Mike Johnson Tries to Cover Trump’s Butt on Those $5,000 Checks

House Speaker Mike Johnson is stoking the flames of Donald Trump’s $5,000 giveaway.

Speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday, the chief House Republican not only suggested that the government handouts could actually happen but said the process will “take time.”

Johnson opted not to elaborate when asked if the checks could be sorted out through the House’s reconciliation process.

“I’m not going to get into the details of all that because, again, we haven’t had the time to process that,” Johnson said. “It’s a big idea.… We’ve begun some of that process right now.”

“I spoke to the president about this late last night,” he continued. “He is very animated right now, as the vice president was this morning.”

It’s been six days since Trump announced his grand plan to dole out $5,000 to every American should Republicans win in the midterms. Only, the sudden and unexpected promise did not come with any details on how the checks would actually be distributed, or how the government could afford it.

Despite Trump’s repeated commitments to “drain the swamp” and “get rid of the debt,” the national debt has more than doubled since he first entered office—moving from $19.97 trillion in 2016 to more than $40 trillion today. During Trump’s first term, the debt grew by $7.8 trillion, and through the first year and a half of his second term, the sum has grown by another $3.8 trillion.

Trump’s last attempt to bribe Americans with money, stimulus checks during the Covid-19 pandemic, helped with his popularity but cost the country a lot in the end. The pandemic-era relief effort extended up to $1,800 to qualifying single adults, totaling $814 billion, according to IRS data collected by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But those congressionally approved checks were significantly smaller than Trump’s current offer, which was unveiled just seven weeks before contentious midterm elections. And this time, American voters seem more skeptical that the president will actually follow through on his word.

“Personally, I think it’s just a publicity stunt and I don’t think that it’s ever gonna happen,” a voter named William told Fox News Digital Tuesday. “It’ll need to go through Congress, and I don’t think with the midterm elections … the possibility of that happening is just so far down the road.”

Daniel from Maryland told the network that he wasn’t sure if the U.S. “[has] the money for that.”

“And I think if we did, it should be going a couple different other places than that, for sure,” he added.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun quietly firing new officers hired during the agency’s push to recruit thousands of “Homeland Defenders.” The results have been deadly.

ICE has started to dismiss some of its newest recruits, citing poor performance and red flags that should have been identified in the vetting process, three former DHS officials told The Washington Post Tuesday.

ICE officials struggled to process the massive surge of applicants after the Trump administration dangled a $50,000 signing bonus in front of people’s noses, hoping to entice Americans to join the legion of officers tearing families apart. In August 2025, an ICE whistleblower wrote to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General warning that the hiring surge had “overwhelmed” the agency, and that applicants were being cleared for duty “without fingerprints, identity verification, or credit checks.”

The agency’s slapdash method of hiring and firing unqualified officers has had disastrous results.

Joseph Moore, a 38-year-old father of two, took his own life in the parking lot of ICE’s Philadelphia office after he was notified that he would be fired. It was his dream to work in law enforcement, and after struggling to hold down a job, Moore leapt at the chance to join ICE. When that opportunity was taken away, he shot and killed himself, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. (His family has expressed doubts that his death was in fact a suicide.)

Two former ICE officers told the Post that their colleague’s death might have been avoided if the agency had adequately vetted him and determined that he was not qualified to serve in law enforcement.

“Once you get fired from law enforcement, it’s terribly hard, right or wrong, to get back into law enforcement,” one of the officers told the Post. “It’s the death of a career, and the weight of this hits some officers hard enough where they take their own lives.”

FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday was forced to answer why his agency is no longer automatically disqualifying applicants who engaged in bestiality. What followed was a perplexing exchange that highlighted the deep absurdity of our current political moment.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin kicked off the bestiality questioning.

“According to a memo issued this June, the FBI has lowered its hiring standards by dropping automatic disqualification for applicants who have stolen from [their employers], paid for sex, are engaged in bestiality. In July, you claim the FBI is ‘losing too many qualified candidates to the rigors of requirements from yesteryear,’” Durbin said. “Director Patel, do you believe those who have previously stolen from [employers], solicited sex, are engaged in bestiality are qualified candidates that the FBI is losing?”

“What we did was, we did not want to punish victims of bestiality—victims who were trafficked,” Patel replied, failing to clarify that the FBI was not in fact making it easier to hire people who had sex with animals. “We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts.”

“He’s no longer protecting those who’ve been charged with bestiality, he’s protecting those who are victims. Just turned it upside down,” Durbin replied. “What I’m reading to you is you dropped automatic disqualification for applicants who have been engaged in bestiality, not victims of bestiality. Applicants who have engaged. Do you disagree with that?”

“Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so,” Patel said. “And at this FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world.”

Even Republican Senator John Kennedy was stunned by Patel’s answer, arguing with the FBI director about the loosened hiring standards.

“What about the bestiality?” Kennedy said, genuinely confused.

“It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it,” Patel replied.

“Either side of what, the bestiality?”

“Yes.”

“So you disqualified the animal?”

“Well, we have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify [them],” Patel said, a poor attempt at a joke.

“I’m trying to understand why you did this.... And I understand the game. People try to make you look bad. We do the same thing when the other party’s in office,” Kennedy continued. “Why would you even get into bestiality?”

“We are not into bestiality—”

“I know you’re not, but you changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If if Joe participated in bestiality—not as the animal but as the human—don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?” Kennedy raised, still confused.

“If he voluntarily did it, sure. But if he was trafficked into it…”

“How do you involuntarily do it?”

“In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers … they don’t just traffic you for prostitution. They traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds,” Patel said. “And some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers, who qualified to be law enforcement officers and later applied to the FBI.”

“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect, the person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, ‘What planet did you parachute in from? Why do I wanna lead with my chin and get into bestiality?!’” Kennedy hollered.

“That was my initial response, senator. But they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI, and so I thought they should be considered. It’s not an automatic disqualification. That’s all,” Patel said, alluding to an apparently significant number of bestiality victims who want to join the FBI.

“Okay, all right. I think I understand. But you’re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent,” Kennedy asked.

“No, they cannot.”

“In fact, they oughta be in jail right?”

“They all are.”

“Yeah, well. OK.”

Iran has inflicted heavy damage on U.S. installations across the Middle East since February, much more than had been previously disclosed.

On Monday, the Department of Defense inspector general released an official account of U.S. losses from February 28 to June 30 to Congress, and the findings are stark. The military lost dozens of aircraft, including drones, fighter jets, helicopters, and refueling tankers. Hundreds of buildings on U.S. bases were damaged or destroyed by Iran, including the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which suffered extensive damage in a February 28 drone attack. U.S. munitions have been depleted, with supply chains to restock them hit with bottlenecks.

The U.S. spent close to $22.3 billion on munitions and $33.4 billion on the war in general in that four-month period. At least 11 U.S. service members were “killed in action,” while another seven were killed in “non-hostile events.” At least 417 U.S. troops were wounded in the war as of June 30. U.S. diplomatic facilities were damaged to the tune of $184 million in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

All of this doesn’t include the costs and damage sustained since hostilities resumed in July. Iran captured a U.S. submersible Dive-LD earlier this month and traded attacks on oil tankers with the U.S. last week.

As the war continues, the White House has requested $87.6 billion in emergency supplemental funding, including $67.1 billion for the Pentagon itself. Senior White House officials have warned President Trump behind closed doors that the war could stretch through the end of 2028. The war has hurt the global and U.S. economy and sent gas prices skyrocketing. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars are essentially being set on fire for a war that wasn’t even necessary to begin with.

The Senate advanced the nomination of Judge Matthew R. Byrne, a longtime member of the Federalist Society and an anti-abortion advocate, by a vote of 47–46. The tie-breaking vote: Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Donald Trump nominated Byrne for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The upper chamber invoked cloture on Byrne’s nomination Monday, ending debate over the judge’s qualifications for the federal gig and proceeding toward a floor vote.

Byrne’s track record on women’s reproductive health is concerning. The Indiana native has several affiliations with anti-abortion groups, including Ohio Right to Life, Cincinnati Right to Life, Warren County Right to Life, the Center for Christian Virtue, and the Federalist Society.

Byrne elaborated on his beliefs in a 2020 judicial candidate survey, noting that he opposed abortion for any reason other than to protect the life of the mother, without any exceptions for rape or incest. He also believed the phrase “life of the mother” should be “strictly defined so as to avoid creating loopholes.”

When pressed over the summer to explain his rationale by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Byrne claimed that it would be “inappropriate for me to opine on this issue as your question asks me to comment on a matter of political controversy,” citing restrictions in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges as they relate to impartiality and political neutrality.

Byrne also stood in the way of the will of Ohio voters in 2023. He was the sole figure on the seven-judge Ohio Supreme Court who refused to dismiss a case involving the legislature’s six-week abortion ban, even after abortion was enshrined in the Ohio Constitution following a statewide voter referendum.

Collins too has a spotted history when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. The Maine Republican is in a vulnerable midterm position, but she has attempted to elevate her odds in the blue-leaning state by branding herself as an abortion rights proponent.

She has repeatedly lamented the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, writing in a statement at the time that it was an “ill-considered action.”

But actions speak louder than words: Collins had voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the high court in 2018. At the time, she told 60 Minutes she was “very comfortable that I’ve made the right decision.” Kavanaugh would ultimately side with the majority in the court’s 5–4 decision to overturn the abortion precedent.