Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act as Bondi faces Senate – US politics live

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Wednesday. In the meantime, here are the latest developments:

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  The attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to answer questions about the indictment of James Comey and what happened to the $50,000 Tom Homan, the border czar, reportedly accepted from undercover FBI agents last year.

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  Donald Trump met the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and jokingly pushed him to agree to “a merger” of their two countries. He also declined to rule out invoking the insurrection act to put troops on the streets of the US, which might have made the prospect of joining the union even less appealing.

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  Trump suggested that he might not follow a law mandating that furloughed government workers will get backpay after the government shutdown ends.

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  Texas national guard troops arrived in Illinois, over the objections of the state’s governor.

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  House speaker Mike Johnson said that his decision to stave off swearing in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona has “nothing to do” with the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition – to compel a House vote on the full release of the Epstein files.

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  Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers. Portland police cleared the street outside ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance. She led federal officers in prayer and met Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor and police chief during her visit. When she appeared on the roof of the facility, protesters blared the Benny Hill theme.

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In a meeting with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, complained about what he has described as excessive use of force and tear gas by federal officers and tried to convince her that conditions in the city bear little resemblance to the wild claims made by her boss, Donald Trump.

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“What Secretary Noem saw today in Portland matches our reports: Portland continues to manage public safety professionally and responsibly, irrespective of the claims of out-of-state social media influencers,” Wilson said in a statement after the meeting.

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Given that Noem invited a trio of conservative social influencers to join her on her brief visit to the city on Tuesday, two of whom are partisans from other states who falsely refer to the protesters as “terrorists”, Wilson’s warning about being fooled by their videos may have fallen on deaf ears.

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“I continue to maintain that the tactics used by federal agents at the Ice facility are troubling and likely unconstitutional,” Wilson added.

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“We believe a constitutional federal government must be accountable to the community in terms of clear limits on use of force, officer identification, limits on chemical munitions, and body-worn cameras,” the mayor said.

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On Sunday, Wilson told reporters that he had complained to the civil rights division of the department of justice about the behavior of federal officers on Saturday, after they pushed protesters off the streets and sidewalks doused the neighborhood around the Ice facility in Portland in tear gas.

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“We see Federal Protective Service that’s really trying to inflame the situation, not put it down and certainly not just protect property,” Wilson said. “We saw unjustified uses of force. We saw shoving peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground. Indiscriminate use of impact munitions [and] pepper spray.”

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The civil rights division of the department of justice that Wilson appealed to for help is currently run by Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general who previously represented prominent conservative social media influencers, including Andy Ngo and James O’Keefe.

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Asked earlier on Tuesday if Adelita Grijalva, a newly elected Democrat, has not yet been sworn in as a member of Congress because she intends to sign a discharge petition which would require a House vote to compel the justice department to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker told reporters he would swear her in “as soon as she wants”.

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Hours later, however, a House Republican leadership aide told CNN that Grijalva, who won a special election last month to replace her late father, would not be sworn in until the government shutdown ends.

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“We will swear in representative-elect Grijalva as soon as the House returns to session when Chuck Schumer, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego decide to open up the government,” the Republican aide told the broadcaster.

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As the CNN reporter Manu Raju pointed out to Johnson, he previously swore in two newly elected members during a pro-forma session, like the current one.

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Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat who lives in the Congressional district Grijalva was elected to represent two weeks ago, said in a social media video: “This is starting to get ridiculous.”

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“I’m not sure exactly the reason,” Kelly added. “Maybe it’s about Jeffrey Epstein, I don’t know.”

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Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, issued a blistering statement on the arrival of troops from the Texas national guard troops arrive in his state.

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“Deploying the Texas National Guard, over the objections of Illinois elected officials, is not only unnecessary, but it is also unlawful. The law, specifically the Posse Comitatus Act, expressly forbids our nation’s military to be used for domestic law enforcement without express statutory or constitutional authorization. National Guard personnel do not deserve to be used as political pawns in President Trump’s political theater,” Durbin said.

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He continued:

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“As made clear in today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Trump Administration continues to shut out Illinois officials. Administration officials have recklessly sent in troops and agency leaders, including FBI Director Kash Patel, to Chicago without speaking to our state’s leaders. If the Trump Administration truly wanted to help Chicagoans, they wouldn’t defy Illinois’ elected leaders. They would work with us.”

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Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said on Tuesday that she is back in command of the state’s national guard, following a federal judge’s ruling that Donald Trump acted illegally by federalizing 200 troops to respond to an emergency in Portland that simply does not exist.

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In a statement, the governor said that she has written to the regional US military command in Colorado asking that 200 citizen-soldiers from Oregon’s national guard be immediately demobilized, and 200 federalized troops from California’s national guard be sent home.

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The Oregon national guard troops are currently staged at Camp Rilea on the Pacific coast, about a two-hour drive from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, according to the governor. The California national guard troops are staged at Camp Withycombe, about 30 minutes southeast of the Ice facility.

n “Judge Karin J. Immergut’s orders are a clear and forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s misuse of states’ National Guard. Thus, I am directing Northern Command to send Oregon’s citizen-soldiers home from Camp Rilea immediately,” Kotek said in her statement. “Let’s remember that these Oregonians are our neighbors and friends, who have been unlawfully uprooted from their family and careers – they deserve better than this.”

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On Saturday, Immergut ruled that Trump did not have the authority to federalize the Oregon national guard since his claims about mass anarchy and arson in Portland were “simply untethered to the facts.”

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On Sunday, after Trump attempted to evade that ruling by deploying troops from the California guard he had seized control of in June, the judge issued a second order, blocking the deployment of national guard troops from any state or the District of Columbia to Oregon.

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There was a bit of an unexplained delay earlier between Kristi Noem’s arrival at the airport in Portland and the departure of the homeland security secretary’s motorcade for the Ice field office.

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The reason, it seems, is that Noem was greeted at the airport by Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, who said in a statement that she asked for the meeting when she “heard through unofficial channels” that the secretary planned to visit Portland.

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According to Kotek, she “reiterated again that there is no insurrection in Oregon.”

n “I requested that Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents obey Oregon laws when they engage in federal operations,” the governor added. “I reiterated that I continue to be focused on doing whatever I can to protect Oregonians from military intervention or harmful federal law enforcement tactics. Oregon is united against military policing in our communities.”

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In a news conference on Sunday, after Oregon had convinced a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump that conditions on the ground did not come close to warranting military intervention, Kotek told reporters that she was concerned that federal officers were violating state law.

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“We’ve worked really hard in the state of Oregon, from 2020 on, to have better crowd control techniques. There are clear laws of when you can be using teargas, for example. They’re not following any of those,” the governor said the day after federal officer blanketed the neighborhood around the facility in teargas.

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The intensity of the chemical munitions was such that a reporter who visited the site the following day had trouble breathing.

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Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has apparently completed her visit to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon.

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According to the Maga influencers in her entourage, Noem met with the Portland police chief, Bob Day, and then drove out of the facility past a handful of protesters outside, including one dressed as a bear wearing a sombrero.

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Despite the obvious comedic disconnect between the claims from Donald Trump that this field office is “under siege” from “domestic terrorists” and the real evidence of a small number of demonstrators in such non-threatening attire, the influencers continued to refer to the protesters as dangerous radicals.

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One of the influencers, Benny Johnson, claimed that Portland’s police chief had “sided with violent ANTIFA militants assaulting journalists and officers outside ICE facility”.

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Johnson was referring to the arrest last week of another influencer in Noem’s entourage, Nick Sortor, after he tried to force his way through a protest encampment and got into a scuffle with protesters. Johnson made no mention of the fact that the charges of disorderly conduct against Sortor have already been dropped.

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While Johnson referred to Sortor and other pro-Trump influencers who have been engaged in scuffles with protesters as journalists, there is copious evidence that they are partisan activists who often act in provocative ways, rather than nonpartisan reporters documenting events as observers.

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Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, is currently touring the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers who arrived in her motorcade.

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Portland police cleared the street outside the Ice office in the city’s south waterfront neighborhood ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance.

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A country-style song, with the refrain, “Trump is in the Epstein files, yes he is”, blared from a protest encampment down the street and one protesters shouted to a government videographer on the roof of the facility, “Did we rename the department of homeland security the ministry of propaganda?”

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Reporters from local news outlets were also held behind the police line outside, as the partisan influencers in Noem’s entourage, Benny Johnson, Nick Sortor and David Media, shared social media updates of the secretary leading federal officers in prayer inside, giving a pep talk, and telling a member of the Oregon national guard to “Get ready.”

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Noem has previously echoed Donald Trump’’s claims that a small band of protesters, who have rallied in their dozens outside the Ice facility since June, including one who wears an inflatable frog costume, are “terrorists” who have placed the office “under siege”, making the deployment of federal troops essential.

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On Saturday, a federal judge in Portland blocked Trump’s effort to federalize Oregon’s national guard, determining that the president’s claims that the peaceful city was “burning to the ground” were “untethered to the facts.”

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A day later the same judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, expanded her order to block national guards troops from any jurisdiction from being deployed in Portland, after Trump tried to deploy members of the California national guard, previously federalized in response to protests in Los Angeles, to Oregon.

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Since Trump has drawn attention to the small but persistent protest outside the Ice facility, and made false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, a growing number of his supporters, including Maga influencers, have turned up to confront the protesters, which has resulted in fistfights and to a series of arrests, including of Sortor. After an outcry in the conservative media, and from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, charges against Sortor were dropped.

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Johnson, a former journalist who reinvented himself as a Christian nationalist influencer after he was fired from Buzzfeed for plagiarism, just shared video of Noem looking down from the roof of the Ice facility at the small group of protesters below, including Jack Dickinson, a protest organizers who wears a chicken costume to mock Trump.

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Johnson captioned the video of Noem inspecting the placid scene below: “DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stares down army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit”.

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Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who represents many federal workers, responded on Tuesday to a leaked White House memo arguing that furloughed federal employees may not be entitled to back pay after a government shutdown ends.

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“All federal employees are legally entitled to back pay when the government reopens after a shutdown. I know this because in 2019, I helped pass the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act which made this a requirement. Donald Trump knows this, too—he signed it into law,” Raskin said in a statement.

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“Now, as the White House reverses course, the president is threatening to deliberately violate the law; or he is suffering from a debilitating case of legislative amnesia. Either way, he should refresh his memory on the law he signed. And if he chooses to barrel forward anyway, he should get ready for a fight in court,” the Maryland congressman continued.

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“The president has no right to just pay the federal workers in his own political camp. That’s a violation of the law and of the First Amendment,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, said.

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Also today, House speaker Mike Johnson said that his decision to stave off swearing in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona has “nothing to do” with the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition – to compel a House vote on the full release of the Epstein files.

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“We will swear her in when everybody gets back,” Johnson said, referring to his decision to not call lawmakers back to the hill, in order to jam Democrats and force the Senate to vote on a House-passed funding bill to keep the government funded. “We’re in pro forma session because there is nothing for the House to do. The House has done its job … it’s exactly the same thing that Chuck Schumer voted for in March, so the house will get back to our normal order in doing our job as soon as he votes to reopen the government, because real people’s lives are hanging in the balance right now.”

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Texas national guard troops have arrived in the Chicago area, marking an escalation of Donald Trump’s crackdown on the city.

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Chicago has already seen a ramping up of immigration enforcement in the past few weeks, as well as increasingly violent altercations in the suburb of Broadview, where law enforcement has been filmed deploying teargas and pepper gas against protestors.

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The latest military presence comes after April Perry, a US district judge, declined to immediately block troops from entering the city amid a pending lawsuit from the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago against the Trump administration’s actions.

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But after Perry’s ruling, the troops were mobilized on Monday, and multiple outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Times confirmed they were remaining in the Chicago area on Tuesday.

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At a press conference on Capitol Hill today, John Thune, the top Senate Republican, said he had not seen the new “legal analysis” that suggests federal workers who have been furloughed due to the government shutdown might not be guaranteed back pay.

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“My assumption is that furloughed workers will get back pay,” Thune said. “But the broader question here is, the answer to everything right now is open up the government.”

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The Republican senator from South Dakota continued to blame lawmakers across the aisle for the shutdown, now on its seventh day:

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n

This government has been shut down by Chuck Schumer and the senate Democrats and it can open up today, and then every of one of those questions becomes an irrelevant question, because we’ll have a functioning government, and everybody will get paid as they should.

n

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In a tense Senate judiciary committee hearing today, lasting more than four hours, attorney general Pam Bondi sparred with Democratic lawmakers as she faced pushback over the justice department’s enforcement efforts in Democratic-led cities, her handling of the Epstein investigation, and Trump’s weaponizing the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate and prosecute his political enemies.

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Bondi claimed the department under Trump was “returning to our core mission of fighting real crime”, citing the surge in federal law enforcement activity in Washington DC and Memphis, Tennessee. She also claimed the DOJ was ending the “weaponization of justice”, even as several political adversaries of Trump face federal investigations and prosecutions.

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The attorney general frequently parried questions from Democratic lawmakers about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, a bribery probe into Trump border tsar Tom Homan and the case against former FBI director James Comey by criticizing her questioners in a bold display of partisan political theater – now almost customary when administration officials have testified before congress in recent months.

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Throughout the oversight hearing, the attorney general was pressed on the DoJ’s reversal on releasing files on sex trafficking investigations into Epstein, a one-time close friend of Trump, Bondi deflected by accusing Democratic senators of accepting campaign donations from an Epstein associate and played down her comments from earlier this year that the “client list” was “sitting” on her desk for review.

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Republican lawmakers generally praised Bondi for her leadership. Texas senator Ted Cruz said the attorney general returned the justice department to “its core function”: “enforcing the law and locking up bad guys”. But colleagues across the aisle had a laundry list of concerns, and pushed Bondi on subjects where she proved evasive.

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On the bribery allegations against border tsar Tom Homan, Bondi refused to answer questions from Democratic senators, instead saying that DoJ and FBI officials had found Homan did not commit a crime, and launched personal attacks as she fended off follow-ups. “If you worked for me, you would have been fired,” Bondi told the Democratic senator Adam Schiff. “Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?”

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Asked about the legal justification for Trump’s moves to deploy national guard troops in US cities, Bondi blamed Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown and said it was jeopardizing public safety. “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she told Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.

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Bondi also declined to answer questions about Trump’s role in the case against Comey or the arguments by career prosecutors, saying she would not comment on private conversations with the White House or personnel matters. Asked about Trump’s social post calling for Comey’s prosecution, Bondi said: “I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years.”

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Bondi’s testimony followed months of tumult at the justice department as Trump administration officials challenge longstanding norms meant to insulate investigations from political influence and align the department closely with Trump’s agenda. Durbin criticized Bondi for firing career prosecutors and agents who worked on investigations condemned by Trump and scaling back the department’s efforts to combat corruption and white-collar crime. He said:

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n

In eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the justice department and left an enormous stain on American history. It will take decades to recover.

n

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A short while ago, senator Adam Schiff said that the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi’s leadership has become Donald Trump’s “personal sword and shield to go after his ever growing list of political enemies and to protect himself his allies and associates”.

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Schiff is a noted adversary of the president, who served on the House select committee which investigated the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021.

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Bondi snapped back at Schiff today, when she refused to answer questions about the allegations against Tom Homan, the border czar, for accepting $50,000 in bribes prior to Trump taking office: “Deputy attorney general Blanche and [FBI] director Patel said that there was no evidence that Tom Homan committed a crime, yet now you’re putting his picture up to slander him.”

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“If you worked for me, you would have been fired,” Bondi told the Democratic lawmaker from California. “Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?”

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Government workers who have been furloughed since the government shutdown last week may not be entitled to back pay, according to a memo first obtained by Axios.

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In a draft, seen by multiple outlets, office of management and budget (OMB) general counsel Mark Paoletta argues that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019, which Trump signed during the last government shutdown, doesn’t guarantee furloughed workers back pay if Congress hasn’t set aside money to compensate them when the government reopens.

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The president didn’t promise that back pay was a guarantee while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office today, simply saying that “it depends who we’re talking about” when it comes to the White House’s position on furloughed workers.

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Meanwhile, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have been similarly evasive. Senate majority leader John Thune said today that “the sooner they vote to open up the government, the sooner this becomes a non issue”, while also saying he wasn’t familiar on the exact language of the law. For his part, House speaker Mike Johnson said that there is “new legal analysis” that back pay might “not be appropriate or necessary”.

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Democratic lawmakers have already hit back against the administration and their colleagues across the aisle. Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, whose state is home to several thousand federal workers, said any suggestion that paychecks will be withheld is “more fear mongering from a president who wants a blank check for lawlessness”. While congressman Jerry Nadler of New York posted a screenshot on X, and urged the Louisiana Republican to “look at his own website to brush up on what federal law says about federal employees and backpay”. Johnson voted for GEFTA in the last Trump administration, and his website says that “under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening”.

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Trump says his administration plans to eliminate a number of government programs as a result of the ongoing shutdown, adding that he would provide details on job cuts within the next four or five days.

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He says he has identified programs to shut down, and he’ll be “announcing it pretty soon, but we have a lot of things that we’re going to eliminate and permanently eliminate.”

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He says the Democrats handed him the opportunity to do so “on a silver platter”.

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“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days, if this keeps going on,” he adds. “It’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”

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Asked what his message was to Democrats ahead of another short-term spending bill vote, Trump accuses Democrats of a kamikaze attack.

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n

This is like a kamikaze attack. Well, they’re the ones that started it … and it’s almost like a kamikaze attack by them. You want to know the truth, this is like a kamikaze attack … they have nothing to lose.

n

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Asked by a reporter what guarantees he’s giving that Israel won’t resume its offensive once it gets the hostages back, Trump stresses that the US has “a lot of power” and says that once they have a deal, the US “is going to do everything possible to make sure everyone adheres to the deal”.

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Trump is again optimistic about the prospect of ending the war in Gaza. “We are very close to making a deal on the Middle East,” he says.

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Asked whether he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, Trump declines to say whether or not he would but says that it has been invoked before.

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“Well, it’s been invoked before. As you know, if you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime, and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job,” Trump says.

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He told reporters yesterday he would consider utilizing the Insurrection Act, a law enacted more than two centuries ago, to sidestep any court rulings restricting his orders to send national guard troops into cities over the objections of local and state officials.

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Trump says they will be talking about trade and Gaza.

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“I think there’s a possibility that we could have peace in the Middle East” beyond just Gaza, Trump says.

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He says another US team has just left to take part in the negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

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Donald Trump and Mark Carney are speaking from the Oval Office now as Canada’s PM seeks to convince Trump to ease tariffs that are hitting the country’s economy. I’ll bring you any key news lines here.

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Trump and Mark Carney share a joke in the Oval Office”,”caption”:”Carney’s meeting comes as he hopes of convincing President Donald Trump to ease US tariffs that are negatively impacting Canada’s economy. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1759852582000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”11.56 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1759853654000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”12.14 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1759853474000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”12.11 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”12.11″,”title”:”Trump and Carney meet in Oval Office”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 7 Oct 2025 22.06 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 7 Oct 2025 05.46 EDT”},{“id”:”68e536ab8f08ca5de7d820d5″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, the case against Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban, have now concluded.

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The conservative justices repeatedly questioned whether the law was an unconstitutional regulation of speech, and how the conversion practices in question were harmful enough to constitute banning them.

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They also probed how Colorado was interpreting its statute, saying the plain language didn’t seem to comport with how it is being interpreted. At times, the liberal justices sought to understand the state’s interpretation of the law as well, though they also noted how the state has not disciplined anyone over violations of the statute.

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly asked for details or proof on how the practices were harmful and asked about studies of the practice.

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Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jim Campbell, in his rebuttal, said that therapist Kaley Chiles “wants to have full conversations, exploring issues of identity and gender, and that includes considering change” of their orientation or identity.

n “This law harms gender-dysphoric kids,” he said, claiming they will be “locked in” to the path of social and then medicalized transition practices.

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The court will now weigh the case, which could have implications for more than 20 states that have similar bans on the books.

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In a line of questioning by senator Richard Blumenthal, attorney general Pam Bondi continued to refuse to discuss or disclose any conversations she had with the president in the lead up to the indictment of James Comey last month. Blumenthal noted that Bondi attended a dinner with Donald Trump, just days before the former FBI director was criminally charged.

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Bondi instead pushed back against the Democratic senator from Connecticut. “I find it so interesting that you didn’t bring any of this up during president Biden’s administration, when he was doing everything to protect Hunter Biden, his son,” the attorney general said.

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When asked by senator Amy Klobuchar whether Bondi sees the president’s post on Truth Social, urging her to prosecute his political adversaries like James Comey and Letitia James, as a “directive”, the attorney general evaded the question.

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“President Trump is the most transparent president in American history, and I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years,” Bondi said.

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She went on to refuse to “discuss personnel issues”, when Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, asked about Bondi’s reported pushback to the president’s pressure campaign to remove the former US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, Erik Siebert. Bondi also refused to discuss the ongoing case against James Comey, after Siebert said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the former FBI director.

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse probed the attorney general on what happened to the $50,000 in cash, that border tsar Tom Homan allegedly received.

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“Mr. Holman was subjected to a full review by the FBI agent and DOJ prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi replied, before chiding the Democratic senator from Rhode Island. “You know, you’re very concerned about money and people taking money, and you work with money groups all the time.”

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A reminder that Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative legal group, is representing a counselor who says a Colorado “conversion therapy” ban for people under age 18 ban violates her first amendment rights.

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The justices are first questioning the ADF attorney, probing into how the Colorado law affects Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist. The state has argued Chiles’ arguments are hypothetical – she has not been disciplined under the law.

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The alliance has argued Chiles is “censoring herself” in her treatment of patients. Jim Campbell, the alliance’s chief legal counsel, told the justices Chiles has been the subject of complaints to the state against her in recent weeks, which are now being investigated by the state.

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He described the therapy she provides as helping clients “when their goals are to resolve gender dysphoria by getting comfortable with their body and realigning their identity with their sex” and that she “helps them if they’re experiencing unwanted same sex attraction, if their goal is to reduce it”.

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Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois grilled Pam Bondi as to why she made a public claim that the Epstein “client list” was “sitting” on her desk for review earlier this year, only to “produce already public information and no client list”.

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Bondi pushed back, saying that she actually said she had “yet to review” the documents, and reaffirmed that there was no Epstein client list.

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The attorney general went on to spar with Durbin, questioning why he “refused repeated Republican requests to release the Epstein flight logs in 2023 and 2024”. Durbin said Bondi’s claims were not accurate.

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“I did not refuse. One of the senators here wished to produce those logs, and I asked her to put it in writing, and she never did,” Durbin pushed back, apparently referring to his Republican colleague, senator Marsha Blackburn.

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“I would really appreciate the opportunity to correct the record, because senator Durbin knows I repeatedly asked for those flight logs, I brought up the subpoena. You even shut down the committee because you didn’t want that, I submitted that in writing, and you continue to misrepresent that,” Blackburn later chimed in.

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Durbin, for his part, maintained that Blackburn failed to commit this to writing.

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In a heated exchange with ranking member Dick Durbin, Bondi refused to answer the senator’s question about whether she was consulted about the president’s decision to send national guard troops to Illinois – the state which Durbin represents.

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“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you,” Bondi said, after declining to discuss internal conversations with the White House. “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate president Trump. Currently the national guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, president Trump will.”

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Pam Bondi said that operation Arctic Frost – which was an intelligence gathering effort that led to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election by president Trump and his allies – was “an unconstitutional, undemocratic abuse of power”.

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On Monday, several Republican lawmakers said that the FBI gathered phone records from GOP senators. These records were obtained through a grand jury. Republicans have called this move part of the wider pattern of political weaponization of the previous administration.

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“This is the kind of conduct that shattered the American people’s faith in our government,” Bondi said today. “Our FBI is targeting violent criminals, child predators and other law breakers, not sitting senators who happen to be from the wrong political party.”

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The committee’s ranking member, Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, is summing up several of the criticisms that lawmakers have made of the Trump justice department in recent months.

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“Our nation’s top law enforcement agency has become a shield for the president and his political allies when they engage in misconduct,” Durbin said, before repeating the allegations of border czar Tom Homan, accepting a $50,000 in exchange for promising immigration enforcement prior to the president returning to office.

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Durbin went on to call Lindsey Halligan, the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, part of a “network of unqualified mega loyalists masquerading as federal prosecutors”.

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Halligan was installed after Trump pressured her predecessor, Erik Siebert, to resign, after Siebert said there was insufficient evidence to indict the president’s political adversaries, like former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.

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“Attorney general Bondi in eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain on American history. It will take decades to recover,” Durbin said.

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Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator who chairs the judiciary committee, has kicked of Pam Bondi’s hearing by criticizing the “political weaponization” of the Biden administration.

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“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said, addressing Bondi. “It’s time for accountability, and I look forward to hearing about your success in that regard.”

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Attorney general Pam Bondi is facing senators on the judiciary committee now. She’ll face questions lawmakers about her tenure at the justice department (DoJ) so far, particularly as Democratic senators have called out the Trump administration for weaponizing the DoJ to investigate and prosecute political enemies.

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Democratic senator Adam Schiff, of California, sits on the judiciary committee, but has also been the target of Donald Trump’s ire, as he’s sought to target his political adversaries. A reminder, Schiff was part of the House committee which investigated the 6 January insurrection at the US capitol.

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Also today, the supreme court will hear arguments in a precedent-setting case, where a Colorado-based therapist is arguing that the state’s ban on conversion practices – which attempt to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity – violates her free speech.

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Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor who is Christian, contends the 2019 ban violates her first amendment rights to discuss her faith with patients. Chiles is represented by the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), who have brought several anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ cases to the court in recent years.

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What’s notable is that the supreme court will essentially weigh in on whether talk therapy is subject to the same regulation as other medical practices, or if it’s protected speech and not subject to the same standards as other treatments.

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Important to note that conversion practices are condemned by the American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and other major groups, with experts noting the techniques are linked to increased depression and suicide attempts.

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You can also read more about the case below, including my colleague Sam Levine’s investigation into the evidence presented to the court.

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Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, will face senators on Tuesday, as Donald Trump ramps up his crackdown on political opponents, Democratic-run cities and alleged drug traffickers.

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Bondi’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee will give lawmakers from both parties the opportunity to question her about the president’s high-profile interventions into the justice system, including the indictment last month of the former FBI director James Comey, a longtime foe.

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“No one is above the law,” Bondi wrote on social media after the charges against Comey were announced – an echo of rhetoric used by Democrats after Trump was indicted during Joe Biden’s presidency.

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Though the charges were filed against Comey only after a top federal prosecutor was dismissed, reportedly for not moving forward with the case, Bondi said: “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”

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The attorney general is also likely to be questioned on the legal underpinnings of the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on boats believed to be carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, as well as the brewing controversy over the release of documents related to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

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Bondi’s appearance comes as Trump ordered national guard troops into Chicago over the objections of the city’s leaders, and is sending the California national guard to Portland after a federal judge blocked him from sending Oregon’s forces.

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Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics as Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy more troops into Democrat-led cities.

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“We have an insurrection act for a reason. If I had to enact it I would do that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, adding, “if people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I would do that.”

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It came after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily halted a National Guard deployment in Portland although troops from Texas could be deployed in Chicago as soon as today despite a lawsuit from Illinois against the move.

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Meanwhile, Pam Bondi is likely to grilled over troop deployments as she faces the Senate judiciary committee. The attorney general is also likely to face questions over the indictment last month of the former FBI director James Comey, deadly strikes on boats believed to be carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, as well as the brewing controversy over the release of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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Trump is also due to welcome the Canadian PM, Mark Carney, to the White House with trade talks expected to be the main focus of discussions.

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Later, he will meet American-Israeli former hostage Edan Alexander as the world marks the two-year anniversary of the 7 October attacks. In Egypt, indirect talks are taking place between Israel and Hamas over Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.

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And, of course, this all comes amid the backdrop of the ongoing government shutdown, now entering its second week. Stay with us for all the latest developments.

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In other news:

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  A career federal prosecutor in Virginia has told colleagues she does not believe there is probable cause to file criminal mortgage fraud charges against New York attorney general Letitia James, according to a person familiar with the matter. The prosecutor, Elizabeth Yusi, oversees major criminal cases in the Norfolk office for the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and plans to soon present her conclusion to Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally, who was installed as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia last month.

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  The US supreme court has declined to hear an appeal from Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell of her sex trafficking conviction. Maxwell in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and related crimes.

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  The Trump administration said that funds from a US government program that subsidizes commercial air service to rural airports are set to expire as soon as Sunday because of the government shutdown.

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  Jimmy Kimmel emerged as more popular than Donald Trump after a spat with the president’s administration temporarily left the talkshow host off the air in September, according to a recent poll.

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  Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has urged Donald Trump to scrap tariffs on his country’s imports and sanctions against its officials, as the two men held what the Brazilian presidency called a “friendly” video call.

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Closing summary

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Wednesday. In the meantime, here are the latest developments:

• The attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to answer questions about the indictment of James Comey and what happened to the $50,000 Tom Homan, the border czar, reportedly accepted from undercover FBI agents last year.

• Donald Trump met the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and jokingly pushed him to agree to “a merger” of their two countries. He also declined to rule out invoking the insurrection act to put troops on the streets of the US, which might have made the prospect of joining the union even less appealing.

• Trump suggested that he might not follow a law mandating that furloughed government workers will get backpay after the government shutdown ends.

• Texas national guard troops arrived in Illinois, over the objections of the state’s governor.

• House speaker Mike Johnson said that his decision to stave off swearing in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona has “nothing to do” with the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition – to compel a House vote on the full release of the Epstein files.

• Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers. Portland police cleared the street outside ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance. She led federal officers in prayer and met Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor and police chief during her visit. When she appeared on the roof of the facility, protesters blared the Benny Hill theme.

Portland’s mayor tells Noem ‘out-of-state social media influencers’ distort reality in city

In a meeting with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, complained about what he has described as excessive use of force and tear gas by federal officers and tried to convince her that conditions in the city bear little resemblance to the wild claims made by her boss, Donald Trump.

“What Secretary Noem saw today in Portland matches our reports: Portland continues to manage public safety professionally and responsibly, irrespective of the claims of out-of-state social media influencers,” Wilson said in a statement after the meeting.

Given that Noem invited a trio of conservative social influencers to join her on her brief visit to the city on Tuesday, two of whom are partisans from other states who falsely refer to the protesters as “terrorists”, Wilson’s warning about being fooled by their videos may have fallen on deaf ears.

“I continue to maintain that the tactics used by federal agents at the Ice facility are troubling and likely unconstitutional,” Wilson added.

“We believe a constitutional federal government must be accountable to the community in terms of clear limits on use of force, officer identification, limits on chemical munitions, and body-worn cameras,” the mayor said.

On Sunday, Wilson told reporters that he had complained to the civil rights division of the department of justice about the behavior of federal officers on Saturday, after they pushed protesters off the streets and sidewalks doused the neighborhood around the Ice facility in Portland in tear gas.

“We see Federal Protective Service that’s really trying to inflame the situation, not put it down and certainly not just protect property,” Wilson said. “We saw unjustified uses of force. We saw shoving peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground. Indiscriminate use of impact munitions [and] pepper spray.”

The civil rights division of the department of justice that Wilson appealed to for help is currently run by Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general who previously represented prominent conservative social media influencers, including Andy Ngo and James O’Keefe.

Republican House leaders refuse to swear in newly elected Democrat Adelita Grijalva, key vote on release of Epstein files

Asked earlier on Tuesday if Adelita Grijalva, a newly elected Democrat, has not yet been sworn in as a member of Congress because she intends to sign a discharge petition which would require a House vote to compel the justice department to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker told reporters he would swear her in “as soon as she wants”.

Hours later, however, a House Republican leadership aide told CNN that Grijalva, who won a special election last month to replace her late father, would not be sworn in until the government shutdown ends.

“We will swear in representative-elect Grijalva as soon as the House returns to session when Chuck Schumer, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego decide to open up the government,” the Republican aide told the broadcaster.

As the CNN reporter Manu Raju pointed out to Johnson, he previously swore in two newly elected members during a pro-forma session, like the current one.

Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat who lives in the Congressional district Grijalva was elected to represent two weeks ago, said in a social media video: “This is starting to get ridiculous.”

“I’m not sure exactly the reason,” Kelly added. “Maybe it’s about Jeffrey Epstein, I don’t know.”

Senior Illinois senator Dick Durbin deplores arrival of Texas national guard in his state

Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, issued a blistering statement on the arrival of troops from the Texas national guard troops arrive in his state.

“Deploying the Texas National Guard, over the objections of Illinois elected officials, is not only unnecessary, but it is also unlawful. The law, specifically the Posse Comitatus Act, expressly forbids our nation’s military to be used for domestic law enforcement without express statutory or constitutional authorization. National Guard personnel do not deserve to be used as political pawns in President Trump’s political theater,” Durbin said.

He continued:

“As made clear in today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Trump Administration continues to shut out Illinois officials. Administration officials have recklessly sent in troops and agency leaders, including FBI Director Kash Patel, to Chicago without speaking to our state’s leaders. If the Trump Administration truly wanted to help Chicagoans, they wouldn’t defy Illinois’ elected leaders. They would work with us.”

Gabrielle Canon

Earlier on Tuesday, senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, accused the Trump administration of orchestrating a plan to crush dissent and opposition, and called on his colleagues to recognize the authoritarian takeover unfolding around them.

“We aren’t on the verge of an authoritarian takeover – we are in the middle of it,” he said, after outlining how a cycle of outrage has clouded the ability of senators to see the concentration of power in its totality. “I think it’s time for all of us – Republicans and Democrats – to really step back and come to terms with the full picture of what is happening right now in America.”

Speaking on the Senate floor, Murphy stood next to a sign outlining what he described as five steps in what he called “The Plan” to bring about the death of a democracy:

1. Convert the justice system into a political witch hunt operation

2. Eliminate the free press and replace it with state-run media

3. Militarize law enforcement

4. Seize control of government spending and taxation

5. Rig the rules

Murphy talked through each step, connecting actions already taken by the Trump administration to each. Murphy described how the indictment of former FBI director James Comey, and the investigation of the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, both of whom previously led investigations of Trump, instills fear in people who might otherwise speak out. “This is a tried and true tactic of a totalitarian state,” he said.

Murphy pointed to the administration’s use of the federal government regulatory powers to censor and consolidate media, and threats to pull the licenses of stations that didn’t remove the president’s loudest critics from the air.

“The deployment of the military to Chicago and to Portland and Los Angeles is illegal,” Murphy said, moving to step three. “But it is designed, once again to quell dissent and protest. This isn’t about public safety – it is about political intimidation.”

Murphy named examples of the administration overstepping Congressional control of spending and taxation, including the cancellation of grants and suspending projects in Democratic-led cities and states.

The fifth part of the plan, he said, is happening through Trump’s demands that Congressional lines be redrawn to elect more Republicans.

Murphy said all these events are connected to a “well-thought-out plan” that will allow Trump and his allies to “rule forever”.

“The rules get rigged, essentially, so the party in power never loses – that is the plan,” Murphy said. “It is not too late for us to see it and for us to stop it.”

Oregon governor says state’s national guard is under her command and should be sent home

Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said on Tuesday that she is back in command of the state’s national guard, following a federal judge’s ruling that Donald Trump acted illegally by federalizing 200 troops to respond to an emergency in Portland that simply does not exist.

In a statement, the governor said that she has written to the regional US military command in Colorado asking that 200 citizen-soldiers from Oregon’s national guard be immediately demobilized, and 200 federalized troops from California’s national guard be sent home.

The Oregon national guard troops are currently staged at Camp Rilea on the Pacific coast, about a two-hour drive from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, according to the governor. The California national guard troops are staged at Camp Withycombe, about 30 minutes southeast of the Ice facility.

“Judge Karin J. Immergut’s orders are a clear and forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s misuse of states’ National Guard. Thus, I am directing Northern Command to send Oregon’s citizen-soldiers home from Camp Rilea immediately,” Kotek said in her statement. “Let’s remember that these Oregonians are our neighbors and friends, who have been unlawfully uprooted from their family and careers – they deserve better than this.”

On Saturday, Immergut ruled that Trump did not have the authority to federalize the Oregon national guard since his claims about mass anarchy and arson in Portland were “simply untethered to the facts.”

On Sunday, after Trump attempted to evade that ruling by deploying troops from the California guard he had seized control of in June, the judge issued a second order, blocking the deployment of national guard troops from any state or the District of Columbia to Oregon.

Oregon’s governor says she told Kristi Noem ‘there is no insurrection in Oregon’

There was a bit of an unexplained delay earlier between Kristi Noem’s arrival at the airport in Portland and the departure of the homeland security secretary’s motorcade for the Ice field office.

The reason, it seems, is that Noem was greeted at the airport by Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, who said in a statement that she asked for the meeting when she “heard through unofficial channels” that the secretary planned to visit Portland.

According to Kotek, she “reiterated again that there is no insurrection in Oregon.”

“I requested that Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents obey Oregon laws when they engage in federal operations,” the governor added. “I reiterated that I continue to be focused on doing whatever I can to protect Oregonians from military intervention or harmful federal law enforcement tactics. Oregon is united against military policing in our communities.”

In a news conference on Sunday, after Oregon had convinced a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump that conditions on the ground did not come close to warranting military intervention, Kotek told reporters that she was concerned that federal officers were violating state law.

“We’ve worked really hard in the state of Oregon, from 2020 on, to have better crowd control techniques. There are clear laws of when you can be using teargas, for example. They’re not following any of those,” the governor said the day after federal officer blanketed the neighborhood around the facility in teargas.

The intensity of the chemical munitions was such that a reporter who visited the site the following day had trouble breathing.

Noem departs Ice facility in Portland, passing protesters in animal costumes

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has apparently completed her visit to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon.

According to the Maga influencers in her entourage, Noem met with the Portland police chief, Bob Day, and then drove out of the facility past a handful of protesters outside, including one dressed as a bear wearing a sombrero.

Despite the obvious comedic disconnect between the claims from Donald Trump that this field office is “under siege” from “domestic terrorists” and the real evidence of a small number of demonstrators in such non-threatening attire, the influencers continued to refer to the protesters as dangerous radicals.

One of the influencers, Benny Johnson, claimed that Portland’s police chief had “sided with violent ANTIFA militants assaulting journalists and officers outside ICE facility”.

Johnson was referring to the arrest last week of another influencer in Noem’s entourage, Nick Sortor, after he tried to force his way through a protest encampment and got into a scuffle with protesters. Johnson made no mention of the fact that the charges of disorderly conduct against Sortor have already been dropped.

While Johnson referred to Sortor and other pro-Trump influencers who have been engaged in scuffles with protesters as journalists, there is copious evidence that they are partisan activists who often act in provocative ways, rather than nonpartisan reporters documenting events as observers.

Kristi Noem visits Portland Ice office with Maga influencers in tow

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, is currently touring the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers who arrived in her motorcade.

Portland police cleared the street outside the Ice office in the city’s south waterfront neighborhood ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance.

A country-style song, with the refrain, “Trump is in the Epstein files, yes he is”, blared from a protest encampment down the street and one protesters shouted to a government videographer on the roof of the facility, “Did we rename the department of homeland security the ministry of propaganda?”

Reporters from local news outlets were also held behind the police line outside, as the partisan influencers in Noem’s entourage, Benny Johnson, Nick Sortor and David Media, shared social media updates of the secretary leading federal officers in prayer inside, giving a pep talk, and telling a member of the Oregon national guard to “Get ready.”

Noem has previously echoed Donald Trump’’s claims that a small band of protesters, who have rallied in their dozens outside the Ice facility since June, including one who wears an inflatable frog costume, are “terrorists” who have placed the office “under siege”, making the deployment of federal troops essential.

On Saturday, a federal judge in Portland blocked Trump’s effort to federalize Oregon’s national guard, determining that the president’s claims that the peaceful city was “burning to the ground” were “untethered to the facts.”

A day later the same judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, expanded her order to block national guards troops from any jurisdiction from being deployed in Portland, after Trump tried to deploy members of the California national guard, previously federalized in response to protests in Los Angeles, to Oregon.

Since Trump has drawn attention to the small but persistent protest outside the Ice facility, and made false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, a growing number of his supporters, including Maga influencers, have turned up to confront the protesters, which has resulted in fistfights and to a series of arrests, including of Sortor. After an outcry in the conservative media, and from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, charges against Sortor were dropped.

Johnson, a former journalist who reinvented himself as a Christian nationalist influencer after he was fired from Buzzfeed for plagiarism, just shared video of Noem looking down from the roof of the Ice facility at the small group of protesters below, including Jack Dickinson, a protest organizers who wears a chicken costume to mock Trump.

Johnson captioned the video of Noem inspecting the placid scene below: “DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stares down army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit”.

Raskin says Trump’s threat to withhold back pay from federal workers after shutdown is illegal

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who represents many federal workers, responded on Tuesday to a leaked White House memo arguing that furloughed federal employees may not be entitled to back pay after a government shutdown ends.

“All federal employees are legally entitled to back pay when the government reopens after a shutdown. I know this because in 2019, I helped pass the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act which made this a requirement. Donald Trump knows this, too—he signed it into law,” Raskin said in a statement.

“Now, as the White House reverses course, the president is threatening to deliberately violate the law; or he is suffering from a debilitating case of legislative amnesia. Either way, he should refresh his memory on the law he signed. And if he chooses to barrel forward anyway, he should get ready for a fight in court,” the Maryland congressman continued.

“The president has no right to just pay the federal workers in his own political camp. That’s a violation of the law and of the First Amendment,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, said.

Per my last post, it’s worth noting that Republican congressman Thomas Massie, who is a co-sponsor of the discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein files, has called out the House speaker directly.

Massie said that Johnson is “doing everything he can, including delaying the swearing in of the most recently elected member of Congress and spreading misinformation about the legislation, to block a vote in Congress on legislation to release the Epstein files”.

Johnson says that not swearing in Arizona congresswoman has ‘nothing to do’ with Epstein file vote

Also today, House speaker Mike Johnson said that his decision to stave off swearing in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona has “nothing to do” with the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition – to compel a House vote on the full release of the Epstein files.

“We will swear her in when everybody gets back,” Johnson said, referring to his decision to not call lawmakers back to the hill, in order to jam Democrats and force the Senate to vote on a House-passed funding bill to keep the government funded. “We’re in pro forma session because there is nothing for the House to do. The House has done its job … it’s exactly the same thing that Chuck Schumer voted for in March, so the house will get back to our normal order in doing our job as soon as he votes to reopen the government, because real people’s lives are hanging in the balance right now.”

Edward Helmore

Six former US surgeons general – the top medical posting in Washington – warned in an opinion column published Tuesday that policy changes enacted by health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, are “endangering the health of the nation”.

The surgeons general – Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello and David Satcher – who served under both Republican and Democrat administrations, identified changes in vaccine policy, medical research funding, a shift in priorities from rationality to ideology, plunging morale, and changes to staffing as areas of concern.

Referring to their oaths of office, both Hippocratic as physicians and as public servants, the former officials wrote in the Washington Post that they felt “compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation”.

“Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored,” they said, adding that they could not ignore the “profound, immediate and unprecedented threat” of his policies.