Trump Targets Democratic Leaders With First Shutdown Funding Freeze

Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened that he would weaponize a government shutdown against Democrats by having his White House budget director, Russell Vought, slash “things they like.”

The shutdown came overnight, and on Wednesday morning, Vought announced plans to freeze funds appropriated toward infrastructure projects in the state represented by the two top-ranking congressional Democrats.

On X, Vought said that “roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold,” specifically naming the Hudson Tunnel project and Second Avenue subway.

The Hudson Tunnel project is a plan to construct new and improved rail tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey, expanding service along the country’s busiest rail route. The Second Avenue subway is planned to connect a station in East Harlem, in an area that has been a “subway desert” for more than 85 years, to one in Lower Manhattan.

Vought said the funds are being withheld to ensure they are not being used for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes, though he did not immediately elaborate on the purported relationship between the two key transit infrastructure projects and the right-wing bugbear that is DEI.

It’s difficult to interpret Vought’s choice as anything but an attempt to punish Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both of New York, who are the minority leaders in the House and Senate, respectively.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz—who is currently leading the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. assets—told former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2015 that they had to “embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” Now, as Oracle moves to take control of TikTok’s algorithm, Catz and Oracle chief technology officer (and avowed Zionist) Larry Ellison will seek to do just that. 

Catz’s message, first reported on by Responsible Statecraft and obtained in a hack of Barak’s email, was titled “I’d like your input.” 

“We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college,” Catz wrote. “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way they can consume it.” 

Catz, who was still head of Oracle at the time, also mentioned that her sister, Saritz Catz, was a “longtime Hollywood writer-producer” as well as a “prominent pro-Israel activist and AIPAC national leader.” She added that her sister was working on a reality show, Women of the IDF, meant to “humanize the IDF in the eyes of the American public.” 

The Israeli American CEO of one of the country’s most powerful companies was asking Israel’s former prime minister for advice on how to better spread pro-Israel propaganda back in 2015. Now she’ll control the algorithm that many conservatives and liberals alike believe is responsible for helping shatter Israel’s (tailored) image among the vast majority of young Americans, who have woken up to the reality of  Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. 

This report comes just days after current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly admitted that TikTok was the most important arena to push pro-Israel propaganda in. 

“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield.… The most important purchase going on right now is … TikTok. Number one. And I hope it goes through because it can be consequential. And the other one? X. We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. We should talk to him. Now, if we can get those two things, we get a lot.… We have to fight the fight, to give direction to the Jewish people and give direction to our non-Jewish friends.”

While sources say that Catz will be “nowhere near the algorithm of TikTok,” her past actions and emails paint a very clear agenda. 

Qatar now has NATO-level security protections, thanks to the Trump administration.

In an executive order signed Monday, Donald Trump pledged that the tiny, energy-rich, non-NATO ally would receive the same level of protection from the United States as some of America’s most powerful allies.

The order specifies, “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.” It further reads that, in the event of such an attack, the U.S. will undertake “diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” measures to defend both America and Qatar.

The strengthened alliance comes weeks after Trump effectively permitted an Israeli strike on the Middle Eastern nation. America’s failure to take action to stop Israel’s attack left those in the Qatari capital with a sense of shock and betrayal, according to CNN, especially after Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani had agreed to act as a mediator to end the war between Israel and Gaza. He later referred to Israel’s attack as “state terror,” and said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had broken “every international law” and must be “brought to justice.”

The Qatari leader’s directive followed a stateside visit by Netanyahu Monday and a Trump-organized call to Qatar, in which Netanyahu “expressed his deep regret” for killing six people in the attack, according to the White House.

Qatar and the U.S. are strategic allies: The Biden administration deemed Qatar to be a major non-NATO ally in 2022. But the Gulf nation’s attempts to sidle up to Washington became more brazen after Trump returned to office.

Just months ago, Qatar solidified a deal with the Trump Organization to build a Trump-branded golf course and a beachside project as part of a $5.5 billion development project. The tiny nation also bestowed a wildly controversial superluxury jumbo jet to Trump, all in an apparent attempt to shore up its relationship with America’s notoriously flighty leader.

The Supreme Court will allow Lisa Cook to remain on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite President Donald Trump’s attempt to oust her.

In a brief one-page order Wednesday, the court said Cook could keep her position pending oral arguments early next year, denying Trump’s application to stay an appeals court decision keeping Cook in place.

“The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is deferred pending oral argument in January 2026,” the order stated.

Trump attempted to fire Cook in August over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte—who’s made similar accusations against a number of the president’s enemies. But the move was initially blocked by a federal judge, who said the claim had nothing to do with Cook’s actual job.

Last month, an appeals court said that Cook was likely to succeed in her statutory claim that she’d been fired without “cause,” as well as her procedural claim that she did not receive her due process prior to her removal. But federal attorney John Sauer argued that she was not entitled to due process, and that Trump has sweeping discretion to fire whomever he wanted as long as he claimed it was related to their job.

This latest Supreme Court decision is a notably different outcome from similar challenges to Trump’s firings. Last month, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The conservative justices also had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to reexamine the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing his New Deal policies. Depending on how the court rules, Trump could be granted sweeping discretion to fire members of independent agencies, like Cook, and Justice Clarence Thomas has already hinted that past precedents may be turned on their heads.

Last week, an amicus brief was filed arguing that removing Cook would “threaten [the] independence and erode public confidence in the Fed,” stressing the historical importance of the agency’s freedom from political considerations. The brief was signed by every living former Federal Reserve chair, and several other economic policy experts that spanned political boundaries.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump used his merchandise to mock Democratic leaders during a meeting while pretending he was working to avert a government shutdown.

The president shared multiple photographs on Truth Social Wednesday of his meeting the day before with House House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Truth Social, showing two bright red “Trump 2028” hats sitting on the Resolute Desk.

Speaking to CNN’s Abby Phillip Tuesday night, Jeffries said the president hadn’t tried to hand out his merch, suggesting that they “just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting.”

“It was the strangest thing ever,” Jeffries said. “And I just looked at the hat, looked at JD Vance who was seated to my left, and said, ‘Don’t you got a problem with this?’ And he said, ‘No comment.’ And that was the end of it.”

It’s possible Trump thought he could win the Democrats over with free hats. In an effort to pass his behemoth budget bill in August, Trump had invited Republican holdouts to meet with him personally in the Oval Office, and they left with signed merchandise, photos with the president, and a new attitude.

But this time, it doesn’t seem that Trump was using his merchandise as part of a charm offensive. More likely, he wanted the meeting to serve as an unwitting photo op to create visuals highlighting the futility of negotiating with a president and a party intent on being in power for the next five years. The Democrats left with nothing to show for it.

Vance also mocked the Democrats over the hats’ presence, saying Wednesday morning on Fox & Friends he thought the hats “made the … minority leader in both the House and Senate very uncomfortable.”

For his part, Vance has expressed no displeasure with Trump’s threats to defy the Twenty-Second Amendment, curb-stomping his own potential run. The president’s fundraising efforts have kicked 5 percent of donations to the vice president’s PAC, so maybe Trump’s number two is not too bothered by hat sales.

It would be a mistake to think that Trump ever took the prompt of working with Democrats seriously. The 79-year-old had already shared an AI video falsely depicting Schumer criticizing the Democrats’ “woke trans bullshit” next to a silent Jeffries in a superimposed Mexican sombrero with a curled mustache. Trump posted a similar video again Tuesday.