Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) shredded President Donald Trump's latest threat to government workers during an appearance on CNN on Tuesday.
Coons joined CNN's Kasie Hunt on "The Arena" to discuss Trump's threat to not pay furloughed government workers back pay once the government reopens. Coons's comments come hours after the president told reporters that some government workers "don't deserve" to be paid once the shutdown ends.
"First, it is just illegal for President Trump to threaten not to pay furloughed federal workers," Coons said. "That's because of a statute, a law that President Trump himself signed in his first term, so he can threaten that, but it's not legal. Federal workers furloughed under a shutdown will be paid when the government reopens."
"Second, between the Republican majority in the Senate in the House and the Republican in the White House,they control whether or not thisgovernment is open or closed,what threats they're making, theways they're trying to impose asmuch pain as possible," Coons said. "This is a Republican shutdown."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) complained about "unbelievable blowback and pressure from the White House" on releasing files about Jeffrey Epstein, despite her support for President Donald Trump on controversial topics, such as the Jan. 6 riots.
"I've always been an unapologetic Trump supporter," Greene told Real America's Voice host Eric Bolling on Tuesday. "Spent millions of dollars out of my own campaign to do that."
"I'm not a slave and I am independent-minded," she continued. "And at times, I disagree with the Trump administration. And guess what, Eric? I'm allowed to do that. I'm an American. I'm allowed to have my own opinion."
Bolling agreed that "Trump's a better president with conservative people who back him, who say maybe not this one, Mr. President."
"On the Epstein files, I've unapologetically stood with women and victims of rape, especially these women," Greene pointed out. "And I received unbelievable blowback and pressure from the White House pushing me to get off [Republican Rep.] Thomas Massie's discharge petition, which I absolutely refuse to do."
"And, you know, that has been shocking to me, and I've seen it as completely unnecessary, and I won't tolerate it," the lawmaker insisted. "There is no amount of pressure they can put on me to force me to step in line on that, so to speak."
Greene said she also received pressure after demanding that Republicans come up with a solution for rising health insurance premiums, which have been at the center of an ongoing government shutdown.
"And I want Republicans to have a solution, and I'm demanding it," she remarked. "I don't think Democrats should be the ones owning this issue because they want socialized health care, and we're $37 trillion in debt, and we can't afford that. However, the reality is many Americans, our families especially, are paying $2,000 a month for health insurance premiums with high deductibles."
"And it's unforgivable. And to allow Democrats to have some sort of moral high ground on this issue because they're only one, the only ones talking about it, I think, is a major failure from the Republican Party," Greene added. "And I'm not going to stand there and just keep talking the talking points when my own adult children can hardly afford health insurance premiums. When everyone in my district, it's the number one issue that I hear about day in and day out, not just people on the ACA, but people that have private insurance as well."
Bolling encouraged Greene to stand firm.
"Instead of other people, you know, you see them kind of flailing around trying to contort themselves into a, and I agree with everything that the president says when, you know, you can't just agree with everything," the host argued. "It's a fool's game to agree with everything as brilliant as he's been and as great as he's done for the country. You just don't have to, especially people who represent literally millions of people like you do yourself."
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace couldn't help but notice that Attorney General Pam Bondi had a large binder of answers and personal attacks to lodge against Democrats.
While a Reuters reporter managed to capture a shot of some of Bondi's binder notes, Wallace noticed just how thick it was and how overtly partisan her talking points were.
Wallace began with a clip of Bondi flipping through her binder to read aloud Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's statement on the matter. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out that it didn't answer his question.
"Another exhausting non-answer seemingly read from some sort of opposition research book that didn't meet the caliber of something on a congressional campaign from a sitting attorney general today, who was far more concerned with launching those ad hominem attacks on Democratic lawmakers, exclusively the ones asking the tough questions," Wallace said.
"Claire, let's start with you, because I think you're the only person here who may have recognized her attacks as just run-of-the-mill sort of flunky, campaign-level, although that was in her binder, along with a bunch of prepared statements," Wallace said to former Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. "I've never seen that before, have you?"
At another point in the discussion, Wallace noted the political nature of Bondi's attacks and wondered who had compiled the binder, as it would likely fall under a Hatch Act violation.
"Are you able to find out through your sources or through the press office who created the opposition research book that Pam Bondi was reading from?" Wallace asked justice and intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian. "And I asked that because I'm probably the only one who has sullied herself in the dark underbelly of politics by both working on the creation of opposition research in my years on campaigns and sort of arming policymakers with it."
She said that creating a document like that as a taxpayer-funded staffer would be illegal.
"And so I wonder if the Department of Justice would answer a call from you today about who created that book she was reading from with attacks on [Sen. Sheldon] Whitehouse on his wife's company. I mean, that is opposition research straight up. And it is a clear violation of the Hatch Act to be created by a government employee."
Dilanian explained that he could try, but that under the Trump administration, "the Hatch Act doesn't seem to be operational anymore."
Wallace then made a call for anyone at the Justice Department willing to blow the whistle to contact her. "The lines are open, as they say."
An American farmer made a dire plea to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying "hope he's listening," as America's "backbone" risks collapse.
Arkansas farmer Scott Brown told CNN it's unclear how he or other agriculture producers will survive Trump's ongoing tariff war, especially as the fall harvest begins.
"I hope to break even, but I mean, we don't know," Brown said. "We're not cutting soybeans yet, and I don't know what the yield is. We're just finishing up corn. I'm a pretty low-debt-load farmer. I farm 800 acres. My equipment's all paid for. I do it all by myself. I'm a first-generation farmer, so I don't have as big of problems as a lot of the guys do. But, I mean, I have friends that farm thousands of acres, 5,000, 10,000, 11,000 acres. They've got worlds of problems. I mean, I don't know that there's any way to yield yourself out of this."
For his friends, the tariff fallout could mean losing everything.
"I don't think that the average American understands when you go down to the bank and get a crop loan, you put all your equipment up, all your equity in your ground, you put your home up, your pickup truck, everything up," he said. "And if they can't pay out and if they've rolled over any debt from last year, they're going to call the auctioneer and they're going to line everything up and they're going to sell it."
Trump is reportedly considering a potential bailout for farmers, a key Republican voting bloc. But that's not enough, Scott said.
"Well, the stopgap needs to come because they've kind of painted the farmer in a corner," he added. "I mean, I want trade, not aid. I need a market. I need a place to sell this stuff. I can work hard enough and make a product. If you give me someplace to sell it, I'll take care of myself, but they've painted us in a corner with this China deal and China buying soybeans. I mean, they've torn a market in half."
China — the biggest buyer — has made zero soybean orders this year. Instead, they've pivoted to purchasing soybeans from South American countries, including Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia. These countries plan to expand planting acreage for their crops and focus on planting soon for the 2025 and 2026 crops in the Southern Hemisphere.
The price per bushel of soybeans has also dropped, he added.
"The farmer can't continue to produce a crop below the cost of production. And that's where we're at. And we don't have anywhere to sell it. We're in a tariff war with China. We're in a tariff war with everybody else. I mean, where do they want me to market this stuff?" Scott asked.
This uncertainty also makes it hard to plan for 2026.
"Farming is done in a Russian roulette fashion to say a better set of words," Scott said. "If you pay out, then you get to go again. If you've got enough equity and you don't pay out, you can roll over debt. There's lots of guys farming that have between $400 and $700,000 worth of rollover debt. You know, and then and then you compound the problem with the tariffs. Look at this. When we had USAID, we provided 40% of the humanitarian food for the world. That's all grain and food bought from farmers, from vegetable farmers in the United States. The row crop farmers and grain and everything. So we abandoned that deal. And China accelerates theirs. So now I've got a tariff war that's killing my market."
He also wants the president to hear his message.
"I hope he's listening because, you know, agriculture is the backbone of rural America," Scott said. "For every dollar in agriculture, you get $8 in your rural community. I mean, we help pay taxes on schools, roads. We're the guys that keep the park store open, we're the guy that keeps the local co-op open, that 20 guys work at, and the little town I live in, we have a chicken plant, about 600 chicken houses, except for the school and the hospital. Almost our entire town of 7,000."
Agriculture is tied to everything in rural America, he explained.
"People's economy revolves around agriculture," Scott said. "I mean, I think he needs to listen. It's bigger than the farmer. It's all my friends. Whether they work in town or anything else. I mean, rural America depends on agriculture. And it doesn't matter if you're in Nebraska or you're in Arkansas."
As the federal government shutdown rages on, Republicans in Congress have a new headache to worry about as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) clashes with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) about whether to convene to pass an emergency extension of pay for troops.
The shutdown has no end in sight, with Democrats demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that stabilize millions of people's insurance premiums as a condition of their votes, and Republicans refusing to negotiate on this matter until the government reopens.
According to Politico, "the unusual tactical disagreement between the two top congressional leaders played out in front of cameras Tuesday on Capitol Hill as the shutdown heads into its second week."
Johnson, who has not convened the House in days, told reporters this week, “I’m certainly open to that. We’ve done it in the past. We want to make sure that our troops are paid.”
Thune, however, disagreed, saying, “Honestly, you don’t need that.”
“Obviously, there are certain constituencies — many of them are going to be impacted in a very negative way by what’s happened here. But the simplest way to end it is not try to exempt this group or that one or that group. It’s to get the government open," he added.
In Thune's view, Republicans should hold firm and not even call the House back until Democrats in the Senate agree to pass the funding bill the House already passed.
Further complicating the issue is that House Republicans have avoided swearing in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). Grijalva is the final vote needed for a Trump-opposed bipartisan discharge petition for the House to compel the Trump administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files.
But as a consequence of the House's inaction, noted policy analyst Matthew Yglesias, this inaction is also to the GOP's detriment, as with the House gone, they are incapable of forcing messaging votes to try to shift blame for the shutdown onto Democrats.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem prayed for a "hedge of protection" around federal agents while meeting at an official Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
According to MAGA influencer Benny Johnson, Noem began a meeting at the Portland ICE office with a prayer to Jesus Christ.
In her prayer, Noem asked God to give her agency "wisdom and discernment to make the best decisions not just for the people that are here enforcing the law but also for the citizens of this country."
"And Lord, I just ask you to continue to put a hedge of protection around these officers, keep them safe, Lord, but that also that you continue to bless each and every one of them and their families," she continued. "And Lord, that you would protect the freedoms that we all enjoy that we're given to us by you."
"We love you, we praise you," she concluded. "Amen."
According to Johnson, the prayer was the "first thing" Noem did upon arriving at the office.
"We are witnessing incredible things," he wrote on X.
A legal expert called Attorney General Pam Bondi's reaction to questions from members of Congress on Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing "remarkably, completely antagonistic."
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman told CNN that Bondi "refused to give answers at every turn."
"She gave no answers, really," Litman said. "Anything she could deflect, she did, but was really remarkable. You've seen fiery moments with AGs at other hearings. She came in guns a blazing with pre-drafted soundbites, and just whenever there was something she needed to answer, she substituted instead the sort of 'when did you stop beating your wife' kind of slurs."
He pointed to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and his fiery interaction with Bondi after he asked her about a reported 2024 bribery scheme involving White House Border Czar Tom Homan receiving a bag of cash with $50,000. It led to an FBI probe, though Homan has not been charged, and senators pressed Bondi about what happened to the money.
She deflected "from some really basic questions" during the hearing, Litman said. "Ask the FBI, she said."
Litman called Bondi's reactions "a concerted strategy, both not to give any responses, but also to have a sort of, you know, outrage, bombastic kind of presentation that she was even there and that I, I assume she hopes, observers who aren't paying a lot of attention just take away from it."
He said it was unusual.
"But it was remarkably unresponsive," Litman added. "And remarkably like I've never seen anything like it. Completely antagonistic and contemptuous to the senators"
At some points, Bondi said she would not say anything, then "proceeded to give details, self-serving details, and then and only then shut things down."
"In any event, the notion I think it's just puzzling," he said. "But what really was salient to me is she'll talk a little bit — she'll talk a little bit about Epstein and then shut things down again with personal insults. You know, Schiff was making a real point. It's an oversight hearing. This is where you give us answers. And with this sort of calculated bombast, she refused to give answers at every turn."
Attorney General Pam Bondi drew reactions from those watching her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, when, instead of answering specific questions from Democrats, she turned to attack them personally.
Bondi attacked Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) over a campaign talking point from more than 15 years ago about his service as a U.S. Marine. She claimed Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) took money from someone who knew sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
When it came to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst noticed that Bondi flipped open a file that provided her with the lines to use in attacking the Senators.
At the top of a folder was a tweet from Whitehouse from July in which he called for ethics investigations into members of the U.S. Supreme Court who may have violated rules.
The second note reads "Whitehouse" in bold letters, then fed Bondi the line, "You claim to be a social justice warrior, but you're a member of the Senate," and then cuts off in the photo. The next line reads, "You rail against dark money but you work with dark money groups." The third bullet point was underlined in blue pen, reading, "You talk about corruption but you push for legislation that would ....," and cuts off. The fourth bullet point read simply, "You're a total hypocrite."
She didn't appear to use the attacks, however.
In a handwritten note below the lines, one talking point that she did attempt to deploy.
"If asked admit personnel or firings — I'll tell you a personnel issue that I'm [missing word] agents are on the streets keeping America [missing words] a paycheck b/c you voted to shut [missing words]."
Several times, Bondi ignored questions about personnel matters by saying outright she refused to answer the question or by attacking the Democrat, saying they voted to shut down the government.
Finally, a note that she used several times, that was also handwritten, read, "Epstein— Did you take $ from Reid Hoffman???"
Hoffman appeared to know Epstein and gave money to Democratic officials, thereby connecting a Democratic member to Epstein through a few degrees of separation. Democrats have specifically asked for information about President Donald Trump's direct relationship with Epstein and demanded that they turn over the entire investigation files.
Zoomed-in photo of Attorney General Pam Bondi's notes while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT
Longtime investigative reporter Ken Dilanian, who typically covers justice and intelligence, called out the Republican talking point that they were "wiretapped" by President Joe Biden's administration.
White House call logs were obtained as part of the investigation into the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, revealing who President Donald Trump called, when the calls occurred, and when they ended. Such call logs were public as part of the House Subcommittee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. However, the call logs published as part of special counsel Jack Smith's final report included the name of the phone number's owner.
Dilanian made it clear on MSNBC that it's simply false.
"Those investigations were conducted based on the facts and the law by career FBI agents and career prosecutors," said Dilanian. "All of the arguments that Donald Trump made about weaponization — he tried to make two judges in courtrooms, and none of them worked. Even Judge Aileen Cannon didn't throw out the search at Mar-a-Lago — didn't decide that it was illegal. She ended up throwing out the case on a technical ground. So, it's totally different. There's no comparison to what happened and there's no evidence."
He said that he keeps repeating himself that if Trump had evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, demanding that the DOJ and FBI were weaponized, he could release all of the documents around the investigation. But over the course of the eight months that Trump has been in office, Dilanian said, they have "not produced a scintilla of evidence that anyone from the Biden administration, any political appointee, had any influence over that investigation."
"That's what weaponization would be. That's their argument. They're saying Biden sicced the Justice Department on his political opponent. There's just no evidence of that. They haven't produced any. They just keep saying it. And lots of people believe it," he closed.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell threatened to go "door-to-door" begging for money to file an appeal after a judge ruled that he and his company defamed voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic.
In a ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan found that Lindell defamed Smartmatic 51 times with claims that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged.
Lindell addressed the ruling in a Tuesday broadcast on his Lindell TV channel.
"This was the biggie. This was the $1.5 billion [lawsuit] against MyPillow and Mike Lindell," he explained. "What this means, everybody, is if this, if I don't appeal this, this would go to the jury trial, I don't know, year, two years for now, but they're saying, if I don't appeal, it's saying, yep, I'm guilty because I didn't appeal. And all the jury would then would decide, did Mike do this maliciously, and how much money I would owe."
"This is going to get appealed. I don't have the funds to do it," he continued. "Now we have 22 more days to raise this money for this appeal... I believe it's going to cost like $300,000. I'm sitting here without 300 cents, but I'll tell you what, this will get appealed."
"I don't care if I have to go door-to-door to raise the money."
Lindell, a supporter of President Donald Trump, claimed that the ruling was a plot "to distract me from getting rid of these machines."
The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal has fallen catastrophically short in the one place above all else where it should matter, legal experts Rachel Foster, Dahlia Lithwick, Mimi Rocah, and Joyce Vance wrote for Slate on Tuesday.
"So far there has been a specific and appalling omission at the heart of the continuing, and at one time relentless, Epstein coverage," they wrote — specifically, that all the focus is not on who was hurt by Epstein's child trafficking operation, but which public figures and politicians might have their careers ruined by it.
The scandal, they wrote, "is wielded as a kind of roving 'gotcha' narrative, in which we the public are encouraged to wait with bated breath for the drip-drip-drip revelation of the next big name to be outed as having been connected to Epstein and the one after that — Elon Musk! Peter Thiel! Prince Andrew! Bill Gates! Steve Bannon! Bill Clinton! Peter Mandelson! Alan Dershowitz! It then devolves into a sordid game of whether the man in question visited the island, got the massage, flew on the jet, as if the primary goal here is to pick off offenders until [holds breath] something finally implicates Donald Trump himself."
Looking at the Epstein case this way, they wrote, "disserves the only people who actually matter — the survivors — who have come together to decry the wholesale repeated failures of law enforcement, government, media, and public attention. They don't solely apportion blame to Epstein, or even to his top co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell — nor are they focused on how it can be politically weaponized.
Instead, they wrote, "the survivors correctly understand that the Epstein-Maxwell ordeal must be viewed through a massive reframing of our legal system’s devastating collective failures when it comes to them: This is not a whodunit so much as a What kind of society are we?"
"Time and time again, we have acceded to the winking, birthday-book gentleman’s agreement that young women exist to pleasure powerful men," they wrote. "What is also lost in this nothing-to-see-here (except the big, shiny names of potentially implicated powerful men), no-harm-no-foul narrative that people conveniently tell themselves are the young lives utterly shattered by cultural complicity and a lack of individual moral responsibility." As shown by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's most famous victims, who lost her life to suicide this year.
The fact is, they wrote, Epstein's case is one of many where powerful men got away with systematic abuse and exploitation for years — such as Larry Nassar, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and Sean "Diddy" Combs, who just got four years in prison for "brutally beating, drugging, sexually abusing, and threatening two women for years," suggesting our society has learned very little.
"Justice can still be achieved if we center the survivors, listen to their stories, and heed their demands for the system to work against the powerful — because, especially when it comes to this, no man should be above the law," they concluded.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) lashed out at Politico's Kyle Cheney on Tuesday when the legal reporter fact-checked the Republican about his claim he was "wiretapped" by President Joe Biden's administration.
Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigative report, listed in footnote 132 that investigators attempt to overthrow the 2020 election found that the White House called several Republican officials.
The documents show that, on multiple occasions, President Donald Trump called Hawley on Jan. 5 and 6, ahead of the certification of the election, declaring that Trump had won.
In a rant before the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Hawley claimed that his phones had been tapped. Cheney explained that's far from what happened.
"Hawley falsely claiming that the FBI 'tapped' his and other senators' phones," wrote Cheney on X. "The documents show a pull of non-content phone records from Jan. 4-7, 2021 – with some key details (like the limitations built into the order) still unknown."
Hawley reposted Cheney's comments, saying that the reporter is saying, "don’t believe your lying eyes! FBI just got caught tracking incoming calls, outgoing calls, location, duration, metadata - but that’s not 'tapping.'"
Cheney responded, "Correct. That’s not 'tapping,' which would actually involve listening to your conversations. You’ve just described a call log."
The New York Times report clarified that the details were an "analysis of phone toll records," which "is a common investigative tactic, though there are occasional policy and political debates about when and how such data should be taken. Such toll record information does not include the contents of conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap."
A "toll record" showed who was called and at what time, but not details about the contents of the call itself, says the laws around the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations.
"The subpoena for the phone records was disclosed by several Republican senators, including Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI," PBS explained in its report. "Grassley said the document memorializing the 'preliminary toll analysis' was produced in response to his request. The investigative step was authorized by a grand jury, the senators said."
The documents show that the calls to the Republicans came from the White House switchboard, which logs every call coming into and going out of the White House.
"Riiiiiight. And Joe Biden never used the autopen," Hawley later responded, attempting to pivot away from his accusation to another one.
"Presumably the logs reflect the seven calls President Trump made to you on Jan. 5 and the morning of Jan. 6 that you don't appear to have returned until after the riot," said Cheney, pasting the records.
Over and over, Trump called Hawley, but the allegedly pro-MAGA senator never picked up the phone.
House Republicans had a theoretical advantage heading into the government shutdown: unlike Senate Republicans, they can use their bare majority to pass messaging bills to reopen the government, making Democrats look bad and trying to stick them with the blame for the standoff.
But that has been derailed by their other key agenda of running interference for President Donald Trump over the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, political commentator Matt Yglesias noted Tuesday on X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wants to avoid a vote on the bipartisan discharge petition to compel the release of the files from the Justice Department, something Trump adamantly opposes despite himself, many of his subordinates, and the MAGA community at large clamoring for their release for years.
The petition, sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), is just one vote shy of passage. That vote is already in waiting in the form of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who won a special election weeks ago to replace her late father.
Since that election, however, her seat has remained vacant as Johnson has held the House closed, a move Democrats say was to avoid having to swear her in and give the discharge petition its final vote. And in doing so, he has essentially declawed House Republicans from using their power to message against Democrats in the shutdown, Yglesias noted.
"An underrated aspect of the shutdown: Republicans won't bring the House back into session because they'd have to seat Grijalva, which would put the Epstein discharge petition over the top, so neither chamber can hold votes on message bills designed to squeeze Democrats," he wrote.
Republicans also control the Senate, which theoretically could hold their own shutdown votes to embarrass Democrats. But, wrote Yglesias, they can't do that "because Democrats might say 'yes' to a GOP message bill, in which case House Republicans would be struck obstructing their own legislation to continue whatever Epstein coverup they're doing."
Democrats have vowed not to provide Republicans with the final votes they need to reopen the government until they come to the table and negotiate to extend subsidies that keep Affordable Care Act premiums stable. If those subsidies lapse, millions of Americans could see their premiums increase by at least double.
As the standoff drags on, even Trump has said he's open to a deal on the issue, but is refusing to do so until the shutdown ends.
Zoomed-in photo of Attorney General Pam Bondi's notes while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT