Former staffers of first ladies expressed shock and sadness as wrecking crews began tearing down the East Wing of the White House to make way for President Trump's grand ballroom, the Daily Mail reported.
For decades, the East Wing was the home base of first ladies as well as the social heart of the White House. Just one day before it was fully demolished, Trump announced that the entire structure would be taken down, a significant change in plans after he initially said the building would remain essentially intact.
While Trump's ballroom is being privately funded, that has not shielded Trump from criticism that he is destroying a piece of history to put his personal stamp on the executive mansion.
The modern East Wing was built during World War II to make office space for FDR's unprecedented expansion of government. At the time, Republicans accused the New Deal president of trying to embellish his image at public expense. Of course, critics of Trump are making similar allegations about his plans to replace the East Wing with a huge, gilded ballroom, which is being funded by private donors.
The White House has said the $250 million renovation will provide badly needed space for state events. For years, the White House has set up large tents on the South Lawn to accommodate guests, arrangements that Trump finds shabby and inappropriate.
While Trump is not the first president to renovate the White House, the complete demolition of a historic building has produced a great deal of shock, especially among former East Wing staffers.
"I saw over the years the need for a larger space and not the big tents on the lawn some administrations used," Anita McBride, former chief of staff for First Lady Laura Bush, told the Daily Mail through email. "But watching the East Wing come down to make way for it is hard."
Quoting First Lady Betty Ford, McBride added: "If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart."
Some of the women who worked under First Lady Pat Nixon, the wife of President Richard Nixon, even made a desperate pitch to stop Trump's project from moving forward, to no avail.
As of Thursday, satellite imaging showed the East Wing had been totally destroyed.
"We determined that after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that really knocking it down, trying to use a little section, you know, the East Wing was not much. It was not much left from the original," Trump said a day earlier.
"In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure," he said.
Trump, who became famous as a New York city builder with opulent tastes, has already added smaller touches of his personality to the White House space.
He has added gold accents to the Oval Office, and the formerly lush Rose Garden is now the Rose Garden Club with a stone patio evoking Mar-A-Lago.
And Trump is far from finished reimagining the nation's capital. Ahead of America's 250th anniversary next year, Trump has shared plans to build a massive commemorative arch on the National Mall.
Kanala Harris' looooong 2024 hangover isn't over yet, as her splashy bachelorette party of a "presidential campaign" continues to burden Democrats with eye-watering bills, placing the party at a disadvantage with Republicans.
In September alone, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid off $1.6 million in campaign debts. The DNC has now paid $20 million to cover Kamala's campaign debt, Axios reports, and Democrats "aren't sure how much more outstanding debt there is."
The extravagant cost of Kamala's failed bid has contributed to a cash disadvantage with the Republican National Committee, which currently has $86 million in cash on hand compared to the DNC's $12 million.
Riding a wave of hype and manufactured "joy," Kamala doled out huge wads of cash for celebrity appearances and six-figure studio sets, shelling out $1.5 billion across a mere 107 days after receiving a rushed coronation from her party.
Democrats are still reeling from Harris' decisive defeat to President Trump, who won all seven swing states and the popular vote as the electorate shifted rightward across the nation.
Dampened enthusiasm since Kamala's defeat has discouraged donors from giving to the DNC, adding to the party's cash woes.
The Wall Street Journal reports that donors snubbed a fundraiser headlined by Harris earlier this year, with one person replying to the invite with profanity.
The chilly reception reflects ongoing skepticism among donors about contributing to the Democratic party, which remains adrift almost a year since Harris' loss.
"There is just a broad consensus that the DNC is ineffectual and not where we should be giving money,” one former donor told the New York Post in June.
Democrats are facing some tight races this November, with party members fearful of an upset in New Jersey's key gubernatorial race.
Meanwhile, Kamala is still opening up fresh wounds in her party, peddling a tell-all book about her failed campaign and the political jockeying that took place behind the scenes as Joe Biden's re-election bid imploded.
In the book, Kamala shares that top power brokers like Barack Obama did not rush to endorse her and instead believed she needed to prove she was worthy.
But those concerns fell by the wayside as Democrats bypassed any semblance of democratic process to anoint her the hope of "Our Democracy."
Despite being rejected by the nation and now her own party, Kamala is not ruling out another presidential run in 2028 as she continues to live in denial about her defeat.
"Well, some people have actually said I was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president," she said in a recent interview.
The former leader of the largest socialist group in America has been on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) staff since her election to Congress in 2018, Fox News Digital reported.
Frank Llewellyn, the former director of Democratic Socialists For America (DSA) is the treasurer for both Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and her political action committee, Courage to Change, campaign finance records show. Concerns about socialism are on the rise as Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member, leads in the polls for New York's upcoming mayoral race.
As the former director of the DSA from 2001 to 2011, Llewellyn played an intimate role in electing Bernie Sanders to the Senate, something Llewellyn saw as a major achievement for socialist politics.
Llewellyn would later become involved with the most famous of Sanders' proteges, joining the campaign staff of Ocasio-Cortez in 2018.
While some of her fellow leftists in the so-called "Squad" have been voted out, "AOC" has become a fixture in national politics, winning re-election easily every two years since entering Congress.
Indeed, some speculate that AOC could take Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) job in the future, and she continues to be floated as a White House candidate.
In any case, the DSA may be on the precipice of a generational victory as polls predict Zohran Mamdani to be the likely next mayor of New York.
Llewellyn has been an active member of New York City chapter of the DSA since it was founded in the 1980s.
The group is giddy about the prospect of Mamdani's mayoralty, with members boasting at a recent meeting that they practically wrote his agenda.
“Our endorsed candidates are expected to follow the will of the membership,” said Darren Goldner, a chapter leader, at an October 1 meeting.
Many Democrats, especially in the suburbs of New York, have scrambled to distance themselves from Mamdani and his radical politics, while out-and-proud socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have endorsed him.
Ideologically, Mamdani and AOC are joined at the hip. Both voice support for DSA priorities like shutting down federal immigration enforcement, curtailing local policing, decriminalizing prostitution, and redistributing wealth to pay for their socialist freebies. Mamdani's agenda even includes plans to hike property taxes in white neighborhoods, a shockingly racist proposal that has received less attention than it warrants.
While it's still too soon for AOC to start popping champagne bottles, Mamdani's rise is widely seen as inevitable, even after a debate showing Wednesday night where he began to crack under pressure.
As Election Day approaches, Mamdani has tried to put on a moderate image, offering token support for law enforcement and vowing to protect Jewish residents who are concerned that he is soft on anti-Semitism. Despite Mamdani's polished persona, his top competitor in the race, ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, warns Mamdani would govern as a puppet of the radical left.
“According to DSA leaders, for years they have told him how to vote, written his platform, and now they openly brag that if he’s elected mayor, he’ll follow their orders,” said Cuomo.
President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of disgraced former New York GOP Rep. George Santos on Friday, The Hill reported. Santos, who was behind bars on federal fraud charges, could face penalties from the state if Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly has anything to say about it.
There were 23 federal criminal counts connected to Santos, including making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, theft of public funds, and money laundering. He was also accused of submitting falsified records to the Federal Election Commission.
Last Summer, Santos took a plea deal that included admitting to aggravated identity theft and wire fraud. The initial sentence was for seven years, but Santos spent just 84 days in prison before Trump rescued him, as Democrats' attempts to malign Santos have failed.
Before this move, Santos had said he would not seek a lesser sentence, but he changed his tune during an interview with Piers Morgan last May. "I’ll take a commutation, clemency, whatever the president is willing to give me," Santos told the British political commentator.
Donnelly suggested that Santos may not get off completely scot-free in the face of a state investigation. "I am proud of the work my office has done, and the conviction achieved in partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s office," Donnelly said in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
"While the office cannot comment on ongoing investigations, suffice it to say that I remain focused on prosecuting political corruption wherever it exists, regardless of political affiliation," she added. Her office would not elaborate any further on whether there is currently an investigation by Donnelly.
Statement from Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly pic.twitter.com/aLHD8kICsQ
— Nassau DA (@NassauDA) October 21, 2025
Meanwhile, Trump shared on his Truth Social that "George Santos was somewhat of a 'rogue,' but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison," the president wrote. He cited how other lawmakers have lied about their pasts during elections. "Democrat Senator Richard 'Da Nang Dick' Blumenthal came up again," Trump continued.
"As everyone remembers, 'Da Nang' stated for almost twenty years that he was a proud Vietnam Veteran, having endured the worst of the War, watching the Wounded and Dead as he raced up the hills and down the valleys, blood streaming from his face," Trump continued. The only problem was that Blumenthal made it up, but Trump noted that it didn't cost him his freedom. Meanwhile, Trump said "ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN! George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated," Trump charged.
The former Republican lawmaker, who was facing criminal charges, had appealed to Trump publicly just days before receiving clemency, NBC News reported. Santos has repeatedly leaned on that support when making his case to Trump, including most recently in an open letter to the president last week, purportedly from solitary confinement.
"During my short tenure in Congress, I stood firmly behind your agenda. You have always been a man of second chances, a leader who believes in redemption and renewal. I am asking you now, from the depths of my heart, to extend that same belief to me," Santos wrote.
This echoes sentiments from a 2019 video, in which Santos was very deferential to Trump, pledging his allegiance to the president and his agenda. "I’ve been on the Trump train, far before Trump was ever president, far before he announced, we’re talking ‘Apprentice’ days," Santos claimed.
Indeed, Santos spoke at a Jan. 5, 2021, rally in favor of Trump and his illegal immigration policies while the then-outgoing president was still convinced that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Santos later showed his support for Trump during his 2023 arraignment and again in a victory party in New Hampshire after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
Santos is certainly problematic in many ways, but Trump's position as president gives him the authority to help those convicted of crimes. Democrats routinely let dangerous criminals out of prison without such explicit permission, so what Trump is doing is nowhere near the same.
President Donald Trump said the Department of Justice "probably owes me a lot of money" for the many federal investigations against him that amounted to nothing but a hassle, Fox News reported. Sources say Trump is seeking $230 million in damages, but the president said it wasn't about the money but about principle.
There were several investigations launched against Trump, beginning with the Russia-collusion hoax during the 2016 campaign that was built on a false dossier. The FBI later raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 over the supposed mishandling of classified documents, which again was thrown out in court.
These investigations turned Trump's life upside down for years and threatened to keep him off the ballot, but they ended up being mostly baseless. Now, the New York Times claimed that Trump is seeking $230 million in compensation, which would be well within his rights.
After all, Trump spent millions on his legal defense and likely lost earning potential as his time and attention were turned toward these baseless investigations. However, when asked about it at the Oval Office by a reporter, Trump seemed genuinely unconcerned about the money and instead wanted justice.
When Trump was asked about the possibility of a lawsuit, he noted that it was certainly something to consider, given how much time and money had been wasted defending himself in these cases. "Well, I guess they probably owe me a lot of money for that," Trump told the female reporter.
The president made it clear he wasn't in it for the money. "No, I get no salary. I gave up my salary. It's a good salary. Not as much as these guys make, but that's OK. It's a lot of money, and I don't, as you know, I didn't take it in the first four years. I didn't take it these four years either," Trump pointed out.
However, he did acknowledge that the DOJ owes him. "But as far as all of the litigation, everything that's been involved, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money," Trump said.
"But if I get money from our country, I'll do something nice with it. Like, give it to charity or give it to the White House while we restore the White House, and we're doing a great job with the White House, as you know, the ballroom is under construction," Trump added. A clip of the exchange was posted by RedWave Press to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
Reporter: “Are you asking the Justice Department to pay you compensation for [the] federal investigations into you?”
President Trump: “Into me? I don’t get any compensation. I do it for nothing. I gave up my salary… They probably owe me a lot of money for that.”
“If I get… pic.twitter.com/w5Lgygvv3X
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) October 21, 2025
While the media was singularly focused on the financial implications, Trump just wants justice after all he's been through. "We'll see what happens. We have numerous cases having to do with the fraud of the election, the 2020 election, and because of everything that we found out, I guess they owe me a lot of money," Trump said.
"But I'm not looking for money. I'm looking for — really, I think it's got to be, it's got to be handled in a proper way… We don't want it to happen again," Trump said, once again alluding to the fact that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from under him.
"We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again. We just can't let that happen," Trump added.
The president went on to say that he does not know the exact figure his legal team may be seeking. "I don't know what the number is. I don't even talk to them about it," Trump said. He noted that he would be the one to decide based on the law ultimately, but Trump admitted it would be "awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself."
Since the day the results came in, the president has contended that he was robbed of his 2020 victory. Though he has never produced definitive proof of those accusations, Trump notably went on to win the 2024 presidential election handily, clinching both the popular vote and the Electoral College. He accomplished this even while the government was busy prosecuting him, and Trump deserves justice for this.
Threats by leaders in one major crime-plagued U.S. city to sue President Donald Trump over his plan to deploy the National Guard have not gone as expected for them.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that President Donald Trump could deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon as part of his plan to fight high levels of violent crime there.
The 2-1 ruling lifted a lower court order that blocked Trump from deploying the troops, but other challenges could make that ruling all but moot.
A second emergency order blocking Trump specifically from deploying any federalized troops to Portland remains in place, and the justices on the 9th Circuit said they couldn't evaluate that order.
Trump has asked the judge who issued that order, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, to dissolve her order in light of the appeals court ruling, but that has not happened so far.
Lawyers for California and Oregon are resisting that move, and asked for the order to remain in place until the 9th Circuit decides whether to have the full appellate court bench deliberate on it.
"The fight is not over," Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek vowed to reporters on Monday. "Until the district court acts on the second TRO, National Guard members from Oregon, or any other state cannot deploy."
Friday should bring more clarity on two fronts.
Immergut has ordered both parties to appear on Friday for a decision on whether to dissolve the emergency order.
In addition, the appeals court has scheduled a hearing to decide whether the full court will hear the appeal of that order.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court may get its chance to weigh in soon, since Trump has asked for an appeal of an order blocking him from deploying troops to Chicago, another city sorely in need of some law and order.
The deployment to Washington, D.C. has correlated with a drop in criminal activity, especially vehicle thefts, which were down 34% in the first 30 days of the deployment.
Trump would like to keep Guard troops deployed in D.C., but there's a case pending related to whether he will be able to do that as well.
At any rate, he's showing he wants to do something to help these high rates of crime, which is more than we can say for the Democrat mayors of these cities.
Hold onto your hats, folks—House Republicans are gearing up to drop a bombshell report on former President Joe Biden’s alleged misuse of the presidential autopen, raising serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the White House.
At the heart of this unfolding drama, GOP lawmakers claim Biden’s staff may have overstepped by using the autopen to push through executive actions without his full awareness, while Democrats and legal experts push back hard against what they call baseless accusations, Newsmax reported.
Let’s rewind a bit: the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has been digging into concerns about Biden’s mental sharpness during his time in office, especially as he aged visibly over his term.
Interviews with over a dozen former senior Biden administration officials have wrapped up, with the committee zeroing in on whether the president’s apparent frailty—noted by some aides as requiring slower schedules and more meetings—opened the door to unauthorized actions.
While specific examples of autopen misuse haven’t been revealed yet, Comer promises the upcoming report will lay out the details, painting what he calls a historic scandal.
"The House Oversight Committee has uncovered how the Biden Autopen Presidency ranks among the greatest scandals in U.S. history," Comer declared in a statement. Well, that’s a bold claim, but without the hard evidence just yet, it’s tough not to wonder if this is more sizzle than steak.
Biden himself isn’t taking this lying down, adamantly rejecting any notion that he was out of the loop on his administration’s decisions.
"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency," Biden stated over the summer. If only saying it made it so—questions linger when aides like former chief of staff Jeff Zients admit decision-making slowed over time.
Longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti also stepped up to bat, denying any shadowy plots among senior staff to hide Biden’s condition or seize control of policy.
Yet, not everyone was eager to talk—key figures like former physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor and others invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, refusing to answer the committee’s probing questions.
Even as some officials acknowledged discussions about a possible cognitive exam for Biden, who was 82 when he left office, they firmly denied any conspiracy to usurp presidential authority.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee aren’t buying the GOP narrative, dismissing the investigation as a distraction from alleged misconduct in the Trump administration—a classic case of pointing fingers instead of addressing the issue at hand.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers are turning up the heat, arguing that any misuse of the autopen could invalidate Biden-era executive actions, pardons, and even laws, with Trump ordering the Justice Department to investigate.
A Trump White House memo to Attorney General Pam Bondi called unauthorized autopen use an "unconstitutional wielding of the power of the presidency," warning of legal ripple effects. That’s a spicy take, but legal experts caution it’s untested ground—and could boomerang on Trump’s own record of autopen use.
Republicans insist Biden’s case is unique, pushing for criminal prosecution of any former staffers found to have abused the autopen, while critics warn such moves could destabilize policies across multiple administrations. It’s a high-stakes game, and one wonders if the cure might be worse than the disease for conservatives who value stability.
As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, some Republican senators are getting squeamish about President Trump's punitive measures toward blue states, the Hill reported.
In addition to targeting thousands of federal employees at "Democrat agencies," Trump has leveraged the shutdown to pause billions for infrastructure projects in Democrat-controlled states like New York and Massachusetts.
Democrats under Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D), of New York, have now voted 12 times against Republican bills to fund the government.
As the impasse continues, Trump has sought to make Schumer pay a political price by cutting staff at "Democrat agencies" and targeting projects like a $16 billion Hudson River tunnel linking New York and New Jersey, the Gateway Project.
“It’s petty revenge politics. And who gets hurt? It’s going to screw over hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters, choke off our economy, and kill good-paying jobs,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Republican senator Lisa Murkowski (Al.), a frequent critic of Trump, warned that Trump's retaliatory measures could hurt conservatives who live in blue states.
“You show me one blue state in America where you don’t have pockets, maybe even big pockets, of Republicans, of conservatives, of MAGA people, of pro-Trump. Do we not care about them?” she said.
“Are we just saying, ‘If you don’t like it, you should move to a place where you’ve got a Republican governor?’” she added. “It makes no sense. Why are we being punitive? It’s hard enough when the government is not operating as it should be. Let’s not be punitive to Americans just to score political points.”.
While some say Trump is improperly seeking retribution, the White House says Democrats deserve blame for any shutdown fallout.
"The Democrat shutdown has drained the Army Corps of Engineers' ability to manage billions of dollars in projects," White House budget director Russ Vought posted to X, while noting the administration is “immediately pausing over $11 billion" for projects in cities like New York and Boston.
One of those Army Corps projects is a $600 million effort to replace two decaying bridges spanning Cape Cod, a popular tourist destination that draws millions annually.
Susan Collins of Maine, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also told the Hill they do not approve of what Trump is doing to blue states.
Capito fretted that Trump's action could create a precedent for Democrats to strike back in the future. But ironically, Capito acknowledged that President Obama had already "killed" her state by throttling the coal industry.
“During the Obama administration, he basically killed my red state,” she said.
If Democrats are going to be partisan anyway, some might argue, why not fight fire with fire?
While Trump's hardball approach might make some Republicans uncomfortable, he's just giving Dems a taste of their own medicine. And if the goal is to convince Democrats to end the shutdown, playing nice obviously won't do the trick.
Just days after he floated another round of Ukraine peace talks, President Trump has called off plans to meet with Vladimir Putin.
A White House official confirmed that Trump is not meeting his Russian counterpart "in the immediate future" after Trump suggested a summit in Hungary, ABC reported.
Trump's reversal comes after a phone call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive call. Therefore, an additional in person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future," the White House official said.
Trump has called for an immediate cease-fire along the current line of conflict, a proposal that Ukraine backs, and Russia opposes.
The cease-fire became a point of contention during Rubio's phone call with Lavrov, who says the Trump administration has grown less receptive to Russia's point of view.
"Now, Washington is saying that we need to stop immediately and not discuss anything further. We need to stop and let history decide. You see, if we just stop, we will forget about the root causes of this conflict, which the American administration clearly understood when Donald Trump came to power," Lavrov said.
While Trump is touting a cease-fire in Gaza, securing peace in Ukraine has proven more difficult.
In August, Trump and Putin met in Alaska for a peace summit that led to no conclusive results. After a phone call with Putin last Thursday, Trump announced another meeting "within two weeks or so" to try to hash out an end to the war.
Just hours after Trump confirmed he would not be meeting with Putin in Budapest, Russia conducted strikes in Ukraine that killed at least seven, including two children.
In comments to reporters Tuesday, Trump said that meeting with Putin right now would be a waste of time.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting; I don’t want to have a waste of time,” Trump said at the White House.
Ukraine's president Zelensky has argued that Putin is stalling for time and that he is not facing enough pressure to end the war.
Zelensky returned to the White House last Friday to lobby Trump for Tomahawk missiles that can strike deep inside Russia, but Trump has declined to provide them, for now.
President Trump ramped up his feud with a pair of Kentucky lawmakers on Tuesday, taking shots at Republican Senator Rand Paul (Ky.) over his absence from a White House lunch to discuss the government shutdown, the Daily Mail reported.
Trump hosted Senate Republicans and members of his Cabinet at the Rose Garden, treating them to his usual jokes and a no-frills meal of cheeseburgers with French fries and a Diet Coke.
"We have everybody but one person here. You'll never guess who that is," Trump said.
Trump recently renovated the Rose Garden to look more like Mar-A-Lago, dubbing it the "Rose Garden Club."
Speaking to guests assembled on the stone patio, Trump couldn't resist knocking Paul, saying he "automatically votes no" on everything.
Without naming the senator directly, Trump left no doubt of who he was joking about.
"Let me give you a hint - he automatically votes No on everything. He thinks it's good politics; it's not good politics," Trump said.
Indeed, Paul is the only Republican senator who has consistently voted against his party's resolution to end the current government shutdown.
Trump suggested that Paul didn't want to be at the White House lunch, adding, "If he wanted to come, I'd probably let him come, begrudgingly."
The relationship between Trump and Paul has turned frosty as the Republican senator opposes multiple aspects of Trump's agenda, from his military strikes in the Caribbean to tariffs to federal spending.
In a social media post, Paul said that he hosted his own "Liberty Caucus" lunch with Rep. Thomas Massie, another Kentucky Republican who has rankled Trump.
I actually wasn’t invited to the White House lunch today, but that’s ok I had a previously scheduled Liberty Caucus Lunch with @MassieforKY pic.twitter.com/7IHoQiZ3OR
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 21, 2025
Trump has criticized Massie and Paul - both doctrinaire libertarians - as all-talk, no-action obstructionists.
This week, a Trump-backed primary challenger and former Navy SEAL, Ed Gallrein, launched a campaign against Massie.
Paul and Massie were among the only Republicans to oppose Trump's sweeping policy bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which codified Trump's tax cuts and investments in immigration enforcement. Massie and Paul both pointed to concerns about the national debt.
Paul is again citing budget concerns as he breaks with Republicans during the shutdown battle. He says the GOP's plan to temporarily fund the government would add too much to the deficit, and he wants no part of it.