Republican Senator, 92, Struggles to Read His Notes on Shutdown Deal

Senator Chuck Grassley isn’t able to read like he used to.

The 92-year-old had difficulty parsing a prewritten statement on the demerits of Obamacare subsidies Sunday night.

“So everybody else that depends upon the subsidy for Obamacare, I want to make very clear to them that the pre-premium subsides for individuals and families under 400 percent of the federal poverty lever that existed prior to Covid are permanent law, and those people will not be affected because that permit of law is not being changed by anything that we’re debating here today,” Grassley said.

Grassley’s slip comes just a few weeks after the senator, who is third in line for presidential succession, struggled to understand a reporter’s question and gave a completely unrelated answer.

More than 20 percent of U.S. lawmakers are over the age of 70. That includes 86 members of the House and 33 senators, making the current Congress the oldest in U.S. history.

Calls for aging government officials to retire have grown louder in recent years, particularly after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. Ginsburg remained on the Supreme Court until she passed despite an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis, providing Donald Trump the opportunity to replace her.

Representatives Gerry Connolly and Dianne Feinstein also died in office, leaving Democrats short on critical votes in the wake of their deaths.

Last week, after years of mounting pressure related to her age, Representative Nancy Pelosi announced she will not seek reelection. The longtime Democratic leader will exit when her term expires in 2027—at 87 years old—after 39 years in office.

Despite public clamor to make American politics young again, no branch of government appears to be safe from the seniority stripe. Last year, voters elected Trump to become the oldest president in U.S. history, and he attended his second inauguration at nearly 79 years old.

Meanwhile, this aging class of politicians is drafting the future of the country—one that, thanks in part to Grassley’s efforts, will not include Affordable Care Act subsidies. The government shutdown ended Sunday after 40 grueling days of deadlock on the merits of the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits, which assist individuals making upward of 400 percent of the federal poverty level. It was the longest federal suspension in U.S. history.

Eight Senate Democrats caved to Donald Trump and voted to approve a budget deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown, angering their colleagues in Congress as well as their own party’s base. 

These eight senators, including independent Angus King who caucuses with the party, are all either retiring or up for reelection years from now. They likely feel that they won’t have to pay an electoral cost for failing to stand up for Democrats’ goal of extending health care subsidies, instead settling for a future vote on the matter.  

The full list of these Democrats is below: 

• Senator Richard Durbin (Illinois, retiring)
• Senator Angus King (Maine, term ends in 2030)
• Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada, term ends in 2028)
• Senator Jacky Rosen (Nevada, term ends in 2030)
• Senator Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire, term ends in 2028)
• Senator Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire, retiring)
• Senator John Fetterman (Pennsylvania, 2028)
• Senator Tim Kaine (Virginia, 2030)

The conservative-majority Supreme Court denied a challenge Monday to its landmark same-sex marriage ruling.

The Supreme Court rejected a long-shot petition from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who refused to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples following the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Davis was seeking to overturn the decision that had legalized same-sex marriage.

Davis had appealed the $360,000 she was ordered to pay after refusing to grant a marriage license to David Ermold and David Moore, a same-sex couple, because she was acting “under God’s authority.”

When the two men pointed out that she had given marriage licenses to “murderer[s], rapists, and people who have done all kinds of horrible things,” Davis responded that “that was fine because they were straight,” according to court filings.

Three of the four justices who dissented from Obergefell are still on the court, helping to make up today’s 6–3 conservative majority, which tends to react with hostility to judicial precedent. But it seems that the court’s 2015 ruling will for now remain intact.

Davis’s appeal failed to explain why overturning Obergefell was necessary to resolve her case. While her suit quoted lengthily from the conservative justices who criticized the ruling, overturning the ruling was not the central thrust of her legal arguments to the court.

Davis had also asked the court to decide whether she had “qualified immunity” from denying the marriage licenses because same-sex marriage wasn’t really a “clearly established right,” even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. She’d previously asked the court to restore her qualified immunity defense after the Sixth Circuit agreed with a district court that that defense did not apply in this case. The Supreme Court declined.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority likely does want to overturn Obergefell—Justice Clarence Thomas has made as much clear—but this case contained far too many questions to do it. If the court were to overturn its own landmark ruling, then it would likely be in the most straightforward case possible.

This story has been updated.

The Democrats were furious Monday over eight senators who caved to support a deal to end the government shutdown that does not include the Affordable Care Act subsidies their party had spent weeks fighting for.

The offending lawmakers include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and independent Senator Angus King, who claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits. Their capitulation comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted for weeks that he wouldn’t promise them a vote on anything, and even if he does follow through with a vote, it’s unlikely such a measure will pass the House.

Democratic lawmakers slammed their colleagues for forfeiting health care coverage for an estimated 5.1 million Americans by 2034 and increasing premiums across the marketplace.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against the deal while speaking before the Senate Sunday. “If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are gonna see at least a doubling in their premiums in the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for health care. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?”

Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth said her colleagues had taken a bad deal, and that she would not vote for a deal that wouldn’t shield tax credit recipients “from [Donald] Trump’s vindictive and malicious efforts in exchange for a vague promise from the least trustworthy Republican Party in our nation’s history.”

House Democrats, who will now have to vote on the deal, tore into their upper chamber colleagues for backing off their only request.

Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal called the deal a “giant betrayal of the American people”; New York Representative Ritchie Torres posted that he would vote “no” on the Democrats’ “unconstitutional surrender”; and Minnesota Representative Angie Craig wrote on X, “If people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you.”

Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton wrote on X, “Caving now makes no sense.”

Moulton was among several lawmakers who blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—who voted “no” but apparently knew about the plan to fold—for failing to keep Democrats united.

“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership,” Moulton wrote in a separate post. “If @ChuckSchumer were an effective leader, he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare.” He then asked Senator Ed Markey, whom Moulton is attempting to primary, if he might now join his Massachusetts colleague in opposing Schumer.

Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan also subtweeted Schumer, referring to his refusal to support New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. “Don’t endorse or say who you voted for in NYC despite there being a Dem candidate. Get Dem Senators to negotiate a terrible ‘deal’ that does nothing real about healthcare. Screw over a national political party. Profile of scourge? Next,” Pocan wrote on X Sunday.

California Representative Ro Khanna also said the vote was a sign Democrats needed new management. “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?” he wrote on X Sunday.

And Graham Platner, who is running to replace Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, wrote on X: “Chuck Schumer is not built for this moment.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom summed the situation up the most succinctly. “Pathetic,” he wrote on X Sunday.

Donald Trump is trying to let the last of his co-defendants in the 2020 election interference case get off scot-free.

The president issued a wave of pardons Friday for his alleged co-conspirators, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, and 72 others also tied to the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, according to an announcement by Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Martin shared details of the pardon on his personal X account Sunday night, replying to a post he made in May that read: “No MAGA left behind.”

The pardons were “full, complete, and unconditional,” according to the note. Four of the individuals granted clemency had pleaded guilty to their charges in the Georgia case.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the pardon reads.

The pardon did not extend to Trump himself, who was charged with 13 felonies in the Georgia case, including a RICO charge. It’s also unclear what the pardons will actually achieve for the recipients, as presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes. None of the pardon recipients have been charged with federal crimes, and the Georgia indictment is at the state level.

The Georgia case is the last one remaining that examines Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The two federal cases were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. The Georgia case is on hold until November 14, by which date prosecutors must appoint a new lead to the case.

In a comment, Martin said his office was still “working on” extending the pardon to former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk and recorder Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in the election conspiracy, participating in a 2021 security breach of the elections office she was responsible for overseeing.

She was found guilty by a jury of her peers on “three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one felony count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, one misdemeanor count of official misconduct, one misdemeanor count of violation of duty in elections, and one misdemeanor count of failure to comply with the secretary of state,” reported the Colorado Newsline.

“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett said at the time of her sentencing, underscoring the “immeasurable damage” she had done to public trust in America’s electoral process. “You are a privileged person. You are as privileged as they come. You used that for power and fame.”

It appears there is yet another problem with the Department of Justice’s so-far-disastrous case against former FBI Director James Comey.

Prosecutors allege that Comey lied during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, when he denied that he had authorized someone “at the FBI” to serve as an anonymous source to news outlets about the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton.  

That someone has been identified as attorney Dan Richman. But a closer look at a set of documents detailing Richman’s stint at the FBI showed that he wasn’t actually working there during any of the communications the government cited as leaks.

Lawfare reviewed a set of documents procured via a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the right-wing rag the Daily Caller, which sought “all records, documents, and communications pertaining to Daniel Richman, a Special Government Employee hired by former FBI Director James Comey.” The documents produced by the government—though likely incomplete—paint a stunning alibi for Richman, the man at the center of one of the government’s flimsiest claims. 

According to the documents, Richman’s first term working for the FBI was between June 30, 2015, and June 30, 2016. He served unpaid on a part-time to intermittent basis advising senior FBI leadership about a range of different issues, but specifically the use of encryption to evade law enforcement.

A request to reappoint Richman was not approved until December 2016. Government records indicate that he neglected to sign his reappointment papers. Included with the FOIA materials was one FBI official’s handwritten note stating: “Doc drawn up + sent to OGC for Richman signature. Never signed. Never officially reappointed after June 2016.”

However, internal FBI emails indicated that Richman may have served a second term anyway—but only for a short period of time, resigning on February 7, 2017.

All of the evidence prosecutors have cited to demonstrate that Comey instructed an FBI lackey—in this case Richman—to speak anonymously to the press took place outside of the periods when Richman was actually employed by the bureau. 

In one filing, the DOJ referred to an email chain between Comey and Richman spanning from October 29 to November 2, 2016, after Richman’s first term had ended. The government also cited emails sent on February 11 and April 23, 2017, and text exchanges between May 11 and 17, 2017, both of which took place after Richman had resigned.

Lawfare noted that it was possible that Richman’s formal employment status may not matter so much to a jury, though in one of Comey’s pretrial motions to dismiss, lawyers for the former FBI chief said that senators had been vague in their original questions and that “at the FBI” could reasonably not include part-time contractors. 

Not including this latest hiccup, the DOJ’s case against Comey has already started to unravel. One magistrate judge has demanded prosecutors stop pawing through Comey and Richman’s communications, concerned that some of the material interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey  Halligan used to personally secure Comey’s two-count criminal indictment may have potentially been subject to attorney-client privilege. 

Meanwhile, a federal judge is seeking a complete account of Halligan’s grand jury proceedings, after she only deigned to submit a partial one—indicating that the government’s case may be on even shakier footing than previously thought.

The Department of Homeland Security won’t say how much money it has paid undocumented immigrants to self-deport—though the price tag is likely tens of millions of dollars.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a cringey AI-generated video on X Thursday celebrating the claim that 1.6 million immigrants have self-deported. In the post, she plugged the $1,000 exit bonus the Trump administration is offering to any undocumented immigrant who chooses to leave the country.

The Trump administration had previously announced in March that it planned to bribe any undocumented immigrant who used the CBP Home app to self-deport with a free plane ticket and a “stipend of $1,000 dollars, paid after their return to their home country has been confirmed through the app.” The Trump administration has reportedly moved State Department funds earmarked for helping refugees resettle in the United States to help fund flights and stipends.

So how much money has the Trump administration spent on immigrants self-deporting? The Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t say.

In a statement Friday to The New Republic, the DHS declined to say how many immigrants had used the CBP Home to self-deport, or how much money it had distributed in stipends.

Instead, DHS claimed that “tens of thousands” of undocumented immigrants had used the CBP Home app to relocate to their home countries. “So far, tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app, and overall 2 million illegal immigrants have left the United States since January 2025,” the department said in a statement.

When pressed for an exact number, DHS sent that portion of the statement again.

If “tens of thousands”—referring to anywhere from 20,ooo to 99,000—undocumented immigrants had actually used CBP Home to self-deport, however, the Trump administration has spent anywhere from $20 million to $99 million on stipends.

None of this includes the price of airfare, which the Trump administration has also offered to cover. The average cost of an international plane ticket is $1,217, according to FCM and Corporate Traveler, meaning that an additional $24 million to $120 million could be added to the DHS price tag.

As a result, the total estimated cost for self-deportations could be anywhere from $44 million to $219 million. These numbers are particularly distressing amid the ongoing government shutdown, as the Trump administration continues to carry out its expensive and unpopular deportation efforts while claiming it doesn’t have enough cash to feed our nation’s most vulnerable.

But crucially, the non-numbers provided by DHS don’t quite seem to add up. Customs and Border Protection reported in September that more than 5,000 immigrants had used the CBP Home app to self deport. If the DHS’s “tens of thousands” claim were possibly true, that would mean at least 15,000 additional immigrants had self-deported using the app in the last month alone.

That would be pretty incredible, considering that the CBP Home app doesn’t seem to work all that well. ProPublica reported in October that more than a dozen Venezuelans who attempted to use the program to return to Venezuela found themselves stranded in the United States.

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump pardoned a man convicted of working as an agent for the Chinese government to intimidate a New Jersey family. 

Michael McMahon, a former New York police officer, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April after being convicted in 2023 for acting as an unregistered agent of China, interstate stalking, and conspiracy. Federal prosecutors said that McMahon and his Chinese associates were trying to get a Chinese couple living in New Jersey to go back to China where they would be tried for corruption. 

The Justice Department said the plot was part of China’s Operation Fox Hunt, which aims to return Chinese fugitives back to their native country and helps the Chinese Communist Party control citizens living outside of the country. McMahon, however, claimed he was duped into working for China as a private investigator, and successfully lobbied several Trump associates to push his case.  

McMahon’s influence campaign included attending the president’s inauguration in January and getting the support of Republican Representative Mike Lawler and Trump associate Roger Stone, himself a recipient of a Trump pardon in 2020. 

An anonymous White House official claimed to The New York Times that McMahon was the victim of a flawed trial and tricked into participating by a person who told him it was an investigation into embezzlement from a construction company. The official said that, unbeknownst to McMahon, he was actually hired by Chinese spies. 

Trump’s pardons seem to either be based on political loyalty, like his pardon of January 6 rioters on his first day in office, or raise questions of corruption and influence peddling. Last month, he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a crypto billionaire, and soon afterwards Zhao cut a business deal with the Trump family. It seems that there is no crime too big for the supposed law-and-order president. 

Alexander Smirnov, the ex–FBI informant who admitted to lying about the Biden-Burisma connection, has been released from prison just months into his six-year prison sentence.

In a plea deal in December 2024, Smirnov admitted to completely fabricating the conspiracy that became central to a Republican effort to impeach then-President Joe Biden. Days later, the Russian asset pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including one count of obstruction, and was sentenced to six years in prison.

But the U.S.-Israeli citizen has been missing for at least four months from the low-security Los Angeles prison he was relegated to, according to investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet.

Smirnov is still listed as a prisoner at FCI Terminal Island in Los Angeles, where his anticipated release date is February 2029, according to the Bureau of Prisons. But a process server responsible for handing off details of a civil lawsuit to Smirnov was unable to find him at the facility.

An employee at the prison confirmed to the process server that while “Smirnov is affiliated with the facility,” he was “not currently housed there,” reported Sweet on Friday.

“I was advised to call back in approximately 15 days, as [Smirnov] may or may not return to the facility by that time. The representative was notably guarded and provided minimal information beyond that,” read an email from the server, obtained by Sweet.

After months of failed attempts to find and locate Smirnov, the local Sheriff’s Department managed to receive a clearer response from the facility.

“They’ve confirmed that Mr. Smirnov has been furloughed, but no forwarding or new address has been provided,” the message read.

In June 2020, Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI that Burisma executives had paid Biden and his son Hunter millions of dollars. The fake claim was part of a larger series of unfounded allegations that accused Biden of improperly leveraging his position as vice president (at the time) to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma, on whose board Hunter sat.

The fraudulent tale also sparked an October surprise in the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon insisted contained evidence that Biden and a Burisma adviser had held a “meeting.” (The New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, later said that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

The Justice Department revealed in February 2024 that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in developing the Hunter Biden narrative.

In the ensuing fallout over the DOJ indictment, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

Smirnov’s smattering of international affiliations makes the convicted felon a significant flight risk—but another possibility of freedom may await the foreign asset. Earlier this year, the DOJ filed a joint motion alongside Smirnov’s attorneys to release him pending appeal. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright tossed that effort in April, but legal experts stress that the effort could be an early sign that the Trump administration is considering pardoning Smirnov, as “it is almost unheard of for the DOJ to argue for someone’s release pending appeal.”

“I can’t say for sure based on the information I have that a pardon deal is in the works,” Oregon criminal defense attorney Bear Wilner-Nugent told Sweet. “But if one were, this is what it could look like. I can say that this is an extraordinarily concerning way for the government to be treating someone when they’re already accused of improper connections with him.”

President Trump is rejecting visas for fat people.

The Trump administration has ordered visa officers to deny immigrants who are obese or have certain health issues, in yet another instance of the president’s strange obsession with fat people.

A Thursday directive from the State Department, sent to embassies and consulates around the world, indicates that people applying for visas to the United States may be rejected if they have certain medical conditions, on the grounds that they could take up domestic health care resources.

“You must consider an applicant’s health,” the cable read. “Certain medical conditions—including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, diabetes, metabolic diseases, neurological diseases, and mental health conditions—can require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care.”

The announcement then goes on to mention obesity, stating that it can be connected to asthma, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure.

“All of these can require expensive, long-term care,” the cable continues. “Does the applicant have adequate financial resources to cover the costs of such care over his entire expected lifespan without seeking public cash assistance or long-term institutionalization at government expense?”

Denying fat people from the U.S. because they might end up having health issues is incredibly broad, cruel, and unusual. Visa applicants are already subjected to health screenings for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and are required to have various vaccinations.

“Taking into consideration one’s diabetic history or heart health history—that’s quite expansive,” immigration lawyer Sophia Genovese told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a degree of this assessment already, just not quite expansive as opining over, ‘What if someone goes into diabetic shock?’ If this change is going to happen immediately, that’s obviously going to cause a myriad of issues when people are going into their consular interviews.”

This announcement comes just one day after Trump announced his “fat shot” deal with two pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Zepbound to around $150 per month (they currently cost around $350 per month).

Trump also took time out of Thursday’s announcement to reveal exactly who was taking the weight-loss drug, outing longtime comms staffer and attack dog Steven Cheung.

“Where’s Steve? Is he here? Head of public relations for the White House? He’s taking it.”