pose “likely insurmountable problems” for the prosecution, according to ABC News sources.

In a September interview, Richman told investigators that the former FBI director “instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions” and “never authorized him to provide information to a reporter anonymously ahead of the 2016 election.” ABC News sources also said a review of Comey’s emails, including with Richman, “could not identify an instance when Comey approved leaking material to a reporter anonymously.” The memo recommended that prosecutors not move forward with the case.

It is the latest of several blinding neon signs indicating that Comey is facing trumped-up charges simply for being on Trump’s bad side.

Trump Republicans aren’t too happy about the new Zach Bryan song coming for the airwaves.

The Grammy award–winning country music singer released a snippet of an unreleased track, “Bad News,” on his Instagram over the weekend. From the minute-long preview, “Bad News” appears to be an old-fashioned protest song that captures scenes of a disintegrating America, taking swipes at ICE while lamenting the “fading of the red, white, and blue.”

“I heard the cops came / Cocky motherfuckers, ain’t they?” sings Bryan. “And ICE is gonna come bust down your door / Try to build a house no one builds no more / But I got a telephone / Kids are all scared and all alone.

“The bars stopped bumping, the rock stopped rolling / The middlе fingers rising, and it won’t stop showing / Got some bad news / Thе fading of the red, white and blue,” the song continues.

Bryan, a self-described “total libertarian,” has rarely dipped his toe into national politics. In 2023, he publicly feuded with fellow country music star Travis Tritt after Bud Light opted to feature a transgender activist in one of its commercials. At the time, Bryan warned his fans against “insulting transgender people.”

But this weekend’s teaser absolutely jolted supporters of the president’s agenda, particularly those in the country music enclave, who have since expressed their disinterest in Bryan’s foray into political commentary.

Nashville singer Jake Owen called Bryan a tool. Big & Rich’s John Rich sarcastically posited there might be a “large ‘anti law enforcement’ wing of the country music fanbase” that Bryan could tap into.

Incredibly, the Trump administration also commented on the pop culture development. In an email to Rolling Stone, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that Bryan should “stick to Pink Skies,” referring to the musician’s song about a funeral. McLaughlin reiterated the comment on X Tuesday.

The White House shared its two cents, rejecting Bryan’s vision while reiterating Donald Trump’s “mandate from the people” governing philosophy.

“While Zach Bryan wants to Open The Gates to criminal illegal aliens and has Condemned heroic ICE officers, Something in the Orange tells me a majority of Americans disagree with him and support President Trump’s great American Revival. Godspeed, Zach!” said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement to Axios.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday said he will schedule the long-awaited swearing-in of Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva “as soon as she wants.” That’s not true, as that day has already come and gone.

After handily winning a special election in Arizona two weeks ago, Grijalva is poised to give Democrats some more power in the House—and also, notably, supply the deciding signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein files.

But Johnson has stalled Grijalva’s swearing-in thus far, even calling the House in recess (seemingly in order to pressure Senate Democrats to cave on the shutdown). Many Democrats—Grijalva included—have chalked the delay up to an attempt to prevent the release of the Epstein files.

Johnson on Tuesday pushed back against that idea, telling CNN reporter Manu Raju, “It has nothing to do with that at all,” and that he would “swear her in when everybody gets back.” But, as Raju noted, there’s no need to wait for a full regular session; Grijalva could be sworn in during one of the brief, minutes-long pro forma House sessions regularly taking place during the recess.

After all, Johnson swore in Republican Representatives Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine during a pro forma session in April. At a pro forma session last week, Democratic lawmakers shouted at the presiding member (Johnson was not in attendance) to swear in the newly elected Democrat, but their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the session was quickly gaveled out.

So why not swear Grijalva in during a pro forma? Throwing up his hands, Johnson replied Tuesday: “Uh, look. We’ll schedule it, I guess, as soon as she wants.”

This was clearly a cop-out, considering Grijalva has, in fact, publicly called for her swearing-in repeatedly over the past two weeks. A few examples: In an interview published three days after her election, Grijalva spoke out against Johnson for dragging his feet. Three days after that, she wrote on social media that “there’s no reason why Speaker Johnson cannot swear me in tomorrow during the pro forma session,” citing the cases of Patronis and Fine.

On Monday, she put it even more directly: “Swear me in NOW,” she posted on X, tagging Johnson’s profile.

Author and Rutgers University history professor Mark Bray is taking his wife and children to Europe after facing mounting death threats, some of which were sent to his home address.

Bray made the announcement on Monday, shortly after the school’s Turning Point USA chapter called for his termination and claimed his research—which focuses on the history of leftist movements—“puts conservative students at risk for antifa to come in.”

“You have a teacher that so often promotes political violence, especially in his book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, which talks about militant fascism, which is on term with political violence,” Rutgers Turning Point chapter treasurer Megyn Doyle told Fox News last week.

A petition from the university’s Turning Point chapter also accused Bray of being “a prominent leader of the antifa movement on campus.” Bray states that he is against facism, not conservative students on campus.

Even still, the so-called free speech club got their wish. In an email to his students later posted on the Rutgers University subreddit, Bray said his class would be online for the rest of the semester as he and his family go to Europe out of fear for their safety.

Hi everyone in Terrorism,

Unfortunately my situation has gotten worse recently. This weekend, shortly after some negative media and social media attention (some of which, ironically enough, accused me of being a “terrorist”), I received another death threat and a separate threat that included my home address. The University and the authorities have been notified. Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe. Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom. I really enjoyed our conversations.

Bray went on to notify the students that he’d be moving the class online asynchronously until the midterm, given the time difference.

This chilling news comes as President Trump designates antifa as a terrorist organization, even as he’s unable to name a single leader of the group—because it doesn’t exist. Trump also declared any vaguely leftist rhetoric to be domestic terrorism in his NPSM-7 memo.

“Wait, so they terrorize, dox him, and he’s the terrorist?” one comment on r/Rutgers read.

“I loved him as a professor,” said another. “He was great at challenging us to argue more nuanced points. He made me such a better writer. I’m honestly in so much shock. I was only in class with him like three years ago.”

Donald Trump has a strange new excuse for attacking Venezuelans.

Seated beside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during a White House press conference Tuesday, the president blamed his administration’s dubious airstrikes on several Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying what he described as “water drugs.”

“We call them the water drugs,” Trump said. “The drugs that come in through water. They’re not coming.”

“There are no boats anymore. Frankly, there are no fishing boats. There are no boats out there, period, if you want to know the truth. We’re saying, ‘Does anybody go fishing anymore?’ The fact is we knocked out, probably saved at least 100,000 American lives—Canadian lives, by taking out all those boats coming in,” Trump said.

He did not elaborate on how his administration had reached the conclusion that killing more than a dozen Venezuelans outside of U.S. waters could save so many people in the northern hemisphere.

Over the last several weeks, the U.S. has destroyed at least four small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters that Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs. At least 21 have been killed in the attacks.

In a memo to Congress on Thursday, Trump declared that the U.S. government is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

“The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations,” the leaked memo, obtained by the Associated Press, read.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has accused the Trump administration of violating U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime,” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”

Is the Department of Homeland Security lying about the victim of yet another shooting by an immigration enforcement officer?

Marimar Martinez, 30, was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago Saturday, after she and several other drivers trailed the officers’ car through the Chicago streets. In a press release, DHS claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.”

Martinez and 21-year old Anthony Ruiz were both charged with felony assault of a federal officer. But Christopher Parente, Martinez’s attorney, claimed during a federal court hearing Tuesday that body-camera footage disproved the government’s claim, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Parente said that he had repeatedly viewed the footage, and it appeared that the agent suddenly turned his wheel, indicating that Border Patrol had rammed into Martinez’s car and not the other way around. That officer was reportedly caught saying, “Do something, bitch,” before leaping out of the car and shooting her multiple times within a matter of seconds.

Parente also claimed the body camera footage captured another officer asking, “Hey, what happened?” The first officer pointed to his body camera and said, “Hey, don’t speak. You’re good.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Hennessy, arguing that the duo should not be released pending trial, told the judge that Martinez had been following the agents for 30 minutes before the shooting happened. He claimed that body camera footage showed the agents fretting that their cars were going to collide. “We’re getting boxed in! We gotta get out of here! She’s going to make contact!” one of the agents reportedly said, before the car was allegedly hit on both sides.

Hennessey claimed that Martinez and Ruiz were “extremely dangerous and extremely reckless,” but Parente argued that the Border Patrol agents careening through the streets of Chicago while carrying assault rifles were the bigger threat.

U.S. District Judge Heather McShain denied the government’s bid to keep Martinez and Ruiz locked up, saying it was “a miracle” that no one was more seriously injured.

Last month, DHS claimed that ICE had shot and killed “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving,” while trying to detain him—but a closer look found that the man had no criminal history, and his last traffic violation was in 2013. DHS also claimed that the ICE agent responsible for the shooting had been “seriously injured” in the line of duty, but bodycam videos from shortly after the incident showed the agent describing his injuries as “nothing major.” One witness speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that ICE’s account of the fatal shooting had been inaccurate, and questioned whether the incident would be properly investigated.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sidestepped a series of simple yes-or-no questions at a Senate judiciary hearing on Tuesday about border czar Tom Homan and the $50,000 in cash he allegedly accepted from undercover FBI agents in a paper Cava bag.  

“There’s a tape, right, with Mr. Homan. First of all, is there a tape that has audio and video of the transfer of the $50,000?” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Bondi, referencing reports that such a recording indeed exists. 

“You would have to talk to Director Patel about that,” Bondi replied.

“No, I’m talking to you.” 

“I don’t know the answer, Senator.” 

“You do know the answer to that,” Whitehouse pressed. 

“Don’t call me a liar!” Bondi shouted. 

“I didn’t call you a liar.”

“You just said I know the answer, I said I don’t know the answer, you have to talk to Director Patel.”

“Let me put it another way. If you don’t know, why don’t you know whether there was a tape and video?” 

“Senator, I believe that was resolved prior to my confirmation as attorney general.” 

Bondi continued to insist that she had no clue about the investigation, and that Director Patel “resolving” the case was enough for her. 

“But it’s not resolved. There’s $50,000. Homan has it, or somebody has it,” Whitehouse responded. “Do you have no interest in knowing where it is?” 

“You’re not gonna sit here and slander Tom Homan.” 

​​

Shortly thereafter, Bondi had a similar spat with Democratic Senator Adam Schiff. 

“You were asked by my colleague from Vermont, whether or not you will support providing a video or audio tape if it exists, of Mr. Homan taking $50,000 in bribe money from the FBI,” Schiff said, referring to Whitehouse. “Will you support a request by this committee to provide that tape or tapes to the committee, yes or no.” 

“Senator Schiff, you can talk to Director Patel about that,” Bondi replied.

“Well I’m talking to you about it. You’re the attorney general. This will be your decision. Will you support—”

“You don’t have to tell me what is my decision and what is not my decision, you think you got a gotcha with Tom Homan our border czar, who’s been out there fighting for our country—”

“You don’t have to refer to the FBI director to pass the buck. So I’m asking you, will you support a request, so that the committee, or indeed I believe the American people should be able to see that video or audio tape. Will you support that request?” 

“Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?” Bondi shot back, avoiding the question entirely and pivoting to Hunter Biden theories. 

Our very own FBI bribed Tom Homan with $50,000 and he accepted it. Now the attorney general is pretending that she doesn’t know anything about it at all, and is instead demanding that Schiff say he’s sorry rather than acknowledging a very warranted further investigation into Homan’s bribe. 

Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California took Attorney General Pam Bondi to task Tuesday for her incessant deflections and evasions throughout a Senate judiciary hearing.

Bondi had verbally attacked Democratic senators throughout the hearing rather than answer their questions. Schiff was, evidently, keeping track of questions Bondi left unanswered, and he ran through the lengthy (yet inexhaustive) list after the attorney general derailed his own inquiry about releasing a video of Tom Homan, now Trump’s border czar, accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents in 2024.

“I think it’s valuable that the American people get a sense of what you’ve refused to answer today,” Schiff told Bondi. The following questions are those that Schiff noted went unanswered, or were met with personal attacks, by the attorney general:

1. Did Bondi consult with career ethics lawyers when she approved Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million jet gifted by Qatar’s royal family?

2. Who ordered that Donald Trump’s name be flagged in the FBI’s review of the Epstein files?

3. Did Homan keep his $50,000 from the undercover agents?

4. Did Homan pay taxes on the $50,000?

5. Did DOJ prosecutors determine there was “insufficient evidence” to charge former FBI Director James Comey before he was indicted?

6. How did the administration determine whether U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean were legal?

(Here, Bondi interrupted, asking the senator, who worked for the justice department before his career in politics, “Do you have a law degree, Senator Schiff?”)

7. Did Bondi discuss indicting Comey with Trump?

8. Did Bondi approve the dismissal of antitrust lawyers who opposed the Hewlett Packard–Juniper merger?

9. Does Bondi support a “compensation fund” for people prosecuted in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots?

10. Is Bondi firing career prosecutors for working on January 6 investigations?

11. Does Bondi think government officials must follow court orders?

After concluding the list, Schiff made the following statement, though he was peppered with interruptions from Bondi—who brought up red herrings, such as wildfires and riots in his home state, and threw personal barbs, calling the senator a “failed lawyer.”

This is supposed to be an oversight hearing of the Justice Department, and it comes in the wake of an indictment called for by the president of one of his enemies. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing, and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag, and this department made that investigation go away. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing, when dozens of prosecutors have been fired simply because they worked on cases investigating the former president.… This is supposed to be an oversight hearing in which members of Congress can get serious answers to serious questions about … the cover-up of corruption, about the prosecution of the president’s enemies.

Schiff implored members of the committee to “demand answers to those questions” and to refuse “personal slander as an answer to those questions.” Bondi in turn said Schiff should apologize for “slandering” Trump.