WASHINGTON — A move by Senate Republicans to allow members of their caucus whose phone records were swept up in the Jan. 6, 2021 investigation to sue the government they are a part of “stinks like s---”, a prominent Democrat told Raw Story.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are appalled and vow to follow the House and swiftly nix the measure.

The controversial provision directed by Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune (R-SD) was included in the bill to reopen the government after the recent record-breaking shutdown.

“It stinks like s---. It's just stinky,” Sen. Luján told Raw Story: “It's why people across the country hate politicians.

“Because, you know, under the guise of opening up the government and [with] Republicans saying they would not allow food programs to go forward … they sneak in more than a $500,000 payoff.”

Under the Senate measure passed on Nov. 10, senators who had their phone records collected during Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol could qualify for hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.

At the time, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), one of the senators investigated over his links to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, said: “Leader Thune inserted that in the bill to provide real teeth to the prohibition on the Department of Justice targeting senators.”

Cruz also bemoaned what he called “the abuse of power from the Biden Justice Department … the worst single instance of politicization our country has ever seen,” telling Politico: “I think it is Joe Biden’s Watergate, and the statutory prohibition needs to have real teeth and real consequences.”

But the move caused widespread outcry. Last week, the House, which is controlled by Republicans, voted unanimously to repeal the provision.

“It's $500,000 per instance, so it's arguably millions of dollars for arguably eight senators,” Sen. Lujan told Raw Story at the Capitol, ahead of lawmakers’ Thanksgiving recess.

“It's stinky. There's a reason why the House Republicans said this was garbage and they acted so quickly. So kudos to them for moving so quickly, and kudos to Sen. [Martin] Heinrich (D-NM) for offering a piece of legislation that says, ‘Take it out.’”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was among other Democrats who told Raw Story they expected the Senate to remove the compensation measure, “probably in one of the one of the must-passes [budgetary bills] at the end of the year.”

‘What the hell are they up to?’

Lujan did accept Republican concerns about senators’ phone records being obtained by Smith and his team.

“Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, I mean, what the hell are they up to?” Lujan asked. “Why are they doing it? Arguably, it's against the law.”

But he also demanded to know why Republican senators needed a “payout” on the issue when they “left out” of their legislation “my Republican colleague out of Pennsylvania that was also in the d--- report” — a reference to either Mike Kelly or Scott Perry, the only two Key Stone State lawmakers mentioned.

“It's stupid, and it's broken all around,” Lujan said.

‘We’ll talk about it’

Republican senators are reportedly split over how to amend their measure after its rejection by the House.

At the Capitol, Sen. Cruz dodged Raw Story’s question, saying he had a call to attend to.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said her party would be “discussing it.”

She also said she had not known about Thune’s provision when the government funding bill passed.

“I think the leaders even said, you know, maybe the process of doing it was not the best,” Capito said. “The substance of it, I don't argue with, being able to keep the separation of powers, but we'll talk about it next week.”

Democrats want to make it as uncomfortable as possible.

“It's outrageous that people would put into the bill essentially a check for themselves for up to $500,000,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told Raw Story.

“Are you guys pressuring?” Raw Story asked.

“Oh, we're working very hard to overturn it,” Van Hollen promised.

WASHINGTON — A rash of censure votes in the U.S. House of Representatives “has to stop,” a prominent California Democrat told Raw Story, recommending a bipartisan effort to make such moves rarer and thereby cool an increasingly heated tit-for-tat exchange.

“It has to stop because all it is is inviting revenge actions, one upon the other,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) said, walking in the Capitol prior to the Thanksgiving recess, after a recent run of such votes.

“We could all find behaviors that we find objectionable in people on the other side,” Chu said.

“So there has to be a higher threshold. I totally agree with this bipartisan attempt to increase the threshold.”

'Broad power'

“The censure process in the House is broken – all of us know it,” Reps. Don Beyer (D-VA) and Don Bacon (R-NE) said, while introducing their measure last week.

“These cycles of censure and punishment impair our ability to work together for the American people, pull our focus away from problems besetting the country, and inflict lasting damage on this institution.”

The chamber has “broad power to discipline its members for acts that range from criminal misconduct to violations of internal House rules, as defined by the House itself.

“Over the decades, several forms of discipline have evolved in the House. The most severe type of punishment by the House is expulsion, which is followed by censure, and finally reprimand.”

The same source defines censure as a way to “register the House’s deep disapproval of member misconduct that, nevertheless, does not meet the threshold for expulsion.

“Once the House approves the sanction by majority vote, the censured member must stand in the well of the House … while the Speaker or presiding officer reads aloud the censure resolution and its preamble as a form of public rebuke.”

Until recently, such rebukes were extremely rare.

Between 1832 and 2021 there were just 23, with none at all between 1983 (when a Republican and a Democrat were censured for “sexual misconduct with a House page”) and December 2010, when the Democrat Charles Rangel was censured for a range of corrupt actions.

There followed another 11-year run without a successful censure.

But since 2021, in the age of Donald Trump’s Republican Party and ever-spiralling partisan warfare, there have been five successful censures and numerous unsuccessful attempts.

One Republican, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and four Democrats — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Al Green (D-TX), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), the latter two having moved on, Schiff to the Senate, Bowman defeated at the polls — have been formally censured.

This month, Chu voted no on a move to censure the controversial Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) and remove him from the Armed Services Committee, a matter that was then referred to the House Ethics panel — the traditional venue for allegations about members’ conduct.

The Mills censure was proposed by a member of his own party, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).

Other recent censure efforts have been traditionally, and typically, partisan.

On Nov. 18, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) beat a censure vote brought by Republicans, regarding her revealed email contact with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was her constituent.

Chu voted no.

Also on Nov. 18, the House voted to disapprove (short of censure) the conduct of Rep. Chuy García (D-IL), after he announced his retirement in a manner that cleared the way for his chief of staff to succeed him without having to endure a Democratic primary in his Chicago seat.

Chu voted no, though 23 Democrats joined Republicans in voting yes.

On Sept. 17, before the long House recess during the government shutdown, Chu voted with all other Democrats and several Republicans to defeat an attempt to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a leading progressive voice.

That motion, also brought by Mace, concerned Omar’s reaction to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

‘Not normal at all’

Speaking to Chu, Raw Story said: “You've been here longer than many of your colleagues — this [rash of censure votes] is not normal.”

“No,” Chu said, “not normal at all. The censures that I remember were few and far between. I remember Charlie Rangel. But yeah, to do it all day, almost every hour?”

“Are all these members just crying wolf and fundraising off these attacks?” Raw Story asked.

“Some could be trying to gain national attention,” Chu said — a description that would certainly fit Mace, a notably publicity hungry Republican now running to be governor of South Carolina.

“But I also think there is a revenge motive, because if one side of the aisle is going to do it, then the other side of the aisle is going to do it.”

WASHINGTON – In a posthumously published memoir, the Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre makes an impassioned plea for the release of all files and records related to the late financier who abused young girls and facilitated abuse by powerful men.

“I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else,” Roberts Giuffre writes.

“I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who's been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed.

“We don't live in this world yet – I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein's houses? And why haven't they led to the prosecution of any more abusers? – but I believe we could someday.”

Roberts Giuffre killed herself in April. She was 41.

Her book — Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice — will be published next Tuesday. Raw Story obtained a copy.

Excerpts published by Vanity Fair and the Guardian have concerned how Roberts Giuffre met Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, and was abused by them and other powerful figures.

Roberts Giuffre’s descriptions of sex with Prince Andrew have generated headlines in the U.K.

In 2022, Roberts Giuffre reached a settlement with Andrew, reportedly worth millions of dollars. The prince did not admit wrongdoing.

The same year, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in jail on sex-trafficking charges.

The so-called Epstein files — records seized after his second arrest and death in prison in 2019 — remain the subject of fascination.

Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump, with whom he was long close, generates intense speculation.

The president campaigned on a promise to release the Epstein files but reversed course in office. Revelations have included a sexually suggestive poem Trump contributed to Epstein’s 50th-birthday book, and reports Trump’s name appears many times in the Epstein files.

In July, Maxwell gave an unprecedented jailhouse interview to Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was previously Trump’s own lawyer. Maxwell was moved to a more comfortable prison.

Now, as House Republicans exploit the government shutdown to hold up a motion to force release of the Epstein files, many detect an attempt to shield Trump.

The author Michael Wolff, who has written four books on Trump and claims to have hours of interviews with Epstein, has said Epstein showed him a picture of Trump in a compromising position with young girls.

Wolff has said he presumes the FBI has the picture.

Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Roberts Giuffre writes about Trump but does not implicate him in improper behavior.

The writer who worked on Nobody’s Girl, Amy Wallace, this week told the Washington Post Roberts Giuffre “was a huge Trump fan … she was a Trump supporter.

“There were two reasons for it: One, she’d met him. She worked at Mar-a-Lago. Her dad worked at Mar-a-Lago. She met Trump several times, and he was always very kind to her. So she had personal memories. She thought the place was beautiful. She loved working there.

“And secondly, he said he was going to release the Epstein files. He was on her side. That’s how she felt.”

Nobody’s Girl most often opts not to name men Roberts Giuffre says she was forced to have sex with. Exceptions include Prince Andrew and individuals now dead.

She writes: “You may notice that while I've named some men in this book, I have not named all the men I was trafficked to.

“Partly that is because I still don't know some of their names. Partly, too, that is because there are certain men who I fear naming.

“The man who brutally raped me toward the end of my time with Epstein and Maxwell, for example — the man whom I've called ‘the former Prime Minister’ in court documents — I know his name, and he knows what he did to me, even though when others have sought comment from him about my allegations, he has denied them.

“I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here.

“There are other men whom I was trafficked to who have threatened me in another way: by asserting that they will use litigation to bankrupt me.

“One of those men's names has come up repeatedly in various court filings, and in response, he has told my lawyers that if I talk about him publicly, he will employ his vast resources to keep me in court for the rest of my life.

“While I have named him in sworn depositions and identified him to the FBI, I fear that if I do so again here, my family will bear the emotional and financial brunt of that decision.

“I have the same fears about another man whom I was forced to have sex with many times — a man whom I also saw having sexual contact with Epstein himself. I would love to identify him here. But this man is very wealthy and very powerful, and I fear that he, too, might engage me in expensive, life-ruining litigation.”

Roberts Giuffre acknowledges that “some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers. If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out?

“My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother … I won't put my family at risk if I can help it. Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.”

Elsewhere, Wallace writes that Roberts Giuffre wanted the book published in the event of her death.

WASHINGTON — Democrats are “not going to cave” and approve a Republican funding measure to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month because “the whole health care system is going to be under attack,” a senior Florida congresswoman said, adding that lives were at stake.

On Friday morning, House Republicans passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open past Sept. 30. It failed to pass the Senate the same day.

“Look, nobody really wants to have a shutdown, but we're not just going to cave,” said Lois Frankel (D-FL), a former mayor of West Palm Beach turned seven-term member of Congress. She was talking as both sides of the U.S. Capitol headed towards a week’s break for Rosh Hashanah, with no solution to the shutdown stand-off in

Last time government funding came to a crunch, in March, Democrats did cave, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) corralling enough votes to pass a Republican measure.

Schumer and other senior Democrats say that won’t happen this time.

House Democrats are angry Republicans cut them out of negotiations over the CR, which would keep the government open until Oct. 31.

The GOP measure therefore does not address Democratic concerns prominently including the impending lapse of tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, through which millions of Americans are able to access affordable health insurance.

“I think for most of us, the ACA, the running out of the tax credit is going to be a calamity,” Frankel told Raw Story.

“The premiums are expected to rise about 75 percent and there's 24 million people on the ACA.”

This week, the Congressional Budget Office said extending the ACA tax credits would let 3.8 million more people access health insurance by 2035. It also said doing so would cost $350 billion.

In a statement, Schumer said the CBO report showed it was “beyond time for Republicans to come to the negotiating table and work with Democrats to find a solution to this upcoming catastrophe.”

Speaking to Raw Story, Frankel cited cuts to Medicaid contained in the GOP “One Big Beautiful Bill” budget that passed earlier this year but is not yet in effect, saying: “The whole health care system is going to be under attack.”

“They want to kill Obamacare,” Raw Story said.

“Or kill the people, I don’t know,” Frankel said in reply.

Another veteran Democratic representative, Mike Thompson of California, told Raw Story, “Trump and Republicans aren't interested in helping people get the health care that they need and deserve.

“I think the health care thing is people’s top priority and I don't think we should take a knee to this guy. He's come out and instructed Republicans. It's just crazy.”

Asked if constituents back in California had told him not to work with Trump’s Republican party, Thompson, 74, said: “Well, I think there's folks who express those concerns.”

Blame game

Any shutdown swiftly becomes a blame game as much as an endurance test, the longer federal employees go without pay and members of the public go without vital services.

Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress but they think a shutdown will work in their favor, Democrats attracting more blame.

It’s set to be a key test before the 2026 midterm elections, when Democrats desperately need to take back at least one chamber of Congress, if they are to press the brakes on Trump’s agenda.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Raw Story he wasn’t overly concerned about Republicans taking all the blame for a shutdown.

“I'm not worried, we're doing our job,” he said. “I don't like a CR, but it's the way to go. I’m sure we’ll get some blame. Comes with the territory.”

Raw Story asked: “Would your base like a shutdown?”

“I don't think so,” said Norman, 72. “There's all the good things going on.”

In March, Democratic leaders explained their climbdown by saying they worried Trump would fill the vacuum of a shutdown, moving to seize yet more power for himself and attack federal government functions.

Asked if Trump would move aggressively if a shutdown happens this month, Norman said: “Oh, yeah … the only thing we can do is what we’re doing.”

Another Republican, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), said it was “kind of ridiculous” for Democrats “to shut the government down in order to try and force some kind of weird policy wins here.

“They're irresponsible. So I think that the CR play makes a ton of sense.”

Raw Story asked if Gill, 31, was worried Republicans would attract any blame for a shutdown.

No, he said, “Because it's not our fault. We'll do our job and then expect the Democrats to do their job.”

When Congress returns from its week-long break, a shutdown will be just two days away.

WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic senator slammed President Donald Trump as trying to realize the "wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry."

The vivid comment was made to Raw Story after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief announced the scrapping of a key control on greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaking at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) fumed to Raw Story that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the former New York Republican congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, was doing “the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, which paid good money for this kind of corruption."

“The endangerment finding is what brings carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act,” Whitehouse added of the measure Zeldin promised to scrap this week.

Issued in 2009, the endangerment finding also imposes emissions standards on cars, trucks and buses.

Announcing its demise, Zeldin claimed “the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”

The move is being hailed within the administration as “a monumental step toward returning to commonsense policies that expand access to affordable, reliable, secure energy and improve quality of life for all Americans,” as Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed.

But Whitehouse charged the Trump administration with simply rewarding polluters who are also big money donors, by pursuing “the deletion of all regulation of carbon emissions, which is obviously the wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry and the result of a lot of dark money spending by the industry to buy an administration that will do its dirty bidding.”

Zeldin’s move has prompted outcry among climate crisis activists but it is not a done deal, as lawyers on both sides gear up for what promises to be a drawn-out legal battle.

“I think it has … legal problems,” Whitehouse said, “because there really isn't a factual basis for what they are doing, outside of the boardrooms of Big Oil and creepy front groups who pretend climate change isn't real.”

Raw Story asked Whitehouse if he had any hope that the MAGA-infused GOP of Trump and Zeldin might resist efforts to cripple the fight against climate change. He said he did.

“You could actually see fairly significant efforts within the Republican Senate Caucus to try to repair some of the stupid damage that Trumpsters were trying to do,” Whitehouse said.

“We continue to have ongoing, healthy conversations about carbon water tariffs, about interesting solar investments, we had a very good conversation last night with a Republican member about the threat to the real estate markets arising out of the uninsurability and hence unmortgageability of so much American real estate.

“I think there's a lot of genuine and underlying concern, but Trump’s political strategy is to try to terrorize Republicans in the Senate, and he's done a pretty good job of it, and most of their money comes from fossil fuels, so they are also having that problem.

“But facts don't go away. As [President John] Adams said [in 1770], facts are stubborn things, and so I have not given up.

“It may take a real kick in the head, like a collapse of Florida's insurance and real estate market, to get them to focus on this as a today issue and not a someday issue.”

'I didn't see it'

At least one Republican from that climate-vulnerable state seemed unlikely, at first glance, to heed Whitehouse’s words.

Catching up with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as he walked through the Capitol, Raw Story asked: “Have you been able to look at the EPA announcement this week on climate change?”

“I didn't see it,” Scott said, of the widely publicized, reported and debated announcement.

Another Republican, from a state historically dominated by the coal industry, was giddy when discussing the dismantling of the EPA.

“What do you make of what Zeldin is doing at EPA, his announcement this week?” Raw Story asked Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV). “Do you think it’s a game changer?”

“It's a huge announcement,” Capito said. “I think it just shows [it’s about] getting rid of the over-regulation [of fossil fuel industries]. So I'm gonna support it.”

Many Democrats are retooling their message and focusing on public health, rather than rising temperatures and seas.

“What Lee Zeldin announced was the greatest crime against nature ever committed in American and world history,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) fumed to Raw Story.

“What Zeldin announced was a complete capitulation to the oil, gas and coal industry, and giving them a permission slip to continue to pollute and endanger the planet and the health of all Americans.

“There is now going to be a dramatic increase in the number of cancers, asthmas and other diseases in the United States of America, and it's going to hit kids and it's going to hit pregnant women disproportionately.

“So what Zeldin just did was to fulfill the payoff that Trump is providing to the oil, gas and coal industry for their contributions by the hundreds of millions to his re-election campaign, but the price is going to be paid by American families.”

No matter what Zeldin and Trump’s EPA are up to, Democrats say the GOP and their funders can’t just wave a wad of cash and reverse the globe’s changing climate.

“It's very bad for the climate,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story, of Zeldin’s move. “The best thing we can do is help people to understand that all these increasing natural disasters are being made worse because of Republican policies.”

NOW READ: The deep state is real — and it works for Donald Trump

WASHINGTON — Republican senators may have confirmed Pete Hegseth as the nation’s 29th defense secretary, but as Pentagon scandals keep stacking up, powerful U.S. senators are refusing to even discuss the embattled military leader.

In March, congressional Republicans rolled their eyes, joked or laughed nervously after Hegseth added the editor in chief of The Atlantic to a private Signal group chat where war plans were discussed.

Now, many in the GOP now seem dismayed by news Hegseth blocked military aid to Ukraine without telling his boss, President Donald Trump.

“What do you make of the news out of the Pentagon this week about the Ukraine funding?” Raw Story pressed the chair of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. “Is the media making too much out of this? Or is there something to be worried about [in] people in the Pentagon undercutting the president?”

“I just wouldn’t be able to comment,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said as he hopped the nearest Capitol elevator.

Wicker wasn’t alone. The chair of the formidable Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), also dodged discussing Hegseth.

“Your thoughts on what happened with this Ukraine funding?” Raw Story asked.

“I know where you're going with this,” Risch said, while riding an elevator with Raw Story.

Like Wicker, Risch refused to even utter the defense secretary’s name.

“Talking about the …” Risch stammered. “I don't know anything about that, and I'm looking forward. I know you guys are looking backward. I'm looking forward. Okay?”

“Do you think my colleagues are paying too much attention to this?” Raw Story asked.

“Absolutely, yeah, absolutely,” Risch said, walking on. “There's nothing to be gained by looking backward. There's everything to be gained by looking forward.”

“But you’re not worried about people at the Pentagon trying to undercut the president?”

“Not at all,” Risch replied. “No I'm not. Listen, he knows how to do this stuff.”

Nonetheless, speculation over how President Trump will choose to handle Hegseth is mounting, given the Ukraine aid fiasco is only the latest public misstep from the former Fox News host.

Observers sense change afoot after Trump publicly attacked Russian president Vladimir Putin while greenlighting the Ukraine military package over protests from the MAGA wing of the GOP.

On Capitol Hill, for many on the far-right of the GOP, efforts to block Ukraine military aid are in the rearview mirror.

For years, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was one of the loudest voices of resistance to funding Ukraine. Not anymore.The former Homeland Security Committee chair says it’s a proverbial new day.

“Curious for your thoughts on the seemingly new Ukraine policy?” Raw Story asked.

“It's kind of recognizing reality,” Johnson said. “I mean, the aggressor here is Putin … President Trump's given him every opportunity like he gave the ayatollahs [in Iran] to come at the table. You know, 'End this war, end your nuclear program.' He's trying to do the same thing.”

What then does Sen. Johnson make of Hegseth cutting military aid without clearing it with the White House?

“I’m not even aware of it,” Johnson said. “So I have no comment on that.”

Other more MAGA-tinged Republicans are also singing a new tune.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a member of the Homeland Security Committee and a committed America First populist, joined Johnson in vigorously opposing President Joe Biden's efforts to assist Kyiv.

“What is this?” Hawley asked. “I've been asked a lot of Hegseth questions recently.”

Raw Story helped him out: “Is the media making too much of this? It kind of seems like President Trump might have been undercut on Ukraine policy.”

“Well, I mean, listen, I mean, everybody … he [Hegseth] serves at the pleasure of the President. Like, the President wants him gone, he'll be gone,” Hawley said, before entering the Senate chamber.

“But I think he seems to be doing a good job. I don't know. Again, I don't get caught up in cabinet drama.”

“No buyer’s remorse?” Raw Story pressed.

“Well, I mean, I didn’t buy him,” Hawley said. “He’s the president's choice.”

“That’s a nice way to wash your hands of every nominee,” Raw Story said.

“I thought he was qualified to do the job,” Hawley said. “Beyond that, he's the President's choice, which is why I also won't have a meltdown if it's like … ‘Well, the President's gonna change him.’ He can do whatever he wants with his cabinet.”

‘Watch your step’

Democrats — most of whom support funding Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders — are worried over the national security implications of Hegseth’s latest error, even as many sense the president losing faith in his Pentagon chief.

“Well, you better watch your step,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) — the Senate minority whip — told Raw Story. “Doesn't take much to get this president to decide that you're finished.”

Democrats who opposed Hegseth's confirmation are hoping this episode will at least go some way to restrain him.

“If Secretary Hegseth has not figured it out now or figured it out yet, he works for someone,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told Raw Story.

“It appears that this Secretary just wants to be in charge, [to] be the president himself. And you know, I appreciate the President standing up to him and supporting Ukraine in this case.

“But it's very concerning that the Secretary of Defense is making arbitrary decisions without those that he has to work with and report to, namely, Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio as well as the President of the United States.”

As for powerful GOP senators like Wicker and Risch avoiding Hegseth like the plague?

“Turning a blind eye to all of this is not good for our national security, especially when we have responsibilities of oversight. This should be very concerning, and there should be briefings and hearings and gifts or whatever required to be able to get to the bottom of this,” Sen. Luján said.

“Someone needs to have answers.”

WASHINGTON — An increasing number of congressional Republicans are nervous that President Donald Trump is forcing them to walk the proverbial plank and pass his “Big Beautiful Bill” — even if that means losing their seat. With the expansive measure stalled in the House, Democrats sense fear in the air.

“I think my colleagues across the aisle are scared,” Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL) told Raw Story.

“They know there's a lot of pain. They know it's gonna be tough, but they're even more afraid of Trump.”

Even so, the Trump card isn’t working as Republican leaders hoped. The president spent Wednesday trying to persuade GOP holdouts to pass the bill as overhauled by their Senate colleagues.

While the president is promising carrots, he’s also wielding a stick.

Trump’s made multi-million-dollar moves to oust one Republican who has rejected the measure from day one, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Other fencesitters are now weighing limited options: Cross Trump or cross their constituents by, say, booting millions off health insurance.

Threats haven’t worked yet, as members of the far-right Freedom Caucus demand more drastic budget cuts and the last remaining more moderate members fight for mortgage deductions for their upper-middle-class constituents.

Analysts and Democrats say the “Big Beautiful Bill” will have a devastating effect on millions of Americans who rely on programs including Medicaid and food stamps, while also damaging U.S. renewable energy production and loading tax cuts in favor of the wealthy.

The bill’s a MAGA wishlist, including billions of dollars for masked ICE agents and tens of billions of dollars more in military spending.

Polling shows clear majorities of Americans don’t like the bill.

Regardless, Republican leaders are attempting to ram it through the House and have it on Trump’s White House desk by Friday, Independence Day.

On Wednesday, rank-and-file Republicans ground the bill to a halt, and Democrats claimed a mini-victory.

“Obviously, there's a message to be had. It speaks for itself. The largest transfer of wealth from ordinary people to rich people. That's real simple,” said Garcia, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.

“The pain … it's real. Real people are affected by this.”

But real people aren’t a part of the debate — politicians are. Trump, Garcia charged, is thereby guilty of a “huge betrayal” of the 77 million Americans who voted for him over Joe Biden last year.

“How long will people go for this, once they start to see the impact on regular people,” Garcia said. “That’s the question.”

The Senate passed Trump’s bill on Tuesday by the barest margin, 51-50, Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker after three Republicans defected.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), an independent-minded Republican, faces continued ire from progressives for voting in favor of the tax and spending package despite saying she did not like it and hoped the House would change it.

So far, SpeakerJohnson’s been working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the Senate measure intact. Otherwise, Senate Republicans will have to pass the measure again.

‘The House is totally frozen’

In the House, with the Fourth of July recess canceled, members from both sides of the aisle faced challenges just getting to Washington to vote.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a senior voice in his party, told Raw Story he abandoned a vacation in France to fly back to the Capitol. While he didn’t stop to shave, the former Goldman Sachs executive was miffed that he had to buy a second round ticket, so he could vote against the “Big Beautiful Bill” before rejoining his family.

As Wednesday evening drew on, Himes took to social media to vent and goad the GOP.

“The House is totally frozen right now,” he wrote.

“Even Republicans know that adding $4 trillion to the national debt while kicking 17 million people off health insurance just to give tax breaks to rich people is A BAD IDEA.”

After campaigning on soaring promises to ‘Read the Bill,’ some Republicans were shrugging off pesky questions about how much of the more-than-900-page bill they had read. Many admitted they hadn’t read it, which had Democrats smarting.

“I read it all night long,” Rep. Diana Degette (D-CO) drily joked to Raw Story: “I decided not to support it.”

“I decided not to support it when Chuck Schumer stripped the title out,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) quipped back.

That was a reference to the Democratic Senate minority leader’s gambit on Tuesday, when he had the bill’s title removed moments before it passed the Senate.

"This is not a ‘big, beautiful bill’ at all,” the New Yorker told reporters. “That's why I moved down the floor to strike the title. It is now called ‘the act.’ That's what it's called. But it is really the ‘big ugly betrayal,’ and the American people know it.

"This vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come. Because of this bill, tens of millions will lose health insurance. Millions of jobs will disappear. People will get sick and die, kids will go hungry and the debt will explode to levels we have never seen.”

Schumer’s move did not meet with universal applause, many observers saying stunts were less effective than action. Nor, on Wednesday, did House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) decision to pose with a baseball bat, to illustrate his determination to oppose Trump’s bill.

Rank-and-file Democrats said such antics were a distraction.

“You know, this is the most consequential bill for hard-working Americans in our lifetime, and not in a good way,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Raw Story.

“You’d think that because these are such radical changes, that we would be given the time and courtesy to be able to read through all of this. We know, of course, the broad strokes and they're horrible, but there are probably innumerable details in there that are just as bad or even worse that we haven't even gotten to.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) finally bowed to pressure on Tuesday and removed social media posts in which he appeared to mock the murder of a prominent Minnesota Democrat and her husband and the wounding of another state Democrat and his wife.

“I have deleted it,” Lee told Raw Story at the U.S. Capitol, as senators emerged from a briefing on safety and security in light of the Minneapolis shootings.

Lee said he deleted the post after “a good conversation with my friend Amy Klobuchar this morning,” referring to the senior Democratic senator from Minnesota, who spoke out on the issue.

“It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee said. “We're good friends. I took it down.”

Lee had previously avoided answering questions on the matter.

In Minneapolis on Saturday, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were shot dead and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman were wounded by a gunman who came to their homes, dressed as a police officer.

The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was charged with murder. Law enforcement said Boelter visited other lawmakers’ homes and compiled a list of targets.

Boelter’s rightwing views and ties have been widely reported, including that he voted for Trump.

Nonetheless, in posts to X on Sunday, Lee wrote, "This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way,” and "Nightmare on Waltz Street,” the latter a misspelled reference to Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president last year.

Subjected to a barrage of disapproval, Lee was initially unrepentant.

Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said President Donald Trump should “demand that Mike Lee takes down his disgusting tweet on X about the Minnesota shootings.”

“I asked [Lee] to do it yesterday,” Schumer added. “Well, he wouldn't listen to me.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) confronted Lee on Monday.

“Mostly, I think he was just sort of shocked to have me talking to him,” Smith said on Tuesday, adding that Lee “did not really seem sorry.”

On Tuesday afternoon, both posts had disappeared.

‘Nobody’s entirely safe’

The Senate continues to wrestle with Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a package of spending and tax cuts, but on Tuesday the security briefing occupied minds. Asked if lawmakers felt safe in the Capitol and in their states after the Minneapolis shootings, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC) chose to be laconic.

“Nobody’s entirely safe,” he told Raw Story. “Everybody should be on guard. I am.”

Schumer was more passionate.

“When political opponents are treated like enemies, when leaders encourage the kind of protest that can lead to violence, it increases that violence,” the New Yorker told reporters.

“So it's the responsibility of all leaders, especially President Trump, to not just unequivocally condemn hatred, but to stop the violent and regressive language against political opponents.”

Trump has repeatedly abused Walz, when asked if he will offer support.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) accused Democrats of stoking hatred themselves.

“When they go out there publicly [and] say Republicans are limiting Social Security, limiting Medicaid, limiting benefits to Americans, they're fanning the hatred of Republicans,” Moreno told reporters, nodding to debate over the GOP spending measure.

“By the way, Chuck Schumer is the same guy that stood in front of the Supreme Court and said that the Supreme Court justices are going to see whatever they deserve.”

In 2020, Schumer said he regretted remarks about justices then viewed as likely to remove the federal right to abortion, but did not apologize.

Moreno said Schumer had “zero credibility on this topic. Zero. He's responsible for the vast majority of inflammatory rhetoric that comes from the other side of the aisle. And we both have to stop it. We both have to say, ‘Look, this is what you believe. This what we believe, and do it in a respectful way.’”

Moreno also claimed Democrats were “7,000 times” more responsible for escalating tensions, adding: “The Democrats have called Trump Hitler, a fascist authoritarian.”

Moreno accused reporters of lacking credibility on the issue. He did not note that Trump’s own vice president, JD Vance, famously called him “America’s Hitler.”

‘Attacks on democracy’

Schumer described “a dramatic increase in threats against senators, congressmen, public officials and throughout America.

“And these are not just attacks on individuals, but on democracy, on our way of life, on what we believe in, and an attempt to intimidate people not to do their jobs, not to run for office.

“It's gross, it's disgusting, we must take immediate steps to ensure the safety of members, and that includes increased funding for the Capitol Police. And there was agreement in our meeting between Democrats and Republicans that we ought to have that increased funding.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R–ND) told Raw Story his “biggest takeaway” from Tuesday’s briefing was that “the Senate has some funding to help … if [senators] want to put cameras or other security equipment in place.

“And beyond that, people can use … the dollars we raise, we can use that for security purposes too. So whether to go beyond that or not at this point, I don't know, and it was more just information about what happened, and what folks could do and those kinds of things.”

Raw Story asked if Hoeven thought threats to lawmakers were the result of heated rhetoric.

He said: “That's always part of it. Look, how do we keep the debate as a debate and not get to the point where people are going beyond just speech and expressing opinions, kind of take the temperature down on those. That's always an important part of this.

“And members obviously have to show leadership in that regard.”

Raw Story asked about charges that Trump is worsening tensions.

“You’ve got to separate the underlying logic of what he's saying versus, you know, the political,” Hoeven said. “In other words, sure, Democrats are going to say that because they're in the blue states, so they're going to say they have a different opinion.”

Trump’s decision to target Democratic-run cities for mass deportation of undocumented migrants, thus stoking angry protests, was just logical, Hoeven claimed.

“Actually, if you look at it, it's a statement of fact. I mean, in terms of where most of the illegal immigrants are, it's in those larger cities in the blue states, because they're sanctuary cities. So it's just basic logic, and [Democrats are] actually politicized.

“When they say, ‘Oh, he's making a political statement.’ Well, it's actually a logical statement. But regardless, there's going to be that back and forth. The key is you keep it within the realm of speech and not resorting to violence.”

Lambasting Republicans as “hypocrites,” Schumer highlighted law enforcement cuts.

“The Trump administration cut the … program aimed to spot lone wolf, [lone] actor violence, violent people, violent extremists,” Schumer said.

“Doesn't that sound exactly what happened in Minnesota? And they're cutting it. It's outrageous, but that's what they do.

“The last top officials at this program that aims to spot … violent domestic extremists were reassigned in the four months that Trump has [been in] office.

“His administration has shrunk the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3 , from dozens of analysts to fewer than 10 people.

“So here with violence increasing, they are shrinking the number of law enforcement people aimed at trying to prevent that violence from ever occurring.

“Right now we need to give our law enforcement more, not less. It's just totally hypocritical of this administration.

“The dangerous environment isn't spontaneous, however, it's being stoked, often deliberately, by reckless rhetoric coming from some of the most powerful voices in the country.”

Donald Trump’s White House even now contains staffers convinced he is unfit to be president, a former senior administration official who famously spoke out anonymously about such concerns during Trump’s first term said.

“If I was sitting with Donald Trump right now, I would say, ‘I have friends in your White House, and some of them are … laying very, very low, but share some of the same concerns that I had during the first Trump administration,’” Miles Taylor said.

Those concerns, Taylor said, were that Trump “is still the same man, but worse and emboldened, still deeply impulsive, but impulsive without checks and balances around him.”

Taylor was speaking to the Clinton adviser turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History.

Taylor was chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security when he wrote the September 2018 op-ed for the New York Times saying he was “part of the resistance” to Trump, a group of senior officials concerned that the president was not fit to govern and dedicated to checking his wilder impulses.

The piece was published under the byline of “Anonymous,” as was a subsequent book, A Warning. The publication stoked intense speculation as to who the writer was. Taylor identified himself shortly before the 2020 election — and became a hate figure for Trump and his followers.

Returned to power, Trump recently signed an executive order suggesting Taylor may have committed treason and ordering an investigation.

This month, Taylor filed a legal complaint, calling for federal watchdogs to investigate such retaliation against him.

Trump was widely reported to have been stopped from numerous extreme actions in his first term by so-called “adults in the room” appointed to key roles, such as Defense Secretary James Mattis, a highly respected former U.S. Marine Corps general. In Trump’s second term, surrounded by loyalists such as Fox News host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the president is not seen to be subject to any such constraints.

Taylor told Blumenthal and Willentz: “The people around [Trump] aren't trying to talk him out of doing bad things — if anything, they are demonstrating fealty at every turn to the leader, and that's resulting in a lot of bad decisions getting made.

“Now, most of the folks I know are on, of course, the national security side of the [White] House, and some of them still think that they can keep their hand on the wheel. And I would prefer some of those people in the posts I'm thinking about than others who might replace them. But I think people of conscience in this administration know that they are an endangered species.”

As described by Wilentz, that is because Trump operates less as a traditional president than as an absolute monarch crossed with a mobster: “John Gotti meets Louis XIV.”

That remark prompted laughter, but straight faces prevailed when Taylor described the immense power enjoyed by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff widely seen to be the most influential presidential aide, particularly in implementing ultra-hardline immigration policy.

Taylor said Miller’s power was “almost absolute,” though Miller himself “would never say that.”

“Stephen is very, very careful to always be entirely deferential to the president,” Taylor said, “but I can tell you, I remember when … I think it was 2018 … Stephen was growing frustrated, and he convinced the president, effectively, at the time to put him in charge of broader homeland security policy for the administration.

“It wasn't some public announcement, but he'd gone to the president and said, ‘Look, I'm tired of this … basically give me the authority to make some of these decisions over at DHS and essentially override the department.’

“And he called me to tell me this. I remember where I was. I was driving on Capitol Hill, and it was the words he used that stuck with me. He said, ‘Think of this as my coronation.’ That's what he called it. He called it his coronation, that he'd gotten the president to empower him to take on these new duties.”

According to Taylor, “that was, I think, the most revealing thing that I ever heard come out of [Miller’s] mouth. And Stephen, you rarely get these unguarded moments with him. He's extremely guarded. And that was sort of an unguarded moment from him, but I think illustrative of not just where his head is at, but also how this administration … thinks of governance not in terms of democracy and checks and balances, but how can you consolidate total rule?

“And so Steven certainly has that inside this administration, he's got much more authority than he had before. And you are seeing what that looks like if left unchecked, right up into these military deployments” in Los Angeles” against protests over deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“That's got Stephen Miller's fingerprints all over it,” Taylor said, adding that Miller had effectively relegated Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, to little more than a “PR role.”

Asked if it would be fair to think of Miller as effectively Trump’s “co-president,” Taylor said “that might be a bridge too far, and Steven would never promote that notion.

“You know, he knows all of his authority is derived from the president. And I think he's probably the only person, I mean this genuinely … I've ever engaged with at the White House that never showed daylight with the president. There was never a private meeting where Steven said, ‘This f------ guy has no idea what he's doing.’

“But almost everyone else I engaged with, the biggest names to the no-names, would have that conversation in private: total frustration with the president, recognition of who he really was. But Stephen, in private, wouldn't even show you that he thought the president was what everyone knows him to be.”

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WASHINGTON – Dismissing President Donald Trump’s claim that preemptive pardons Joe Biden gave members of the House January 6 committee are invalid if Biden used an autopen to sign them, the senior Democrat who chaired that panel and received such a pardon doubted whether Trump himself signed all pardons he gave supporters who carried out the Capitol attack.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Raw Story: “Ask him! Did he sign all 1,500 pardons?”

Trump and Republican allies claim aides to Biden used an autopen to sign documents as the then president was too old and infirm to wield a pen himself.

This week, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate.

Democrats dismiss the move as political theater.

Thompson said: “It's just a distraction. The autopen has been around for a good while.”

Experts agree, and reporters have pointed out that presidential autopen use is long established, with Trump himself having used such devices.

Nonetheless, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has subpoenaed Biden’s doctor for testimony on matters including “potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions,” suggesting drama to come.

Speaking to Raw Story, Thompson defended his decision to push for preemptive pardons.

“One of the reasons I was a public advocate for pardons is that I know what Trump and the people around him are capable of doing,” Thompson said.

“If we had not received a pardon, there's no question what we'd be faced with. And the members didn't deserve it, and the staff or the committee didn't deserve it.”

Thompson and his January 6 vice-chair, the former Republican Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, were among those who received the pre-emptive pardons Trump now wants to void.

The president and his allies also claim members of the bipartisan House committee destroyed evidence that did not support their view of the attack on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, which Trump incited as he tried to overturn his 2020 defeat by Biden.

Thompson told Raw Story: “All this stuff about, ‘Well, they did away with stuff and all that’ — where is it? So prove it. They can't. We went to great lengths to preserve everything consistent with what the law required.”

“I think the only thing left is to try to somehow discredit the process. You know, we were created by the House, charged with doing a job. We did it, our committee [closed], and that was it.”

The January 6 attack is linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.

It produced hundreds of convictions but after Trump returned to the White House this year he issued pardons and acts of clemency even for people convicted of violent offenses and crimes as serious as seditious conspiracy.

Thompson told Raw Story: “I think in America, when you see people break into this great building [the Capitol], some who pled guilty, others who went to court, and then you do a mass pardon saying they, in fact, were the victims — it's a sad commentary for democracy.”

Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress have refused to display a plaque made to commemorate police officers who defended the Capitol, including some who died after the riot.

Thompson said Republicans were “always talking about ‘Back the Blue,’ right? But a couple of [officers] lost their lives, 140-odd got hurt. A number of them had to go out on disability retirement.

“And so it's come to this. It all boils down to Trump’s stranglehold on the party.”

Trump has also stirred controversy by vowing to pay $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by an officer as she and other rioters tried to break into the House chamber.

“I was in there when she got shot,” Thompson said. “I was up in the gallery. And so this whole notion that, ‘I can break in, I can get shot, breaking the law, putting everybody at risk,’ and there’s a $5 million payment, for law enforcement doing their job?

“God knows, if they hadn't done their job, I don't know what would have happened.”

WASHINGTON – Democrats on Capitol Hill are nervously laughing off President Donald Trump’s so-called investigation into Joe Biden’s use of an autopen.

Prominent Democratic senators who spoke to Raw Story at the Capitol on Thursday dismissed the effort — passed through executive order and giving Attorney General Pam Bondi authority to launch a criminal probe — as a made-for TV “political stunt.”

“It’s a political stunt trying to change the narrative from tariffs that are gonna harm the economy,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It’s a gigantic distraction and totally frivolous and unfounded,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the second-most senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Raw Story.

“They would be better advised to focus on problems that really matter to everyday Americans, like rising prices and threats to our economy from dumb moves like imposing across-the-board tariffs. It’s a political stunt.”

Biden’s use of an autopen to sign documents — from pardons to pieces of legislation — has become the subject of Republican conspiracy theories.

Riding the coattails of the new book Original Sin, by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, conservative pundits and far-right politicians are claiming Biden was too old to function properly as president.

Biden was 78 when he entered the White House in 2021, and 82 when he left office this year.

Trump, who turns 79 next week, has shared numerous conspiracy theories about the man who beat him in 2020.

Last week, Trump shared the objectively absurd claim that Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by “clones[,] doubles and robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.”

Compared to that, the autopen conspiracy theory is relatively mundane, holding that aides used the robotic device to sign documents and keep the government running because Biden was too old to keep up.

Republicans claim documents signed by autopen would be invalid, including pardons issued by Biden to family members and leading Democratic politicians, especially those who served on the House January 6 committee.

Experts, historians and journalists have repeatedly countered that presidential autopen use is long established and perfectly legal — as Trump would know, having used an autopen himself.

“I don't think there's a there there,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story. “I think this is more of a political point.”

Coons has more reason to know than most. A close Biden ally, he holds the Senate seat Biden vacated to become President Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009. He has also served as an executive himself, in his home state.

“Broadly, governors, mayors [and] presidents should have and need to have processes that guarantee that the documents that are executed by them are, you know, duly reviewed and appropriately executed,” Coons said.

“When I was county executive, we used to have signing day once a month where I would sit down and sign a stack of a thousand documents. And I remember saying on several occasions, ‘Do I really need to personally sign every single one of these?’

“Anyone who's been an executive of any significant entity recognizes that the use of the approved, auditable use of an autopen is essential to carrying out the due functions of a large government. The number of things the U.S. president has to sign would boggle the imagination.”

Asked about Republican claims that then-First Lady Jill Biden really ran the government during much of Biden’s four years in the White House, Coons answered wryly.

“In the case of Edith Wilson, where the president was literally in a coma, yeah, that was true,” Coons said.

President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke while in office in 1919. Accounts of Wilson’s illness differ, but he is not thought to have fallen into a coma.

Coons said he was with Biden in his final days in office, and he says he was cogent.

“I had breakfast with President Biden the last Friday that he was in the White House and he was present, engaging, positive, clear,” Coons said — before admitting that at other moments Biden seemed his age.

“Did he have some bad moments in his last year as president? Like the debate? Yes.”

Biden’s catastrophic display against Trump in Atlanta last June ultimately precipitated his withdrawal as Democrats’ presidential nominee.

“But I've seen no evidence that he actually, at any point, wasn't fully capable of being president,” Coons said.

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WASHINGTON — “I agree with Musk,” far-right Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) told Raw Story on Wednesday, when asked about Elon Musk’s forceful opposition to Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the package of tax and spending cuts the House sent to the Senate before Memorial Day — and for which Burlison voted.

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire, is the world’s richest man. He left the Trump administration last week, after four months leading attempts to slash government budgets and spending through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

On Tuesday, Musk shocked Washington by turning on the Republican budget measure.

Slamming the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill” as “a disgusting abomination”, Musk thundered: “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

On Wednesday, he added: "Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL."

Burlison, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, cast his vote last month as the bill passed the House by the narrowest tally possible, 215-214.

Regardless, on Capitol Hill he told Raw Story: “I agree with Musk. I welcome his comments and his energy on this.

“We need more people like Elon Musk because being in the arena and being on the battlefield and fighting, that air cover is awesome.”

But many Republicans fear being strafed by Musk, who donated more than $250 million to Trump’s presidential campaign last year and is widely seen to be able to take out most any Republican who crosses him.

“We probably could have gained more ground in spending cuts if we had had [the bill] earlier, but at the end of the day, I welcome [Musk’s comments],” Burlison insisted. “I think it's awesome.”

The two-term Republican also offered an extended baseball metaphor, about why he voted for the bill.

“The best way that I described this bill is that we're 37 runs down, it's the bottom of the ninth, and the question is, do you bunt to get on first base? And you know what it's like, it's not gonna win the game, but you know what, like, I'm gonna take a bunt if that's all I can take.”

Other right-wingers who voted for the House bill now say they agree with Musk.

“I think he’s right,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R–TN) told Raw Story. “It's big, it's not quite beautiful yet. If the Senate makes additional cuts, it'll become beautiful.”

“When you voted, were you voting for an ‘abomination?’” Raw Story asked.

“His words not mine,” Ogles said. “What it does is, it really puts the pressure on the Senate to do more. So for him to criticize the product that's coming over, that gives the Senate ammunition to say, ‘Hey, we should fix this.’”

Other Republicans found themselves tied in knots, trying not to dump on their own work or Musk’s pointed words.

“We're gonna get through it,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Raw Story, puffing a stogie while walking across the Capitol grounds.

“We're gonna get through it. Everybody talks. A lot of people talk, not everybody's happy, but it's gonna be fine.”

Nehls insisted, “This isn't about Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one person, but I will tell you, you got 435 members in Congress, and the House passed it. Thin majority, but we got it done.”

Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA), more of a moderate, said Musk had turned against the bill because he was “very frustrated” … because “he's a businessman. Trump's a businessman. They want to correct things fast.

“And in government, you can't do that. So, you know, [Musk’s] frustration bubbled over because he's acting like this is the last bill we're ever going to pass. This is four months into the administration. So this is a beginning.”

Where Burlison talked baseball, Meuser looked to football.

“We didn't score a touchdown on this play, but we did run the ball up field 25 yards, and it does have some savings. It's got the taxes, the border, the energy initiatives, everything else,” Meuser said. “So it's a big play, but it's not all of it.”

Meuser added that Musk “doesn’t understand Washington, he understands auditing. He understood what he was tasked with” through DOGE.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R–WI) dismissed questions about Musk, telling Raw Story that as “a retired Navy Seal Senior Chief,” he had “had about 50 of my friends killed in training and in combat since 9/11, and I broke my spine. That was painful. Somebody disagreeing with me politically is not.”

Asked if Musk’s intervention might complicate matters in the Senate, Van Orden said: “Dude, listen, I do me.

“I respect Elon Musk. The work he's done is just remarkable, but you know, his 130-day term as a special government employee has expired. Will he continue to give input? I sure hope so.”

Democrats seeking to highlight what they and independent analysts say the Big Beautiful Bill will mean for the national debt (a big increase) and Medicaid (severe cuts) looked on.

Of Musk, Rep. Mark Pocan (D–WI) told Raw Story: “To be fair, I've had Republicans tell me they didn't know what DOGE was up to. They didn't get any updates either.”

Pocan added: “Instead of letting an unelected billionaire and a bunch of outsiders make decisions as an extra-governmental organization, because that's kind of what DOGE has become … [we] should maybe have a bigger policy conversation.”

Back on the Republican side of the aisle, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a leading Trump ally, pointed to the common absurdity of a House chamber which often twists members into human pretzels, pushed to vote first one way then the other, often opposing bills they recently supported.

“Anybody who comes to this place with a desire to do things that are logical gets frustrated very fast,” Donalds told Raw Story.

WASHINGTON – Veteran members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) say the Trump administration has moved from offensive to straight racist with its decision to welcome white South Africans as refugees.

Amid continuing controversy over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration by people of color, one senior Black House Democrat lamented “the most blatant show of white supremacy in America in the history of the world.”

“It is a slap in the face to every African American and every person in this country who believes in the rule of law,” added Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), ahead of Congress’ Memorial Day recess.

Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch colonists who underpinned South Africa’s racist apartheid regime until 1994, when the African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, became his country’s first Black president.

Now, the Trump administration claims Afrikaner farmers are the victims of government-sponsored genocide — claims Trump spewed live on TV last week in a widely decried Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump’s conspiratorial claims were rejected by Ramaphosa — and easily debunked.

A picture Trump claimed showed farmers being buried was from the Democratic Republic of Congo. An image Trump claimed showed “burial sites” of “over a thousand of white farmers” showed a memorial to one murdered couple.

One experienced observer, Dorothy Byrnes, a former head of news for the British TV network Channel 4, went viral when she told radio station LBC: “There is no genocide against Afrikaners, that was absolute drivel.”

Byrnes added: “Overwhelmingly, and this is covered, and I have covered it myself, the big problem of violence in South Africa inordinately affects Black people. South Africa has a terrible problem with violent crime, and the chief victims are Black people.”

Regardless, Trump plowed ahead.

“We're deporting thousands of people, and he's bringing in white Afrikaners who he says he's gonna uplift, get health insurance, get found jobs, resettle and housing,” Wilson said.

“I mean, what an insult, right? And also the foundation for his conspiracy theories, saying that there's this genocide happening, that is insane and none of it is true.

“I think that the way that he acted when the president of South Africa came, to try to embarrass … one of our African countries’ heads of state, was just an insult.”

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO), a minister and former CBC chair, called Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa “embarrassing.”

“He was set up,” Cleaver said of Ramaphosa, who followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in enduring a White House harangue.

“You know, in some ways we should have known [Trump was] gonna do that when he met with African leaders,” Cleaver said.

“He's divisive in his spirit. And so I guess he can't help himself. I wonder who was orchestrating that stuff. Is it him, or is it Elon Musk?”

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, is a Trump donor and adviser and attended the Ramaphosa meeting. A U.S. citizen, Musk was born in South Africa and has advanced claims of genocide against Afrikaners.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had time for only a short word, as she rushed to a vote.

Trump’s Afrikaner policy was “Elon weirdo stuff,” the progressive phenom told Raw Story.

‘Stephen Miller probably came up with this’

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story Trump’s policy was simply another instance of his “burning our alliances, eroding if not totally compromising trust.”

“As long as he's on top, he’s the bully,” Welch said.

The Afrikaner policy is an example of Trump “changing inherent policies to pick who's going to vote for him,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM.) “Rather than looking at policy, fixing the broken immigration policy and then let us all work towards finding these solutions and working together.”

Luján also said “the initial reaction and response that I've heard from constituents and from colleagues is a negative one. It just feels very overt. It's not a surprise coming from this administration but I would argue it's intentional. Stephen Miller probably came up with this.”

Miller is an immigration ultra-hardliner and one of Trump’s closest advisers.

Earlier this month, Miller told reporters “what's happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created. This is persecution based on a protected characteristic, in this case, race. This is race-based persecution.”

Miller claimed “a whole series of government policies specifically targets farmers and the white population in South Africa”, including “land expropriation.”

He added: “You even see government leaders chanting racial epithets and espousing racial violence.”

Miller said such policies and threats were “all very well documented.”

Experts disagree.

“The politicians quoted [as espousing racial violence] were not ANC politicians, one of them was a man who’d been specifically thrown out of the ANC and the other was an opponent of the ANC,” said Byrnes, the British expert.

The first 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in the U.S. in mid-May. Before that, Miller predicted “a much larger-scale relocation effort, and so those numbers are going to increase.

“It takes a little while to set up a system and processes and procedures to begin a new refugee flow,” Miller said. “But we expect that the pace will increase.”

‘Against the ideals of our nation’

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has emerged as a leading Democratic voice against Trump, notably through a record-breaking Senate speech in April, when he spent 25 hours highlighting Trump’s threat to the Constitution.

Speaking to Raw Story, Booker said the Afrikaner refugee policy was a dereliction of moral duty.

“Why, at a time of ungodly ethnic cleansing, like in places like Darfur and Sudan, are we not allowing in people that are escaping legitimate threats?” Booker asked. “Why are we making it harder for them to get in?

“So this is, to me, unconscionable. It's against the larger ideals of our nation. It's morally unacceptable.”

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to attempt to persuade moderates and the hard-right to back his “Big Beautiful Bill,” a controversial package of tax cuts and spending reductions leaders want done and dusted by the coming Memorial Day weekend.

The president failed to sway either group.

“I’m a no on the bill at this point,” Andy Harris (R-MD), the chair of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told reporters.

“I want to support it,” said Don Bacon (R–NE), a prominent moderate, adding that on his personal concerns he was “getting mixed answers, but I think we're very close.”

But Bacon is not among moderates from blue or Democratic-run states, mostly on either coast, pushing for greater concessions on SALT — state and local tax deductions.

Exiting the meeting, Freedom Caucus member Lauren Boebert (R-CO) lashed out at such moderates, telling Raw Story Trump had been “very specific on … not increasing SALT.

“He addressed how unfair SALT is to those states who do not have radical leftist governors who are increasing taxes and taking advantage of their people and the rest of America should not be subsidizing these horrible policies that Democrat governors are putting in place.

“… Of course we have those Democrats from blue states who want more SALT. They want to increase that. And President Trump said, ‘Leave it alone. We're not doing that.’”

It was widely reported after the meeting that Trump had not moved the needle and such blue-state Republicans remained opposed to the bill.

Democrats seized on the stand-off, pointing to Trump’s previous support for raising SALT deductions.

“Donald Trump lied to the American people about the state and local tax deduction,” Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, said on social media.

“And now he is punking House Republicans in New York, New Jersey and California who will fold like a cheap suit. Vote them all out.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) can afford to lose only three votes if the “Big Beautiful Bill” is to pass the House.

Just days before the Memorial Day break, the number of moderates and hard-right GOP members opposed to the bill is much higher than that.

Having angered moderates on SALT, Trump also risked angering hardliners by telling the closed-door meeting he did not want deep cuts to Medicaid, the federal health care program widely targeted by the right.

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According to members leaving the closed-door meeting, Trump told hardliners “don't f––k with Medicaid. Only focus on fraud and abuse.”

Tim Burchett (R-TN), a prominent right winger, told reporters Trump “said, don't mess with it” but “then he said, ‘But if they're on there fraudulently, kick ‘em off. And that's what I wanted to hear.”

Democrats are also seizing on Republican threats to Medicaid as a potent political issue, seeking to highlight a threat to health care for millions.

“Donald Trump is on the Hill to demand that House Republicans end Medicaid as we know it in America,” Jeffries posted. “They can all get lost.”

Thomas Massie (R-KY), a libertarian who says he is a definite no on the bill, and who has long clashed with Trump on issues related to government spending, confirmed to reporters that Trump directly criticized him in the closed-door meeting.

“Compared to how I’ve been attacked before, he was very nice,” Massie said. “He talked about MIT, so he was nice, he was joking around.”

Massie studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – where one of Trump’s uncles was a professor, a regular touchstone for the president when discussing his supposedly inherited intelligence.

“He's a pretty nice guy,” Massie said of Trump, adding without apparent irony: “I mean, he's a New Yorker, so you gotta take some of the attacks with a pinch of salt.

“But I didn't feel attacked in there. He was trying to persuade people who weren't there yet.”

WASHINGTON — Lamenting Donald Trump’s first 100 days in the White House, one prominent Democratic senator resorted to blunt talk as he pondered how long it might take to repair damage done to America’s global standing.

“It's hard to put the s--- back in the donkey,” said Mark Kelly, from Arizona.

Tuesday was the 100th day of Trump’s second term. The first 100 days are a highly symbolic period of any administration, as a president seeks to establish a governing agenda and illustrate command of the political landscape. This time, Trump has dizzied Washington and the world with a blizzard of executive actions, swinging cuts to the federal government and hectic media scandals.

On the Senate side of Capitol Hill, Raw Story asked Republicans for their thoughts on Trump’s first 100 days. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama’s declaration – “We got a tough guy like President Trump, he’s gonna do it the right way” – summed up their curt satisfaction.

Democrats were more eager to talk.

Asked about aspects of Trump’s 100 days that might be in danger of being under-appreciated by the American public, Kelly pointed to lasting damage done to relationships with US allies, not least Canada, which Trump says he wants to make the 51st state.

“Stuff that is getting attention is that Americans are poorer and less safe because of his 100 days,” said Kelly, a U.S. Navy pilot and astronaut before entering Congress.

“What isn't getting attention, I would say, is just the damage in the relationships with our allies. If you watched Mark Carney's speech last night [after winning the Canadian election, to remain as prime minister], it's pretty obvious that we now have a long-term problem with one of our closest allies. I don't think that gets enough attention.

“It’s hard to quantify, what does that mean over the next decade, and can the next guy in the White House [change course]. You know, it's hard to put the s--- back in the donkey.

“And somebody's got to figure out how to do that eventually. And it's not just Canada. It's our European allies, folks in Asia — how much confidence do they have in who we are and what our principles are, and if we're going to stand with them or not?”

Tammy Duckworth is also a combat veteran. The Illinois senator, who lost both legs when the Black Hawk helicopter she flew was shot down in Iraq, worried that under Trump, “the Pentagon is being absolutely gutted, and the morale is so low, under [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth. I think all of that we need to continue” watching.

“But fundamentally, these first 100 days are about a man who's basically destroyed America’s standing in the global order, destroyed our economy, and even gone after the fundamentals of our society and the checks and balances in the Constitution.

“That’s gonna have a lasting impact. And I am deeply, deeply disappointed in my colleagues on the Republican side that they're going along with this. They're part and parcel of the disruption of the checks and balances. They are basically handing over control of the purse strings of the legislative branch to a wannabe dictator. I think my Republican colleagues have become invertebrates. They've lost their backbones, and they're hiding in their shells.”

‘Pay to play’

Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said the “chaos and corruption of the first 100 days” had been “overwhelming nearly everything” – but focused on Trump’s economic policy, which has stoked wild market swings and antagonized trading partners.

Trump is “undermin[ing] people's confidence in an even moderately fair game,” Warren said, before pointing to claims of insider trading by Trump allies.

“When Donald Trump started the dumbest trade war in US history, and then played red light, green light with the tariffs, and suddenly he reverses himself after having driven the market down … and drives the market back up, millions of people start to wonder, ‘Did the folks who were close in get a great deal there? A deal that's not available to middle class families in this country?’”

Before entering the Senate, Warren played a key role in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, meant to help ordinary Americans guard against exploitation by financial firms but which Trump now wants to destroy.

“Same thing with tariffs,” Warren continued. “He announces, no matter what, there will be no exceptions on the tariffs. And then he turns around and says, ‘Oh, yeah, but I got a visit from Tim Cook, and now a special deal just for Apple.’ I hear from little businesses in Massachusetts who are wiped out by the Trump tariffs, but who don't have a million dollars to contribute to Trump's pocket, and therefore don't get a hearing and no special deals for them.

“… Trump has pushed this country hard in the direction of pay to play, and we've never seen anything like the scale of that at the federal government level … the tariffs have split this country into two economies, one for a handful of billionaires and billionaire corporations that can get access to Donald Trump or his family, and the other for everybody else just trying to make a living.”

Tina Smith, from Minnesota, stressed the impact of Trump’s economic policies on her state.

“We have an agricultural economy, we manufacture a lot of things, it’s the home of Best Buy and Target,” she said. “So for Minnesotans, the president's economic tariffs are one, raising costs; two, hurting their businesses; and three, just creating massive anxiety, because nobody knows exactly what's going on.

“I think of the farmers who probably many of them voted for the president and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but they feel like they're just pawns … and nobody is really thinking about what's going on with them and what it means for them. And … this is happening in a moment where it's probably one of the worst agricultural economies since, like, the late 80s. Really bad. Nobody's making any money.”

Smith also looked back at Trump’s first term, when he first sought a trade fight with China.

“Farmers have told me … the market share that they lost during the last Trump trade war they have not yet regained,” Smith said. “They've gotten some of it back, but not a lot of it. And … China has shifted its purchases to South America, and they've invested billions of dollars in the infrastructure that you need in order to be able to get that grain to China.

“They're not going to just flip a switch if the president changes his mind again. And so that's just one example of how the economy in Minnesota has been really hurt by what the president has done.”

‘You all are under attack’

Cory Booker of New Jersey made headlines of his own recently, with a record-breaking Senate speech meant to draw attention to the costs of Trump’s policies.

On Tuesday, Booker told Raw Story that Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy was working, forcing the press and the public to constantly switch attention from one dramatic attack to another.

But Booker also identified Trump’s threat to the media itself as a story the media might not cover enough.

“We're in a moment where the Fourth Estate, you all are under attack,” Booker said. “Not just in the direct attacks, like he did in his first term [calling reporters] fake news, calling you all enemies, trying to de-legitimate you. We're seeing greater attacks now in removing people, turning the White House press room into a place with obsequious people who are just there to support and not there to get to facts, and then the constant threats leading to doxing of reporters. And so this is a dangerous story in and of itself.”

Like Duckworth, Booker also highlighted Republicans’ fealty to Trump.

“When you [show people] the things he's doing, they're wildly unpopular people on both sides of the aisle. When you start talking about a Republican Party that has so often championed ideas of freedom – what he's doing is not popular. So they find other ways to try to obscure it, and for the press not to have the bandwidth with which to do something about that.”

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