Democrat Politics

The Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded a blatantly unlawful federal aid shutdown, which threatened everything from government health care programs to food stamps, veteran resources, and more.

Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), issued a two-sentence memo Wednesday, saying that the federal funding shutdown “is rescinded.”

“If you have questions about implementing the President’s executive orders, please contact your agency general counsel,” the memo said.

The shutdown was already temporarily blocked by a federal judge after a group of nonprofits sued the administration, saying the move was unlawful since the funding had already been appropriated by Congress, and the administration did not have the authority to unilaterally withhold it.

As the lawsuit said: 

The Memo fails to explain the source of OMB’s purported legal authority to gut every grant program in the federal government; it fails to consider the reliance interest of the many grant recipients, including those to whom money had already been promised; and it announces a policy of targeting grant recipients based in part on those recipients’ First Amendment rights and with no bearing on the recipients’ eligibility to receive federal funds.

Backlash to the initial funding shutdown was fierce, with everyone from GOP governors to organizations like Meals on Wheels, Head Start, and charities that assist unhoused veterans expressing concerns that the funding halt would prevent them from providing critical services.

The fate of Medicaid—a government-run health insurance program that serves more than 72 million Americans—was also hanging in the balance, with reports that state-run Medicaid portals went down after the funding shutdown was issued. 

Democrats hammered Republicans for the shutdown and threatened to shut down votes in the Senate until it was lifted.

As criticism mounted, the Trump administration first tried to claim that the shutdown only applied to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, which was a lie.

White House Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was then peppered with questions from reporters during her first daily briefing about the pause, and she had no idea whether programs like Medicaid were impacted.

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Leavitt was later asked what the administration had to say to groups like Meals on Wheels that were worried about making payroll during the shutdown.

Leavitt said that groups who feel they are deserving of funding should call Trump’s nominee to lead OMB, Russ Vought, and make their case—even though the groups were already legally guaranteed to receive the funding as appropriated by Congress.

“The line to his office is open for federal government agencies across the board, and if they feel that programs are necessary and in line with the president’s agenda, then the Office of Management and Budget will review those policies,” she said.

xAsked how organizations that rely on federal funding should make payroll, Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says they should call Russ Vought and make a case— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-28T18:26:15.345Z

When backlash continued to mount, the Trump administration then blamed the media for the public fear about losing access to critical services. 

“Welcome to the first dumb media hoax of 2025. OMB ordered a review of funding to NGOs, foreign governments and large discretionary contracts. It explicitly excluded all aid and benefit programs. Leftwing media outright lied and some people fell for the hoax,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff and slimeball Stephen Miller wrote on X.

A day later, the administration completely folded by rescinding the memo on the shutdown, but not before forcing Republican lawmakers to defend it by getting them on record supporting the chaotic, unlawful act that would have harmed millions of Americans.

“I fully support it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “This is the appropriate thing for a new administration to do.”

“This is not unusual for an administration to pause funding and to take a hard look and scrub of how these programs are being spent and how they interact with a lot of the executive orders that the president signed,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said.

Democrats, meanwhile, took a victory lap for helping create the outrage over the shutdown that got the administration to fold.

“This is Trump’s first major loss. When we fight, we win,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote on X. 

“We may not have majorities in the House and the Senate,” she continued, “but we DO have the power to loudly educate and mobilize against the mass looting the Trump admin is attempting against our veterans, healthcare, education, and more.”

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House Republicans held a three-day retreat at President Donald Trump’s crappy resort in Doral, Florida, where they were supposed to nail down a plan for how to pass his tax cuts for the rich. But according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Republicans are leaving the event with no plan for how to move forward, keeping the party in its state of disarray.

“After two days at our House Republican winter retreat, we still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one. Not even if we are in a one bill or two bill framework, even though President Trump (who prefers one big beautiful bill) literally told us here at the start of our conference that he now does not care if it’s one or two,” Greene wrote in a lengthy post on X.

Republicans want to use a process called budget reconciliation to pass Trump’s agenda of cutting taxes for the rich and deporting part of the country’s workforce. Budget reconciliation allows the Senate to bypass the filibuster (which requires 60 votes) and advance legislation with a simple majority, thereby letting the GOP pass Trump’s agenda without having to earn a single Democratic vote.

But budget reconciliation has a major caveat: Bills passed through this procedural method cannot add to the deficit past a 10-year cutoff. (That is why much of the legislation that passes this way sunsets after 10 years.) That means Republicans have to find a way to pay for the massive tax cuts for the rich and Trump’s expensive deportation plans. 

In order to do that—and line the pockets of the wealthy—Republicans have proposed making cuts to programs that help working-class Americans. 

Some of the GOP’s proposed cuts have leaked, and they include cutting food stamps and school lunch programs for needy children, imposing work requirements to receive Medicaid, taxing scholarship money, eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction (which would make it more expensive to own a home), ending tax credits for child and dependent care, and making work commutes more expensive by allowing for employer transportation benefits to be taxable, among other things. 

Agreeing on what cuts to make should be the hard part for the GOP and its extremely narrow majority.

So the fact that Republicans can’t agree on the basic idea of whether to split the tax cuts and deportation plan into two bills is a bad sign for the party’s ability to pass the legislation down the road.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, as Republicans were set to leave the retreat, House Speaker Mike Johnson told people not to worry, he’s got things under control, saying Republicans are “right on schedule.” 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

But even Greene isn’t buying that.

“I very much want House Republicans to be successful, all of us, with our razor thin majority. Next time we meet, I hope to know a framework of our plan and I hope this doesn’t turn into another bill with thousands of pages dumped on us with less than 72 hours to read it all before we have to vote on the eve of another government shutdown,” she wrote in her post. “But why would I expect different?”

Ultimately, it appears the only thing Republicans accomplished at their three-day retreat is lining Trump’s pockets. By holding the three-day event at his resort in Doral, Florida, Trump personally profited—a disgusting violation of ethics. (Just six years ago, The Washington Post reported that the resort was in “steep decline.”)

But for Greene, throwing money at Trump was the one benefit of the getaway.

“I would normally complain about spending money that didn’t accomplish anything, but we stayed at Trump Doral, which is a phenomenal resort, and the weather was sunny and in the 70’s,” Greene wrote, giving a nice little plug for Trump’s shitty resort near the Miami airport.

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The Department of Justice on Wednesday announced it is dropping its appeal against Donald Trump’s two codefendants in the classified documents case, officially letting two men who allegedly conspired with Trump to impede the government’s investigation into Trump’s willful mishandling of the country’s secrets off the hook.

Walt Nauta, who has served as Trump’s valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-a-Lago, were both indicted in 2023 and charged with conspiring with Trump to withhold classified documents. 

The DOJ accused Nauta of helping Trump hide boxes of classified documents from federal investigators. The DOJ also accused Nauta and De Oliveira of deleting video footage of the documents being moved around at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Judge Aileen Cannon

Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, who worked her hardest to delay the case against Trump and his codefendants, ultimately dismissed it in July with a ridiculous ruling that special counsel Jack Smith, who sought the indictments, was illegally appointed.

The DOJ was appealing the dismissal of Nauta and De Oliveria’s case, but now that Trump won and installed yes-men, it dropped that appeal.

“The United States of America moves to voluntarily dismiss its appeal with prejudice. The government has conferred with counsel for Appellees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who do not object to the voluntary dismissal,” U.S. Attorney Hayden P. O’Byrne wrote in a filing on Wednesday.

This is the final nail in the coffin of ever holding Trump and his codefendants accountable in federal court for flagrantly breaking the law by taking classified documents from the White House and refusing to give them back.

The DOJ already pulled this case—as well as the case accusing Trump of trying to steal the 2020 election—citing the precedent that the DOJ cannot prosecute a sitting president.

Of course, Trump is and always will be a convicted felon, after he was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments he made to a Playboy model and a porn actress to keep them from going public about sexual affairs he carried out with both women.

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Democrats on Tuesday flipped an Iowa state Senate seat in a district Donald Trump carried by 21 percentage points just a few months earlier, an incredible special election result that may serve as an early warning signal for Republicans about the 2026 midterms.

Democrat Mike Zimmer defeated Republican Kate Whittington, 52% to 48%, in a special election for Senate District 35—a rural seat located on the state’s eastern side. 

In November 2022, Republican Chris Cournoyer defeated her Democratic opponent, 61% to 39%, in this same seat—making Zimmer’s win a massive shift toward Democrats. (Cournoyer resigned the seat to become Iowa’s lieutenant governor, creating the vacancy.)

Zimmer’s win should give Republicans a case of heartburn since special election results often correlate with the outcome in the next midterm election. 

Democrat Mike Zimmer

Democrats saw a similar overperformance in special elections in 2017, after Trump took office the first time. Those special election victories turned out to be the precursor to Democrats taking back the U.S. House and winning big in state-legislative races in 2018.

“This earthquake victory in Iowa puts Republicans across the country on notice,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “In a ruby red district that Trump won by 21 points, DLCC candidate Mike Zimmer clinched a comfortable win against his extreme MAGA opponent. Tonight’s win marks the first flip of the cycle and builds on key majority-making wins in Virginia earlier this month. The DLCC is starting the new cycle strong just a month into 2025—from battlegrounds to Republican territory. We have dozens more special elections on the horizon—we’re only just getting started.”

It wasn’t just Zimmer who overperformed in a special election on Tuesday.

In Minnesota, Democrats won a state Senate district by a 91%-to-9% margin to win a majority in the chamber. In November, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris carried this same district, with 83% to Trump’s 14%—making Tuesday’s results a sizable swing toward Democrats, according to data from the Downballot.

Ultimately, Zimmer’s performance also gives Democrats hope in upcoming congressional special elections. 

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York is expected to leave her seat to be Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, and her district’s partisanship is similar to that of the Iowa state Senate seat Democrats just won.

“Democrats just flipped a Trump +21 Iowa state Senate seat in the first special election since Trump assumed office. Of note: New York’s 21st District, which Elise Stefanik is vacating soon, was also Trump +21 in 2024,” Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of the election-analysis outlet Inside Elections, wrote in a post on X.

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On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump fired two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, potentially hobbling a federal agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws.

Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, who were appointed by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, were let go before their terms were set to expire. Without their presence on the EEOC board a quorum cannot be reached and the agency will be unable to carry out many of its duties.

“Removing me, along with Commissioner Samuels, well before the expiration of our terms is unprecedented and will undermine the efforts of this independent agency to do the important work of protecting employees from discrimination, supporting employers’ compliance efforts, and expanding public awareness and understanding of federal employment laws,” Burrows said in a statement.

She also said she would “explore all legal options available to me.”

The EEOC was formed in 1965 in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. It is tasked with investigating allegations of discrimination across a wide swath of issues including race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.

The agency’s web page detailing what type of discrimination is against the law has been removed. The page was intact on Jan. 7, when the Biden administration was in power.

In an example of the sort of action that EEOC will be unable to do without a quorum, the agency announced on Jan. 6 that it got United Airlines to agree to a settlement in a case of creating a hostile work environment based on race. The company paid $99,000 after being sued for allowing an Asian American employee to be racially harassed and assaulted.

Since taking office, Trump has used the power of the presidency to attack civil rights under the guise of opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Conservatives have falsely claimed that such programs discriminate, rather than address the long-term effects of systemic racism and discrimination.

Trump’s actions have led to the removal of anti-racism curriculum throughout the government, including in the military. He has also signed executive orders nullifying previous orders put in place to combat racial segregation, including one that had been in place since 1965. The Trump administration has even told federal employees to snitch on one another, encouraging them to inform on employees working against discrimination.

For decades the conservative movement has sought to roll back the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Using complaints about DEI, Trump is now acting to undo decades of progress.

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The Trump administration’s unprecedented, sweeping freeze on $3 trillion in federal grants and aid sent shockwaves through vulnerable communities and every level of government on Tuesday, but Democratic attorneys general quickly banded together to fight back. Twenty-three states filed a lawsuit just minutes after U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan blocked the freeze Tuesday afternoon. The administrative stay pauses the action until Monday, according to the Associated Press.

Donald Trump’s latest stunt would have halted essential programs like Medicaid and Head Start, which are vital lifelines for low-income communities who rely on them for school meals, health care, and early childhood education. The funding freeze also jeopardizes critical education initiatives like Pell Grants and ESSA funding, which help students access college, and child care block grants that support working families.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii announced on Tuesday that health care providers in multiple states had been locked out of the Medicaid portal, essentially blocking Medicaid payments and jeopardizing medical treatment.

“This is a Trump shutdown, except this time it’s unlawful,” he wrote on BlueSky. 

xMultiple states locked out of Medicaid portal. This is a Trump shutdown, except this time it’s unlawful.— Brian Schatz (@schatz.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 8:27 AM

A mere four hours after the funding freeze first made headlines, Democratic attorneys generals from six states held a press conference to announce they were forming a multistate coalition to sue the Trump administration over the shutdown. Filed late Tuesday, the lawsuit seeks an immediate court order to stop the policy’s enforcement and keep funds flowing and was brought by Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called Trump’s order “reckless, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional.”

“When the president and his administration, with the stroke of a pen, issues an unconstitutional and unlawful directive that freezes that funding simply because he doesn’t like something about our state, about a particular person in our state, about a policy that duly enacted in our state that’s totally unrelated … he not only violates the laws and the constitution of this nation, he violates the norms of who we are as a people,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. 

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha emphasized that Trump’s shutdown affects everyone, not just the vengeful president’s perceived political enemies. 

“If you drive on a road, you’re impacted,” Neronha said. “If you get health care, you’re impacted. If your children are being educated, you’re impacted. If you believe in public safety, you’re impacted. If you’re a man or woman in blue, and all of you who are protected by them, you’re impacted.” 

Some of Trump’s reliable Republican cronies were quick to defend the brazen move, including Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia, who defended the decision to take school meals away from children during a Tuesday interview with CNN.  

McCormick said those kids should work for McDonald’s instead of “sponging off the government.”

“Before I was even 13 years old, I was picking berries in the field before child labor laws that precluded that. I was a paper boy, and when I was in high school, I worked my entire way through,” McCormick bragged. “You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work? I think we need to have a top-down review.”

One Bluesky user sarcastically commented, “Hey, hungry 8-year-olds. Get off your lazy ass and get an after school job to pay for your food!”

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced that the House Democratic Caucus will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to strategize about how to challenge Trump’s order in court and what message to communicate to constituents.

“Republicans are ripping off hardworking Americans by stealing taxpayer dollars, grants, and financial assistance as part of their corrupt scheme to pay off billionaire donors and wealthy corporations,” Jeffries said in a statement. “The Republican Rip Off will raise the cost of living for the working class, while hurting children, seniors, veterans, first responders, houses of worship and everyday Americans in need.”

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While President Donald Trump wreaks havoc in the White House, one of his most trusted cronies announced plans to introduce new changes to the briefing room.

In her first press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced plans to allow “new media voices” to attend her press conferences. Notably, that could include anyone ranging from TikTok content creators to podcasters to reporters from conservative news outlets that generally don’t challenge the president.

“It is a priority of this White House to honor the First Amendment and it is a fact that Americans are consuming their news media from various platforms, especially young people,” Leavitt said. “As the youngest press secretary in history, thanks to President Trump, I take great pride in opening up this room to new media voices to share the president’s message with as many Americans as possible.”

She added that the White House will now “encourage anybody in this country, whether you are a TikTok content creator, a blogger, [or] podcaster,” who is creating “legitimate news content, no matter the medium,” to apply for White House press credentials. 

We’re already seeing how this might play out. While the first question during Leavitt’s briefing went to a new media voice, it wasn’t from a Washington outsider. Axios cofounder Mike Allen asked the first question, which was about DeepSeek and artificial intelligence. Leavitt then pivoted to a reporter from the conservative Breitbart website.

According to the New York Post, several right-wing media personalities—including those from One America News Network, Real America’s Voice, and Steve Bannon’s War Room—were also among the first to ask questions.

The changes announced on Tuesday come after Trump practically declared war against the mainstream media. During his first term in office, the president castigated journalists who dared to challenge him and called the media the “enemy of the people.”

During his campaign for his second term, Trump largely eschewed several mainstream media outlets and instead opted to sit for interviews with podcasters and internet personalities. More recently, he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr,  who recently revived three complaints levied against ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News.

Leavitt first announced her want for new voices in the briefing room in December, during an appearance on Fox News. According to the Daily Beast, Leavitt then suggested that she wanted to reward the “podcasters and influencers” who helped Trump get elected to a second term in the White House.

Joe Rogan

By that, she seemed to be referring to the coterie of content creators, most of whom are white and male, who delivered an unfiltered, pro-Trump worldview to their audiences. Over the past several years, right-wing influencers have come to dominate talk radio—and those podcasts did indeed help determine last year’s presidential election. In the final days of his campaign, Trump appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world. 

And it’s not entirely surprising that the new Trump administration is throwing a bone at TikTok content creators, either. The president’s  low-rated inauguration was sponsored by the beleaguered app, which was temporarily banned after former President Joe Biden signed a law last year that would force the app to shut down in the states unless it was sold to another company.

In addition to giving these voices the same level of access that legitimate reporters receive, Leavitt said that, as part of his second term, Trump would speak to all media outlets, some of whom would receive specially designated chairs in the press room. She also said that Trump’s communications team would also work to restore the press passes for the more than 400 journalists whose passes were “wrongly revoked” by Biden’s administration. This occurred after guidelines were changed for all journalists seeking a “hard pass” for regular access to the White House.

“In keeping with this revolutionary media approach that President Trump deployed during the campaign, the Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media, who are seated in this room,” Leavitt said. “It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”

Of course, Democrats have courted influencers too. Remember that Biden hosted social media influencers in the White House in August as part of a Creator Economy Conference. What makes Leavitt’s announcement more daunting, though, is the fact that the Trump administration is essentially admonishing traditional news media and instead awarding conservative voices who will likely give him preferential treatment.

And as one Trump official predicted to Politico in November, imagine a briefing room where The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman sits next to Joe Rogan.

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President Donald Trump signed a handful of executive orders Monday, reshaping the U.S. military to fit his MAGA values. One in particular revives his old quarrel with transgender military personnel.

While he tried to ban transgender military members during his first term, Trump is taking a different approach this time around by targeting trans members under the guise of “troop readiness.”

Per the executive order, the military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology,” which is an indirect way of referring to transgender people without ever actually using the word “transgender.” 

It goes on to state that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”

The language of the order gives power to the highly controversial Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to determine who falls into the category of someone who is ready or not ready for war. 

Given Hegseth’s shiny record of bashing women and transgender people in military roles, it’s likely he will have no problem following in Trump’s transphobic footsteps. 

The Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal are already gearing up to sue the Trump administration for the “cruel and dangerous” order. 

“See you in court,” the two groups wrote in a collaborative Instagram post.

Protesters march against transphobia.

While Trump’s team claims those with “radical gender ideology” are a concern for “troop readiness,” Lambda Legal says otherwise. 

“[The executive order] will harm readiness because it will remove servicemembers that the military has invested millions of dollars in training,” Lambda Legal Counsel and Nonbinary and Transgender Rights Project Director Sasha Buchert told Daily Kos. 

“Thousands of transgender troops are combat-tested, having been deployed to war zones and executed missions with distinction, many of whom are senior personnel with decades of experience. It will hurt unit cohesion because it will discriminate against otherwise qualified service members, sending the message that identity rather than merit is what is important and that some discrimination is acceptable,” Buchert added.

Historically, transgender people had to serve in the military secretly until President Barack Obama removed a ban, effectively allowing transgender people to serve openly. Trump reinstated the ban in his first term, but it mostly stayed tied up in the courts until it was overturned by President Joe Biden. 

With Trump just more than a week into his second term, we are already seeing a slew of anti-trans measures taking place—which isn’t surprising considering the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in transphobic ads he ran during his presidential campaign. 

In addition to his military ban, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the federal government will exclusively define sex as either female or male, rejecting the fact that people can be trans, nonbinary, intersex, or otherwise genderqueer. This order is expected to be challenged in court as well. 

Attacks against the already vulnerable transgender community have been happening even before Trump started his second term. Not only are members of Congress attacking a colleague for being transgender, but GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson also snuck in a provision on the latest military defense spending bill banning gender-affirming care for military children. 

Additionally, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a similar case, United States v. Skrmetti, which will determine the constitutionality of banning medical care for transgender minors. 

Needless to say, civil rights groups are gearing up for a long four years ahead.

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It’s not that these acronyms didn’t exist before, but they’re being weaponized now. Suddenly DEI has replaced “diversity initiatives,” “civil rights,” “equal rights,” “fairness,” and “anti-discrimination” in everyday conversation. I would suggest that one small thing we can do is return to using those actual words.

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For all of his tough anti-China talk, President Donald Trump sure is doing the Chinese communist party a favor. Not only is he antagonizing all of China’s allies and starting trade wars across the globe, but he is now targeting Taiwan. 

Trump’s threat to impose 25-100% tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors and pharmaceuticals could break the U.S. economy.