WASHINGTON — Republican leaders’ refusal to consider extending Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at year’s end is weird, according to at least one senior GOP senator, after the issue erupted and fueled high drama in the House this week.

“It's just strange,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who sits on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, told congressional reporters.

“We had the vote last week, and … now the House passed [its own measure], and we're going to have a vote, and of course, that’s not going to go anywhere.

“There could have been a one-year extension. Maybe there was a chance to have enough votes … we need 60 votes here. I want to vote on something that can actually pass, and I don't know why that's not our plan.”

No one really knows what Republicans’ plan is — other than to craft a plan.

While swing-state Republicans have been freaking out — especially the four endangered moderates who crossed Speaker Mike Johnson when they formally crossed party lines Wednesday — GOP leaders have, basically, shrugged off widespread fears of Obamacare subsidies expiring on New Years, leaving millions of Americans bracing for brutal rate hikes.

Most Republicans remain unmoved, even after Democrats have successfully raised alarm bells about the unaffordable rate hikes for months, including by using the issue as fuel for the longest government shutdown in history.

Just last week, the GOP-led Senate failed to pass dueling health-care bills. In response to a Democratic measure to extend COVID-era insurance subsidies another three years, rank-and-file Republicans cobbled together a last-minute measure aimed at promoting health savings accounts over Obamacare exchanges.

Both failed by a vote of 51-48 in the chamber where 60 votes are needed to pass most bills.

Then the four moderate House Republicans dramatically crossed the aisle, joining a Democratic-led discharge petition to force a vote on a Democratic measure that would extend subsidies for three years.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY) , Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) were the members who chose to cross Speaker Johnson, underlining the Louisianan’s lack of control of his party ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

“We have worked for months to craft a two-party solution to address these expiring health-care credits,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected ... Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”

The Democratic proposal will now get a vote in the new year — but only after subsidies lapse.

Observers noted that in July, three of the four Republican rebels voted for the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the GOP budget measure which contained massive cuts to spending on Medicaid, another key health-care resource for millions of Americans. Fitzpatrick said no then too.

This week, the picture grew more confusing still, as a separate House GOP health bill passed.

Seen as barely even a bandaid, as it doesn’t address the expiring subsidies, it has no chance of gaining 60 votes in the Senate, according to South Dakota Sen. Rounds.

‘24 million people’

Gridlock aside, it seems most everyone on Capitol Hill loves a bit of political drama — even at the end of a year of relentless chaos.

“This is huge,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) marveled to Raw Story after learning that a fourth Republican had signed off on the discharge petition.

“This is, like, huge for my district.”

The member of the progressive “Squad” of lawmakers was far from alone.

“I think it's a big victory, and it's a victory for the American people,” former House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told Raw Story.

“We need to pass that, put it over in the Senate and see whether they have the courage to do what's right.”

Securing a House vote does nothing to dislodge Republicans on the other side of the Capitol, though.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune is insulated from House rules, including on discharge petitions.

There are Senate Republicans who like their moderate House colleagues fear the electoral repercussions of failing to extend subsidies, but nowhere near enough to buck leaders and secure an extension.

Still, with the 2026 midterms just around the corner, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and other Democrats are celebrating the four Republican moderates’ decision to buck Speaker Johnson and force a vote on extending health insurance subsidies.

Like Sen. Rounds, Ivey also marveled at the larger GOP’s continued opposition to helping so many Americans, however dire their need.

Despite “24 million people” facing a financial cliff when ACA subsidies expire, Ivey told Raw Story, “Republican leaders weren't listening to that.

“I don't know what they were listening to. I just don't understand what they're doing, and in the Senate they’re saying they’re not going to move something forward anyway.

“So I'm like, ‘Worst of all possible worlds, from a Republican standpoint.’

“We hit 218 so we got the votes to move [the discharge petition], but they don't want to bring it to the floor, and then the Senate Republicans want to block it. It's crazy.”

WASHINGTON — A rebel House Republican openly questioned top Trump administration officials on Thursday about their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files after House Democrats released dozens of new photos from Epstein's estate, amid anticipation for a Justice Department file dump on Friday.

These images included disturbing quotes from Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" written on a woman's body, alongside other unclear-context photos of Epstein and redacted women. The novel contains the theme of an adult man's obsession with a 12-year-old girl, mirroring allegations against Epstein.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Robert Garcia spoke to reporters on Thursday about the case.

"I think they will be [released]. We'll see," he said of the files expected to be released by the Justice Department on Friday. "It'll be interesting if they're not."

Fifteen days after Friday's release, the Justice Department must fork over a report to lawmakers with a list of the politicians and government officials in the files.

When asked if he thought there would be a cover-up, Massie noted that the officials appointed to review the Epstein files — namely, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi — are not implicated in them. As such, he said there's no reason for them to be reluctant about releasing them.

"Why would they be reluctant?" he asked.

Massie warned that this is a law that "lasts forever."

"So the next attorney general will prosecute this attorney general or this FBI director if they do become involved in a cover-up by not being in compliance with this law," he said.

Massie also accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of lying about the law.

"Three federal judges cite the Transparency Act, but, more importantly, they cite that they're going to redact the victims' names, which was a lie that was told about this bill by the Speaker himself. He said that victims would be exposed by this bill… but all three judges said no, there are sufficient protections," said Massie.

When asked if Mike Johnson would remain in power long term, Massie said Johnson would remain in place as long as President Donald Trump wants him there.

"As long as he's on his good side, he's still the Speaker," said Massie.

Garcia repeated his call to reporters on Thursday to release all the files, and also put Bondi on notice.

"Let's be very clear that the Department of Justice has to release all of the files tomorrow, and I also want to remind the attorney general that she cannot use any excuse that somehow the law says that 'if there's an investigation happening, we can, you know, partially not release everything.' The subpoena that's in place, that's essentially with the law that Oversight passed, does not include that provision. They have to release everything."

Garcia threatened that Democrats will use every tool available to them, including going to the courts and taking legal action to get the files released.

"We're prepared to do that, but we're gonna see what happens tomorrow," he said.

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats accuse the Trump administration of misleading Congress in the wake of the president’s announcement of an oil tanker blockade on Venezuela, Republicans are dismissing Democrats’ — and some Republicans’ — fears.

At the Capitol on Wednesday, one senior GOP senator went so far as to mock Democrats for speaking up.

“Poor babies,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story.

Asked if he had been surprised by Trump’s announcement on Tuesday night, as senior Democrats complain they were, Cornyn said: “Not really.

“I mean [Venezuelan oil] is the lifeline for Iran and to some extent, for China, and an outlet for Russia to continue to be able to sell oil and finance its war machine against Ukraine. So I think it's not a surprise from that standpoint.”

Cornyn is a member of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.

Raw Story said, “Your Democratic colleagues are saying they wish [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio would have focused on this yesterday, and they kind of feel deceived or misled a little bit.”

Rubio and Hegseth briefed both chambers of Congress during the day on Tuesday about controversial U.S. strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea.

“Well,” Cornyn said. “I was in this briefing and [Democrats] were asking questions about the strikes. They weren't asking about” the blockade.

Raw Story suggested that was because the Democrats didn’t know the blockade was coming.

“Poor babies,” Cornyn said. “They just need to open their eyes.”

Most Democrats’ eyes have long been wide open to President Trump’s moves to secure regime change in Venezuela.

The administration has implemented boat strikes that have now killed nearly 100, while Trump’s regular statements on the matter have accompanied reports of both a major U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and CIA covert action in Venezuela itself.

Most Democrats and some Republicans maintain Trump needs congressional approval for any action against the regime in Caracas, led by the left-wing authoritarian Nicolás Maduro.

On the House side of the Capitol on Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Raw Story: “We heard it again from the Chief of Staff, who said that these bombings won't stop until Maduro is out” — a reference to remarks from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a bombshell Vanity Fair profile.

After Trump’s blockade announcement, Meeks said, it was clear Venezuela was “about oil. It's not about drugs. It's about taking oil.

“You know, I'm a former special narcotics prosecutor. If you really try to stop drugs, you don't take the little guy, kill them and then pardon the top guys and don't go after them at all.”

That was a reference to Trump’s recent pardon of a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking.

“You try to get the little guys to get you all the information that you can so that you can go after the big guys,” Meeks said, going on to condemn the “double tap killing” of two men on a boat hit by the U.S. on Sept. 2.

The two men survived the original strike but were killed with a second missile — by most observers’ standards, a war crime or plain murder.

Hegseth has vehemently denied the strike was illegal, while shifting responsibility to a senior military commander.

Meeks and other Democrats said they were not satisfied with Rubio and Hegseth’s briefings.

“That wasn’t a classified session,” Meeks said.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), a House Intelligence Committee member, said: “No one has gotten an intel briefing. So that's what we're owed.”

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also lamented the absence of comprehensive briefings, telling Raw Story: “That just reflects the attitude [the Trump administration has] with Congress.

“If the Republican majority in Congress will allow it, they will continue to follow their agenda regardless.”

Among that Republican majority, not all opinions were as dismissive, or harsh, as Cornyn’s.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voiced his continuing concern about the “double tap” boat strike.

Two months after the Sept. 2 killing, Paul said, when U.S. forces “saw people in the water, they're like, ‘Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn't kill helpless people in the water.’ And they plucked them out. And did they prosecute them? No, they sent them back to their country.

“There's so much that's inconsistent and wrong about this. With the video, every American should be able to see it. We should continue talking about it.”

Raw Story asked Paul for his view on Trump’s surprise announcement of an oil blockade.

“I’m opposed to it,” Paul said, bluntly.

WASHINGTON — Outspoken Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders raised dire concerns Wednesday about the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and robotics, warning that the United States is unprepared for the economic disaster that such technologies will bring.

In comments to Raw Story, Sanders cited major tech figures such as Elon Musk in noting that industry leaders openly predict an ominous future in which traditional work becomes obsolete. According to Sanders, the U.S. faces the prospect of widespread unemployment, particularly among young people already grappling with a dearth of entry‑level jobs.

"He tells us that the concept of work itself, your job, may be obsolete. That means mass unemployment," Sanders warned. "Is Congress dealing with that issue?"

Sanders emphasized that while AI offers potential benefits, the nation must ensure that tech serves the broader public rather than a tiny group of billionaires. To that end, Sanders demanded a temporary "moratorium" on new data centers until lawmakers can figure out how to integrate AI responsibly and protect workers from economic ruin.

The senator also cast doubt on the motivations of tech elites, including Musk, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting that their priorities don't align with the needs of the working class.

He called President Donald Trump an "oligarch" who is "working with other oligarchs."

"Do you think he's staying up nights worrying about the working class of this country? I don't think so," said Sanders.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spoke the “unvarnished truth” when he openly complained about immigrants from “sh–hole” countries, one senior U.S. House Republican told Raw Story, amid outcry over the president’s spate of racist remarks.

“Trump tells the truth,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said at the Capitol. “He tells unvarnished truth. I have no problem with what he's saying. He rallies the troops like no other.”

Asked what he thought about Trump being accused of being racist, Norman, 72, was unabashed: “People say what they want. This man has brought this country back in less than 11-and-a-half months.”

In a cabinet meeting last week, Trump, 79, attacked Somalian Americans in virulent terms, including calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a leading progressive, “garbage.”

This week, in a speech in Pennsylvania, Trump attacked Omar again. He also said he had “announced a permanent pause on third-world migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries.”

Answering a supporter’s shout of “sh–hole”, the president said: “I didn't say sh–hole, you did.”

But referring to a scandal from 2018, in his first term, he admitted it: “Remember I said that to the senators, they came in, the Democrats, they wanted to be bipartisan.

“So they came in and they said, ‘This is totally off the record. Nothing mentioned here. We want to be honest.’ Because our country was going to hell.

“And we had a meeting. And I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from sh–hole countries?’ Right? Why can't we have some people from Norway? Sweet and just a few. Let us have a few from Denmark, ‘Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind?’

“But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they're good at is going after ships.”

Rep. Derrick van Orden (R-WI) knows a thing or two about ships, having been a Navy Seal. Telling Raw Story he had lived in Africa, specifically Djibouti, he backed Trump too.

Asked to respond to Trump’s “s------- countries” remarks, Van Orden said: “Listen."

“The President of the United States is in charge of foreign policy. And the President of the United States has affected more positive changes in foreign policy than any president in my lifetime, with maybe the exception of Reagan…

“So I have the utmost confidence in the President of the United States and [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio getting foreign policy in a way when it's a benefit to America.”

It fell to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), a former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, to provide a more conventional GOP take on Trump’s “sh–hole countries” remarks.

“It's not a good message,” McCaul said, adding that “there are some who argue, ‘Hey, we did away with all of our soft diplomatic power’” thanks to Trump’s cost-cutting as well as his frequent racist invective.

McCaul said he was “briefed by Rubio's chief of staff yesterday about things we are doing to deal with soft power in a different model paradigm.”

“Is that hard when the president’s calling them ‘s------- nations’?” Raw Story pressed.

“He said that in the first term,” McCaul answered.

“But they denied it then and now he said it publicly,” Raw Story pressed again.

Choosing not to engage, McCaul continued to talk about ways to advance U.S. soft power despite crippling cuts to foreign aid via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

‘Ignorance, racism, xenophobia’

Among Democrats, Rep. Omar lamented rising “ignorance, racism, xenophobia” and said Trump was more open in his second term about his use of racial invective because “he feels more comfortable being a racist.

“His base [is] basically raising money for a woman who gets fired for calling people the N-word. What is there more to be surprised” about?

Omar was referring to a high-profile story from Wisconsin, in which a woman employed by Cinnabon was filmed subjecting a Somali couple to brutal racist abuse.

Crystal Wilsey, 43, was fired but has since benefited from crowd-funding efforts.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is one of the longest-serving Black members of Congress. That means that when it comes to Trump deploying racist language, he’s seen it all before.

“It's par for the course,” Thompson, 77, told Raw Story when asked about Trump’s “sh–hole countries” remark. “He lies on the regular.

“He has some kind of tendency to talk about countries and people of color … and he makes no bones about it. When he apologizes for insensitive statements, he comes right back and repeats.”

Raw Story cited a recent National Parks Service decision to drop free admission on holidays dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Juneteenth, but to provide it on Trump’s birthday.

“Why are you trying to erase things that people of color have contributed to just because you disagree with them?” Thompson asked, rhetorically.

‘It’s very frightening’

Unlike Thompson, first elected in 1993, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is new to Congress, sworn in just last month.

“This can't be the new normal,” she said of Trump’s remarks. “That's what we're here for, fighting against it…

“I see it every day now, where people are openly discriminated against, people threatening their neighbors because they don’t like something that they're doing. It's very frightening.”

Proudly announcing herself as a “wife, daughter and sister of librarians,” Grijalva lamented “the dismantling of public education” through Republican attempts to ban books and change school courses to reflect a conservative view of U.S. history, particularly on grounds of race.

“Generations won't hear history,” Grijalva said, “because this administration is deciding that it hurts their feelings to talk about how oppressive they [white people] were and what we did too, right? Native American, indigenous people, I mean. We have to talk about that stuff.

“I'm very afraid, and I'm a mom with three kids. So [does] this country look like the one we grew up in? Right now it doesn't.”

WASHINGTON — Thursday is the long-awaited health-care day in the U.S. Senate, but that doesn’t mean Congress has a plan to avert massive spikes in health premiums in the New Year.

To counter Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s proposal to extend COVID-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for three years — which most Republicans say is too long — on Tuesday, Majority Leader John Thune announced the GOP would offer a new measure to replace subsidies with health savings accounts.

“We need to fix it. It's broken. It's a piece of s---,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story of the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare.

While many in the GOP are glad the party finally has an alternative to the ACA to rally behind, more middle-of-the-road Republicans are upset with the competing messaging bills at a time when Americans are desperate for a solution.

“How are you feeling about this [new GOP] health-care measure?” Raw Story asked Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a rare moderate in GOP ranks.

“Bad,” said Murkowski. “We haven't resolved anything, so we're going to have votes? Good deal. What have you got? What are you going to get out of it?”

With no bipartisan solution in sight, the American people aren’t expected to get anything from Thursday’s dueling health-care measures — setting up a key battle in next year’s midterm elections.

‘Not a serious proposal’

This fall, throughout the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Democrats demanded the GOP sit down and find a way to prevent the pending health insurance premium spikes.

The GOP refused, leaving rank-and-file Republicans scrambling to craft a counter offer.

“The 1.6 million people approximately that will lose their subsidy, I've got sympathy for those folks,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “They're going to be left paying enormous Obamacare premiums.”

“And your party might get blamed for that?” Raw Story asked

“Totally. We get blamed for everything,” Johnson said. “But Democrats should be blamed for destroying that individual insurance market with Obamacare.”

Democratic leaders say their three-year extension is essential for families struggling under the weight of inflation induced by President Donald Trump’s tariffs — but the measure is bound for defeat.

“That’s not a serious proposal, because they know there’s billions of dollars in fraud,” Sen. John Husted (R-OH) told Raw Story. “That’s not going to be tolerated.”

Earlier this year, under the guise of rooting out “fraud,” Republicans cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP benefits, or food stamps, in their “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

That’s something you only hear Democrats mention these days.

“Why not promote the changes you guys made to Medicaid in the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ as Republican health reform?” Raw Story asked Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). “You guys just did sweeping reform, just to Medicaid.”

“Well, it's a possibility,” Kennedy told Raw Story.

“It seems like you guys don't want to own that and make that a part of the debate?” Raw Story pressed.

“No, I think your conclusion is wrong,” Kennedy said.

While the GOP scrambles to save face on the Senate floor, Republicans continue to rally around unraveling Obamacare — but not much else.

“At the end of the day, we got to get the federal government out of it,” Sen. Tuberville said. “To do that, we got to have a lot of smart minds putting it together where it'll help everybody and not only just a few.”

With little to no guidance from party leaders, four competing GOP Senate measures have emerged, including a new proposal from Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH), to extend ACA subsidies two years.

While that is likely to attract Democratic support, GOP leaders refuse to bring it to the floor and instead are promoting health savings accounts.

It’s almost as if GOP leaders don’t want to solve the pending health-care cost crisis, even as the party desperately tries to portray itself as serious about health care.

“We need to put something forward. We need to show America what we're for,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told Raw Story.

“This is just a springboard. This bill that we're voting on now is a springboard to a hopefully bipartisan bill that truly addresses all of health care in January.”

But as the New Year quickly approaches, the clock is ticking.

“Nothing happens around here without a deadline,” Husted said.

So far, Republicans haven’t gotten much of any direction from President Trump.

“Would it be helpful for Trump to say: ‘This is the plan that I want, the one I prefer?” a reporter asked Sen. Kennedy.

“Sure,” Kennedy replied. “But I don't think the White House is going to do that, nor do I think that they're prepared to do that. I think the White House is concerned about what, if anything, the House would do, as am I.”

‘Get to 60’

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson remain mum, even as swing-state Republicans are freaking out.

At the same time, Minority Leader Schumer’s putting forward a three-year extension despite opposition from most all Republicans.

With a mere two legislative weeks before the end of the year, it seems as if the two parties are campaigning past each other instead of trying to find a path to a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.

“Is that all this week is,” Raw Story asked Sen. Murkowski, “just politics on both sides?”

“That’s what it seems like,” Murkowski replied. “It takes both sides. Sixty. Neither side has 60. We need to get to 60.”

Murkowski’s one of the few senators willing to cross the aisle. While she remains undecided as to how she’ll vote Thursday, she says she knows the outcome.

“See, the thing is, how I vote doesn't matter, because either one, the public gets nothing, right?” Murkowski said. “So I can say I support the Republican agenda. I can say I support the Democrat [bill]. I can say I support either, but the results are the same.”

WASHINGTON — To end the longest government shutdown in American history, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators came together and agreed to kick the can.

The can seems to have hit a brick wall.

Unless Congress acts, massive spikes in health-care premiums are coming in the New Year for millions of Americans — the reason Democrats refused to fund the government this fall.

“This whole year we've been moving backwards on health-care because of this administration,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told Raw Story just off the Senate floor.

While President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have yet to offer a policy solution, this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a measure to stave off premium spikes by extending COVID-era health insurance subsidies for three years.

As part of the deal that ended the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised to bring Democrats’ proposal up for a formal vote. That is now scheduled for next Thursday.

But the measure’s fate is all but sealed. Many Republicans say they could stomach a one- or two-year extension but not three, which is why many in the GOP dismiss Schumer’s bill as a show vote aimed at next year’s midterm elections.

“No, not to the people in Nevada. They don't think that's a show vote. They need it,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) told Raw Story as she walked through the basement of the U.S. Capitol.

“They need us to extend those subsidies if they're going to be able to afford health care. That's what we should be doing.”

‘We got a health-care crisis’

No one in Washington was really discussing health-care until the shutdown. Now it’s the talk of the town. Cortez Masto says that’s because, unlike in 2024, Democrats are now listening to voters.

“If you just are talking to the American public, we got a health-care crisis,” Cortez Masto said. “Too costly, too high — prices are too high. People can't afford medicine when they need it, so we do need reform.”

For most of the shutdown, the mood was so bitter on Capitol Hill, party leaders refused to talk to each other. But as the shutdown stretched to a record-breaking seven weeks, rank-and-file lawmakers reported productive bipartisan talks on health reform, just way off our screens.

“I had been somewhat hopeful during the shutdown,” Kim, who served in the House until he was sworn in as a Senator in January, said. “I was engaged with a number of House Republicans that were expressing a similar sentiment of wanting to make progress, but Speaker [Mike] Johnson successfully silenced them during the shutdown.”

“Has their tune changed since the government reopened?” Raw Story inquired.

“They're still pissed,” Kim said. “… but I think that they're feeling like … Johnson's just continuing to be obstructionist.”

Kim’s not too optimistic ahead of next week’s vote to extend Obamacare subsidies, in part because the Republican whose opinion matters most has been MIA.

“We’ll see. I'm still engaged with my colleagues on both sides right now,” Kim said. “But right now, what we need to have to actually move this is for Trump to weigh in and get engaged. And so far, he's been not only unwilling but often being obstructionist as well.”

The New Jersey Democrat wonders what happened to Trump’s populist appeal, let alone heart.

“It just boggles my mind. I mean like, the majority of people that are going to be hurt by these tax credits expiring live in states that he won,” Kim said.

“And it just makes no sense. Even if they have thoughts about reforms that they could be doing, none of that can get implemented in the next month, so, like, why not extend this work to try to get some type of reform going forward? It just makes no sense to me. We're just pulling out the rug on these people.”

While the current debate centers around extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, Democrats say that’s just the start.

“That's the first step. There's more that needs to be done,” Cortez Masto said. “We've been fighting this battle against big pharma, against health companies, against PBMs [Pharmacy Benefit Managers].”

Most all small bipartisan efforts, even as health-care remains a bipartisan wedge issue, political leaders love to use to fearmonger and fundraise.

‘The people would reward us’

Many Republicans are itching to rally behind a GOP plan — most any GOP plan to “replace” Obamacare will do, as they didn’t campaign on specifics.

But they need Trump-sized cover and gold spraypainted salesmanship — they need President Trump. Otherwise, Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t going to walk the legislative plank alone.

“The White House clearly believes that we need to have a solution,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told congressional reporters. “That would be very helpful for them to weigh in.”

After refusing to engage with Democrats on health-care subsidies during the shutdown, a growing number of Republicans now say the party should take the lead on health-care reform.

“It's an opportunity. Health-care really hasn't been addressed for years, for decades,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told a gaggle of reporters on the Capitol steps.

Nehls is retiring at the end of his term — his twin brother running to replace him — but he says the GOP will be rewarded by voters if they take the lead.

They just need an actual proposal first.

“This is an opportunity for us to do it and address it, because we have a unified government. So everybody gather around President Trump. He's got smart people, very smart people around him. Come up with a good plan,” Nehls said.

“Let's get it done and then get this done in 2026. I think it'd be great. And forget about the 2026 election, it's just good for the American people. It's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do, and I then believe that the American people would reward us.”

As with all things policy, the devil is the details. And thus far, the GOP’s all over the map.

Like many on the right, freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) says Democrats are just calling for a band-aid to keep health insurance premiums from spiking by extending COVID tax credits — aka “five-year subsidies,” because they were passed in 2021 with a sunset at the end of 2025 — instead of addressing cost savings.

Like many in the GOP, Moreno’s touting tax-free health savings accounts. He also wants to end free, $0.00 premium plans offered to qualifying low-income families through Medicare or Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

“We have to fix that eventually. The Democrats are talking about this very hyper-specific five-year subsidy, but I think we can go along with extending it for those two reforms,” Moreno told reporters. “I would like to see the money go into household accounts."

Demands like those have Democrats wary.

‘It really is a mess’

A part of the reason health-care politics have heated up is, the GOP already raided Medicaid to the tune of $1 trillion as a part of their GOP-only Budget Reconciliation Act — aka the One Big Beautiful Bill.

“It really is a mess,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) told Raw Story as he rode an elevator up to the House floor during a vote this week.

That’s why many Democrats, especially in the House, aren’t expecting any help from the other side of the aisle.

Rather, they think the issue paints a stark contrast between the parties ahead of next year’s winner-take-all midterms.

“That's our view, because even if they fix the ACA tax credit, you still got the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid,” Ivey said.

“And so if they just extend the ACA tax credits, that's a big step in the right direction, helps millions of people, but the Medicaid cuts are putting even more people at risk. And then you're also putting medical institutions at risk, hospitals — especially in rural and urban areas, that sort of thing.”

Then there’s “repeal and replace” — the GOP’s repeated promise to eradicate Obamacare.

“They just want to kill it. They want to repeal but not replace,” Ivey said. “Going back to, like, when pregnancy was a pre-existing condition? I just can't see folks being okay with that. Or your kid, you know, not being able to stay on your insurance until he turns 26?

“I mean, why would people walk away from that?”

WASHINGTON — A pair of top Democrats in the House of Representatives slammed President Donald Trump's "deranged obsession" with attacking Somali-Americans on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Trump said he does not want Somalis in the United States because "they contribute nothing," the AP reported. His most recent attack follows a report by the conservative outlet City Journal that accused Somali Americans of committing fraud in Minnesota, the report added.

Speaking exclusively with Raw Story on Wednesday, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pushed back against the president's remarks.

"He's a bigoted fool," Omar said. "There's nothing surprising about the president using racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic rhetoric to attack an entire community."

Omar added that Trump's comments make him look weak to the Somali community she represents.

"They're all mockingly wondering if he's ok, and so am I," she said. "Even the reporters were asking, 'Why are you bringing them up?' It just seems like he has a very deranged and creepy obsession with me and, by extension, the Somali Americans, and it's really off-putting. It puts his mental decline on display in a way that I don't think he's smart enough to recognize."

The Trump administration has since stepped up its immigration enforcement activities against Somali-Americans since the president made his remarks, officials told the AP.

Ocasio-Cortez said the immigration raids show Trump is not aware of the legal complexities of his actions. She warned that his actions could leave him vulnerable to legal action.

"There are so many legal exemptions, from libel laws to slander, that, as an elected official, there are very few protections," she said.

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.”

After President Donald Trump called for the execution of Democratic lawmakers on social media, some Republican members of Congress are uncomfortable taking a hard stance on the matter when asked by Raw Story.

Trump's anger stemmed from a video in which half a dozen Democratic senators and representatives with a background in military service reminded active-duty troops that they have an obligation, under both the Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to refuse illegal orders even from the president himself. This reminder comes as legal experts rebuke Trump's orders, including the deployment of National Guard to American cities and the military targeting of alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela.

"I thought [Democrats] video was cowardly, foolish, it was dangerous," Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) told Raw Story. But when asked his stance on Trump calling for those Democrats' execution, he replied, "I haven't seen his reaction so I'm not going to comment on it ... I usually don't comment on things I haven't seen yet."

When Rep. Dan Meuser (R-NY) was also pressed on whether Trump's comments could trigger violent threats against members, he said he hoped not — but was quick to argue "the left" was at least as responsible.

"We've been seeing that, and I completely denounce anything of that nature," said Meuser. "So no, I certainly don't expect that will occur, hope it doesn't occur, and we can't have, you know, language that leads to, hostile language that leads to violence. Which by the way, once again, how many times are we going to see it before we admit and acknowledge that the left's language has caused incredible levels of violence. Half my friends in tough areas ... have security details, okay?"

Meanwhile, Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), one of the six who delivered the original video, made clear he wasn't backing down.

"I won't allow myself to be intimidated and to back away from by Constitutional oath," he said. "I served my country, I went to war three times for this country. That is a lifetime oath. And I will do anything and everything necessary to maintain my fidelity to the Constitution."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) disclosed exclusive new details to Raw Story on Friday about the activities of the suspect in the pipe bombs left at the Republican and Democratic National Committees on Jan. 6.

"Based on those reports, it should have been a lot worse," said Loudermilk, explaining that many details known to the FBI have gone unshared with the public for years.

"Why wasn't that information shared?" Raw Story's reporter asked.

Loudermilk went on to detail "videos that we hadn't seen before" about the Jan. 6 pipe bomber, who has never been identified but can be seen in videos wearing a gray hoodie. "The newest revelation which we're just getting out today is that the pipe bomber, the gray hoodie jacket person, actually made a stop ... at the Congressional Black Caucus before he placed the device at the Democratic National Committee."

"They walked into the property ... stayed there for a minute or so, then got up and left," Loudermilk added.

"So the FBI never released that information," Raw Story confirmed.

The new information raises a number of additional questions about the plot, Loudermilk said, including, "Was the one at the RNC supposed to go to the CBC?"

WASHINGTON — The federal government may be open, but the House of Representatives is closed for business. Again.

The record-shattering 43-day-long shutdown coincided with an impromptu 53-day vacation for House Republicans.

To end the shutdown, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to call the House back in session. He did. For roughly eight hours Wednesday. Then he gave House members the rest of the week off.

“What do you make of Speaker Johnson?” Raw Story asked Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “You guys have just been gone for, like, more than a month, but you guys are just here for one day and then you're gone?”

“He's the most disappointing member of the U.S. Congress,” Beyer said, just off the Capitol steps Wednesday. “There was the opportunity to do a lot of other work that needs to be done in committee after committee, and that didn't get done.”

Instead of making up for lots of lost time, Congress still intends to take off the full weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That means there are only four more legislative weeks in the year. And when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, the 2026 midterm elections formally begin, which historically has meant an end to most legislating in Washington.

Still, Johnson’s all smiles for the cameras.

“Republicans are going to deliver for the people,” he told reporters this week.

“We're ready to get back to our legislative agenda. We have a very aggressive calendar for the remainder of this year. There'll be some long days and nights here, some long working weeks, but we will get this thing back on track.”

That’s what Democrats are afraid of.

‘Wow’

The reason House members got a 53-day vacation, even as the longest shutdown in history lasted 43 days, is because after the House passed its initial continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government on Sept. 19th, it left town — even though government funding didn’t run out til Oct. 1st.

Johnson intended to jam the Senate by forcing the upper chamber to either adopt or reject the House measure.

It took 53 days for senators to craft their own compromise. That needed the House to come back to town to sign off. It did so, and President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Wednesday night.

Frustrated House Democrats accuse Johnson of living in la-la land, in part because the new measure reopening the federal government expires as soon as Jan. 30.

“We should be here every day to make up for the 53 days that we weren't here,” Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) told Raw Story on the Capitol steps.

“But also, what we did was just gave ourselves another deadline. So we need to start working. We should have been working from Oct. 1st to meet that deadline.”

A formerly bankrupt businessman occupies the White House — a fact not lost on most Democrats.

“Well, if you were dealing with corporate management, you'd probably say it wasn't too efficient,” Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) told Raw Story, just off the floor of the House, about the funding process.

“You'd probably say you'd find a little bit more to manage.”

“It feels like they're just putting Trump in the driver's seat by being gone for upwards of a month?” Raw Story asked.

“It does, and I think that's what he liked,” Davis said. “And I think that's what they like.

“And so it's kind of like a camel, humping to please, and I think they're trying very hard to stay in the good graces of the president. Please him, please him, please him, please him.”

One thing that likely displeased Trump: on Wednesday, after delaying for weeks, Johnson was forced to swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ).

She immediately joined a majority of her House colleagues in signing a discharge petition, which forces Johnson to bring up for a vote a measure demanding the Trump administration release the full “Epstein files.”

For former Jan. 6, 2021 committee members like Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), it’s clear: the Speaker kept the House out to forestall seating Grijalva.

“I think it's about the legislative days to ripen the discharge petition,” Lofgren told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol.

Like others on the left, Lofgren felt her suspicions were only confirmed by Wednesday’s release of new emails from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that directly named Trump.

“Wow,” Lofgren said of the documents released by the House Oversight Committee. “Wow.”

‘A double whammy on our democracy’

Many Democrats fear Republicans’ absence from Washington for the past month made Trump’s case that the White House holds all the power.

“We adjourned when Trump wanted us to adjourn and we come back whenever Trump gives the okay, or the directive, to come back and what we consider is what his agenda is,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) told Raw Story.

Congress is “blatantly subjugating itself to executive authority,” Johnson said.

Like most on the left, Johnson says he’s disappointed because Speaker Johnson, a constitutional lawyer by trade, is ceding Congress’s constitutional powers.

“The House is no longer acting as an independent Article I institution. It's an organ of Article II,” Johnson said.

“That's revolutionary in and of itself, especially when the Supreme Court is giving away legislative power.

“So it's a double whammy on our democracy. After 249 years, this experiment is under direct assault from both the executive and the judicial branches.”

Republicans aren’t buying that, especially when it comes to the continuing resolution to keep the government funded at, mostly, last year's numbers.

Far from it. Republicans are cheering for themselves.

“This is monumental. We're doing the CR, which is fantastic,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Raw Story ahead of Wednesday’s vote to reopen the government.

The measure also included three of the 12 spending — or appropriations — bills required to fund the government for a full year. Those included funding for Congress itself, the agriculture sector, military construction and veterans affairs.

“So this is not a ‘just for today’ thing,” Van Orden said. “It's an amazing thing for America today, and it comes to you from the Republican Party.”

Rank-and-file Republicans argue the extended recesses the Republican majority just gave itself didn’t impact the other nine full-year spending bills Congress has to fund before Jan. 30.

“We've already read them. They're nothing new. They already passed through committee a long time ago,” Van Orden said. “In order to get back to regular order, you got to get back to regular order.”

‘He just lied’

Throughout the shutdown, House Democrats held in-person caucus meetings at the Capitol, along with occasional press conferences, even as Speaker Johnson addressed the cameras himself.

“In his daily press conferences, he just lied again and again and again,” said Beyer, from Virginia.

“He also used the most extreme language, you know, this ‘Marxist’ and ‘communist’ and all this crazy stuff. I mean, I'm not big into name-calling, especially things that are sort of disconnected from reality.

“Also, I thought there was a pettiness and meanness about the way he managed this place. Locking all the doors. Not lifting the [security] barriers. Of course, staff had to wait in line 30 and 45 minutes to get in in the morning because they would lock all the doors.”

But beyond abused employees or hurt feelings, Democrats feel their base was energized by the shutdown.

“I believe the American people are ready to stand up and insist that we rehabilitate and strengthen this democracy for the next 250 years,” said Johnson, from Georgia.

“The people are enlivened, even if the House has been MIA?” Raw Story pressed.

“That's right. They're even more engaged now,” Johnson said. “They are more aware of the stakes of what this democracy means for their pocketbooks, for their ability to afford to live in this country, and people are connecting the dots.

“They're recognizing that MAGA — Trump and Republicans — are all about tax cuts for billionaires and multi-millionaires and tariffs for everyone else.

“It's getting to be unbearable. The American people want relief. So they have become even more attuned to what's happening since this shutdown began, and they're going to be engaged next year in these elections.”

Hayes, the Connecticut Democrat, said her party’s fight wasn’t about the midterms.

“The midterms are a long way off, and a lot of people are going to get screwed between now and then,” Hayes told Raw Story.

“So our goal can't be we fix this in the midterm. We work every day to do something. Anything — or, you know, get caught trying.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's tariff policy, and particularly his aggressive push against Canada following an unflattering ad aired by the Ontario provincial government, has triggered a mixed reaction from Senate Republicans, some of whom sought to defend him — but many others of whom either walked a fine line or had outright criticisms.

One of the biggest defenders of the president's policies was outgoing Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

“What do you make of people saying that you guys are ceding your tariff power to the White House?” Raw Story asked him. "You're not buying that?”

“No. We got the authority, because we have the House and the Senate and the White House,” said Tuberville. “I'm all in. Free trade.” As Tuberville entered an elevator in the Capitol building, he seemed to correct himself and shouted back, "Fair trade!"

Raw Story also asked Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) about the Canadian ad specifically, as he represents a state directly on the northern border.

“Canada's biggest trading partner is Montana ... and we're thankful that when we look north, we see Canada,” Daines said. “We've got a really strong relationship with Canada, and, you know, there's a few trade differences that we've got to keep working out.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), one of Trump's most consistent critics on the tariff issue, told Raw Story, “I will vote to end the emergency. Emergencies are like war, famine, tornadoes. Not liking someone's tariffs is not an emergency. It's an abuse of the emergency power, and it's Congress abdicating their traditional role in taxes.”

He is currently co-sponsoring a bill to rein in Trump's tariff power with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).

“Taxes are supposed to originate in the House, so I will continue to vote to end those,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who similarly has become more outspoken as a critic of the Trump administration as he prepares to retire from office, told Raw Story, “I've had a big concern about the Brazil one, particularly, since we have a trade surplus with them."

WASHINGTON — In the unusual world of Congress during a shutdown, far-right firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has emerged as an unlikely ally of Democrats, seeking to save millions of Americans from spiraling health care costs. And she's not the only Republican making such an admission.

The government shutdown comes as Republicans call for a "clean" continuing resolution that funds the government as it stands. However, at the end of 2025, the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, will expire.

Democrats want a deal to continue the subsidies, but according to Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman, "Republicans do not want to extend these Obamacare premium tax credits at all, period."

Democrats may agree with Greene that subsidies help fund costly healthcare premiums, but they aren't welcoming her with open arms quite yet, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) making a dig at her online, writing, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

"Nothing she does surprises me," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story on Thursday. "For a change, she's using common sense."

Some Republicans, too, agree with Greene and the Democrats on extending the subsidies.

When speaking to Senate Republicans who remain on Capitol Hill during the shutdown, Raw Story found more strange bedfellows generated by increasing voter support for tax breaks on healthcare costs.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that the Affordable Care Act is "important to a lot of us, not just to Democrats." She agreed that the subsidies should be extended, though she would like to see some reform. She didn't specify what.

"But the sooner we can get an appropriations bill through, the better off we're going to be," she said. "There are many discussions going on, and I have been in very close contact with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is very constructive and is trying to find a path forward.

Collins refused to answer about being in a coalition with Greene.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story that he became the second Republican speaker of the North Carolina state House since the Civil War because he "was convinced" that former President Barack Obama "was going to make a bad healthcare decision."

Now, he appears to have evolved.

"We will be making a bad healthcare decision if we don't help — all we're really trying to do is reduce the waste and abuse," he told Raw Story, noting that it should be a tax cut that nixes high-income wage earners. "I do think there should be skin in the game for people that have means."

Ultimately, he confessed that "MTG is right" and noted that only "a handful of members" want to see the subsidies expire. That isn't what reporters are hearing on the House side, however.

One of those who opposes the subsidies is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who told Raw Story that "Obamacare totally failed" and Republicans want to "fix it," but "the way to fix it is not to throw more money at it." He went on to call the subsidies "a massive fraud" that "won't fix the problem."

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that in 2025, "18.7 million (77%) of the total 24.3 million ACA Marketplace enrollees live in states President Trump won in the 2024 election."

WASHINGTON — Retribution is in the air.

The federal government is shut down and President Donald Trump’s chomping at the bit, canceling blue-state projects, threatening (more) mass layoffs and diverting funds — and the jobs that come with them — to the red states that propelled him back to the White House.

Save the courts, nothing seems to stand in Trump’s way.

The House of Representatives is on an impromptu vacation, Republicans having jammed their Senate counterparts with a government funding measure negotiated without Democratic involvement.

Practically speaking, that makes Senate Republicans the most powerful block in Washington.

But if you're looking to the Senate GOP to intervene to get the government back open, think again.

As the shutdown stretches into its eighth day, Trump is tripling down on his partisan attacks — “We can get rid of a lot of things,” the president said last week, “Democrat things” — and promising more politically targeted cuts to follow.

Even so, most Senate Republicans barely muster a shrug.

“Do you have any concerns with how the administration’s specifically targeting — and canceling — projects just for blue states?” Raw Story asked Trump-ally Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). “Why are you laughing?”

“What do you think [President Joe] Biden would have done?” Johnson replied.

“But did he?” Raw Story pressed. “He didn’t…”

Johnson didn’t reply. He smiled.

On the other side of the aisle, no one’s smiling.

Democrats are braced for what Trump and co plan to throw their way next.

“It's definitely part of his retribution agenda, going after anybody he perceives as enemies,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) told Raw Story.

New Hampshire’s retiring senior senator is part of a handful working behind the scenes to negotiate a way out of the partisan bind that’s shuttered large swaths of an already beleaguered federal workforce.

Those unofficial talks remain unsanctioned by party leaders, which is why Shaheen bemoans extraneous, hyper-partisan pressure from Trump’s White House.

“One of the challenges is making sure that people can trust each other,” Shaheen said. “And there's a lack of that right now.”

The threats, memes and rants don’t seem to be letting up.

‘Stop playing games’

You’d think Washington would be short on trust in these divided days, but in one sense the opposite seems true: Broad swaths of both parties trust their counterparts to lie.

Democrats also expect the GOP to dissect and dismantle what’s left of the legacies of Presidents Biden and Barack Obama — whether concerning health care or renewable energy.

Senators are holding out, demanding a concrete promise that the GOP won’t allow Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) premiums to skyrocket.

Republicans continue rebuffing Democrats’ demands, even as the White House ups its attacks.

Democrats are still reeling from last week’s announcement that the Trump administration was canceling roughly $8 billion in clean energy projects across 16 Democratic-leaning states.

That’s on top of efforts to withhold billions of dollars for public transit projects in the blue bastions of New York City — a metropolis Trump threatens to defund if voters tap Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor — and Chicago, whose mayor, Brandon Johnson, the president now says should be jailed.

Yet most Republicans, publicly at least, claim they don’t know what the fuss is about.

“What do you think of the administration saying, ‘We're not going to fund these projects because they're [in] blue states’?” Raw Story asked Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE).

“I think you need to open the government,” Fischer said. “I hope the Democrats do.”

As the senator boarded an elevator in the Capitol basement, Raw Story pressed the issue.

“You're not worried about a little payback the next time we get another Biden in the White House?”

Fischer just smiled.

“Yes, ma'am,” Raw Story said, as the elevator doors closed.

Other Republicans aren’t smiling, even when regurgitating talking points.

“Curious, are you worried at all about the overt partisanship?” Raw Story asked Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), of blue-state infrastructure projects cancelled by the White House.

“Where we’re focused on waste, fraud and abuse — that's appropriate,” Hoeven said.

“But this is 16 blue states,” Raw Story pressed.

“Well, beyond that, for Democrats that are concerned about how it's being done, they should join with us and vote yes on this [funding measure] and get the government open.”

“But the partisanship doesn't worry you?”

“Well, I haven't seen what reductions they're doing,” Hoeven said, of the green energy cancellations. “But for anybody that's concerned about it, the best way to address it would be to vote to open up the government, wouldn't it?”

Even some more moderate Republicans are giving Trump leeway.

“There's no question the president's playing hardball,” Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — who refused to endorse Trump in 2024 after the January 6 attack on the Capitol — told Raw Story. “That's expected, right?”

“But a state like Indiana, if the next [Democratic president] comes in and they target you all, like, is that democracy?” Raw Story asked. “Is that how this is supposed to work?”

“There's precedent for Democratic presidents disproportionately giving favor to their own states and disfavor to other states,” Young said. “So this is not unlike that, one might argue.”

“But is it good?” Raw Story pressed. “Is this how America’s supposed to run?”

“It's, it's — it's a reality, which is why we need to open government right now,” Young said. “Democrats need to stop playing games.”

‘Don't think that's right’

Even in Trump’s heavy-handed second term, it is possible to find some Republicans pushing back on the White House for so blatantly inserting politics into federal funding.

“I don't think that's right,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Raw Story.

“Are you telling that to the administration?” Raw Story pressed.

“There are inappropriate actions occurring on both sides,” Collins said.

While Maine’s senior senator doesn’t seem to be relaying her consternation to the president, one of the GOP’s other remaining moderates is calling the president out.

“We shouldn’t be targeting different areas in ways that would be viewed as punitive, that’s just not what we do,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told reporters at the Capitol.

“If there is a rationale that the administration has for foreclosures or terminations of grants, present it out there but let’s not paint it blue and red. Let’s not further divide people politically.”

‘Schoolyard bully’

While Trump’s overt targeting of blue state funding is new, it’s not a surprise to most Democrats.

“That's who Trump is — he's a schoolyard bully,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) told Raw Story. “Maybe what is new is that they're articulating what they've been doing.”

Even so, more moderate Democrats hope Trump realizes his shutdown shenanigans are making him look more petty than presidential.

“I don't think that's helpful,” Sen. Shaheen of New Hampshire said. “It's not helpful for the president either. The public doesn't like that.”

“Does that feel new?” Raw Story pressed. “More overt?”

“Yes. It's definitely part of his retribution agenda going after anybody he perceives as enemies,” Shaheen said. “What people are looking for in this country right now is somebody who's going to bring people together, who's going to try and help bridge divides, not create more.”

To the more progressive wing of an increasingly progressive party, the entire sordid shutdown scuffle is revealing Trump and Republicans’ true colors.

“It shows that it's the Republicans who are enjoying this,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story. “Once you understand who's enjoying this you understand who's responsible for it.”

“Will that point stick?” Raw Story asked. “Like, this place just feels like it got more cynical — if it was even possible.”

Hopping on an underground Senate tram, Whitehouse laughed.

“Welcome to our world,” the senator said.

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 — FBI Director Kash Patel was back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, for a second straight day of grilling by unfriendly Democrats.

In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, Patel’s many clashes with lawmakers were splashed all over cable news and social media. But the controversial FBI director was welcomed by Republicans, who rolled out an array of excuses to protect President Donald Trump’s top cop.

While Patel faced criticism from Democrats and the far right for bungling the investigation into the assassination of Kirk — prominently including tweeting out false information regarding an arrest within hours of the shooting in Utah last Wednesday, at the start of a manhunt that would last more than 24 hours — Republicans on Capitol Hill stayed behind their man.

“I don't know that it was a mistake,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story, of Patel spreading bad information on social media.

“I know that Kash Patel is doing a wonderful job, and that guy I support to the end.”

Mullin was far from alone — and that has dumbfounded Democrats.

"What every law enforcement agent in America would say is [Patel committed] a massive bungle,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story. “In the midst of an investigation he released incorrect information. That is unfortunate.”

Raw Story asked if this could be seen as “a teachable moment” for Patel.

"He was recalcitrant,” Booker said, after clashing with Patel Tuesday. “He was combative. He refused to answer basic, simple questions.

“We have a constitutional obligation for oversight — he undermined that constitutional check and balance … It's the Trump way, right? Not to work within the bounds of the Constitution but to assault, attack, demean and denigrate.”

‘So heartbroken’

Since Patel’s combative confirmation in January, Democrats have warned the public defender turned far-right troll is unfit to lead the FBI. After Kirk’s murder, they claim to have proof.

But the GOP controls Congress and though Patel has faced criticism from some inside Trump’s White House and among Republicans on Capitol Hill — let alone frustrated FBI agents — Kash remains all but king.

Despite being confirmed by the bare minimum number of senators, 51-49, Patel has cover from the GOP, including when he tweets out misinformation in the midst of a nationwide manhunt.

“Oh, you know, the fog of war,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the former Senate Republican whip, told Raw Story. “I thought he did fine.”

Other Republicans are seemingly going out of their way to make up excuses.

“I suspect Kash probably knew Charlie,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story. “And he was so heartbroken that he wanted to make sure that the perpetrator was caught right away.

“So, at least, I understand, he might have jumped the gun a little on whether the guy had been actually apprehended or not. I get it. You know, people were just kind of hyper-emotional.”

As information about suspect Tyler Robinson fills headlines, Patel stands by the misinformation he initially spread. Nonetheless, other Republicans are blaming his aides.

“He was just going by the people that worked for him,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story. “Somebody made a mistake, obviously, but I mean, no harm, no foul.”

“But some folks say Patel and [FBI Deputy Director Dan] Bongino are politicizing the agency?” Raw Story pressed.

“‘Politicizing’?” What does that mean?” Tuberville asked.

“Going after what Democrats call the president's enemies list or [Patel’s] enemies list,” Raw Story explained.

“I don't listen to all that stuff,” Tuberville said.

Other Republicans aren’t listening to Patel either, but that doesn’t mean they’re not standing by him.

“He's trying to be transparent,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story.

“When you're transparent, you're providing information that ends up not being 100 percent correct. I'm sympathetic from that standpoint. Investigating crimes is not easy.”

“Overall you're pleased with him?” Raw Story pressed. “And the direction of the FBI?”

“I haven't had much contact with him, quite honestly,” Johnson said. “I know all these people have enormous challenges. They're trying to ferret out the partisans in their ranks and still have an awful lot of work to do.”

Johnson must not have gotten the memo on rooting out “partisans,” because throughout two days of testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Patel denied targeting FBI personnel over personal politics.

‘Not familiar with the case’

Despite a torrent of reporting on Patel’s misinformation-laced tweets, some Republicans claim to remain blissfully unaware of the steady stream of negative headlines.

“Where do you see false information?” Mullin asked.

“He said someone was in custody when it wasn't accurate,” Raw Story explained.

“I'm not familiar with the case,” Mullin said.

“You didn't hear that?” Raw Story asked.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Mullin said, “but if you're going to talk about purposely misleading people, let's talk about the White House and the last administration.”

“It wasn't purposeful,” Raw Story explained.

“But then it wasn't misleading. Information may have been a mistake,” Mullin said. “You and I make mistakes all the time. I don't know that it was a mistake. I know that Kash Patel is doing a wonderful job, and that guy I support to the end.”

‘Everybody needs to calm down’

Patel verbally scrapped with Democrats this week, even amid worries that rhetoric is out of control in Washington — and thus spilling out in states like Utah and Minnesota, where in June Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were killed and state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were wounded.

Still, tensions remain high in Washington, with lawmakers from both parties braced for further violence as members keep pointing fingers.

“I'm totally for free speech — even speech I don't like,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) told Raw Story.

“That being said, I mean, it's just sad, because I think that we've seen kind of an explosion of it. I think we're going to see more of it.”

The Trump White House continues pointing fingers at the left, which it blames for incendiary political rhetoric and deepening division, even as more moderate Democrats urge their base to give the GOP time to grieve.

“I don't care, you know, if you think someone's extreme,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Raw Story. “So what? It's just like, that's democracy, that's free speech. And now I'm not going to make it any more complicated than just that. It’s terrible.”

Many Democrats say the Kirk assassination highlights the peculiarly American problem of easy access to high-powered weapons. But the GOP has rebuffed calls for new gun control measures as a response to Kirk’s death.

“Everybody just needs to calm down,” Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat, told Raw Story. “We have to have debates with words, not with guns. That's how I feel about the whole thing.

“Really, debate with words.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Raw Story that aliens may have come to the Earth 1,000 years ago or more and could have been living in the deep ocean.

Walking on Capitol Hill Wednesday night, Burchett mused, "What if these are entities that are on this Earth that have been on this Earth — who knows how long, and that we, we, think that they're coming in from way out. Maybe they did a millennium ago, but they're here in these deep-water areas and that's why — I mean, like we say, we know more about space than we do what's going on there."

The oceans have gone largely unexplored and unmapped. Google began a project 12 years ago to map the oceans as part of a partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. The images can be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth.

"We have a higher propensity of silence around these five or six, I believe, deep-water areas," Burchett continued. "And so, for me it, just, um, creates a question. And then when we have Naval personnel telling me that we have these sightings and that there's these underwater craft they're chasing that are doing hundreds of miles of hour and the best we've got is something that goes a little under 40 miles an hour. So, I got a lot of questions about that stuff."

Last week, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed a video seen on social media in a House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing that showed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone attempting to intercept an unidentified object off the coast of Yemen in 2024. It failed to do so, VICE reported.

Four witnesses spoke in the Sept. 9 hearing about their experiences with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

USA Today noted that congressional leaders allege that the federal government knows more than is being said and is intentionally keeping Congress in the dark on the matter.

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A firebrand MAGA lawmaker put her colleagues on notice Wednesday — including members of her own party — as she aims squarely at Congress' sexual misconduct "slush fund" amid a bipartisan House effort to release documents in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) made the comments exclusively to Raw Story on Wednesday after joining House efforts to release the Epstein files by signing a discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA). Boebert was one of four Republicans who officially endorsed the petition, which seeks to force a House vote demanding the full release of Department of Justice records related to Epstein and his associates.

Talking to Raw Story, Boebert went a step further, suggesting details of sexual misconduct from fellow Congress members ought to also be brought to light.

“Also, I think the sexual assault slush fund, members of Congress paying off staffers to be quiet, that this should be released too,” Boebert told Raw Story's Matt Laslo.

Since the late 1990s, the Office of Compliance has spent more than $17 million in public money to settle workplace disputes on Capitol Hill. But that doesn't include sexual harassment, Politico reported in 2017, including a settlement for a woman who accused her former boss, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), of sexual misconduct. That money, the report said, came out of Conyers’ office budget and wasn’t included in the $17 million total.

In 2018, data released by a House committee showed nearly $300,000 in taxpayer money was spent to settle 13 claims against members of Congress or their offices since 2003, including over sexual harassment or sex discrimination, The Associated Press reported. The statistics didn't include names or other identifying information, except settlement amounts and the basis for the claim.

Boebert said that needs to change.

“That's a pretty big one, and, you know, I was promised before this Congress that we would be all over it. And I've heard more about the Epstein list and other things than that. So why are we — are these members still here? What were they covering up? What were they paying off? That's something the American people need to be demanding answers on," she said.

“That's just like a bipartisan swamp?” Raw Story asked.

“Yes,” Boebert replied. “Absolutely.”

“Like, this is how this place has worked,” Raw Story pressed, “but a part of your mandate is to upend that and, like, rid your own party of some of those elements?”

“Absolutely. I don't care what letter is next to anybody's name,” Boebert said.

She warned of what could emerge should the secret side deals face sunlight.

“Of course, you know, some things in there could be, you know, sound worse than they are,” Boebert said. “I understand that aspect of it, but I want to see what's in there. Why is this something that the House of Representatives is paying out to people and we have no transparency on it? We don't know what they're being paid for.”

Fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie have also called for releasing the names of members who've settled with accusers.

“Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices,” Massie wrote on X in December.

“Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives? I do,” he said.

“Yes. I want to release the congressional sexual slush fund list,” Greene wrote on X at the time.

“Taxpayers should have never had to pay for that. Along with all the other garbage they should not have to pay for,” she added.

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WASHINGTON — After a slow start, President Donald Trump has been ramping up the pace of judicial nominations — but it remains to be seen if his recent public breakup with the increasingly far-right Federalist Society will impact the quality of his picks.

While Senate Republicans have tried to stay out of the fray, Democrats have enjoyed watching the brewing right-wing civil war.

“I love it. It's delicious,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story.

“It's a fine sight to have those two corrupt factions warring with each other, and it puts the point on the fact that this is, in fact, a captured [Supreme] Court. Trump is just discovering that the wrong people captured it.”

‘Got what they wanted’

In late May, after Trump’s new tariff regime was blocked in federal court, the president lashed out at first-term allies who helped him transform large swaths of the federal judiciary.

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before lashing out at one of the group’s longtime leaders by name.

“But then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.”

Leo is the fundraising Svengali behind a range of right-wing groups who has become a bête noir of Democratic progressives.

Leo did not fire back at Trump — in public, at least — choosing to tell reporters he was "very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts.”

Regardless, Democrats can’t get enough.

“Listen, those are judges that Trump nominated,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Raw Story. “The whole strategy of the Federalist Society was to create a court that ruled in favor of corporations and the rich. They got what they wanted.

“If you want a conspiracy thesis that is actually true, it's how [the Federalist Society was] created 30 years ago for this purpose, basically, to ensure that we don't have government by and for the people, but by and for the powerful, and the Federal Society succeeded.”

Other Democrats agree that Trump got played.

“It's a little bit Bizarro World,” Sen. Whitehouse said, referring to the world in the Superman comics in which everything is the opposite of the same thing on Earth.

“But it's not Bizarro World if you have thought that you appointed a court that was going to do what you wanted and you've discovered that you've appointed a court that's going to do what the polluter billionaires want, and you got had in the scheme.

“You were the chump at the table. You weren't the person who was calling the shots.”

Whitehouse pointed to the libertarian-leaning Koch brothers — billionaires Charles and David Koch, the latter now deceased — and their political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

“That was real combat back then,” Whitehouse said.

But the former Rhode Island attorney general said it was evident the Koch brothers came around to Trump after he pledged to only nominate Federalist Society approved judges for lifetime appointments.

“The combat evaporated, and the Federalist Society list emerged,” Whitehouse said.

“Now it wasn't the Federalist Society list. The Federalist Society never considered a list, never approved a list, never had a list on the agenda — not a thing. But they called it a Federalist Society list to give it some cover.

“Every clue points to there having been a deal where the Koch political apparatus would back off of thrashing Trump and the Kochs would get to appoint his Supreme Court justices.

“House of Trump is beginning to figure out that they had their pants pulled down around their ankles by the House of Koch.

“It appears now that Trump has finally figured out that he was the chump in the scheme, and that his rivals, who he despised, the Kochs, actually picked his Supreme Court justices.

“They've got the 100 percent batting record at the Supreme Court for polluter interests, and he does not have a 100 percent batting record.”

‘Those who will serve him’

Republican senators have tried to avoid the rift between Trump and the Federalists altogether.

“What have you thought of this little spat between Trump and the Federalist Society?” Raw Story asked.

“Who? I don’t keep up with that — why would I keep up with that?” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said. “It’s for you guys. We got day jobs.”

The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee also shrugged off the spat.

“I don't know anything about the fight between the Federalist Society and Trump,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Raw Story.

In Trump’s first term, Senate Republicans confirmed 234 of his picks to fill vacancies on the federal bench. But after former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats confirmed 235 federal judges between 2021 and 2025, there just aren’t many vacancies left to fill.

That’s partly why Trump didn’t get his first federal judicial nominee confirmed until July 14th, just before senators left Washington for their summer recess.

Before Trump sent five more nominations to the Senate on August 12th, an Associated Press review found “roughly half” of his first 16 judicial nominees had “revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.”

While such views are in line with those of the Federalist Society, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), said Trump was deploying a new litmus test.

“Don't look for any consistency. He is just looking for those who will serve him personally,” Durbin told Raw Story.

“Occasionally the Federalist Society, which was the secret handshake of Republicans for so many years, disappoints him.”

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WASHINGTON — Just outside the newly unrolled yellow police tape that encloses Lafayette Square, the green seven-acre public park just north of the White House, a graying African American man bent down to leave a hot Potbelly sandwich and tall store-bought water for a younger white man who lay there, sleeping in the sun.

“Sir, I don’t mean to disturb you,” Michael — a 61-year-old Houston native — said as the man was roused.

“I brought you a sandwich and a drink.”

Michael walked away. Moments later, as Raw Story asked what prompted his act of kindness, the unhoused man sat up and enjoyed the sandwich.

"We're all human," Michael said. "It's a human lying on the street, hungry. It's terrible."

Hunger may remain “terrible” to many Americans, but to President Donald Trump, the homeless themselves need to be, at the very least, hidden far from the public eye.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” the president thumbed on social media over the weekend. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”

'Crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor'

Throughout much of the nation’s capital — especially the hot spots frequented by lobbyists, politicians and tourists — you can hardly tell that earlier this week Trump took control of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and deployed National Guard troops.

Trump’s promise to “rescue” the nation's capital from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” is far from the reality of the city streets.

Murders have dropped 34% this year, compared to 2024.

In May, homelessness data from the District’s Department of Human Services (DHS) showed a “9% decrease from 2024, including an 18.1% decrease among families and a 4.5% decrease among unaccompanied individuals.”

District officials say the latest numbers reveal a 19% decrease from its last count in 2020, before COVID-19 shuttered much of the nation.

Community Partnership, a local advocacy group, says an estimated 798 individuals sleep on D.C. streets any given evening.

Michael, the man who helped the sleeping man in Lafayette Square, said he was in town from Houston, visiting his daughter who just left the Navy and started "one of the coolest jobs" in national security.

Raw Story asked: "What do you think about President Trump coming through and saying, like, 'You don't have a home but you can't stay here'?"

"President Trump is a dictator,” Michael said. “I think that America is gone the way we knew it. It will never come back.

"I think this is martial law with a different name on it. What's the definition of a martial law? It's when the government takes over the functions of the state, and that's exactly what happened yesterday. In detail.”

Eight months into his second term, Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles — ostensibly to deal with protests — and now Washington, despite howls from local and state leaders.

To Michael, it’s just the beginning.

"They're not just here. It's going to be in every state,” he said. “It's clear to me. It's clear to me."

‘Just doing my part’

Washington may be getting its Trumpian makeover, but Michael says his goal will remain to never forget the least of us, especially those suffering homelessness.

"Just doing my part, man,” Michael said. “Nothing special."

"That is special," Raw Story pressed.

"Nothing special.“

Michael shared that he'd had experiences with homelessness himself. “That's why I didn't want to wake him up," he said.

“But when you wake up, there you go. [Meal] right there."

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WASHINGTON — Elon Musk may have packed up and gone home weeks ago, but he’s still got a grip on Washington’s political class.

While Republicans cling to the coattails of the world’s wealthiest man — whether or not he’s tweet-shaming the GOP agenda on his social media platform, X — many Democrats are cheering the Tesla CEO’s latest foray into politics, with the soft launch of his “America Party.”

Musk’s initially cringe-inducing breakup with President Donald Trump is mostly in the rearview, and many veteran Democrats remain wary of the heavy-spending billionaire.

“A man that rich can do a lot of things,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story at the Capitol recently. “He can also fake a lot of things, so I’m not sure how serious he is.”

Musk may no longer lead the Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — but he’s still a Washington player. And with next year’s midterm elections looming, members of both parties are trying to simultaneously avoid and court him.

‘I wouldn’t say he's turning on us’

Musk and Trump formally parted ways at the end of May, but just a few days later things got awkward as they took to their social media companies to digitally pummel each other.

After Musk lambasted Trump’s signature tax cut and tough-on-migrants spending bill, Trump complained of being "disappointed" in his former wingman.

Musk then dropped what he called the "really big bomb" — and accused the president of being “in the Epstein files.”

Republicans in Congress struggled to make sense of the fight between their leader that some call “Daddy,” and the sugar daddy who dropped upwards of $290 million on the 2024 election.

This summer, the Musk-aligned Building America’s Future PAC doled out more than $1 million promoting Trump’s agenda, including his signature “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which perplexed many political watchers, as at the same time Musk repeatedly used social media to rip a bill he labeled a “disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” Musk posted in early June. “You know it.”

Wrong or not, many rank-and-file Republicans who voted to pass Trump’s agenda want to appease Musk too.

“I agree with Musk,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) told Raw Story at the time.

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

For many — if not most — in the GOP, Musk’s declaration that he’s starting a third party doesn’t mean he’s parting ways with the Republican Party they call home.

“I wouldn’t say he's turning on us, he's got a right to his opinion,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story. “Turning on us would be him going back to the dark side: the Democrats.”

On that Democratic side, things are awkward too.

Generally, Democrats view Musk’s promised third party as a net win, a move that will split the right-wing vote.

“Oh I definitely think it will be better for Dems,” Rep. John Larson (D-CT) told Raw Story.

“That obviously would help us. We’ll take it. I think we’re gonna do well no matter what. House Democrats did extraordinarily well [in 2024]. We actually picked up seats in a time that had gone heavily against the trends.”

“Republicans should worry more. Much more so,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story.

Democrats don’t have many good inroads to Musk, in part because DOGE focused on slashing and burning rather than building, Beyer said.

“I don’t know anybody that doesn’t want to make [government] more efficient. I’d love just the modernization. Makes perfect sense to me.

“Even things like deficit reduction, I’m on his side. We need to have much better deficit reduction, not the way [Republicans are] doing it, which is cut all the hospitals and services [like] Medicaid and then still drive [the deficit] up $4 to $5 trillion.”

With the Democratic Party promising to get “big money” out of politics, cheering on the world’s richest man is awkward — a point many veteran Democrats understand.

‘He’s got no base’

On the other side of the Capitol, most Democratic senators remain wary of Musk.

“Is it good for Democrats to just not have his money behind the GOP this time around, seemingly?" Raw Story asked the Democratic whip.

“I think there are going to be outrageous unlimited amounts of money regardless, and what impact he’ll have on either political party remains to be seen,” Durbin said.

“At the moment we only know the message that he is personally grieved. If there’s more, perhaps he can build a political base.”

Democrats are increasingly united in wariness of Musk and his meddling.

“I don't know yet [about the third party],” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told Raw Story. “Like, he certainly has the money. Right? But he also has to have people who decide to go with him.

“He's got no base. Until I see that, it's interesting. I enjoy a cat fight between two men. But until I see who joins [Musk], I can't say that this is a real thing.”

What is real is voter unrest.

“There are a lot of disaffected voters,” said Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). “Absolutely.”

Polling shows many Democratic voters are disaffected with Fetterman, one of the more independent-minded senators in either party, who has supported Trump nominees and sided with Israel in its war in Gaza.

“At points I’m at odds with my party,” Fetterman conceded, “and I know I’ve had colleagues on the other side that were at odds with their side too. I don’t know if we're ready for a third party in that sense, but without a doubt there are a lot of disaffected voters.”

“Last I saw, you were doing better with Republicans than Democrats?” Raw Story pressed.

“I have a great relationship with my parents,” Fetterman said, alluding to his blue-collar, conservative Pennsylvania roots — the very groups Democrats alienated and Musk courted last year.

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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.”

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WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer confused the heck out of Capitol Hill this week when he deployed a little-known procedural maneuver — the "Rule of Five" — to try and force the Trump Justice Department to release the "Epstein files."

“Never heard it before,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) told Raw Story.

“No, never heard of it,” two-term Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) told Raw Story.

“I gotta go,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsay Graham (R-SC) responded to Raw Story’s inquiry.

All the confusion and consternation stems from Schumer invoking the arcane 1928 "Rule of Five," which — on paper, at least — enables any five members of a congressional committee to band together and demand executive branch documents within their jurisdiction. No matter their party.

While Democratic leaders feel bullish on the issue, some Democrats are urging caution — in part because the party didn’t touch the topic during former President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House — despite Schumer’s latest effort to dislodge the files on the former billionaire financier who allegedly trafficked and abused minors.

"It's not a stunt”

Heads turned on Wednesday after Schumer announced their new strategy to force the Department of Justice to release most of the files the government has on Epstein.

Many Republicans initially laughed off the camera-loving New York Democrat as whispers of the minority leader’s gambit to deploy the little-known rule spread across the Capitol grounds.

But Schumer, flanked by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee — all of whom formally signed off on the effort — brushed aside charges of politics as usual.

"It's not a stunt. It's not symbolic. It's a formal exercise of congressional power under federal law," Schumer told members of the congressional press corps Wednesday. “And we expect an answer from DOJ by August the 15th. That's what accountability looks like. This is what oversight looks like. And this is what keeping your promises to the American people look like."

Stunt or not, this latest effort by Schumer puts him in league with at least one of the nation’s most far-right senators.

“Hey, what do you make of this ‘Rule of Five’ that Schumer and Dems are deploying?” Raw Story asked the former chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the same committee trying to force the disclosure of the Epstein docs.

“I used it,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “I never got the information.”

“So are you writing this effort off?” Raw Story asked.

“Well, they can try,” Johnson said. “We tried it a number of times. It’s very difficult to do. You gotta take that to the committee. When you’re in the minority, you really can’t do it.”

That doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t following suit.

The Epstein investigation — or "coverup," depending on who you ask — was dismissed by many Senate Republicans just a couple weeks ago. Not anymore.

After rank-and-file House Republicans forced Speaker Mike Johnson to address the topic — which he did by recessing his chamber early ahead of their August recess purely to avoid debating Epstein — Senate Republicans took note.

“What do you think should happen with the Epstein investigation?” Raw Story asked.

“Well, isn’t it kind of materializing in the House of Representatives right now?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — who as the president pro tempore of the Senate, is third in line for the presidency, thus always flanked by security — told Raw Story.

“Yeah? Well, they’re on recess now,” Raw Story pressed. “But you’re watching that?”

Grassley said nothing as he, his security detail and aides entered a Senators-only elevator.

Even though many Senate Republicans still want to avoid the scandal at all costs, like Grassley, many are now quietly pressuring the Trump administration to judiciously address this homegrown scandal.

“I think the administration’s gotta be transparent,” Ron Johnson said.

“It’s very difficult to do”

It’s not just Republican heads that were turning this week.

“Did you know about this ‘Rule of Five’ before yesterday?” Raw Story asked a veteran Democrat.

“I don’t know if I did,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told Raw Story.

Even though many have never heard of the rule, Schumer’s procedural gambit has many on the left giddy as they continue ramping up pressure on the administration, but Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) cautions his fellow Democrats to keep the bipartisan scandal in context.

“I don’t really spend any time thinking about this,” Fetterman told Raw Story. “I don’t get any kind of outreach on it or whatever.”

While many Democrats have been feeling the wind at their backs for the first time in this second Trump administration, Fetterman cautions his colleagues against spiking the football.

“If they release it, fine, but it’s a strange argument when we were in absolute control for four years, we didn't release it or say anything with it,” Fetterman said. “So I’m just kind of like, ‘okay, release it. That’s fine. I don’t care.’ But I don’t think it’s a Democratic, another ‘get rich quick’ kind of scheme. You know, it’s like Russiagate or the ‘pee tape.’”

Unlike the fabled "pee tape," Epstein lived, breathed and, allegedly, abused. A lot.

These days, even Republicans who’ve avoided Epstein like the plague he became are now tuned in.

“People are interested,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story.

When Scott was governor, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi served as Florida's top law enforcement officer, so he’s in her corner, lonely though it may be.

“I trust Pam Bondi,” Scott said. “I think Pam feels like she’s doing the right thing. She’s protecting victims. She doesn’t want to release pornography. When I’ve talked to her, she’s doing the right thing.”

If Bondi’s doing the right thing, then someone else in the administration is the culprit, according to many of the president’s supporters who are increasingly frustrated with taking campaign pledges as ironclad promises.

“Something’s not on the level”

Bondi may have powerful Senate allies, but it’s been lonely for the 59-year-old lawyer of late.

The attorney general’s chorus of critics has grown since her claim to have the "Epstein list" on her desk unraveled — or disappeared, as many members of the MAGA wing of the GOP believe — in real-time.

While the Epstein affair was never a central issue for Democrats, the party’s rank-and-file are now engaged. And now that they are, they say things just aren’t adding up with this mysterious scandal.

“You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that something’s not on the level,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story.

With the Trump administration seeming to stall — even as reports swirl about Trump’s relationship with the former financier — Democrats are piling on, even as that means angling to co-opt this issue many dismissed as a conspiracy mere weeks ago.

“They don’t want to release information that they’ve been demanding. It’s a Republican issue. It’s gotten some lift because Republicans are furious that the president is not being transparent,” Welch said. “There’s a lot of internal pressure. The Republican base wants this information. Might be they’re entitled to it. We all are."

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WASHINGTON — Republicans are debating whether to blow up Senate rules to quickly usher through dozens of President Donald Trump’s stalled nominees — or to adjourn at the end of the week, thereby allowing Trump to make recess appointments throughout the scheduled August break.

“I think we have a choice. Democrats either have to relent and let us do the nominees through [unanimous consent], or we've got to do it through recess appointments,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story.

Presidents are allowed to temporarily bypass the Senate nomination process and fill vacancies when Congress is out, appointments that expire at the end of the next congressional session.

Some veteran GOP senators are now warning against allowing Trump to use recess appointments, but they seem to increasingly be in the minority.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are debating whether to strike a deal allowing the confirmation of a slate of lower-level nominees. Even that has tensions boiling.

“There’s a lot of us in this caucus that want to f–––––- fight,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday. “And what’s bothering me right now is we don’t see enough fight in this caucus.”

Republicans beg to differ.

‘Getting close’

In recent weeks, President Trump’s been increasing pressure on Republican leaders to deal with more than 140 nominees still stalled in the Senate.

In recent days, rank-and-file Republicans have started rallying around the president’s pressure campaign, because they say things have gotten to boiling point.

After Trump took office in January, Democrats allowed their then-Senate colleague Marco Rubio to be confirmed as secretary of state by unanimous consent — known as UC, whereby all 100 senators agree to limit debate on a bill or nominee.

But Democrats have refused to fast-track any other picks. With Trump fuming, Republicans say Democrats put them in a bind, which is why they’re debating rule changes.

“President Trump's the very first president not to have any UCs or voice votes on nominees, and the more they do this, the more [Republicans’] attitude changed,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story.

“At this point, people are like, ‘You're not giving us a choice.’ I think in February, they were like, ‘No, that isn't something we want to talk about.’ Now, that conversation has changed, like, ‘This is your all’s decision. You guys made this happen.’”

Democrats are particularly incensed by the nominations of former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to be a federal prosecutor, Mike Waltz for UN ambassador — Democrats say Waltz endangered national security by discussing classified war plans on Signal after he included the editor of The Atlantic on a group chat — and Paul Ingrassia, nominated as special counsel despite ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

But Republicans aren’t discussing individuals. Ahead of their summer vacation, they’re focused on the forest, not the trees.

“We need to explore what our options are. The obstruction we're seeing from Democrats is just kind of mindless and it's denying President Trump the benefit of his team,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story. “This has just gotten beyond the pale.”

“Does it feel like something has to give?” Raw Story pressed the former GOP whip.

“Yeah and it feels like we're getting close,” Cornyn said.

That has some Republicans proposing allowing Trump to make recess appointments — which divides the party.

“We're kind of reaching the point where to our Democrat [sic] friends, I think the choice is going to be either quit filibustering all these people or we’re going to recess the Senate and the president is going to fill up the rest of his administration with recess appointments,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story.

“I'm open to it,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) said.

‘Steady as you go’

While the GOP’s united in frustration over Democratic stall tactics, veteran Republicans reject recess appointments.

“The last thing we want to do is create the challenges that would come from sweeping recess appointments,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story. “That just lays the groundwork for really surprise appointments.”

The Constitution gives senators the special role of "advice and consent” when it comes to the president’s cabinet, which Tillis says is a duty senators should protect.

“It's our job. I mean, where we differ the most from the House,” Tillis said. “Doing recess appointments would essentially relegate us to being the House because we are in the personnel business.”

Roughly 1,200 executive branch positions need Senate approval. Tillis says he could be supportive of lowering that number, but he won’t be convinced to lay down and allow Trump to make recess appointments.

“Let's have that discussion versus using an absence as a way to get something done. Doesn’t make sense,” Tillis said. “I don't think the American people would like it regardless of whether or not they're sympathetic to some of the frustration we have right now.”

Tillis is far from alone in his opposition to recess appointments.

“I’m not in favor of that,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Raw Story.

"Why not?” Raw Story pressed the chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee.

“Oh, I don’t have time,” Wicker said as he waited in his Senators Only elevator for the doors to close.

“How do you guys get through these backlog of nominees?”

“Steady as you go,” Wicker said.

‘Insider baseball’

With GOP leaders threatening to keep the Senate in session into summer while contemplating rules changes, Democratic leaders find themselves torn between the progressive base and moderates who fear looking obstructionist.

But after years of watching the GOP stall Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s nominees, party leaders say Republican complaints ring hollow.

“We're trying to follow the same rules that they established,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told Raw Story. “We’re doing a lot, but they want more.”

While progressives like Sens. Booker and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are unwavering in their desire to stay in Washington and fight Trump on every front, more middle-of-the-road Democrats don’t think nominations are the hill the party should die on.

“This is like the insider baseball of Washington, D.C.,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) told Raw Story.

“I try to focus on, like, we have huge cuts to Medicaid coming in my state. We have rural hospitals on the edge. I mean, that is the stuff that, on a day-to-day basis, I'm putting my time into.”