Lindsey Graham Is Pushing Us Into a Shutdown for the Pettiest Reason

Lindsey Graham is so mad about his phone records being investigated that the South Carolina Republican might shut down the whole dadgum government.

On Thursday night, Graham refused to support a bill agreed upon by both Donald Trump and Senate Democrats that would have solidified 95 percent of the year’s funding for federal agencies.

The remaining five percent consists of the annual budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Following months’ worth of public outcry against the violent actions of ICE, Democrats successfully stripped DHS funding from the larger bill. The new bill allows for a two-week stopgap, giving Democrats time to formulate policy changes before they agree to fund DHS.

Graham is refusing to endorse the bill, not because of his love for DHS, but for a much dumber reason: he’s annoyed at a provision that repeals a law allowing senators to get payouts if they had their phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith.

As one of nine Republican lawmakers who had their records seized while Smith investigated Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, Graham would have been able to sue his own employer and potentially collect millions of dollars in taxpayer money under the provision—an idea he appeared to be very excited about. Now, that provision (which was criticized on both sides of the aisle as essentially legalized bribery) is gone, and Graham is reportedly pissed.

Graham will likely cave to his dear leader soon and agree to support the bill. But a government shutdown being caused by one of Trump’s biggest loyalists remains possible—and quite funny to think about.

Doug Burgum had a long resume before Donald Trump tapped him to be the secretary of the interior, but the credential that actually got him the job was apparently his wife, according to the president.

“I saw them riding horses in a video. And I said, ‘Who is that?’ I was talking about her, not him,” Trump said Thursday, seated at the Resolute Desk beside the couple. “They explained it, I said, ‘I’m gonna hire him,’ because anybody that has somebody like you to be with, it’s an amazing tribute.”

The reference to the video made Burgum’s wife, Kathryn Burgum, turn her face into her husband’s chest. Burgum served for eight years as North Dakota’s governor prior to entering Trump’s presidential cabinet.

It’s the second instance in recent weeks in which the president has opined about his colleagues’ wives.

At a GOP retreat on January 6, Trump told a collection of Republican lawmakers that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has a “great wife,” recalling Jennifer Scalise’s affection for her husband after he was attacked by a gunman at a congressional baseball game in 2017.

“Another one who has a great wife, Jacquie, is Tom Emmer, right,” Trump also said at the time, referring to the House majority whip. “Look at you, you have a great wife.”

“She actually liked me at the beginning when we were having little fights,” he continued, recalling that he and Emmer used to regularly disagree. “But Jacquie was saying, ‘I’m telling you, he’s a great guy, he’s good. He’s going to be a great president, blah, blah, blah.’ She was fighting for me and now I love this guy. He’s great. Jacquie’s right about—she was right about both of us, I think, right.”

Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty. 

Mangione, who is on trial for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had his federal murder charges dismissed on technicality by a federal judge who determined that the shooting was not simultaneously committed during another act of violence. Prosecutors argued that stalking fulfilled that requirement, but the judge disagreed. 

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, a Biden appointee, left in place the stalking charges against Mangione, which would carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Thompson was killed in December 2024 on his way to an investor conference. Mangione, who has a history of severe back pain, noted in an alleged manifesto that the U.S. has the “most expensive healthcare system in the world” but “ranks #42 in life expectancy.”

“United [Healthcare] is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but [h]as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” he wrote. The U.S. actually ranks even lower in life expectancy at sixtieth in the world. It is by far the most expensive.

This is a massive blow for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, as they made a spectacle out of seeking the death penalty for Mangione. President Trump even claimed on Fox News that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.... He shot him right in the middle of the back — instantly dead.... This is a sickness. This really has to be studied and investigated.” All of what Trump is was only alleged, undermining federal prosecutors’ case.

So much posturing and tough talk, only to have their dreams of capital punishment deferred by a technicality. It seems like the DOJ will have to go back to the drawing board.

 Mangione’s attorneys have yet to comment.  

This story has been updated. 

A girl was injured after being hit by a car sporting a large Trump flag on Thursday afternoon. The driver of the vehicle then sped away to screams from a crowd of high school students protesting ICE.

The incident took place outside Fremont High School in Fremont, Nebraska. In video captured by Veronica Sandoval of News Channel Nebraska, a young man is seen entering a red SUV with a Trump flag mounted on the back.

The young man reportedly drove past the protest multiple times before the incident, and student protesters heckled him from the side of his car before he began to drive away once more.

One girl in the crowd ran toward the car from the front, seemingly attempting to stop it. The car did not stop but accelerated slightly, striking the girl and throwing her to the ground. The SUV then stopped for a split second before accelerating again, away from the scene.

News Channel Nebraska reported that police and paramedics responded to the injury, and that the girl was alert and talking with first responders. She was loaded onto an ambulance and taken to a hospital.

It’s the latest in a growing number of protest incidents that have turned violent, with one of the most notable being the shooting and killing of Minnesota poet Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross after Good attempted to drive her car away from him.

Vice President JD Vance’s story about protesters mobbing off-duty ICE and Border Patrol officers in a Minneapolis restaurant is being challenged by local police—and the restaurant manager.

On Sunday, Vance posted a story on X about officers at dinner being doxed (in this case, just having their restaurant choice revealed) before protesters supposedly mobbed them. Vance claimed that the officers were locked inside the restaurant and that local police refused to help them because the authorities had instructed them not to do so. According to Vance, the off-duty officers only got help from their fellow federal agents.

But the manager of the restaurant that night said Vance’s retelling was off. Balli Singh of Darbar India Grill & Bar told Politico that he didn’t even know Vance was talking about his restaurant until the publication contacted him on Thursday and that the real story was very different. He said two men came into the restaurant at 8:30 p.m. on January 19 and asked why so many restaurants were closed or only offering takeout.

Singh said that ICE activity might have been the reason, to which one of the men said, “ICE is not problem.” The officers were in the middle of eating when some people came to the restaurant and told Singh that they suspected ICE was there. Singh said more people started to arrive and gathered near the men’s car. The agents told their server they were being harassed.

“One guy actually told me, ‘Brother, don’t come between this,’” Singh said, referring to one of the agents. “‘We’ll teach them a lesson.’” Only a few minutes later, uniformed officers arrived and the two men left shortly after that.

A Department of Homeland Security report of the incident claimed that one of the protesters who arrived locked the two agents in the restaurant, which Singh said he didn’t see anyone do, “even after in my cameras,” he added.

Local police have also fact-checked Vance’s retelling. “MPD monitored the situation and determined that the federal agents had sufficient resources available to manage the incident,” said Sgt. Garrett Parten, a public information officer for the department, in a statement to Politico about the incident.

“Records indicate the two individuals, and the assisting federal resources were able to leave the area within approximately 15 minutes of the initial 911 call. MPD was later notified that one of their vehicles had been left behind,” Parten said. “MPD monitored the vehicle until the agents were able to return and recover it.”

It seems that DHS agents may have exaggerated the incident to Vance, who took their account at face value and shared it to bolster the Trump administration’s narrative that Minneapolis protesters are aggressors against federal agents who are just trying to enforce immigration law. But it’s obvious to anyone on the ground or seeing video of these agents’ violent actions that the administration is telling lies.