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    Top Senate Republican casts further doubt on Trump special counsel pick after ‘Nazi streak’ comments – live

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    Addressing reporters after lunch in the Rose Garden, Senate majority leader John Thune took a question about the White House’s updated stance on Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which now remains in question after Politico reported text messages in which Ingrassia allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.“They’ll have something official to say about that. But you know what we’ve said,” Thune said, after he told reporters on Monday that Ingrassia’s nomination is “not going to pass”.During the White House celebration of Diwali, Donald Trump repeated a disputed claim that he brokered a ceasefire this year between India and Pakistan by threatening to impose tariffs if the conflict continued.“Let me also extend our warmest wishes to the people of India. I just spoke to your prime minister today. We had a great conversation. We talk about trade, we talk about a lot of things, but mostly the world of trade, he’s very interested in that,” Trump said.“Although we did talk a little while ago about, ‘let’s have no wars with Pakistan,’ and I think the fact that trade was involved, I was able to talk him out of that,” Trump added.Trump’s claim that he brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire in May reportedly infuriated the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, who insists that it was settled directly between the two nations, and caused a rift between Trump and Modi.The fact that Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, gave Trump credit and nominated the US president for the Nobel Peace Prize, is unlikely to have improved relations between Modi and Trump.In his remarks, Trump repeatedly suggested that he had used tariffs to bring peace around the globe, perhaps previewing the case his administration will make next month at the supreme court when it asks the court to overturn lower court rulings that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, at a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, Donald Trump was asked about a report that he is demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the thwarted legal cases against him after his first term.While Trump initially suggested that he was unaware of the report, he said, “I guess they probably owe me a lot of money for that.”He added that he would donate any money paid to him by the government to charity or to pay for public works, like the construction of a massive ballroom at the White House.“We have numerous cases, having to do with the fraud of the election, the 2020 election” Trump added. “Because of everything we found out, I guess they owe me a lot of money.”He then suggested that both Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, “are working on” investigations of the 2020 election he falsely claims was stolen from him.“What they did, they rigged the election,” Trump said later, suggesting that the compensation he expects is not simply to pay his legal fees but a sort of compensation for not being named the winner of the 2020 election he lost.Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman and former US marine campaigning to be the Democrat’s candidate in next year’s US Senate race, “has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest” and “knows damn well what it means,” according to one of his close aides who resigned last week.Platner tried to get ahead of the revelation that he has a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest known as Totenkopf, a symbol used by the Nazi SS, by releasing video of himself shirtless to Pod Save America, and offering an explanation to the podcast run by former Obama communications staffers.In the interview, Platner claimed that he was unaware of the Nazi link when he got the tattoo while on leave in the Croatian city of Split during his time in the marines.Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, disputed that in a Facebook post shared by Alex Seitz-Wald, the editor of Maine’s Midcoast Villager newspaper.“Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,” McDonald wrote. “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”“His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros,” she added, “along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it.”Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, told Igor Bobic of HuffPost on Tuesday that he continues to support Platner. “There’s a young man who served his country in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he went through some really difficult experiences seeing friends of his killed or whatever, and in spite of all of that he had the courage to run”, Sanders said.“I personally think he is an excellent candidate. I’m going to support him, and I look forward to him becoming the next senator in the state of Maine”, he added.Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill today, House speaker Mike Johnson said a vote to release the full tranche of Epstein files will hit the House floor, after representative-elect Adelita Grijalva is sworn in.Grijalva will be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote in the House. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have accused Johnson of delaying the formal swearing in of the Arizona representative and staving off a vote.“If you get the signatures, it goes to a vote,” Johnson said today. However, at a press conference earlier he said the bipartisan effort would be redundant as the House oversight committee continues its investigation into the handling of the Epstein case.Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said that Johnson saying he would not block the vote is ultimately “a big deal”.“I appreciate Speaker Johnson making it clear we will get a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie and my bill to release the Epstein files. The advocacy of the survivors is working. Now let’s get Adelita Grijalva sworn in and Congress back to work,” Khanna added in a statement.In his gaggle, Thune noted that the next vote in the Senate, on the House-passed stopgap funding bill to reopen the government, will take place tomorrow. He said he’s confident that he’ll get enough Democrats on board to cross the 60-vote threshold.Addressing reporters after lunch in the Rose Garden, Senate majority leader John Thune took a question about the White House’s updated stance on Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which now remains in question after Politico reported text messages in which Ingrassia allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.“They’ll have something official to say about that. But you know what we’ve said,” Thune said, after he told reporters on Monday that Ingrassia’s nomination is “not going to pass”.The New York Times reports that the president is demanding the justice department pay him about $230m in compensation for the federal investigations into him. They cite anonymous sources familiar with the matter.The sources tell the Times that Trump is seeking damages for “a number of purported violations of his rights”, including the FBI and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign.They add that the president has made these complaints through and administrative claims process, that have yet to be made public. Another complaint allegedly says that the FBI violated Trump’s rights when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched in 2022 for classified documents.The report has raised significant concerns from legal experts about the ethics of these unprecedented demands – which would essentially require a department, that the president now oversees, to pay him out for their work investigating him.Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and legal US resident who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) following his pro-Palestinian activism, have filed appeals to prevent the Trump administration from detaining him again.Lawyers representing Khalil argued to the federal third circuit court of appeals in Philadelphia that his release from Ice detention by a lower court should be affirmed and that the US government should be barred from detaining or deporting Khalil in the future.“The Trump administration is still trying to bring me back to detention and block the federal court in New Jersey from reviewing my case, the same court that ordered my release and ruled that their actions against me were unlawful,” said Khalil of his case in a press release. “Their intention couldn’t be more clear: they want to make an example of me to intimidate those speaking out for Palestine across the country.”Khalil was released from Ice detention in June after spending more than 100 days in the LaSalle detention center, an immigration jail in Jena, Louisiana. Michael E Farbiarz, a US district judge in New Jersey, ordered Khalil’s release and blocked the Trump administration from deporting him for foreign policy reasons.But in September, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Khalil should be deported to Syria or Algeria for not reporting certain information on his green card application.The ruling from the judge, Jamee Comans, came amid a previous order from Farbiarz which bars Khalil’s deportation as the federal case proceeds in New Jersey. Khalil’s lawyers said they planned to appeal the latest deportation order and that Farbiarz’s mandates prevent Khalil’s removal.A group consisting of several hundred former US national security officials have issued a letter to Congress, urging its leaders to examine the existence of an “Interagency Weaponization Working Group.”The Steady State, a group of over former officials committed to their oath to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” wrote the letter Tuesday in response to reports of the IWWG, which is “apparently tasked with pursuing retributive actions against individuals perceived as political opponents of the president.”Citing a recent Reuters investigation, the letter said:
    If accurate, these reports describe a profound and dangerous subversion of the apolitical foundation of the Intelligence Community… The activities described in the Reuters report echo the worst examples of intelligence politicization and misuse of ‘security services’ in our history, and would represent a direct violation of the statutory and ethical boundaries designed to separate intelligence functions from domestic political operations.
    The letter went on to call leaders from the Senate and House intelligence, judiciary and armed services committees to:
    1. Hold immediate closed hearings with the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and relevant agency heads to determine the existence, authority, and scope of any such interagency group;2. Request all documents, communications, and membership lists related to the IWWG and similar “weaponization” initiatives, including taskings and technical-collection authorizations;3. Assess potential violations of the National Security Act, Executive Order 12333, and statutory prohibitions on domestic intelligence activities; and4. Affirm publicly—in a bipartisan statement—that the Intelligence Community must never be employed for political or personal retribution.
    It is nearly 2pm ET in Washington DC. Here’s a look at where things currently stand across US politics:

    There are no plans for Donald Trump to meet with Vladmir Putin “in the immediate future”, a White House official told the Guardian. The official added that the recent call between secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was “productive”, and therefore an additional-in-person meeting between the envoys is “not necessary”.

    Hosting several Republican lawmakers at the White House for lunch, Trump spent most of his opening remarks heralding the success of his sweeping tariffs. “We’re a wealthy nation again, and we’re a nation that can be secure. We’re a nation that can start paying down our debt, and with tariffs, we’re the wealthiest nation ever in the history of the world,” he said.

    Earlier today, Trump said on Truth Social that several Middle East allies told him they would “welcome the opportunity” at Trump’s request to go into Gaza “with a heavy force” and “straighten our Hamas” if they “continue to behave badly”. This comes after the 11-day ceasefire in Gaza was seriously undermined on Sunday when Israel launched waves of deadly airstrikes and said it would cut off aid into the territory “until further notice” after a reported attack by Hamas, which the militant group denied being involved in.

    Meanwhile, JD Vance, who is currently on a visit to Israel, said that he would not “put an explicit deadline” on Hamas to comply with the key points of the Gaze ceasefire deal. “If Hamas doesn’t comply with the deal, very bad things are going to happen,” Vance said, reiterating Donald Trump’s threats earlier today on social media.

    New York state police announced recently that a pardoned rioter at the January 6 insurrection was arrested last weekend for allegedly threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader. House Republican speaker Mike Johnson noted that “anybody who threatens political violence against elected officials or anyone else should be have the full weight and measure of the Department of Justice on their head.”

    Johnson also said that lawmakers on the House oversight committee are “working around the clock” to ensure “maximum transparency” in the ongoing investigation into the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. He added that the committee’s work is “already accomplishing” what the bipartisan discharge petition, which would force a vote on the House floor to release the full tranche of Epstein records, seeks to do achieve.

    Some Republican senators have said they don’t support Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, ahead of his confirmation hearing on Thursday. Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told other Republicans he “has a Nazi streak” and said holidays commemorating Black people should be “eviscerated”, in a private group chat.

    The CIA is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations. Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret.
    The Senate’s top Republican, John Thune, closed out the lunch in the Rose Garden by urging his colleagues across the aisle to “get wise” and “vote to reopen the government”.“Everybody here has voted now 11 different times to open up the government, and we are going to keep voting to open up the government, and eventually, the Democrats, hopefully, sooner or later, are going to come around,” Thune said.Trump is running through what he sees are the greatest hits of his first nine months back at the White House. “We don’t need to pass any more bills. We got everything in that bill,” the president said, referring to his sweeping domestic policy agenda that he signed into law in July.Here are a few pictures of some of the senators and officials in the Rose Garden today. More

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      Senate vote fails again as shutdown becomes one of the longest in US history

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      One of the longest government shutdowns in US history just got longer after the Senate again failed to pass a funding resolution after a majority of Democrats continued their pressure campaign after the No Kings nationwide weekend protests.The Senate vote fell for the 11th time with a vote of 50 to 43, with no new defectors from the Democratic side.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, has for weeks kept the House shuttered on an extended recess, and defended his strategy as necessary to push Senate Democrats into passing the House’s continuing resolution without policy additions. But Democrats have refused to support the measure without provisions addressing healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.Johnson, in a Monday morning press conference flanked by other Republican congressional leaders including Andy Harris, the House freedom caucus chair, said the reason for the shutdown was to appease Democratic voters, particularly putting blame on the No Kings rallies.“It is exactly why Chuck Schumer is pandering, in this whole charade. We’ve explained from the very beginning, the shutdown is about one thing and one thing alone: Chuck Schumer’s political survival,” Johnson said.The stuffed vote also came after a prominent Republican lawmaker, representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday morning criticized Johnson’s strategy, calling on the House to return to session immediately.“The House should be in session working,” Greene wrote on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”The criticism from Greene, who is aligned with the right flank of her party, is a noticeable crack in support for Johnson’s hardline approach from the GOP over an extended congressional recess. Since 19 September, when members last cast votes, the chamber has not been conducting legislative business, although members have staged press conferences.The shutdown, which began on 1 October, has become the longest full government shutdown in US history, and the third-longest when including partial shutdowns. If it extends past Tuesday, it will surpass the 21-day shutdown of 1995-96 to claim second place. Only the 35-day partial shutdown during Donald Trump’s first term, from December 2018 to January 2019, has lasted longer.The shutdown’s impact grew more severe on Monday as the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration began furloughing approximately 1,400 federal employees responsible for maintaining and modernizing the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, is scheduled to address the furloughs at a press conference in Las Vegas later on Monday, a spokesperson told the Guardian.Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, speculated on Monday, citing “friends in the Senate”, that the impasse might soon break.“I think the [Senate minority leader Chuck] Schumer shutdown is likely to end some time this week,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview. He reasoned that some Democrats had been reluctant to reopen the government ahead of last Saturday’s No Kings protests against Trump, which drew millions of demonstrators nationwide to rebuke corruption and authoritarianism. More

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      Trump administration freezes $11bn for infrastructure in Democratic states

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      The White House budget director, Russell Vought, said on Friday that the Trump administration will freeze another $11bn worth of infrastructure projects in Democratic states due to the ongoing government shutdown.Vought said on social media the US army corps of engineers would pause work on “low priority” projects in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. He said the projects could eventually be canceled.The White House office of management and budget (OMB) said Donald Trump “wants to reorient how the federal government prioritizes Army Corps projects”.The Trump administration has already frozen at least $28bn meant for transportation and energy projects in Democratic-controlled cities and states, as the president pressures his opponents in Congress to end the shutdown, which began on 1 October.Trump has also vowed to cut “Democrat agencies” and has sought to eliminate 4,100 federal jobs as he looks to inflict pain on his political opposition.The army corps of engineers projects include a waterfront park in San Francisco, bridge expansions in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and water and wastewater systems in New York City, the OMB said. New York projects account for $7bn of the total.Other affected projects are in Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, the OMB said.All of these states voted against Trump in the 2024 presidential election.The OMB said many of the projects sit in “sanctuary jurisdictions” that have resisted the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.The army corps of engineers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      A surge of visitors to Yosemite overwhelms a skeleton crew: ‘This is exactly what we warned about’

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      Cars and RVs surged into Yosemite national park throughout the weekend, as visitors from around the world came to enjoy the crisp autumn weather, undeterred by a lack of park services and the absence of rangers.National parks have largely been kept open through the lapse in US federal funding that has left workers furloughed and resources for the parks system more scarce than usual. But as the US government shutdown enters its third week and legislators warn that their impasse could linger even longer than the one in Donald Trump’s first term – which currently holds the record at 35 days – concerns are mounting over how the nation’s treasured public lands will fare.Even with winter weather setting in along the Sierra, which will create more dangerous conditions, visitors continued to pour into the park, filling campgrounds and parking lots over the long weekend.Already, there have been widespread reports of illegal activity in Yosemite. People have been spotted Base jumping off high granite peaks, swimming in reservoirs where it is prohibited, camping and parking in unauthorized areas and climbing Half Dome’s cables without permits.The issues aren’t only affecting Yosemite. A fire ignited near a Joshua Tree campground on Sunday morning, forcing evacuations and closures in the park.Wildland firefighters are exempt from the shutdown and responded rapidly, according to a National Park Service spokesperson, and by Monday afternoon, crews had mostly contained the small blaze. But advocates voiced concerns that the fire – which is still under investigation but is believed to be human-caused, according to NPS officials – is a reminder of the increased risks posed by the public during staff shortages.In Yosemite, one of the limited park employees seen on duty during the holiday weekend, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to comment publicly, said it had been chaotic. “Then again, when is it not?” he added sardonically.Relying on funds pulled from entrance fees collected before the shutdown – a budget kept separate from federal appropriations – Yosemite has retained maintenance and emergency services to ensure bathrooms, trash and campgrounds are kept up and emergency operations continue. A concessionaire, Yosemite Hospitality, has also continued to operate.View image in fullscreenPrevious use of these fees, collected under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, to support park operations during shutdowns was found to be a violation of the law by a 2019 Government Accountability Office analysis.And, even with trash cans emptied and toilets cleaned, the loss of key staff could be keenly felt.“It felt like you showed up to school and none of the teachers were there,” said Mark Rose, the Sierra Nevada & clean air senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, after spending a portion of last week at Yosemite. “You could tell the janitors had been there the night before and maybe there were hall monitors there – but we are missing this big piece.”Workers who provide other essential functions such as trail maintenance, those who offer support and monitor visitation at entrance gates, and staff responsible for ongoing conservation or maintenance projects have not been able to continue working. Half of all staff at Yosemite have been furloughed, according to the NPCA.On Saturday, as droves of vehicles rolled through entrances where fees typically would have been collected and guidance given, they were met with signs on the empty booths that read: “During this lapse in appropriations parks will remain as accessible as possible. We are doing our best to take care of your parks at this time, but some amenities and services may not be available.”In one booth, the sign was accompanied by a second: a hand-drawn bluebird with the familiar scrawl of a child pleading: “Put park rangers first.”Dangerous, damaging and illegal activity was a chief concern among advocates when the administration opted to keep parks accessible without adequate staffing. Before the start of this shutdown, national park leaders and advocates had pushed the Trump administration not to repeat its previous policies of 2018-19, when the parks were kept open and unstaffed, leading to widespread destruction.View image in fullscreen“National parks don’t run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” 40 former superintendents said in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, in the week leading up to the lapse. “If sufficient staff aren’t there, visitors shouldn’t be either.”Irreversible damage was done at popular parks, including Joshua Tree in California, following a month-long shutdown in Donald Trump’s first term, when his administration demanded parks be kept open while funding was paused and workers were furloughed.Without supervision, visitors left behind trails of wreckage. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend national park. Joshua trees, some more than a century old, were chopped down at Joshua Tree national park, as trash and toilets overflowed. Tire tracks crushed sensitive plants and desert habitats from illegal off-roading vehicles in Death Valley. There were widespread reports of wildlife poaching, search-and-rescue crews were quickly overwhelmed with calls, and visitor centers were broken into.“This is exactly what we warned about,” Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a statement issued following the reports of how visitors were behaving in Yosemite. “This shutdown is making an already bad situation at national parks and public lands far worse. And the longer this goes, the worse it is going to get. The situation is dangerous and reckless for our parks, public lands, and the visitors who love them.”Burgum called the Yosemite incidents “misinformation” in a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday, and falsely claimed the park was “fully staffed”.“Yosemite has a full team working to uphold public safety and preserve the integrity of the park,” he said, before blaming Democrats for the shutdown. “Unauthorized camping, squatting, and illegal activities like BASE jumping are being addressed with firm, appropriate law enforcement action.”Katie Martin, Department of Interior’s communications director, echoed Burgum’s claims and disputed that there are unmonitored campgrounds and widespread squatting.“Our on-the-ground teams confirm that these reports do not accurately reflect current operations or visitor conditions,” Martin said, adding that all law enforcement rangers in the park remain on duty and have been handling both frontcountry and backcountry patrols.There are 1,545 campgrounds within the park, but the 13 major sites are staffed, according to Martin, who also said visitor disputes and etiquette issues are not unusual and are being handled as they typically would under normal operations.“Yosemite remains safely managed. Law enforcement, emergency response, and campground staff are on duty, and visitation levels remain well within normal ranges,” Martin added.According to a recent National Park Service contingency plan created to guide parks during the shutdown, more than 9,200 employees were furloughed system-wide, reducing NPS staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, were set to remain on duty.Even before the shutdown began, sharp reductions in staffing that came as part of the Trump administration’s plans to shrink the federal government left gaps in an NPS workforce already stretched thin. According to Rose of the National Parks Conservation Association, the long-term strain has only been exacerbated by the shutdown as advocates grow exceedingly concerned that more cuts could be coming.Close to $1bn in funding cuts have been proposed by the administration, and Rose said there were fears that the administration may argue operations were successful during the shutdown as a way to validate their calls for a smaller workforce. With toilets clean and law enforcement on patrol in popular places like Yosemite, visitor experience has been prioritized while other important NPS responsibilities, including conservation, science and education, remain on the chopping block.“This is a skeleton crew and we have been seeing this from the beginning,” Rose said. “But you can only keep up the facade for so long before major cracks start showing.” 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

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      Trump says military members will be paid despite government shutdown

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      Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that he has found a way to pay US military troops despite the ongoing federal government shutdown, saying he has instructed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to release funds.Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “I am using my authority, as commander-in-chief, to direct our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops PAID on October 15.”Trump said he had identified the funds to make the payments happen, adding: “I will not allow the Democrats to hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous government shutdown. The radical left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT.”The recent federal government shutdown began on 1 October and is the first since a 35-day closure that happened in December 2018 and extended into the new year during Trump’s first presidential term. The shutdown came as Democrats were looking to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.More than 1.3 million military personnel across the country would not have received their first post-shutdown paychecks this month, only getting paid for the 21-30 September period. An estimated 750,000 federal employees have also been furloughed.As the Hill reported, however, federal workers are generally paid once a shutdown ends, whether they are furloughed or working. After the last shutdown in 2018, Congress wrote into law that federal workers must be paid once the government reopens.On Thursday, the US Senate remained deadlocked on legislation to end the shutdown, even as Trump repeated his threat to make Democrats pay for the funding lapse that has closed federal agencies and furloughed employees across the nation.Speaking to Punchbowl News, the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, expressed confidence in the strategy, saying: “Every day gets better for us.”The White House announced the layoffs of federal workers on Friday, following through with a threat it made to initiate the mass firings of government employees.A document filed with a federal court on Friday evening revealed that hundreds of layoffs took place across the executive branch, including about 315 at the Department of Commerce, 466 at the Department of Education and 187 at the Department of Energy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnion leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.After Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go, the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”In a repost of Trump’s delivery of the news that he proposes to pay the military by 15 October, Hegseth responded: “President Trump delivers for the troops.” More

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      Democrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage builds

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      When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he were relishing his standoff with the Republicans.“Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republicans believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.Outrage followed from Republicans, who printed out the Senate minority leader’s remark on posters and condemned it before press conferences. The shutdown has prompted federal agencies to close or curtail operations nationwide, and forced hundreds of thousands of employees to stay home without immediate pay. Schumer, Republicans argued, was being callous.“I’ve been asked many times in interviews the last couple days: ‘You seem angry – you don’t get angry a lot.’ I don’t, but this is beyond the pale,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said at a press conference on Friday morning, the 10th day of the shutdown. “What Chuck Schumer is doing right now, it’s sickening.”Hours later, the White House took it upon itself to increase the misery for government employees when Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget, began following through on his threat to carry out layoffs. The budget office said that more than 4,000 federal workers were being fired from a variety of agencies that had already shrunk in the second Trump administration, and the funding situation was “fluid and rapidly evolving”. Legal challenges are likely to follow, but still, now it was the Democrats’ turn to accuse the GOP of brutality.“Let’s be blunt: nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer said in a statement. “They don’t have to do it; they want to. They’re callously choosing to hurt people – the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos.”It was the latest salvo in a battle that began when government funding lapsed on 1 October and has since degenerated into legislative trench warfare. Seven Senate votes have resulted in no breakthroughs, with lawmakers from both parties preventing the other’s proposals from reaching the 60-vote threshold needed to advance.Democrats are maximizing the leverage they have in the upper chamber by refusing to reopen the government until premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans are extended into next year. They also want cuts to the Medicaid program for poor and disabled Americans reversed, funding to public media outlets such as PBS and NPR restored and Donald Trump’s use of “pocket rescissions” to slash spending curbed.Most of those are non-starters for Republicans, who insist government funding be restarted before negotiations take place. They’ve ascribed a variety of motivations to Democrats’ intransigence, from the rise of Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for New York mayor to the influence of a “far-left base” that has the party’s leaders in their thrall.On Friday, Johnson posited that Democratic senators were holding out because they were concerned about a “No Kings” protest planned for 18 October – which he called a “hate America rally” and where attendees might target party leaders if they decided to end the shutdown.“It is an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes, but the Democrats in the Senate have shown that they’re afraid of that crowd,” Johnson said, alleging that “the antifa crowd, and the pro-Hamas crowd and the Marxists” would be in attendance.“They’re willing to hold the American people hostage so that they don’t have to face an angry mob – that’s a big chunk of their base,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere are indeed outside influences pressuring Democrats to stand firm on their demands, and so far they are happy with the results.“The Democrats, I think, have taken in the blowback, have understood where their folks want them to go, and are actually taking it and fighting back. And it’s a sight to see. It’s a welcome strategic shift,” Ezra Levin, co-executive director of progressive organizing group Indivisible, said.In March, Schumer opted to work with Republicans on keeping the government open, prompting Indivisible to call for him to step aside as minority leader. Months later, Levin says his group is coordinating with Schumer’s office on actions to support Democratic lawmakers as the shutdown wears on, and believes the party should not compromise on its demands.Not only are Democrats’ demands “wildly popular”, Republicans are not to be trusted to honor any agreement, he said. Trump and his allies in Congress have made clear their interest in rescissions packages, which can be passed on a party-line vote, to cut spending approved with bipartisan support. After passing one in July that clawed back $9bn in funding for public media and foreign aid, Johnson said he is considering putting together another.“This regime is treating the federal budget like a personal bank account for Donald Trump, and we should stop that,” Levin said. “No deal is a real deal unless you have rescission and payment language.“We’ve got the goods. We are fighting for popular things. The Republicans are closing rural hospitals, increasing costs and giving a lawless administration more power to do what it wants. That’s a losing hand, and we want to see Democrats fight back.” More

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      White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week

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      The White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.While Vought provided no details on the departments and agencies at which the layoffs were taking place, a treasury spokesperson said notices had been distributed within the department. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Guardian that layoffs would also happen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And a union representing federal workers confirmed that members at the Department of Education would also be affected by the reduction in force.Union leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.Vought had warned that federal agencies could slash jobs if the government shuts down, but the Trump administration largely held off after funding lapsed last week. Asked at a press conference before Vought’s announcement why no layoffs had occurred, the top Senate Republican, John Thune, signaled they would happen soon.“The White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” he said.View image in fullscreen“My expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted. That’s what a shutdown does.”The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded to Vought’s post on Friday, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”Last week, the AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown. The unions filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday, following Vought’s post.Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, said: “These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day. Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games.“By illegally firing these workers, the administration isn’t just targeting federal employees, it’s hurting their families and the communities they serve every day. We will pursue every available legal avenue to stop this administration’s unlawful attacks on public service workers’ freedoms and jobs.”Congressional Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican-backed bill to restore funding unless it includes an array of healthcare-centered concessions. After holding seven unsuccessful votes on the parties’ spending bills, the Senate’s Republican leaders have put the chamber in recess until next Tuesday, meaning the standoff is unlikely to be resolved before then.The layoffs came on the same day government employees received only a partial paycheck covering the final days of September but not the beginning of October, since appropriations lapsed at the start of the month.At a Friday-morning press conference, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, blasted Senate Democrats for not supporting the GOP’s bill, which passed his chamber on a near party-line vote.If the government is not reopened by next Wednesday, US military personnel are set to miss a paycheck.“This is the last paycheck that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government,” Johnson said.View image in fullscreen“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck. If Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday, then that October 15 date will pass us by.”Johnson has kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown in an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into supporting the Republican funding proposal. Earlier this week, a group of House Democrats sent the speaker a letter asking him to allow a vote on legislation that would ensure US troops get paid during a shutdown, but Johnson has refused to bring lawmakers back to Washington.The Senate has become a chokepoint in the funding battle because any legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance in the chamber. In exchange for their support, Democratic senators are demanding that premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans be extended beyond their end-of-the-year expiration date.They are also seeking safeguards against Donald Trump’s rescissions of congressionally approved funding, a restoration of money for public media outlets, and an undoing of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans.Max Stier, the president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, condemned the gridlock’s impact on government workers.“It is wrong to make federal employees suffer because our leaders in Congress and the White House have failed to keep our government open and operational,” Stier said.“Our air traffic controllers, VA nurses, smoke jumpers and food inspectors are not responsible for this government shutdown, and they shouldn’t bear the financial burden created by the failures of our elected officials. The irony is that members of Congress and senior White House leaders are continuing to be paid.”Earlier this week, on 7 October, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the affected agencies and whether any federal employees have been recalled back to work to carry out layoffs, by Friday, 10 October.A report by the Center for American Progress on 30 September argued that a government shutdown limits the ability of the Trump administration to carry out firings, citing guidance from the office of management and budget that admitted any permanent layoffs need to have been initiated before the shutdown began.“Constraints on permanently firing federal employees during a shutdown largely exist because of the Antideficiency Act and the distinction between ‘shutdown furloughs’ that happen during a lapse in congressional appropriations and ‘administrative furloughs’, which are department and agency procedures on how to permanently let staff go, including – for example – through a RIF,” the report, authored by Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, states. “The Trump administration’s threats to layoff federal employees should be understood as a goal of the administration that will be pursued with or without a government shutdown and should not drive lawmakers’ decisions on whether to support government funding bills.”Shrai Popat contributed additional reporting More

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      IRS to furlough nearly half its workforce due to government shutdown

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      The Internal Revenue Service said it will furlough nearly half of its employees – about 34,000 workers – due to the government shutdown, making it significantly harder for US taxpayers to receive assistance.In a statement on Wednesday, the IRS said that “due to the lapse in appropriations”, it would begin its furlough on 8 October for “everyone except already-identified excepted and exempt employees”.“Employee who are not exempt or excepted are furloughed and placed in a non-pay and non-duty status until further notice; however, all employees should plan to report to work for their next tour of duty,” the IRS said, adding that employees would be given up to four hours to close out work requirements and receive formal furlough notification.The furlough will leave only 53.6%, or 39,870 IRS employees, working as the government remains shut down.In the standard furlough letter provided to all affected employees, David Traynor, acting IRS human capital officer, confirmed that furloughed employees cannot work and will not be paid during the shutdown.The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, condemned the decision, with its president, Doreen Greenwald, saying on Wednesday: “Due to the government shutdown the American people lost access to many vital services provided by the IRS.”The statement continued: “Expect increased wait times, backlogs and delays implementing tax law changes as the shutdown continues. Taxpayers around the country will now have a much harder time getting the assistance they need, just as they get ready to file their extension returns due next week.”The IRS’s decision to furlough its employees comes a day after a White House memo suggested that furloughed workers may not receive back pay, despite the 2019 law Trump signed during his first term, during the last government shutdown; the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 (Gefta) ensures government workers would be automatically paid after future shutdowns.In his letter, Traynor said that “employees must be compensated on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates”. More