Media

A partial government shutdown is considered "all but certain" after senators said they were preparing to leave Washington, D.C., for the week.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) confirmed to PBS correspondent Lisa Desjardins that senators were leaving town without passing a funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security open. Some agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were expected to continue operating because of funds allocated by a Republican tax bill passed in 2025.

Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly fired Gail Slater, the head of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.

In a Thursday post on X, Slater revealed that she was leaving the role "with great sadness and abiding hope."

Reporter Neil McCabe told MAGA influencer Steve Bannon that President Donald Trump could be guilty of "sheer incompetence" after he ordered border czar Tom Homan to end the anti-immigration surge in Minnesota.

"Tom Homan's a good man. And he was put in, obviously, in a tough situation," Bannon said after Homan announced the withdrawal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. "Let's be blunt, this is a color revolution. It's not; these are not like peaceful protesters. That was not their whole focus; their whole focus was to surge in, the Marxist jihadist was to surge in, and to kind of break the spirit of ICE and Customs and Border."

Sen. Josh Hawley exploded with rage at a Senate hearing as he accused Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison of "fraud."

Hawley began his questioning of Ellison on Thursday by asking an obvious question: "Are you the chief law enforcement officer of Minnesota?"

While the FAA blamed Mexican cartel drones after closing the airspace over El Paso, a new report suggests that Department of Defense drones were responsible.

After reopening the airspace on Wednesday, FAA Secretary Sean Duffy pointed to a "cartel drone incursion."

Vice President JD Vance responded to calls for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign by observing that powerful people were guilty of "disgusting behavior" related to their relationships with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

After Lutnick admitted that he dined with Epstein on his island, Vance took a question about the commerce secretary before departing from Azerbaijan on Wednesday.

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow questioned President Donald Trump after he claimed he could grow the economy by 15% to 20%.

"You know, I've been watching you and everybody else for years, and they say, 3% growth," Trump told Kudlow during a Tuesday interview. "We should grow 15 or 20 percent."

Cheryl Hines, the wife of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced an awkward moment after podcast host Joe Rogan accused President Donald Trump's FBI of "gaslighting" people about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On his Tuesday podcast, Rogan's producer pointed to a recent Associated Press headline: "FBI concluded Jeffrey Epstein wasn't running a sex trafficking ring for powerful men, files show."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Tuesday that the Trump administration was "moving on" from the scandal surrounding the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

At the White House press briefing, one reporter noted that the Epstein files indicated that President Donald Trump talked to authorities about the notorious sex offender in 2006.

A British woman was shot dead in Texas after arguing with her father about President Donald Trump, witnesses told an inquest this week.

According to the BBC, police in Prosper, Texas, investigated the death of Lucy Harrison after she was shot in January 2025 as a possible case of manslaughter, but no charges were ever brought.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) reported that President Donald Trump "yelled" at her and said his "friends" would be hurt if sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's acquaintances were revealed by the Department of Justice.

"The reality is the Trump administration is not releasing the information," Greene told the Redacted podcast Tuesday. "And I got yelled at by the president over this. This is why he called me a traitor. He called me a traitor because I would not take my name off the discharge petition because I stood firmly and said, no, we are going to release the Epstein files."

MAGA pollster Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen Reports warned that President Donald Trump's poll numbers were plunging because of the harsh tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"In his inauguration speech, he promised that this was the golden age of America," Mitchell told host Benny Johnson on his podcast Monday. "And the bad news here is that his numbers among the young people are just absolutely atrocious now. And people have freaked out over Donald Trump just in the last week or two in a way that's dangerous."