Congress

Shutdown threatens to drag on for days as positions harden

Published

12 months ago

October 6, 2025

Buckle in — this shutdown might last a while.

With federal agencies closed going into a second workweek, there are vanishingly few signs that a bipartisan breakthrough is imminent. To the contrary, all indications are that leaders in both parties are only digging in deeper, and efforts to forge a compromise among the Senate rank-and-file are so far sputtering.

Already some lawmakers are eyeing Oct. 15 — the date when active-duty military members could miss their next paycheck — as the next real deadline for action.

Democrats are insisting they will not vote to reopen the government without some kind of an agreement around soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies impacting more than 20 million Americans, and party leaders have been emboldened by flash polling giving them a modest advantage.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, said Republicans are “losing in the court of public opinion” and vowed to continue “standing up for the health care of hard-working American taxpayers.” A CBS News poll released Sunday was the latest of several new surveys showing a small majority of respondents taking the side of Democrats in the shutdown blame game.

Republican leaders, meanwhile, continue to insist any discussions about health care can happen only after Senate Democrats reopen the government by passing a House-approved seven-week stopgap.

Speaker Mike Johnson said in an BLN interview Sunday that lawmakers “need the month of October” to hammer out a deal on the subsidies: “There’s a lot of thought that’s gone into that on both sides of the aisle. But we need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down.”

Those talking points have barely shifted from a week ago, when Congress was still on the precipice of plunging into a shutdown. Now, more than five days in, some leaders have their eyes on some key dates they believe could force action.

Most federal workers will miss their first paychecks Friday if agencies don’t reopen by then. Active-duty military members will miss their pay the following Wednesday if Congress does not act.

Speaking to House Republicans on a private conference call Saturday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise identified that latter date as a key pressure point and urged members to hammer Democrats as it approached.

President Donald Trump also alluded to the sensitivity of troop pay in a speech Sunday to a crowd of sailors and others celebrating the Navy’s 250th anniversary: “I want you to know that despite the current Democrat-induced shutdown, we will get our service members every last penny. Don’t worry about it.”

Trump and his deputies are seeking to add to the pressure by threatening to proceed with mass layoffs of federal employees as the shutdown wears on. Top economic adviser Kevin Hassett described potential firings Sunday as a sort of Sword of Damocles that will hang over Democrats in the coming days.

“We think that the Democrats, there’s a chance that they’ll be reasonable once they get back into town on Monday,” he said on BLN. “And if they are, I think there’s no reason for those layoffs.”

But the layoff threats have only caused Democrats to dig in more. Many inside their ranks are calling the spectre of firings a bluff, arguing Trump has no more legal authority to carry out such firings in a shutdown than he would otherwise and that any such moves would be quickly challenged in court.

And even swing-state Democrats are growing comfortable fighting for the position Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have staked out for them: extending the insurance subsidies ahead of Nov. 1, when open enrollment begins for next year’s plans offered on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

“Twenty-four million Americans are going to have their premiums increase. Millions of them are going to lose their coverage,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an interview. “Any answer to the shutdown has to involve fixing that.”

Gallego has been part of a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators who have been holding informal conversations about finding a way out of the shutdown. But so far the discussions have remained nebulous.

While leadership talking points have hardened, there are tensions inside both parties that could grow over the coming days and weeks and bring matters to a head.

House GOP leaders decided Friday not to return to session this week — driven by both a belief that they have nothing further to do after approving the seven-week stopgap last month and concern that having members of the more boisterous chamber together on Capitol Hill would not help the party stick to its message. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) flatly said the House would only make things “worse.”

“This is not a game,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol last weekend. “I don’t know why this is so complicated.”

In contrast, some in the speaker’s leadership circle quietly bristled at Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to recess his own chamber for the weekend after another stopgap vote failed Friday, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

They privately argued Senate Republicans were giving up an opportunity to keep hammering Democrats. The House’s absence continued to fuel Democratic attacks over the weekend.

“House Republicans continue to be on vacation, spread out across the country and the world and this makes no sense,” Jeffries told reporters Friday. He brought his own members back to town last week but has not made similar plans for this week; House Democrats are set to hold a conference call Monday evening.

In past shutdowns, the majority party has often held votes to reopen particularly popular parts of the federal government in a bid to put pressure on the minority. Senate GOP leaders have no such plans at this point, but Johnson and Thune could bring up legislation to pay troops as the Oct. 15 paycheck deadline nears. Some Republicans, though, still believe Democrats will fold before then.

“We might not even be in a shutdown at that point,” said one senior GOP leadership aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal thinking.

The more profound GOP divide, however, concerns the health insurance subsidies. Republicans from the White House to Capitol Hill leadership suites privately admit the party is increasingly vulnerable on health care but are now committed to an argument that they cannot undertake any negotiations until the shutdown ends while also accusing Democrats of wanting to protect services for undocumented immigrants.

Asked about his position on the subsidies, Trump said Sunday, “We want to fix it so it works.” He said the ACA in general was “not working” and “has been a disaster for the people,” but there is little appetite inside the White House or the GOP generally for reopening the landmark 2010 health law.

Inside the White House, even some of Trump’s most hard-line deputies are coming around to the political realities they face with the coming insurance cliff. Policy officials are readying proposals around the expiring tax credits — one, according to three people granted anonymity to comment on the proposals ahead of an announcement, could include grandfathering in current beneficiaries and cutting off boosted subsidies for new enrollees.

Democrats are dealing with internal splits of their own, with Schumer caught in the middle. Some of his moderate members want to find a quick exit from the shutdown and are exploring a framework deal that could open the government and set up further talks on the ACA subsidies. But others — including Jeffries — want nothing less than an ironclad legislative deal in writing to extend the subsidies first.

“We’ve seen the president — once Democrats and Republicans have agreed on budgets — come along later to rescind those things. So we need something more, much stronger than a promise,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) told reporters last week.

Schumer, for now, is content to highlight the divides on the Republican side — and he is pushing Trump to get involved in talks now.

“Johnson and a whole lot of his caucus don’t like the ACA, don’t want to do the extensions. A lot of Republican senators in the Senate do, but they’re not enough,” Schumer said Friday. “You need Johnson, and you particularly need Trump, to get it done.”

Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Lummis blocks resolution denouncing Trump’s ‘public service announcements’

Published

5 hours ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A Republican senator blocked a resolution Tuesday that would have denounced President Donald Trump’s recent campaign-style ads funded with taxpayer dollars.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming objected to Sen. Maggie Hassan’s nonbinding resolution, which said it was the sense of the Senate that the ads “should not be paid for by the United States government.” Because Hassan (D-N.H.) was trying to pass the resolution without a formal vote, any one senator could block it.

“It just tells the president that he is wrong — that these ads need to be pulled down and that they should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Hassan said on the floor.

Lummis however countered that Hassan’s concerns about the ads say “more about her side of the aisle” and compared Trump’s ads to President Bill Clinton’s antidrug campaign, among others. One of the ads Trump is running at taxpayer expense is virtually identical to a 2024 campaign ad.

“When a Democratic president tells Americans what to do, it’s a public service,” Lummis said. “When this president tells Americans that liberty is worth defending, it’s a problem.”

Congress

Republicans wanted Jack Smith to give them a smoking gun. They got a gaffe instead.

Published

5 hours ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It started with a pledge to expose a Biden-era conspiracy to take down President Donald Trump. It ended with a botched attack over basketball tickets.

Armed with subpoena power in Congress and a friendly Justice Department on their side, Republican lawmakers have spent two years promising to expose former special counsel Jack Smith as the leader of an anti-Trump witch hunt that morphed into a full-blown attempt to take down the Republican establishment.

Smith’s appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee — his third time testifying under oath on Capitol Hill, the second time in public — was supposed to be a watershed moment for the GOP intent on extracting a smoking gun ahead of the midterm elections. Instead, the hearing was most memorable for the fusillade of insults hurled by the panel’s Republicans.

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri unsuccessfully sought to implicate Smith in a plot to attend a sporting event as a cover for investigating Trump election interference claims, then called him a “dirtbag.” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the former prosecutor made him “want to throw up in my mouth.” And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, comparing him to “Javert from ‘Les Mis,’” said Smith’s probe was “the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.”

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley insisted the hearing was “not the end” of his investigative work, but the four-hour grilling had the feeling of finality. The Republican-led probe into Smith’s efforts to bring criminal charges against the president has already stretched for two years, and Democrats stand a chance of retaking control of Congress in the midterms.

And at least one Republican member of the panel, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, said he believed the investigation into Smith had run its course in Congress.

“At this point, I think we kind of know what we know,” Hawley said in an interview following the hearing. “I think at this point, it’s up to the DOJ to either prosecute him for perjury for lying under oath, which I think the House has formally referred him for … or try to have him disbarred.”

Judiciary Committee Republicans did little Tuesday to challenge the substance of Smith’s criminal case against Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Smith reinforced his contention that Trump mounted an unprecedented criminal assault on the transfer of power, seeking to derail Joe Biden’s victory and then capitalizing on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol — unleashed by a mob of his supporters — to further that goal.

Smith also defended the work of his staff and decried the Trump-led Justice Department’s decision to fire them as “illegal.” And he made his most forceful case yet that the probe he led was actually fueled by Republican witnesses who broke from Trump over his handling of the 2020 election.

”It’s very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses, the people who were the difference between the rule of law and not, were Republicans,” Smith said.

When Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) ripped into Smith for secretly obtaining her late brother Lindsey Graham’s phone records as part of his inquiry, Smith hailed him as a “patriotic public servant” and who likely would have been a featured witness in Trump’s trial — because he eventually concluded Trump’s election fraud claims were false.

Smith similarly hailed Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and former Vice President Mike Pence as heroic figures who were crucial witnesses against the president. Smith ultimately dropped his case after Trump prevailed in the 2024 election. Though he said he remained confident in his ability to secure a conviction at trial, Smith emphasized that Justice Department policy forbids criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

When they weren’t lobbing personal attacks at Smith, Republicans homed in on what they described as procedural flaws of Smith’s investigation. They criticized him for subpoenaing phone records of members of Congress, like Lindsey Graham, who communicated with Trump and his administration during the post-2020 election timeframe.

They hit Smith for securing court orders that prevented telecom companies from alerting lawmakers to those subpoenas, and challenged his respect for the constitutional protections members of Congress are afforded to avoid scrutiny from federal prosecutors. That line of questioning produced one of the only bipartisan moments of the hearing: a pitch by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) for legislation that would limit the ability of prosecutors to obtain secrecy orders when they issue subpoenas in sensitive probes.

Lee is poised to be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress if Republicans maintain control of the chamber.

Smith used his appearance, as well as friendly questions from the panel’s Democrats, to parry GOP criticism of his tactics. He followed all Justice Department policies and laws, he insisted, and said he had respect for the separation of powers — including Congress’ constitutional protection from executive branch scrutiny.

Smith said he never targeted GOP lawmakers but pursued critical evidence of Trump’s actions and state of mind that would have been necessary to prove his case in court, and he repeatedly returned to an overarching contention: that he had enough evidence to convict Trump of “one of the most serious crimes that’s ever happened in our nation’s history.”

He also reminded lawmakers what he couldn’t say: anything at all about his charges against Trump for hoarding classified information at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s findings in that probe remain sealed from public view by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has ordered the Justice Department to keep it secret.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said subpoenaing that report would be one of Democrats’ first actions should they have the majority in the next Congress.

Ultimately, Smith’s hearing Tuesday may end up being best remembered for a high-profile gaffe by Schmitt, who accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta at the very moment local prosecutor Fani Willis — who had also charged Trump over the 2020 election scheme — was facing damaging questions about her conduct. As proof, displayed on an elaborate poster, Schmitt offered text messages suggesting that Smith attended a basketball game on Feb. 3, 2024 — the same day the Atlanta Hawks played the Golden State Warriors.

Schmitt revelled as a clearly flummoxed Smith struggled to discern what Schmitt was talking about.

“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Schmitt said. “So I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself.”

After a few moments, Smith did recall having attended a basketball game — but not in Atlanta. It wasn’t the Hawks his colleagues were discussing in a series of texts, Smith explained, but the Hawkeyes, whose star Caitlin Clark was playing in Maryland that day.

“It was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play, and so we went to the game,” Smith said.

Immediately after the exchange, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) fact-checked Schmitt in real-time, confirming the date of the Iowa-Maryland game and suggested that her colleagues’ reliance on “false information based on confusion about the name of a team” warranted an apology.

“You don’t call someone a dirtbag when you haven’t done your own research and you don’t have your facts straight,” Klobuchar said after the hearing. “And it just shows how completely out of control this whole thing was.”

Schmitt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his allegations.

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Cruz blocks Senate Democrats’ bid to pass AI safety bill

Published

8 hours ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.

“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.

“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.

As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.

In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.

Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.