Carl Gibson, AlterNet

The alleged perpetrator of the recent shooting of two National Guard members in downtown Washington D.C. may have been kept out of American society if not for budget cuts by President Donald Trump's administration.

That's according to #AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver, who told MS NOW on Thursday that alleged shooter Rahmanullah Lakanwal – an Afghan national who came to the United States in September of 2021 — could have potentially been stopped before carrying out his act. He cited the 2024 arrest of 19 year-old Afghan national Abdullah Haji Zada, who was apprehended for plotting an Election Day mass shooting in Oklahoma City, as an example of how federal resources can work to prevent acts of terrorism before they happen.

"Nobody should ever have to endure this gun violence that's endemic in our American society. And look, the truth is that this man alone is responsible for his crime. His actions do not represent the Afghan community or Afghan wartime allies, or anybody who stood with us for 20 years," VanDiver said.

"In fact, the FBI's own watchdog confirmed that the vetting systems worked under Kash Patel in in June of 2025. He said there were no systemic failures, so we don't necessarily know what failed yet. But we do know that there are law enforcement mechanisms in place to identify lone wolves, and that worked before the last election, when the man in Oklahoma City was identified and taken out."

"All sorts of people have tried to do these lone wolf attacks. President Trump, through DOGE, wiped away all of the mechanisms meant to protect our American society from that," he continued. "So I would encourage DHS, the FBI, law enforcement around this country to reallocate resources away from stunts at Home Depot and picking up grandmas at immigration court back to the places that keep our country safe."

VanDiver's organization, #AfghanEvac, works to resettle Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban — particularly those who helped the United States during its 20-year war in the Central Asian country. He pointed out that all people applying to move from Afghanistan to the U.S. have to be "thoroughly vetted," and reminded viewers that the Trump administration approved Lakanwal's asylum application earlier this year.

"This gentleman came through Operation Allies Welcome, went through the airport in Kabul, arrived as a parolee on temporary status. And he, for whatever reason, he got Chief of Mission approval, which means he went through vetting then," VanDiver said. "But then he also applied for and received asylum from the Trump administration, which means he was vetted then as well. The CIA, the intelligence community, the larger intelligence community, law enforcement all vetted this guy."

"So we're not certain that that has anything to do with it. What we think is that he was just a deranged man, and the entire Afghan community shouldn't suffer for that," he added. "But look, these folks are facing really hard times, right? They're hiding in Kabul. They're in hiding all all over Afghanistan, trying to come here because of the promises that our diplomats and service members made to them. And the Trump administration shut it all down on day one."

Several Democratic members of the House of Representatives have filed official complaints with the U.S. Capitol Police Department after President Donald Trump endorsed a call to have them hanged.

Politico reported Friday that Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chris DeLuzio (D-Pa.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) contacted Capitol Police to file reports about the threat, which Trump issued after they appeared in a video encouraging military service members to defy illegal orders. The video also featured Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), along with Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin. (D-Mich.)

Following the video's release, Trump posted to his Truth Social account that their comments should be seen as "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by death!" He also reposted a supporter's comment calling for the six Democrats to be hanged.

“Each one of these traitors to our Country should be Arrested and put on trial," Trump wrote. "Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example must be set."

Houlahan's office told Politico that the congresswoman treated Trump's threat no different than "all threats targeting Representative Houlahan" and reported it to police. Two of her district offices received bomb threats following Trump's post, and her office was reportedly barraged with "thousands" of angry phone calls and email messages.

"If that’s not a threat to violence I don’t know what is," Houlahan told The New Republic's Greg Sargent. "Even if he for whatever reason didn’t mean it or doesn’t act on it, he’s just unleashed a lot of people who are not necessarily well on me and my team and my family, and that’s also a crime."

The six Democrats noted in their video that they were all veterans of either the U.S. military or intelligence agencies. And their call to disobey illegal orders comes from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That document stipulates that members of the military are duty-bound to obey "any lawful general order or regulation" lest they be subjected to a court-martial, but the provision of the UCMJ pertaining to the court-martial process stipulates that the duty to obey orders "does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime."

House Republican leadership recently took action to bar one of their own members from international trips, according to a new report.

Punchbowl News reported Wednesday that GOP leaders decided to ban Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) from traveling for three months due to an "alcohol-related episode" in Mexico this summer. In details laid out by Punchbowl reporter Andrew Desiderio, the original incident took place while Crenshaw and other Republicans were on an official Congressional delegation (CODEL) visit to Mexico in August, and Crenshaw was "having drinks with a group of Mexican officials."

"One Mexican official cracked a crude joke that made a woman present uncomfortable. Crenshaw toasted the remarks," Desiderio wrote on his X account.

Following the August CODEL, Crenshaw reportedly met with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Intelligence Committee chairman Rick Crawford. (R-Ark.) Desiderio's sources told him that the meeting grew "heated," and that Crawford apparently wanted Crenshaw kicked off of the prestigious committee.

Johnson reportedly didn't strip Crenshaw of his seat on the committee, though the Texas Republican was banned from international travel for 90 days. Crenshaw's cartel task force was also disbanded.

Desiderio further reported that Crenshaw and Crawford were squabbling over appropriations for counterintelligence programs in the annual legislation to fund intelligence agencies. Crawford had been pushing for additional funding, and was reportedly "frustrated with Crenshaw’s lack of support for the plan." Those funds were ultimately included in the version of the bill that reached the House floor.

Click here to read Punchbowl's full report (subscription required).

When President Donald Trump called on the Republican-controlled Texas legislature to redraw new U.S. House of Representatives district maps earlier this year, he expressly hoped GOP lawmakers could find five additional Republican seats by carving up Democratic districts. But after federal judges in Texas ruled those maps illegal, some House Republicans are railing against the entire effort.

Politico reported Tuesday evening that the recent 2-1 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has some Republicans bemoaning the apparent failed effort in the Lone Star State to give Republicans an advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) told reporters that House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) refusal to denounce the redistricting push was a "total failure of leadership." Other Republicans are also speaking out against GOP-led gerrymandering efforts.

"I was never in favor of doing all this redistricting stuff anyway," Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) told Politico. "Should not have opened that box."

Kiley's California district is likely to flip Democrat in the wake of https://www.alternet.org/newsom-texas/, which Golden State voters approved by massive margins earlier this month. The Texas decision only applies to the Lone Star State's new maps and will not impact the new temporary maps created by Prop 50, where Democrats are expected to flip five total seats next year. California-based Republican strategist Rob Stutzman called the Texas gerrymandering gambit a "possible debacle" if the Supreme Court decides to uphold the lower court's ruling.

"This will have been a ready, shoot, aim exercise by Trump," Stutzman said.

Should the Texas decision be upheld, the Lone Star State will revert to its 2021 maps, meaning Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) will no longer be pitted against one another to remain in office. Doggett quoted author Mark Twain on Tuesday, saying "the reports of my death, politically, are greatly exaggerated." Other Texas Democrats like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) — who has been contemplating a U.S. Senate run — will also be able to run for another term in their respective districts.

Trump's effort to gerrymander Democrats out of their seats in red states has already been running into significant obstacles, as Indiana Senate president pro tempore Rodric Bray said recently he did not have the votes to pass gerrymandered maps through his chamber. New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) has also poured cold water on Trump's redistricting campaign despite her state having a Republican trifecta government, saying earlier this year it was "not on the top of [voters'] priority list."

Click here to read Politico's full report.

Senate Republicans are expected to vote soon on whether to keep a controversial provision that was included in the legislation that reopened the federal government after the recent 43-day shutdown. But that language is causing significant division among the Senate Republican Conference.

That's according to a Tuesday article by Politico's Hailey Fuchs and Jordain Carney, who reported that senators are planning to discuss that section in a Wednesday lunch meeting. The provision in question would allow Republican senators whose phone records were accessed by former Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith's team as part of their "Operation: Arctic Frost" investigation to sue the government for up to $500,000.

"[C]onfusion, frustration and anger ran rampant about what has quickly become branded as a politically toxic, taxpayer-funded windfall for a select few," Fuchs and Carney wrote.

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) joked that there could be "some stabbings" when the topic comes up during the Senate GOP's lunch. He told Politico that the provision violated "trust and good faith" among his fellow Republicans.

"Whoever put this in had an obligation to tell us about it, and they didn’t," Kennedy said.

House Republicans are expected to vote Wednesday to repeal the provision, which Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) characterized as a "pretty serious mistake" and a "cash payout to Republican senators." But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has continued to defend it in spite of the House vote, insisting that the language "doesn't apply to them."

Despite Thune's insistence on keeping the lawsuit language in place, Republicans are distancing themselves from it. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) went on the record to Politico that he would vote for its repeal, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) blamed "the leaders" for the provision and that she "played no role" in crafting it.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) along with Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) all had their phone records seized by Smith's prosecutors. However, only Graham has publicly promised to sue for the $500,000, while other senators have either opposed it directly or said they would insist on a non-monetary judgment if they did pursue litigation.

Click here to read Politico's full article.

President Donald Trump appears likely to sign the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act into law this week, which would compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all remaining evidence pertaining to deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein that has yet to be made public.

However, Epstein's brother, Mark, recently said that a "pretty good source" told him the DOJ is "sanitizing" the Epstein files ahead of their likely release in order to downplay implications for Republicans. But one veteran journalist is arguing that even if Attorney General Pam Bondi attempts to release doctored documents, the effort could still backfire and make the administration's Epstein problem even worse.

"I get the concerns that AG Bondi and FBI Director Patel may try to scrub all Trump references and images in the Epstein files before they are released," former CNN, Fox News and NBC journalist David Shuster wrote Tuesday on his official X account. "Well, there are nearly 1,000 FBI/DOJ staff who looked at the files in March with no compartmentalizing, limits, or controls."

As Shuster pointed out, Bondi ordered DOJ staff to comb through approximately 100,000 pages of documents pertaining to Epstein's two federal investigations in 2006 and 2019 earlier this year. The New York Times reported that between February and April, DOJ staff pored through the evidence four times.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who was Trump's former personal lawyer) explicitly told attorneys to flag any mention of Trump in the files. Shuster argued that one of the many DOJ staffers working on the case would likely report any noticeable changes to lawmakers and undermine any attempt by the administration to shield high-profile figures from accountability.

"Bondi and Patel will be jammed by their own incompetence," Shuster wrote. "Because if the AG and FBI director try to scrub Trump references now, there will be more than a few FBI/DOJ whistleblowers who will notice the removals and alert Congress. Check mate."

The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House overwhelmingly on Tuesday by a vote of 427-1, with Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) being the only "no" vote. Capitol Hill journalist Jamie Dupree reported that the House is expected to walk the legislation to the Senate on Wednesday, where it is expected to pass.

After a panel of federal judges struck down Texas' new gerrymandered Congressional redistricting maps, one Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives is turning his outrage toward House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for giving them his blessing.

Punchbowl News' Laura Weiss reported Tuesday that Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) denounced both Texas' mid-decade redistricting push as well as House Republican leadership for what he viewed as a major strategic blunder. Kiley lobbed criticism at Texas Republicans' praise of the maps as being advantageous for Republicans, and argued that the effort to force new redistricting boundaries ahead of the 2026 midterms for partisan advantage was doomed from the start.

"To the extent there was any point to begin with — which I don't think there was — I don't think even if you've got a partisan advantage on this it in any way shape or form justifies it," Kiley told Weiss. "But that's not even gonna happen it looks like. And with this court decision, it's even more in doubt. So it's just utterly foolish."

In the 2-1 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, judges appointed by President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama ruled in the majority that the new maps were illegal as they were drawn to disenfranchise racial minorities. A judge appointed by former President Ronald Reagan was the lone dissenting vote. Legal journalist Chris Geidner wrote on Bluesky that the decision was made under a law in which any appeals go directly to the Supreme Court of the United States, and that the Western District of Texas' ruling will not impact the new Democrat-friendly maps overwhelmingly approved by California voters earlier this month.

Kiley specifically called out Speaker Johnson for not using his influence to speak out against redistricting efforts earlier this year, and said he should have sought out a truce with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to head off Democratic responses, like California's Prop 50.

"It was a total failure of leadership to let this happen in a way that is going to be bad for our own members, bad for the House, bad for representation across the country, Kiley said.

Kiley is one of the California Republicans likely to lose their seat next year, with Prop 50 creating new boundaries designed to disadvantage the GOP in the 2026 midterms. Democrats are expected to win as many as five new seats in California as a result of Prop 50.

Meghan McCain — the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — recently singled out a popular MAGA-aligned commentator over her attempt to soften deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.

The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that on the newest episode of her podcast, McCain took SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly to task for her implication that Epstein's sex crimes against minors were not as monstrous as the media made them out to be. The former Fox News host argued earlier this month that she agreed with an unnamed source who told her that Epstein's preying on teenage girls was nuanced, saying: "There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old."

"I’m just giving you facts that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds," Kelly said. "But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby."

McCain — a former panelist on The View — acknowledged the backlash to Kelly's remarks and condemned the conservative commentator for attempting to downplay Epstein's history of predatory behavior toward underage girls. She observed that Kelly was pushing the discourse into "very dangerous territory" with her comments.

"Are we going to have a discussion about if a 15-year-old is a kid or not and what implications it means if you’re a man who’s attracted to a 15-year-old, like is that somehow better than a 5-year-old?" McCain said.

"It’s all vile. It’s all disgusting. It’s all unacceptable. It all should put you in jail," she continued.

McCain went on to say that Kelly's Epstein defense was "obviously insane," that "barely legal" was not a legal term, and that there should be no parsing of the seriousness of someone who exploited underage girls.

"Fifteen is a kid. And the idea that in any situation a 15-year-old should be considered anything except a child — I just don’t understand it," she said. "And it doesn’t matter what you and I think. It doesn’t matter what Megyn Kelly thinks. What matters is what the law says. And the law says that it’s 18 and under is considered a legal child.”

Click here to read the Beast's article in full (subscription required).

President Donald Trump's ironclad grip on the Republican Party may be weaker than it's ever been due to the ongoing fallout over deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein.

That's according to commentator Scott Morefield, who writes for the conservative website Townhall. Morefield told New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg that Trump's handling of the Department of Justice's unreleased evidence pertaining to its two Epstein-related investigations has caused widespread disillusionment among the MAGA movement.

He particularly focused on Trump's attacks on Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), who have both pressured him to release all of the DOJ's remaining evidence on Epstein.

Trump called Greene a "ranting lunatic" on his Truth Social platform last week, and called Massie a "loser" and remarked that his recent marriage was "quick" (Massie's first wife, Rhonda, died last June). Massie shrugged off Trump's attacks and shared a joke that he and his new wife made at Trump's expense.

"She said, 'I told you we should have invited him to the wedding!'" Massie told reporters on Monday.

"Trump’s denunciations of MTG and especially Thomas Massie last night were unnecessary, over the top, and cruel in a way that should make any human with basic empathy question what kind of human he is," Moreland posted to X. "If anyone is responsible for the fracturing of MAGA, it’s the top dog himself. The buck stops there."

In her Monday essay, Goldberg marveled at how Trump used to dispatch with his political opponents within the GOP with relative ease. She pointed to past examples like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). However, she observed that Trump's failure to cow Greene and Massie into submission suggested that "something has changed." When Goldberg asked Moreland how much Trump's movement had split, the conservative writer didn't mince words.

“I think it’s pretty serious,” he said. “Epstein really started it. It was like the crack in the dam, I think.”

Click here to read Goldberg's full essay in the New York Times (subscription required).

Earlier this week, senior U.S. District judge Mark Wolf (an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan) retired from his post, saying President Donald Trump's "assault on the rule of law was "deeply disturbing" and that he felt "compelled to speak out." And now, he's not sparing the Supreme Court from criticism for enabling Trump.

In a recent interview with Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, Wolf argued that judges need "support" from the institution of the judiciary, given that Trump and his followers are openly calling for the impeachment of federal judges for simply issuing rulings against the administration. He added that such behavior would have been seen as immediately disqualifying during the Watergate era.

"I’m afraid if the courts do not have the support they need … our rule of law and our democracy will be doomed," Wolf said.

Wolf offered particularly sharp criticism of the current Supreme Court, which he accused of regularly undermining lower court judges and longstanding precedent with decisions issued on its emergency docket (also known as the "shadow docket"), which are sometimes devoid of any explanation and rationale for the decision. Wolf's argument is sound: Stanford University professor Adam Bonica found that between May and June of this year, lower courts ruled against Trump 94.3 percent of the time, going against him in 82 of 87 cases. During that same period, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the administration 93.7 percent of the time in 15 of 16 cases.

“When Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa all started hitting 60 home runs or more when no one in the history of baseball except Babe Ruth and Roger Maris had ever hit 60 home runs, there was reason to suspect something improper was going on,” Wolf told Politico. “When the president wins 17 out of 20 cases decided on the shadow docket, to me at least it raises a concern about whether there’s a possible lack of impartiality.”

Cheney observed that Wolf isn't the only Reagan-appointed judge to accuse Trump of violating the law. When ruling against Trump's attempt to repeal birthright citizenship, U.S. District Judge John Cougheneur wrote: "It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore."

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has repeatedly assailed the January 6 insurrection from the bench, along with Trump's pardon of the roughly 1,500 Janury 6 defendants that he issued on his first day in office. And U.S. District Judge William Young denounced the Trump administration's revocations of green cards for pro-Palestinian immigrants on American college campuses as a threat to free speech.

President Donald Trump's initial response to the latest batch of emails from deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein has been to call for the investigations of Democrats who have been linked to Epstein. But one of the people Trump explicitly mentioned is now firing back.

In a series of posts to his official X account, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — a prominent Democratic donor with a net worth of roughly $2.5 billion — responded to Trump's call to investigate him with a demand to "release all of the Epstein files," saying "every person and every document" should be known to the public.

"I want this complete release because it will bring justice to the victims," Hoffman wrote. In a subsequent post, he wrote that releasing the full files would also prove his innocence.

"I want this complete release because it will show that the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander," Hoffman tweeted. "I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT."

The Democratic donor went on to argue that Trump's push to investigate him was "an obvious ploy to avoid releasing the files." He pushed for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to "simply release all the files, and expose the people who had both deep and ongoing relationships with Epstein."

"I will do everything in my power going forward to advocate for the release of the files, to get justice for Epstein’s victims and to promote the values of truth our great country was founded on," he added. Hoffman concluded the thread by writing: "I refuse to bend the knee to Donald Trump and his slanderous lies."

In addition to Hoffman, Trump demanded the DOJ investigate former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers and J.P. Morgan Chase bank.

"This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his “Island.” Stay tuned!!!"

One new photo of the construction site of what used to be the East Wing of the White House is prompting outrage among Americans on social media.

While on assignment for Getty Images, freelance photographer Andrew Leyden posted photos on Friday of the White House from the Washington Monument, which recently reopened following the 43-day government shutdown. Leyden's photos showed a massive pile of dirt and a deep hole in the ground where the East Wing previously stood, after President Donald Trump tore it down to make space for his planned $300 million ballroom.

Leyden's photos sparked multiple reactions on X. Historical preservation consultant Karyn Caplan wrote: "The historic preservationist in me is still horrified by the paving over of the Rose Garden, the East Wing demolition and the monstrosity of a ballroom, and more, but there’s nothing to be done now."

"Excited for the monument to be open, sad of the wreckage visible," tweeted regulatory strategy professional Alex Pawlowski.

Former federal employee Jack Miller – who was previously the communications director for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — listed Trump's changes to the White House in a bulleted list in a post to his X account. Miller noted that Trump "demolished the East Wing," put up "gold plated decorations" with "tacky labels for ~*The Oval Office*~" and put up "car dealership sized American flags," and also "flattened the Rose Garden."

"It’s just so tacky," Miller wrote.

Gulf War veteran Stan Walters opined that the inflated cost of the construction for Trump's ballroom didn't add up, writing: "Ballrooms don't cost $3,000 sq/ft. This is weird as all hell."

"Who knew cheaper eggs could be so expensive," quipped writer Christian H. Cooper.

Behind closed doors, President Donald Trump has been increasingly "frustrated" about the emails from deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that the House Oversight Committee released on Wednesday.

That's according to CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene, who told the network on Thursday that White House sources confirmed the administration is "thinking about" the bipartisan Epstein files discharge petition that reached its decisive 218-signature mark on Wednesday. She also remarked that it was unusual for the administration to bring Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) into the Situation Room in an attempt to cajole her into taking her name off the petition.

"Obviously that wasn't successful, and so now they have to figure out where to go from here," Treene told CNN host Dana Bash. "There is a lot of frustration. The president himself is frustrated at all of this."

Treene went on to point out that "a lot of the people in the White House were the same ones ... that were calling for this transparency" during Trump's third campaign for the presidency. Bash added that FBI Director Kash Patel had also repeatedly promised in several podcast interviews that he would push to have the Department of Justice's (DOJ) remaining documents pertaining to Epstein released under a second Trump administration.

According to Treene's sources, administration officials are walking a fine line between their arguments that Trump himself is not implicated in the Epstein files, while also defending his continued opposition to making them public. Congress is also poised to vote in favor of compelling the DOJ to release the Epstein files, possibly as soon as next week.

"They have a tough thing right now, because I think the emails, for whatever they were yesterday ... I don't think there's any legal implication for Donald Trump, for the president, in those emails. But they are of course, embarrassing," Treene said. "But I think the serious question it poses is, has the president known more that he is keeping quiet, and has he really been as transparent as they always promised? And having all this come out is, I think, the problem that they are trying to protect him from."

Watch the segment below:

Republicans in Congress are quietly admitting that soon-to-be-expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits could turn their voters against them in next year's midterm elections.

That's according to a Tuesday article in Politico, which reported that GOP lawmakers are hoping President Donald Trump will take on a more vocal role in healthcare negotiations than he did during the ongoing government shutdown (which is the longest in U.S. history). One unnamed White House source told Politico that Trump is in favor of the GOP-controlled House and Senate having a vote on extending the ACA tax credits, though they refrained from saying what Trump's specific position is on the policy other than that he has "talked about healthcare quite a lot."

"And recently, he has broadly said, you know, we got to cut health care costs down in any way we can. We got to look at different ways in order to do that," the source said. "And so the healthcare cost is definitely on his mind."

If the ACA tax credits run out at the end of 2025 with no extension, monthly premiums could double in certain health insurance marketplaces like California. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) previously said her adult children are on the precipice of seeing their own premiums double in cost. Premiums in deep-red states like Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming are set to rise by anywhere from 150 percent to 387 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And the recent elections in Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere were largely defined by voter anger with the high cost of living.

"Once we get past [the shutdown], then things can become a little trickier for the administration and it goes to that issue of cost," Republican strategist Doug Heye said. "We’ve seen it a million times — as recently as the last administration — whoever is in charge gets the blame for rising prices. [If] that happens on your watch, even though it’s a program that was cleared by Democrats… you’re still where the buck should stop and voters want to see and hear that you’re engaged."

Politico's source told the outlet that many Republican elected officials have confided that they hope Trump will take swift action to prevent health insurance costs from spiking — particularly as they fight to stay in power next November.

"There’s a lot of [Republicans] who think, I don’t want to go into the beginning of a new year, which is an election year, with premiums going up 25, 30 percent," the source said. “I’m assuming they want [Trump involved]. The question is, will they get it?”

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.

After more than a month, Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will be sworn in on Wednesday. Her swearing-in ceremony has significant implications for a highly anticipated vote to compel the Department of Justice to release all remaining documentation pertaining to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In response to the announcement that Grijalva will officially join the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who is cosponsoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) – posted to his official X account: "The 218th and final signature for the Epstein discharge petition will happen tomorrow." Once Grijalva signs the petition, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be unable to prevent the legislation from getting a full vote on the House floor.

Former CNN, Fox News and MSNBC journalist David Shuster, who has been closely following Epstein-related developments in Washington, wrote Tuesday that official House rules stipulate that discharge petitions can't be voted on until after seven legislative days (which roll over after the speaker gavels the House back into session after an adjournment). And once those seven legislative days have passed, the speaker has a 48-hour window to schedule the vote.

However, the approaching Thanksgiving recess means that the full floor vote on the Massie-Khanna discharge petition will have to be delayed a little longer. According to the 2025 House work calendar on House Majority Leader Steve Scalise's (R-La.) website, the House will not be in session after November 20. Lawmakers are not set to return to Washington D.C. until December 1.

"Given the Thanksgiving break, and the expectation the [H]ouse will be in recess that entire week, the House vote on the Epstein files will happen at the start of the following week (first week in December)," Shuster tweeted.

President Donald Trump's administration has been vocal in its opposition to the discharge petition, warning Republicans that supporting it would be seen as a "very hostile act." In addition to Massie, Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have added their names. Shuster reported last week that the full floor vote could garner "more than 100" Republican supporters.

The House is finally back in session this week to debate the bill to reopen the federal government that the Senate passed over the weekend. Speaker Johnson has kept the lower chamber of Congress out of session since September 19.