Trump Ignores Crucial Question on Insurrection Act in Chicago

Invoking the Insurrection Act is still very much on the table, according to the president.

Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to enforce a nineteenth-century law that would let him utilize the military for domestic purposes, allowing the troops to police and arrest citizens. If invoked, Trump would be able to deploy active duty forces in order to enact his agenda, which involves federalizing the law enforcement agencies of Democratic cities.

“I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump has claimed that the troops are a necessary precaution to safeguard federal buildings and agents enacting his administration’s immigration agenda.

“If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe,” Trump continued.

The law has not been invoked since 1992, when President George H. W. Bush used it to subdue riots in Los Angeles after the local police force brutalized Rodney King.

Trump has floated the idea of leveraging the Insurrection Act for years, though the idea has picked up steam since his inauguration.

But the president has so far not aligned his desire for militaristic order with quelling real violence in the country. After mass shootings devastated communities in Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Illinois late last month, the president decided to order the National Guard to the hipster paradise of Portland. His rationale for sending them, according to the president himself, was not informed by statistics or data, but because of something he saw on TV.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said at the time, referring to a phone call he had with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place.… It looks like terrible.”

So far, federal judges have temporarily staved off Trump’s efforts to force the National Guard into Oregon. In the meantime, though, the president has directed the Guard to deploy to Chicago and Memphis. He has already federalized the law enforcement of Washington, D.C., as well as areas of Los Angeles.

“What President Trump is trying to do is an abuse of power,” Kotek told PBS News Hour Monday. “And it is a threat to our democracy. Governors should be in command of their National Guards, our citizen soldiers who sign up to stand up in an emergency to deal with real problems.

President Donald Trump came off unintelligibly Tuesday while comparing the Democratic Party to Somalia.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump appeared to brag that he didn’t even know the names of the Democratic lawmakers hoping to speak with him about ending the government shutdown.

“I’m getting calls from Democrats wanting to meet. I never even heard their names before. And they’re claiming to be lead—the Democrats have no leader. They remind me of Somalia,” Trump said.

Appearing pleased with his weirdly racist analogy, Trump continued babbling.

“And I met the president of Somalia, told him about the problem it’s got. I said, ‘You got somebody from Somalia that’s telling us how to run our country, from Somalia.’ I said, ‘Would you like to take her back?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want her!’” Trump ranted incoherently.

Trump was referring to Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, who has previously been targeted with threats of deportation by racist Republicans. The president, who has a tendency to repeat himself, was rehashing a joke he made earlier this month at Omar’s expense when he claimed he’d asked Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud if the Minnesota lawmaker could be “taken back” to her home country.

Trump’s insistence that he doesn’t know who the Democrats are, and that they have no leaders, tells you everything you need to know about how seriously Trump is taking efforts to end the government shutdown. His own spokesperson revealed Monday that she wasn’t aware of any efforts the president had taken to speak with Democrats directly, but he is instead working through his own proxies in the House and Senate.

Trump previously met with very real Democratic leaders House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (whom Trump has repeatedly called a “Palestinian,” as another form of racist insult) ahead of the shutdown last week. But the president used the meeting as a meme photo op before proceeding to blame Democrats for the shutdown, as well as his administration’s efforts to enact massive layoffs and illegally withhold back pay from furloughed workers.

President Donald Trump gave the least reassuring answer Tuesday about ensuring federal workers receive backpay after the government shutdown.

During a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump was asked about the White House’s position on paying back furloughed federal workers for the shutdown. While federal law requires the government to provide backpay for federal workers sent home during the shutdown, the Trump administration is reportedly making preparations to renege on its obligation to pay up once the government reopens.

“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump replied.

“I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you’re talking about,” Trump continued. “But for the most part, we’re gonna take care of our people. There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’re gonna take care of them in a different way.”

Trump limply attempted to blame the Democrats for his potentially lawless acts—but it’s Russell Vought’s White House Office of Management and Budget that is behind the newest threat.

A drafted memo from OMB reportedly offered a wild new interpretation of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act Trump signed during a previous shutdown in 2019, undermining assurances that federal employees will eventually get paid. OMB also quietly deleted a line from a document about Frequently Asked Questions During a Lapse in Appropriations that referred to the GEFTA rule that “employees will be paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday morning that paying federal workers was something he hoped for—but not something he could promise. Meanwhile, the Louisiana Republican’s own website states: “Under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening.”

When asked why only some people would receive backpay, Trump simply replied, “You’re gonna have to figure it out.”

But it’s not clear who exactly the president believes will receive pay, or why. During a shutdown, government employees are either furloughed or “excepted” from furlough, meaning they continue to work and earn pay, but their pay is postponed until appropriations are authorized. And Trump has already picked some convenient projects to keep federal employees working on, ensuring that immigration enforcement and tariff offices are fully staffed, while threatening to gut Democrats’ “favorite” programs. Trump could potentially plan to pay those working on his own pet projects, and illegally withhold funding from everyone else.

It’s also not clear how the president intends to deal with those he believes do not deserve pay. The president could potentially be referring to the scores of federal employees OMB has instructed agencies to lay off amid the shutdown, in an unprecedented move he certainly appears to be enjoying.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he hopes federal workers receive their back pay, making it seem possible that they won’t—even though he knows federal law requires that they be compensated.

Speaking on the House floor, the Louisiana Republican suggested that there was new analysis that showed that federal workers furloughed during the government shutdown might not be entitled to back pay.

“I hope that the furloughed workers receive back pay, of course,” Johnson said immediately after, claiming that was why he and President Donald Trump had begged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to spare federal workers from a government shutdown.

“We don’t want this to happen,” Johnson said.

But as Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer, noted on X, this was a blatantly dishonest gambit—and Johnson knew it. As Johnson’s own website states: “Under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening.”

It seems that Trump’s administration may be preparing to withhold back pay from federal workers in the president’s latest ploy to force Democrats to abandon their fight for health care subsidies.

Axios reported Tuesday that a draft of a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget claimed that federal workers may not be entitled to just compensation after the government reopens, under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act Trump signed during a previous shutdown in 2019.

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,” one senior White House official told Axios. OPM’s draft memo claimed that the law had been previously misconstrued to ensure back pay to furloughed workers.

The White House claimed that an amendment to the law assuring workers will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse” refers to when federal employees will be specifically appropriated funds by Congress, and not how it has always been understood as the completion of the shutdown. A joint resolution that accompanied the 2019 amendment said that the government would pay “obligations incurred.”

It seems OMB is preparing to move forward with holding federal employees’ pay hostage. Government Executive reported that OMB had quietly deleted a line from a document about Frequently Asked Questions During a Lapse in Appropriations that referred to the GEFTA rule that “employees will be paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

But OPM’s special instructions for agencies affected by a lapse in appropriations starting October 1, 2025, stated just the opposite. “The appropriate retroactive pay for periods of furlough and excepted work will be provided after the lapse ends, as required by law,” the instructions say.

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who helped write the 2019 back-pay measure, told Government Executive the meaning of the statute was clear.

“The law is the law,” he said. “After the uncertainty federal employees faced in the 2019 Trump Shameful Shutdown, Senator Cardin and I worked to ensure federal employees would receive guaranteed back pay for any future shutdowns. That legislation was signed into law—and there is nothing this administration can do to change that.”

This isn’t the only dirty trick the administration has pulled to intimidate Democrats into submission. Trump has also threatened to execute mass layoffs amid the government shutdown. Administration officials have insisted that the Democrats forced the president’s hand, but the move is entirely in line with Trump’s agenda as outlined in Project 2025, and the president has touted the “unprecedented opportunity” to make sweeping permanent cuts to programs and departments that he doesn’t like.

Attorney General Pam Bondi somehow managed to be smug and combative while offering an incredibly weak answer to a basic question about her department’s handling of the Epstein files. 

“So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?” Senator Dick Durbin asked Bondi during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. 

Bondi paused for a beat. 

“To flag records for President Trump?” she said, as if she was confused or unfamiliar with what Durbin asked. 

“To flag any records which included his name.” 

Bondi shook her head, smiling slightly. 

“I’m not going to discuss anything about that with you, senator.” 

“Eventually you’re going to have to answer for your conduct in this,” Durbin replied. “You won’t do it today, but eventually you will.” 

This all goes back to July, when Durbin’s office found that Bondi told personnel to flag any mention of Trump in the Epstein files. It was later revealed that once flagged, Trump’s name was redacted from the files.  

This is such a clear example of the attorney general—historically a politically neutral position (or at least meant to be such)—openly caping for her president. If she can’t be transparent and honest in a Senate hearing, how are we expected to take anything she says seriously?