Mike Johnson Shows the Dems’ Shutdown Deal Is Already Backfiring

House Speaker Mike Johnson has found a way around answering every question with “I don’t know”—he’s just not going to answer any questions at all.

During a press briefing Monday, Johnson discussed the tentative deal struck by a group of errant Democrats to end the government shutdown, but he scurried off before taking any questions.

“There are probably lots of questions, but I’m gonna get a lot of my own questions answered later today, so, stay tuned for more,” Johnson said, before quickly departing the press gallery.

Johnson isn’t very good at taking questions in the first place. During the shutdown, the Donald Trump ally has forged a reputation for feigning ignorance in the face of tough questions about everything from Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants, to the president’s blatant corruption, to what’s going on in his own chamber.

The handful of Democratic (and one independent) senators who caved to support the Republicans’ continuing resolution Sunday claimed that they’d managed to secure a House vote on a bill ensuring the continuance of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Not only is such a measure unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House, but Johnson wouldn’t even commit to the vote Monday as reporters shouted after the fleeing Republican with questions about his plans.

Johnson insisted as recently as last week that he wouldn’t promise Democrats a vote on anything. Meanwhile, Democrats slammed their colleagues for settling for the promise of a vote.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen revealed that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer knew the entire time about the plan for a few Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on the government shutdown.

Shaheen, one of the seven Democrats (and one independent) who dropped their demand for a guaranteed extension of Obamacare subsidies, spoke to Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on Monday morning.

“Senator Chuck Schumer, your leader in the Senate, said ‘I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address health care, I am voting no.’ Did you do this outside leadership, and was there a big push for you not to join the others and break the 60 threshold?” Kilmeade asked.

“No, we kept leadership informed throughout,” Shaheen responded. “And I think it’s important to remember who’s responsible for why we got into this shutdown. We are here because we are concerned about the health care costs rising significantly on millions of Americans, and we didn’t have any indication before the shutdown started that our Republican colleagues were willing to address it.”

Aside from serving as further proof that the Democrats are failing to act as an opposition party in any meaningful way, Shaheen’s comments also reveal one of two possible scenarios. Either Schumer was scheming to end the shutdown behind the scenes, only pretending to be against it while pinning the blame on the eight people who aren’t up for reelection anytime soon, or he has no control over his party. Either way, it proves the need for Democrats to jettison the minority leader.

Ghislaine Maxwell is asking Donald Trump to commute her prison sentence.

The longtime girlfriend and criminal associate of pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is working on a “commutation application,” according to documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee via a whistleblower.

“Documents and information received over the last several days by this Committee … [indicate] that Ghislaine Maxwell is working on filing a ‘Commutation Application’ with your Administration—demonstrating either that Ms. Maxwell is herself requesting you release her from her 20-year prison sentence for her role as a coconspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s international child sex trafficking ring, or that this child sex predator now holds such tremendous sway in the second Trump Administration that you and your [Justice Department] will follow her clemency recommendations,” Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote in a scathing memo dated Sunday.

Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp mere days after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July to help curate a new list of Epstein’s potential associates.

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

Since then, concerns have swelled among Republican lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported. In a convenient turn of events, Maxwell’s new list of Epstein associates does not include Trump’s name.

But the information exchange resulted in an extremely cushy 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.”

Maxwell has since raved about her new digs, celebrating the difference between the two facilities as akin to having “dropped through Alice in Wonderlands [sic] looking glass,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail 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. She and Trump partied together, attended fashion shows together, and went “out on the town” together, according to a 1997 postcard.

President Donald Trump made a bad day worse for Washington Commanders fans, as he was loudly booed while making an announcement from the broadcasting booth during the game versus the Detroit Lions in Maryland on Sunday. 

The president performed an enlistment ceremony creed for new members of the military during a pause in the game. He read from a black binder, speaking into a microphone. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood close by, as the president was booed nonstop for over two minutes.  

“Please raise your right hand. I—and state your name—do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic,” Trump said.

The boos could be heard clearly, even on Fox’s official broadcast, and Trump had to pause multiple times in that short statement. In video taken from fans in the stands, middle fingers and jeers can be seen and heard from Lions fans and Commanders fans alike. 

Trump was the first sitting president to go to an NFL game in almost 50 years, with the last being Jimmy Carter in 1978. 

The president made an appearance on the Fox NFL television broadcast, joining Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma in the booth afterward, talking about his relationship with football, which he played in high school. He also brought up his role in building the Commanders’ new stadium, which he reportedly wants named after him. 

“They’re going to build a beautiful stadium. That’s what I’m involved in, we’re getting all the approvals and everything else,” he said. “And you have a wonderful owner, Josh (Harris) and his group. And you’re going to see some very good things.”

This is just one of many sporting events that the president has made a point to show face at, making himself known at UFC fights, the Daytona 500, the U.S. Open, and the Ryder Cup. Trump has even promised a UFC fight on the White House lawn next summer. 

Trump’s presence may have been a death stroke for the Commanders, as they lost to the Lions 44–22, falling to 3–7 on the season. 

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.