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      The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan

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      The last remaining piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – section 2, which empowers the federal government to protect voters from racial gerrymandering meant to dilute Black political power – appears headed for an untimely end. At oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais on Wednesday, the US supreme court appeared ready to strike down section 2, effectively completing the gradual nullification of the Voting Rights Act that it has pursued for over a decade.The case stems from new congressional districting maps that were drawn in Louisiana after the 2020 census, which found both that the state was eligible for six seats in the House of Representatives and that its population was about one-third Black. The state initially drew maps that featured only one majority-Black congressional district, rejecting seven more racially fair maps; voters sued, and federal courts ordered Louisiana to comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing new maps in which Black voters would be a majority in a second district, thereby reflecting their share of the population and giving Black Louisianans an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.But now, a group of people identifying themselves as “non-African-American voters” have sued to get those racially proportionate maps thrown out, arguing that enforcement of the VRA violates their own rights under the 14th and 15th amendments. They claim the maps drawn to remedy racial discrimination against Black people in fact constitute racial discrimination against non-Black (read: white) people. The court seems likely to side with them.If they do, it will mark the end of the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the crowning achievement of the civil right movement, which the supreme court, under John Roberts, has been dismantling for years. In 2013’s Shelby county v Holder, the court struck down much of section 5, which had required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get federal preclearance for changes to its voting laws.In subsequent cases, the court has repeatedly narrowed the conditions under which litigants can bring voting rights claims and expanded states’ leeway to make voting laws that would have previously been deemed discriminatory. Writing for the majority in Shelby, Chief Justice Roberts claimed that racial animus and inequality had diminished enough that such a regime was not necessary, and indeed violated the rights of states. As states imposed a slew of new voting restrictions in the aftermath, the gap between Black and white voter participation rates grew dramatically. It expanded twice as much in districts that had previously been subjected to the section 5 preclearance regime.On Wednesday, the court seemed determined to apply the same logic that it used in Shelby county to section 2, demanding that Janai Nelson, the head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, justify why section 2 should still be efficacious and should not be considered to have somehow expired. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito asserted that the racial gerrymander was justified if it was intended as a partisan gerrymander – that is, that the lawmakers’ stated or professed intentions was what mattered, and not the racially discriminatory impact of the gerrymander.Previous supreme court precedent, as well as ample evidence from the congressional record, has said that discriminatory impact, rather than intent, is sufficient to constitute illegal racial discrimination – but at oral argument, the Republicans on the court, along with those representing the litigants, did not seem to think that this should matter. As she rebutted these arguments in the guise of asking questions from the bench, one could hear the exhaustion in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s voice. The remedies, she sputtered, “are so tied up with race, because race is the initial problem!” Jackson has been the court’s most passionate and articulate advocate for the Reconstruction amendments and for the legacy of the civil rights movement, but she seemed to know that her colleagues were not listening to her.The case reflects two major trends of the Roberts court: hostility to racial justice claims brought by minorities, and a willingness to invert civil rights law and the Reconstruction amendments alike to create interpretations in which these legal traditions function to entrench, rather than challenge, historical hierarchies of race and gender. Louisiana’s attorney general – who has switched sides in the case since it was initially argued last year, joining an opposition to the Voting Rights Act – claimed that to assume that Black voters would vote differently than white voters – which in Louisiana, they overwhelmingly do – would be to unconstitutionally impose a racial stereotype. This facile fiction elicited exasperation from Justice Kagan.But the attorney general knew his audience. Roberts has long been an enemy of practices that attempt to remedy historical and ongoing racial discrimination, claiming that the law mandates that state and private actors alike take no interest in such projects and attempt facially race-blind policies in everything from voting rights enforcement to college admissions – no matter how racially discriminatory against Black Americans such practices prove to be in reality. “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he once memorably said, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” – that is, to stop trying to account for or combat racism with official policy. The result will be that if the court rules in Louisiana’s favor, it will no longer be illegal, in practice, to racially gerrymander congressional districts to minimize and dilute Black voter power. But it will be illegal to use race to redistrict in such a way that restores Black voter power.It is apparently through this fanciful and motivated reasoning that Roberts and his colleagues have decided that any move to secure Black Americans’ voting rights and equality in fact violates the very constitutional amendments that were meant to secure their voting rights and equality. The Voting Rights Act does not violate the 15th amendment; it enforces it, and gave the United States, during the 60 years or so of its enactment, its only plausible claim to being a real democracy. To say that the VRA contradicts the 15th amendment is more than just bad reasoning. It is bad faith. But bad faith, increasingly, is what the supreme court operates under.If the supreme court rules in favor of the “non-African-American” voters and vacates what is left of the Voting Rights Act, as they are expected to, then a decision will probably come down sometime in June, just a few months before the November 2026 midterms. The resulting racial gerrymanders are expected to net Republicans 19 House seats.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump says US looking at land attacks in Venezuela after lethal strikes on boats – live

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      Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, on Wednesday urged the Republican-led House oversight committee to launch an investigation into the “vile and offensive” text messages exchanged between leaders of Young Republican groups.The request follows a report in Politico that revealed more than 28,000 Telegram messages sent between Young Republican leaders over the course of seven months, in which they refer to Black people as monkeys, praise Hitler, and repeatedly make glib remarks about gas chambers, slavery and rape.“Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke’, and it is not fringe,” Newsom said in a statement. “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.”With Republicans in control of the House, the oversight committee is unlikely to act.In the letter addressed to James Comer, the Republican committee chair and an ally of the president, Newsom notes that while House Republicans have made combating antisemitism a priority, few party leaders have publicly condemned the messages revealed in the report.Democrats such as the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, expressed outrage over the messages, and some GOP groups, like the Young Republican National Federation, have called for resignations.But the vice-president, JD Vance, said that he refused to “join the pearl clutching” over what he inaccurately described as “a college group chat”.Vance recently expressed support for the effort to track down, intimidate and harass people who voiced criticism of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he might go to the supreme court next month when it hears his administration’s appeal of two prior court rulings against his imposition of sweeping tariffs under an economic emergency that appears to exist only in his mind.A trade court and an appeals court have both found that Trump exceeded his authority by imposing global tariffs citing provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.On Wednesday, Trump also claimed that he had used the threat of tariffs to stop the escalation of fighting this year between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed nations.Indian officials have said that Trump’s intervention had nothing to do with the end of hostilities.Donald Trump has finished speaking in the Oval Office. After he recited a long series of previously aired grievances, he confirmed, for the first time, that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in the administration’s apparent effort to drive the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Donald Trump just claimed that the number of Hamas fighters killed by Israel, with US support, exceeds the entire estimated death toll in the Gaza Strip in the past two years.“We, meaning Israel, but I knew everything they were doing, pretty much, I knew most of the things they were doing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “they’ve killed probably 70,000 of these people, Hamas.”As the United Nations reported last week, there have been 67,183 fatalities and 169,841 injuries reported to the Gaza ministry of health since 7 October 2023.The dead included 20,179 children, 10,427 women, 4,813 elderly people and 31,754 adult men.In May of this year, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found that Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed or probably killed.Trump went on to claim that Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons, but, while Hamas leaders said earlier this year that they would consider giving up the group’s heavy weapons, such as rockets and missiles, on Saturday a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that disarmament was “out of the question”, adding: “The demand that we hand over our weapons is not up for negotiation.”Nevertheless, Trump said on Wednesday: “We want the weapons to be given up, sacrificed, and they’ve agreed to do it. Now they have to do it, and if they don’t do it, we’ll do it.”Asked by a reporter if that meant the US military might be directly involved in disarming the Palestinian militants, Trump replied, again apparently referring to US support for Israel’s military: “We won’t need the US military … because we’re very much involved.”To defend lethal US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers, Donald Trump just repeated his familiar but baseless claim that Venezuela “emptied” its prisons and “insane asylums” by sending incarcerated people into the United States as undocumented immigrants during the Biden administration.“Many countries have done it,” Trump claimed.As the Marshall Project reported a year ago, before the 2024 election, Trump had already made this claim more than 500 times without a shred of evidence.Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Kash Patel, the FBI director, is speaking to members of the press now.“In just a three-month span, you had 8,700 arrests of violent criminals. You had 2,200 firearms seized off the streets permanently, to safeguard our communities. You had 421kg of fentanyl seized. Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough to kill 55 million Americans alone,” Patel said.He then compared the number of arrests since Trump returned to the White House with the yearly arrests of violent criminals during the Biden administration.“You have 28,600 arrests of violent criminals in just seven months alone, because of your leadership,” Patel said, praising the president in the process.“It’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco,” Trump said of the city and California governor Gavin Newsom’s home town.“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver.”Trump touted the success of federal law enforcement in Washington DC.“It’s been so nice because so many people, they’re going out to dinner, and they’re having dinners they wouldn’t, they didn’t go out for four years, and now they’re going out three times a week,” he said.He went on to complain that the only thing in his way in other major cities is “radical left governors”.The president begins his press conference saying that he’s here to talk about “Operation Summer Heat”. He’s flanked by the FBI director, Kash Patel.“Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority. That’s what they did, rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” Trump said.Brown University is the latest institution to reject the White House’s offer to join a “Compact of Academic Excellence” – the controversial agreement which would provide preferential treatment to colleges that carry out several of the administration’s education policies, including ending diversity initiatives and capping international student enrollment.In a letter to the education secretary, Linda McMahon, Brown’s president. Christina H Paxson, said she’s concerned the compact would “restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance”.She added:
      A fundamental part of academic excellence is awarding research funding on the merits of the research being proposed. The cover letter describing the compact contemplates funding research on criteria other than the soundness and likely impact of research, which would ultimately damage the health and prosperity of Americans.
      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university to reject the invitation to join the compact, before the White House extended the option to all higher education institutes across the country.The Senate has rejected a House-passed funding bill to reopen the federal government, as the shutdown enters its 15th day.With a vote of 51-44, this is the ninth time that the funding extension has failed to meet the 60-member threshold needed to advance in the upper chamber.According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, the plane carrying the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, back from a meeting of Nato ministers in the UK had to make an unscheduled landing “due to a crack in the aircraft windshield”.Parnell added: “The plane landed based on standard procedures and everyone onboard, including Secretary Hegseth, is safe.”

      A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs during the ongoing government shutdown. In a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) challenging the reductions in force that the Trump administration enacted last week, Judge Susan Illston said that the mass firings across agencies, which amounted to more than 4,000 layoffs, are an example of the administration taking “advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them any more”. Illston blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of, or during, the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.

      While that hearing was under way, the White House budget director maintained that the firings are far from over. Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget – has said that the current reductions in force are just a “snapshot”. He added that the total amount could end up being about 10,000.

      The supreme court heard two and a half hours of oral arguments today in a case that could thwart a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The conservative majority on the bench seemed sympathetic to the case, made by lawyers for Louisiana, a group of “non-African American voters” and the Trump administration. They all argue that a 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, violates the constitution. If the court rules in their favor, it could ultimately diminish section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits electoral practices that dilute the voting power of minority groups. It would also limit the ability of legislatures from drawing maps with racial demographics in mind, and could cost Democrats several House seats in Republican-led states.

      Also in Washington, the government shutdown enters day 15, with no end in sight. Republicans and Democrats in Congress held press conferences at the US Capitol, and continued to exchange barbs – blaming the other party for the lapse in funding. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he spoke with Donald Trump on Tuesday, adding that Republicans are “forlorn” and not taking “any pleasure” in the length of the shutdown and the mass layoffs implemented by the White House budget office. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries slammed the administration for offering a $20bn cash bailout to Argentina, but not “spending a dime on affordable healthcare for Americans”. CSPAN also reported that Johnson and Jeffries have both accepted an invitation to debate on the network. The date has yet to be announced.

      Today, Johnson also accused a group of Democrats of “storming” his office, showing “disdain for law enforcement” and playing “political games”. On Tuesday evening, a group of Democrats including Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic representative-elect for Arizona, marched to Johnson’s office, chanting “swear her in” and demanding that she be seated after she won a special election in her state over three weeks ago. Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has threatened legal action against Johnson for failing to seat Grijalva, and Grijalva said she has also been exploring her legal options for officially claiming her seat.
      In her order, Judge Illston has temporarily blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of or during the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.She’ll lay out further details in her written ruling later today, but said that the administration will need to provide a plan outlining how they have complied with her order within two business days. Illston said that she will schedule a preliminary injunction hearing in roughly two weeks’ time. “It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case,” Illston added. “My breath is bated until we find that.”Judge Susan Illston has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the firing of federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown. More

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      Trump calls Charlie Kirk a martyr and boasts about 2024 election at posthumous medal ceremony – live

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      Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.Erika Kirk delivered an emotional speech, at times dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, as Trump stood to her right.She said: “I have spent seven and a half years trying to find the perfect birthday gift for Charlie… But now I can say with confidence, Mr President, that you have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have.”The pair then spoke quietly for some moments as a band began to play Amazing Grace.The White House ceremony in honor of Charlie Kirk has now concluded.At a campaign event last year, Donald Trump said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom for civilians, which he bestowed on Kirk on Tuesday, was “much better” than the top military award for those killed or wounded in action: the Medal of Honor.Trump was widely criticized for that comment, made as he addressed Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Trump had awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom in 2018.The civilian medal, Trump told supporters then, is “actually much better because everyone [who] gets the congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers.”“They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”Charlie Kirk is not the first to receive the medal from Trump posthumously. During his first term, he gave it to Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley and Antonin Scalia.In 2020, Trump also presented the medal to the rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh during a State of the Union address.In his speech at the memorial for Kirk in Arizona last month, Trump revealed that Limbaugh was one of Kirk’s role models. “He was an Eagle scout who spent his school lunch breaks listening to another champion for liberty, somebody that he greatly admired, Rush Limbaugh,” Trump said.“Charlie Kirk was one of a kind. He was unstoppable… He’s irreplaceable. Nobody can replace him,” Donald Trump said in his remarks.“In Charlie’s honour we will continue to fight, fight, fight and win, win, win.”A military officer then read Kirk’s citation for the presidential medal of freedom.Kirk’s widow Erika thanked Trump and said: “Charlie always admired your commitment to freedom.”In remarks at the White House, Charlie Kirk’s widow praised her late husband in explicitly Christian terms and said that he would likely have run for president one day had he not been killed before his 32nd birthday.“If the moment had come, he probably would’ve run for president, but not out of ambition,” Erika Kirk said.In paying tribute to Kirk, Trump railed against “radical left extremism, violence and terror.”He asserted: “They have the devil’s ideology… They seem to become very violent on the left.”Trump claimed these attacks included the attempt on his own life at a campaign rally last year, even though the would-be assassin had no apparent political motive.The president went on tout his law and order crackdown on US cities. “We’ve done a great job.”He said of Washington: “We’re done with the angry mobs.” He claimed the city is now safe.But then police car sirens wailed near the White House. Trump, however, insisted: “That’s a beautiful sound. They’re stopping crime. That’s what they’re doing.”Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.As Donald Trump boasted about the impact of his federal takeover of policing in the District of Columbia, blaring sirens could be heard in the distance, undermining his claim that there is no longer any crime in the capital city.Trump then claimed, falsely, that sirens were previously not heard in Washington DC because the city’s police force did not respond to crime.“You hear those sirens going off? That’s good, that’s a good sound,” the president said. “That means they either got the bad guy, or are gonna stop the bad guy. You didn’t hear that sound, because nobody wanted to do anything.”“Charlie Kirk was a martyr for truth and freedom,” Donald Trump just said in the Rose Garden. “From Socrates and St Peter, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, those who change history the most, and he really did, have always risked their lives for causes they were put on earth to defend.”In the course of praising Charlie Kirk for his efforts to turn out conservative voters, Donald Trump boasted at length about his victory in the 2024 presidential election, repeating his familiar exaggerated claims that his popular vote victory “was massive”.Trump in fact got about 77.3 million votes, or 49.81%, to Kamala Harris’ 75 million votes, or 48.33% — a 1.48-point margin.From my vantage point at the back, I saw Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity greet each other warmly. Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Spicer and Jesse Watters are also present.Reflecting on Kirk’s death, Trump said: “It’s a horrible, heinous, demonic act of murder.”The president, who just returned from the Middle East, noted the inconvenient timing of today’s event but insisted: “I would not have missed this moment for anything in the world.”Guests are sitting or standing in warm sunshine and a gentle breeze as Trump speaks from a lectern with four US flags behind him.Recent additions to the rose garden and surrounding area include a statue of George Washington, bust of Abraham Lincoln and gold framed portraits of every president except Joe Biden, replaced by an auto pen.Trump referred to the government shutdown and commented: “We’re dealing with some radical left lunatics.”He suggested that Kirk would have responded by organising a young people’s march on the US Capitol.Trump said: “Charles James Kirk was a visionary and one of the greatest leaders of his generation.”The president seemed to be telling Kirk’s life story but veered off into talking about his past election campaigns. “Too big to rig.”Donald Trump has arrived for Charlie Kirk’s posthumous presidential medal of freedom ceremony, which is taking place in the Rose Garden at the White House.Trump walked out of the Oval Office with Charlie Kirk’s widow Erica.The guests here include JD Vance, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, attorney general Pam Bondi and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.Also here are top Trumpworld operatives who were close to Kirk, including lobbyist Arthur Schwartz, former Trump deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and Alex Bruesewitz.Donald Trump just began his remarks by praising his own renovation of what he called “the new and improved Rose Garden, and people are loving it”. He also drew attention to the new “presidential walk of fame”, which is a gallery of portraits of 44 of the 45 men to have served as president, with an image of an automatic pen in place of Joe Biden.Trump said that they were gathered to honor “the late, great Charlie Kirk”, the founder of the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.The president took issue with the characterization of Kirk at his memorial in Arizona as someone who loved his enemies. “He didn’t necessarily love those enemies”, Trump said.Trump also suggested that he would have asked to push back the ceremony so that he could stay longer in the Middle East with the wealthy leaders of Gulf nations, but “October 14 is Charlie’s birthday, and he should have been turning 32 years old”.The president went on to give a largely familiar political speech, attacking Democrats as “radical left lunatics” and making jokes about the ABC host George Stephanopoulos, whose name he intentionally mispronounced.Trump also suggested that the current government shutdown would have been ended by Kirk, had he not been killed last month in Utah, who would have led “a march on the Capitol.”Guests have assembled in the new Mar-a-Lago style patio in the White House Rose Garden for the Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor Charlie Kirk, the murdered conservative activist and podcaster.The guests include Kirk’s widow, Erika, and current or former Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and Jesse Watters.Also there is Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist who hosts a show on the far-right Real America’s Voice network sponsored by Turning Point USA, the advocacy group founded by Kirk.The are currently listening to a rendition of Ave Maria as they await the president, Donald Trump.

      Donald Trump said that a list of ‘Democrat programs’ that White House plans to cut will be released on Friday. He noted that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear, but doesn’t plan to touch Republican programs, “because we think they work”. While hosting Javier Milei, president of Argentina, Trump took questions from reporters, in what became a far-ranging, impromptu press conference.

      Trump warned that Hamas must disarm ‘or we will disarm them’. Trump added that could happen “quickly and perhaps violently”. When he was asked about a timeline for disarmament, the president said that it would be “a reasonable period of time … pretty quickly”. So far, Trump has been taking a victory lap, complete with bipartisan praise, for brokering the hostage-prisoner exchange on Monday, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza.

      Earlier, Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuala, killing six people aboard. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

      Back in Washington, the government shutdown enters its 14th day, with no end in sight. House Republicans continued to criticize the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, who they accuse of holding out on the House-passed funding bill to appease the left-wing base of his party. “We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” House speaker Mike Johnson said today. Meanwhile Democrats, claim their colleagues across the aisle have abandoned good faith negotiations. House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries said that Republicans have gone “radio silent” since congressional leadership met with Trump at the White House days before the shutdown began. The Senate will hold its eighth vote, in the hopes of passing a funding bill to reopen the government. Spoiler alert: it’s unlikely to happen.

      The supreme court declined to hear Alex Jones’s challenge to a $1.4bn judgment awarded to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012. Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, made several false statements that the shooting – which killed 20 children – was a hoax.

      On the campaign trail, Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has officially announced that she’s running for US Senate, challenging the incumbent, Republican Susan Collins. Mills, 77, will face a primary challenge from Graham Platner, the progressive oyster farmer entering politics for the first time and backed by Independent senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont.
      Speaking to reporters while hosting Argentina’s president, Donald Trump said that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear.“They’re never going to come back,” Trump said. “The Democrats are getting killed, and we’re going to have a list of them on Friday.”“We’re not closing up Republican programs because we think they work. So the Democrats are getting killed, but they’re not telling the people about that,” he added.Donald Trump floated taking away Boston’s ability to host several 2026 World Cup matches, calling out mayor Michelle Wu. “She’s intelligent, but she’s radical left,” Trump said, while offering to send federal law enforcement to the city. “All she has to do is call us. We’ll go in and take them back. But she’s afraid to, because she thinks it’s bad politically.”Trump added that if he feels that the city is “unsafe” he will “call up Gianni” and tell him to move the games to another location. Gianni Infantino, the head of Fifa, has emerged as an ally of the president as the games inch closer.“Boston better clean up their act, that’s all I can say,” Trump said. More

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      Johnson says ‘I don’t have anything to negotiate’ as US shutdown drags on

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      The top House Republican said he won’t negotiate with Senate Democrats as the government shutdown dragged into its 14th day on Tuesday, while defending the Trump administration’s decision to shuffle Pentagon funds to make sure military personnel get their paychecks.Speaking to reporters, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed: “I don’t have anything to negotiate” and accused Democrats of playing games ahead of the Senate’s scheduled eighth vote Tuesday evening on a House-passed measure to fund the government.He also dismissed Democratic concerns about the legality of the Pentagon’s decision to use unspent research and development funds to pay service members during the shutdown, starting with a paycheck on Wednesday.“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said. “I’m grateful for a commander in chief who understands the priorities of the country.”The payment arrangement came after Donald Trump ordered his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to find money for military salaries over the weekend. Trump said in a post on TruthSocial that he wouldn’t let Democrats “hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE” during the shutdown.The Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget announced that troops will receive their scheduled 15 October paycheck using reallocated funds, eliminating the immediate need for a separate US military pay bill.Johnson has said the Trump administration has “every right” to redirect the appropriated defense department funds, though Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether the action is legal.The speaker continued to blame the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, for the impasse, accusing him of blocking the House-passed “clean” continuing resolution to appease his party’s progressive wing.“We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” Johnson said, adding that he had “no strategy” beyond “doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing”.Johnson claimed the Republican stopgap funding bill contains no partisan priorities, telling reporters on Tuesday: “I don’t have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them.”The Republican speaker has kept the House in extended recess and scrapped scheduled votes as he attempts to pressure Senate Democrats into accepting the Republican proposal without modifications. Playing hardball has drawn praise from the rightwing House Freedom Caucus but criticism from some Republicans who argue the House should negotiate.According to a court filing by the country’s largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, more than 4,000 government employees have been laid off during the shutdown. Senate Democrats representing Maryland and Virginia, states with high concentrations of federal workers, condemned the dismissals on Tuesday.“This is all part of the Trump 2025 playbook,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator. “Stop attacking employees, stop attacking the American people, and start negotiating to reopen the federal government.” More

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      US Congress committee investigating Musk-owned Starlink over Myanmar scam centres

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      A powerful bipartisan committee in the US Congress says it has begun an investigation into the involvement of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite business in providing internet access to Myanmar scam centres, blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world.The move comes as it was revealed that large numbers of Starlink dishes began appearing on scam-centre roofs in Myanmar around the time of a crackdown in February that was supposed to eradicate the centres, according to a investigation by Agence France-PresseStarlink has come from nowhere to become the war-torn country’s biggest internet provider in three months, data from the APNIC Asian regional internet registry shows.SpaceX, Starlink’s owner, has not replied to AFP requests for comment.The US Congress joint economic committee told the news agency it began an investigation in July into Starlink’s involvement with the scam centres. The committee has the power to make Musk testify before it.China, Thailand and Myanmar forced pro-junta Myanmar militias who protect the centres into promising to “eradicate” the compounds in February. They freed about 7,000 people – most Chinese citizens – from the brutal call centre-style system, which the UN says runs on forced labour and human trafficking.Many workers said they were beaten and forced to work long hours by scam bosses who target victims across the globe with telephone, internet and social media cons.Senator Maggie Hassan, the leading Democrat on the US congressional committee, has called on Musk to block the Starlink service to the fraud factories.“While most people have probably noticed the increasing number of scam texts, calls and emails, they may not know that transnational criminals halfway across the world may be perpetrating these scams by using Starlink internet access,” she said.The senator wrote to Musk in July demanding answers to 11 questions about Starlink’s role.Former California prosecutor Erin West, who now heads the Operation Shamrock group campaigning against the centres, said: “It is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen.”While still a cybercrime prosecutor, she warned Starlink in July 2024 that the mostly Chinese crime syndicates that run the centres were using its technology, but received no reply.Americans are among the top targets of south-east Asia scammers, the US treasury department said, losing an estimated $10bn last year, up 66% in 12 months.Up to 120,000 people may be being “forced to carry out online scams” in the Myanmar centres, according to a UN report in 2023.On the Thailand-Myanmar border, new buildings have been springing up inside the heavily guarded compounds around Myawaddy at a fast pace, with some festooned with Starlink receivers, satellite images and AFP drone footage show.Analysis of satellite images from Planet Labs PBC found dozens of buildings going up or being altered in the largest of the compounds, KK Park, between March and September. More

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      The populist playbook: Democratic US Senate candidate seeks to replicate Mamdani’s success

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      During Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s Fight the Oligarchy tour stop in Michigan, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed hit on bold populist policies like Medicare For All and taxing the rich.But he drew among the loudest cheers from the crowd in Kalamazoo, when he bellowed his updated reversal of an Obama catchphrase that signified a new pugilistic tactic when dealing with Maga attacks. “When they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out,” he said.El-Sayed’s fiery speech and his populist campaign in Michigan’s Democratic primary for the Senate race comes on the heels of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning June win in New York City’s mayoral primary, which has generated momentum on the left-wing of the party.The Sanders-endorsed, anti-establishment El-Sayed, 40, follows a similar blueprint as Mamdani, and Michigan in some ways offers favorable terrain for the leftwing populist playbook. But at the same time a repeat of Mamdani’s success in the more conservative, upper midwest swing state is far from certain, and the race is viewed as a possible bellwether on leftists’ electability in statewide campaigns across the US.“This is a time when that call for new politics is resonating beyond the places one would expect it to resonate, like in the far reaches of Michigan’s rural communities,” said Yousef Rabhi, a former Michigan House Democratic floor leader who has endorsed El-Sayed. “Abdul and Mamdani are speaking to this moment.”Like Mamdani, El-Sayed eschews partisanship in favor of leftwing populist economic ideas, sharply criticizes Israel, and leans heavily on a sense of authenticity. In New York City, that formula resonated with younger people, activated disaffected voters and attracted support for Mamdani from across the political spectrum. Mamdani remains strongly ahead in the New York mayoral raceUsing that style in Michigan is a break from the moderate Democratic politics that for decades have dominated in the state, and which defeated El-Sayed in 2018 when he lost to now governor Gretchen Whitmer in a gubernatorial Democratic primary.But since then, El-Sayed has run health departments in Detroit and Wayne county, and touts accomplishments like helping to eliminate $700m in medical debt for local residents.The economic playing field has also shifted since 2018, and El-Sayed thinks his message is more likely to resonate now than seven years ago. “People now understand Donald Trump was not the cause, but the symptom,” he said during an interview with the Guardian at a Detroit coffee shop.Moreover, Democratic voters’ frustration with the party is near all time highs, and the left believes there is appetite for outsider candidates, populist economics and criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. It has boosted El-Sayed, especially in a state that’s home to the uncommitted movement and large Arab-American and Muslim populations.But there are some crucial differences between El-Sayed’s and Mamdani’s races.El-Sayed’s opponents are not damaged like Mamdani’s main competitors, mayor Eric Adams and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In the August 2026 primary election, El-Sayed faces US congresswoman Haley Stevens, and state senator Mallory McMorrow. The latter is similarly young and critical of party leadership, and has styled herself as an outsider. But McMorrow largely shares the establishment’s economic policy positions and brought on political insiders, like controversial former Cuomo consultant Lis Smith.Educated, middle-class voters who wanted to vote for an outsider were key to Mamdani’s win. El-Sayed also needs those votes, but they may be split among him and McMorrow, even if the two candidates have substantially different policies and El-Sayed is more truly an outsider, said Josh Cohen, a progressive political analyst who writes the Ettingermentum newsletter.“The race is not the ideal feel and circumstance in the way that New York was for Mamdani,” Cohen said. An El-Sayed win would suggest voters are concerned with policy, he added. “It would be a very meaningful sign that people’s desire for a shift isn’t superficial.”Another key difference between McMorrow and El-Sayed lies in Israel policy. El-Sayed calls for an end to “blank check” military aid to Israel and other countries, and uses the term “genocide”. McMorrow, by contrast, has tried to walk a tightrope, calling for humanitarian relief while not using the term “genocide” until October.El-Sayed’s populist economic proposals include a ban on tax incentives for companies like Amazon, new taxes for billionaires, the elimination of medical debt and a strengthening of anti-monopoly laws to address corporate price gouging.Though those are leftist ideas, El-Sayed said he avoids the “left-right” label, which might help thread a needle in places like the rural, conservative upper peninsula. Financial pain and its cause are the same everywhere, El-Sayed added, so his focus is on the economic divide, not the cultural or political one.“It’s the divide between the people who have been locked out and those doing the locking out,” he said. He added that his solutions have broad appeal no matter what they are labeled, and that explains why some Trump voters surprisingly show up for “a guy named Abdul”.“They didn’t vote for Donald Trump out of a sense of hate for Muslims. They voted for him because of a sense of frustration with the way the system has locked them out,” El-Sayed said. Indeed, the Trump-to-Mamdani voter was a key piece of the story in New York City.But Mamdani also had built-in help from politically aligned groups who in recent years laid dow campaign and issue infrastructure that was key to his win. No such infrastructure to push these ideas exists in Michigan.Even if El-Sayed wins the primary, Republicans will try to make the general election about social wedge issues instead of economics, said Jared Abbott, a political scientist and director of the Center for Working Class Politics.Mamdani and El-Sayed have so far been “very disciplined” in focusing on the “working class’s bread and butter economic issues”, Abbott added, and that would be essential to his overcoming GOP general election attacks.A win in the general could have an outsize impact on national politics – just as the Squad members’ 2018 midterm wins reverberated into the presidential primary and Biden’s domestic policy, El-Sayed’s election in a swing state could help pull the 2028 presidential race and next president to the left.“It would be a massive proof of concept that progressives do not [currently] have,” Abbott said. More

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      Democrats are captive to outdated etiquette. It’s endangering democracy | Ryan W Powers

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      In early August, dozens of Democratic lawmakers fled Texas for Illinois, denying Republicans the quorum needed to pass new congressional maps projected to give the party as many as five additional seats. Their absence paralyzed the state legislature, turning a walkout into political resistance and drawing national attention.As the standoff dragged on, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, offered an unorthodox countermove: a proposal to suspend his state’s independent redistricting commission and draw maps designed to hand Democrats a comparable advantage. He unveiled the plan with spectacle, mimicking Donald Trump’s signature style through all-caps declarations, a mocking nickname for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (“KaroLYIN”) and AI-generated celebrity endorsements.While Texas Democrats ultimately returned and the Republican redistricting plan has advanced, Newsom has been cast as the emerging leader of Democratic opposition to Trump. Why did it take the party nine months to find one?It wasn’t for lack of need. Just last summer, Trump ousted independent agency heads who contradicted his narrative, deployed the national guard to Washington DC against the mayor’s wishes and granted the attorney general license to enlist the justice department in partisan battles. Each step pushed democratic norms closer to the breaking point.The real answer is that the most powerful liberal institutions – the Democratic establishment, major donors and the professional class around them – are captive to outdated etiquette. They prize agreeability as an end in itself: disruption is discouraged, compromise exalted, restraint worn as a badge of honor. And because these institutions shape liberal culture from the top down, their attachment to niceties dulls urgency and narrows the space for bold, breakout leadership.What makes Newsom unique is his willingness to defy convention when circumstances demand it. The lesson is not in his theatrics, but in the reminder that strategically breaking norms can sometimes accomplish more than following them.California’s independent redistricting commission is written into the state constitution, which means Newsom’s proposal cannot advance without voter approval in November. Even if successful, redistricting alone is only a stopgap. The deeper fight is cultural: whether the Democratic establishment can break its attachment to rigid politeness before democracy withers.The stakes are not theoretical. The Trump administration has undermined judicial independence, hollowed out federal agencies and run straight through one of elite liberalism’s most entrenched institutions: big law.For decades, elite law firms have been essential to Democrats, supplying both the funding and talent that sustains the party’s infrastructure. Yet when faced with punitive executive orders, some of these very institutions – once defenders of liberal democracy – folded, signing settlement deals that critics have labeled unconstitutional and undemocratic.Until recently, I was an associate at a big law firm. After publishing an op-ed about the constitutional dangers of a Trump-Palantir partnership – implicating my firm’s client Trump Media, and a former client, Palantir – I was warned that continuing to speak out could cost me my job. What came next was more interesting: a test of how far one act of dissent could ripple through a system built to contain it.Instead of leaving quietly, I challenged big law publicly. I announced my firing on Instagram with a caption that began “Candidly, I’m disgusted” and concluded with a stern rebuke of big law’s surrender to Trump “in shadowy back rooms, on billion-dollar yachts”. The post was raw, even theatrical, but its real purpose was to spotlight a more substantive op-ed I had written on the corporate legal sector’s complicity in democratic backsliding.Within hours, the post went viral. Political commentators with a combined audience of more than 10 million amplified it on social media, and leading legal publications picked up the story. The op-ed drew more than 50,000 readers, including Fortune 500 CEOs, non-profit leaders and the dean of Harvard Law School. Even the prominent legal scholar Laurence Tribe shared the piece.What began as a messy act of dissent had become legitimized critique. Some elites may have clutched their pearls at the breach of decorum, but the spectacle renewed debate over big law’s role in creeping authoritarianism.In elite liberal spaces, the expectation is always the same: stay quiet, exit gracefully, never make a scene. Yet nonviolent unruliness has power precisely because it breaks the code of composure. Psychologists call this the “expectancy violations theory”: when behavior defies what’s anticipated, it commands outsized attention and carries significant weight. That impact is magnified when it comes from insiders with status or access.This dynamic suggests that liberalism’s best strategy is to subvert its own norms. Critics may argue that spectacle undermines substance, or that breaking etiquette diminishes the credentials that lend Democrats authority. But in today’s attention economy, spectacle is often how substance gets noticed. Breaking strict decorum is not the enemy of liberalism; it may be the very tool that keeps it alive.Elections bear this out. In Wisconsin’s supreme court race this year, the candidate Susan Crawford broke from traditional judicial etiquette. She waged a decisively bold campaign, labelling her opponent Brad Schimel “a rightwing extremist” and mocking him as “Elon Schimel” in light of his endorsement by the controversial tech billionaire. Behavior that might once have seemed undignified instead helped drive record turnout and carried her to a decisive victory.By contrast, in Ohio’s 2022 Senate race, the US representative Tim Ryan built a campaign on moderation and convention, presenting himself as a steady unifier. That strategy failed to resonate with the electorate, overshadowed by the deliberately unorthodox and provocative campaign of his opponent, JD Vance, now the vice-president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe cult of congeniality has left Democrats out of touch. Their resistance, defined by hollow gestures like waving “No King!” and “Save Medicaid” signs on the House floor, only underscores how mismatched the party is to the moment. The reason is clear: politics has evolved, but the Democratic establishment still clings to the Obama-era script of unwavering politeness and reserve that now defines a bygone age.That era ended with the mainstream embrace of rightwing populism. In the late 2000s, the Tea Party clawed its way into the national spotlight by angrily heckling Democratic lawmakers, parading AR-15s outside political events and staging unruly rallies on the National Mall. The movement dominated headlines, heavily influencing the Republican party’s agenda and showing that unruliness itself could confer political legitimacy. By the 2010 midterms, Republicans had turned that ethos into an electoral strategy and managed to flip 63 House seats, the party’s largest gain since 1948.If the Tea Party proved that disrupting norms could win elections, Trump showed that it could seize an entire party. Once a familiar face on red carpets and network television, he built a political base by rejecting etiquette: apparently mocking a reporter’s disability live on stage, attacking a federal judge’s ethnic background and urging supporters to use physical force against protesters at his rallies. Acts that might once have disqualified a candidate instead became evidence that longstanding norms were now optional.Even so, Democrats should not use rightwing populism as a blueprint. That approach is rooted in demolition: attacking institutions indiscriminately, sometimes through brute force. What’s needed instead is an approach rooted in defense: reinforcing institutions carefully and rejecting violence wholesale. When Nicole Collier, a Texas state representative, camped out in the House chamber, she was not attempting to upend the legislature. She was pushing back against a Republican power play that threatened its integrity.Skeptics may argue that this style of politics risks alienating moderates or deepening division. But unruliness is not an end in itself: it is a temporary shock meant to restore democratic vitality. Here, abandoning etiquette is less about breaking order than resetting it. As the economist Karl Polanyi observed, such interruptions act like an immune response, jolting institutions back to health so decorum can return.Of course, bold disruption carries risk. Breaking composure can cost reputations, careers, even relationships. From Harry Belafonte, ostracized by Hollywood and mainstream media for defiant civil rights activism, to Larry Kramer, rejected by his peers for uncompromising Aids advocacy, history shows that those who put action above etiquette often paid dearly. But sacrifice itself – the willingness to acceptance consequences – is what transforms dissent into political pressure.The task now is to channel deliberate, nonviolent unruliness into strategy. Trump’s return to the White House made clear that authoritarianism does not yield to decorum. Voters recognize this: a recent survey found that nearly three-quarters of Democrats believe their leaders aren’t fighting hard enough. Newsom has now stepped forward, with Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, and Obama himself – the onetime apostle of gentility – lending their support. Breaking ranks will not always succeed, but caution all but ensures defeat. The choice is plain: abandon outdated norms, or watch democracy slip away.What’s giving me hope nowWhat gives me hope are the people living out Jane Goodall’s final lesson: that hope is a discipline we practice together, not a feeling we hold alone. The ones who show up at town halls, register young people to vote and lean into the small, human bonds that keep hope alive. Connection is everything.

      Ryan W Powers is a legal analyst who writes a weekly newsletter on democracy, dissent and the law More

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      ‘Using us as political pawns’: federal workers reel over threats of firings and withheld back pay

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      With no end of the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain furloughed. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. They are being “held hostage by a political dispute”, according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked.In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees would not necessarily receive back pay – despite a legal guarantee – prompting further unease throughout the federal workforce. “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” the US president said.The administration, meanwhile, continues to threaten mass firings if Democrats stand by their demands. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial,” Trump told reporters. “And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”On Friday, Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) director, announced on social media that layoffs had begun. Several federal agencies started announcing layoffs, but details remained scant on how many workers would be impacted.After a brutal year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing anxiety over their pay – and the future of their jobs.“This is the third time I’ve been furloughed in my federal career,” said Priscilla Novak, a furloughed federal employee researcher. “But this is the first time there were threats of having people be fired en masse. I’ve been checking my email every day to see if I’m fired yet.”“Even before the shutdown, it’s just kind of been one thing after another for us,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I think a lot of us are expecting the worst, hoping for the best.”“Not knowing when my next paycheck is going to get here is definitely very daunting,” Farruggia, also executive committee chair of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC workers, added. “But at least I paid rent this month, so that was probably the most important thing. If some of my other bills go by the wayside, then it is what it is, and I don’t really have any other options to seek out.”“What I’m hearing is a lot of anxiety, confusion, and chaos,” said Brent Barron, a US Department of Labor employee who serves as president of the National Council of Field Labor Locals, which represents workers at the department outside Washington DC. Some staffers don’t even know whether they’re furloughed or not, he claimed, let alone “whether or not they’re going to continue to have a job” for much longer.“There are a lot of employees out there that can’t even miss one check, let alone have this thing drag on for weeks and weeks and weeks,” said Barron. About three-quarters of the labor department has been furloughed. “All we want to do is do our jobs.”A law signed by Trump during his first term, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, guarantees all federal workers receive retroactive back pay once a government shutdown is over.“It really baffles me that this administration can just flaunt whatever law and say they don’t have to follow it,” said Barron. “This is a law that was passed in 2019 by Congress and signed by the president. And we all know who was president in 2019.”Trump officials are now facing calls to clarify that the federal government will follow the law, and ensure that every furloughed employee receives back pay.“Given the clarity of the law, there is no place for the Administration to backpedal on its obligation to pay furloughed workers,” labor unions and Democracy Defenders Fund, a watchdog group, wrote to the OMB on Wednesday. “The Administration’s statements appear to be a naked attempt at inflicting pain on innocent parties to gain advantage in the shutdown.”OMB is led by Vought, an architect of the rightwing Project 2025 blueprint. In a private speech in 2023, Vought spoke of wanting to put officials “through trauma” to reduce the capacity of the federal government. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”As the administration continues to threaten mass layoffs, raising the prospect of further cuts beyond the 300,000 federal employees set to be removed from the government by the end of this year through firings and attrition programs, officials have also been ordered by a federal judge to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the agencies affected, and whether any federal employees have been recalled to work to carry out reductions in force.“The American people and the workers who keep this country running are being held hostage by a political dispute, by a petty political dispute that they have nothing to do with,” Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trades department, said during a press conference this week. “This is entirely vindictive and the only victims are going to be this country.“We’ve all seen the reports every single time we go through this stupid process of a shutdown, how much the American taxpayers lost. It’s a drain on our economy. It’s a drain on our safety. It’s a drain on the people that live here. So we need to put this to an end.”‘People cannot focus on their jobs’Almost all Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are required to work without pay during shutdowns, in a bid to minimize the threat of disruptions at key travel hubs like airports.The uncertainty has been particularly unnerving for newer, lower-paid employees, according to Cameron Cochems, a lead TSA officer and vice-president for AFGE Local 1127, which represents the administration’s employees in Idaho.Workers are worried about when they start missing paychecks, he said, adding that several have asked where to get low interest loans to float them through missed paychecks.“It feels kind of like there’s just a train coming and you can hear the whistle blowing, but every day it gets a little closer and closer to us,” Cochems told the Guardian. “And right now we can barely hear the whistle because we’re still focused on our jobs, we’re still focused on the mission, which is protect the nation’s transportation system to ensure freedom of movement for people in commerce.“But once that paycheck doesn’t come, I think that that train whistle is going to get louder in everyone’s heads, and it could get so loud that people cannot focus on their job because they’re focusing on things like ‘The bank is calling me for the fifth time today’, or ‘I don’t know how to pay for my daycare,’ things like that.”Threats made about federal workers not being entitled to back pay by Trump and his top officials have heightened anxieties and fears and “thrown a lot more people for a loop, especially the people that are disadvantaged, single parents or living paycheck to paycheck”, added Cochems.“It just feels like they’re intentionally using us as political pawns, and they intentionally want to make our jobs and lives unstable,” he said.“Even worse than morale is the future implication for how our government runs,” added Novak. “I think having a strong civil service that is not politically motivated is the most effective to render modern services for our citizens. Furloughed workers want to go back to work. We need Congress to pass a budget.”The White House and office of management and budget did not respond to multiple requests for comment. More