This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Rep Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently announced she will not seek re-election to Congress, setting the stage for an end to her some 40 years in the halls of government in Washington.
And while Democrats undoubtedly will have honors for her as she exits, after years at the controls of government, including years in the powerful position of speaker of the House, the reality may be something else.
"Pelosi will be remembered as a Democratic leader who opposed some of the most positive things the federal government did during her time in office," charged a commentary posted at the Daily Signal.
Author Terence Jeffrey pointed out her agenda that even opposed plans that would "protect innocent human lives."
That particular agenda point, debated in 2000, involved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Despite significant bipartisan support Pelosi declared her "strong opposition" to the plan, insisting about abortions, "We want to keep them safe, and we want to keep them legal."
The fact is the plan was to avoid the procedures in which a living baby is delivered until the boy or girl is partly outside the body of the mother, then deliberately killed.
"When the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act came up again in the House in 2003, Pelosi again voted against it. But that year, then-President George W. Bush signed it into law," the commentary explained.
'Her support for taking the lives of unborn and partially born children will forever be at the dark center of her legacy," the commentary said.
She also demanded higher taxes from Americans often struggling to feed their families.
"When President Donald Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was considered in the House in December 2017, Pelosi was an adamant opponent. As analyzed by The Heritage Foundation, this act cut taxes for working Americans. 'The reform will produce larger incomes, more jobs, more investment, and ultimately, more economic opportunity,' said a Heritage Foundation report. 'In 2018, taxpayers will save an average of $1,400, and married couples with two children will save $2,917.'"
Pelosi misinterpreted this as a tax cut for the rich.
Then there is President Trump's border wall, a border security issue on which he had campaigned.
She demanded, "Democrats do not support the wall," because it was "immoral."
Explained the commentary, "From 2007 through 2010, during Pelosi's first term as speaker of the House, more than 2.5 million aliens were apprehended trying to illegally cross the southwest border, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump's strategy was to stop this massive flow of illegal migrants."
Joe Biden abandoned the border security efforts, but they have been resumed on Trump's return to the White House.
And CBS confirmed, "Unlawful crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest level since the early 1970s, amid the Trump administration's sweeping clampdown on illegal immigration, internal federal statistics obtained by CBS News show."
Pelosi tried claiming there were fewer illegal aliens entering the country during Biden's term than during Trump's first term.
"I don't think we were clear enough by saying fewer people came in under President Biden than came under Donald Trump," she claimed.
Politifact quickly corrected her: "Border Patrol agents have encountered people trying to illegally cross the border between official ports of entry 7.2 million times under President Joe Biden's administration compared to 1.8 million times under President-elect Donald Trump."
Pelosi further was active in the Democrats' lawfare against President Trump, including creating a special partisan committee that creatively assigned blame to him for the protest-turned-riot at the Capitol in January 2023.
Twice her schemes to impeach him and remove him from the White House failed.
And long have there been questions about how she was able, on an admittedly healthy congressional paycheck, able to accumulate a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.
President Donald Trump's Justice Department has fired as many as 70 immigration judges since his new administration began in January, Breitbart reported. While estimates differ, this comes as Trump is attempting to narrow protections for asylum-seekers left over from then-President Joe Biden.
The Justice Department said that the firings have occurred for fewer than 55 judges, but that hasn't stopped the left from decrying the move. The government agency further noted that the decision on which judges have to go is not a political one.
"DOJ doesn’t ‘target’ or ‘prioritize’ immigration judges for any personnel decision one way or the other based on prior experience. DOJ continually evaluates all immigration judges, regardless of background, on factors such as conduct, impartiality/bias, adherence to the law, productivity/performance, and professionalism," a spokesperson for the DOJ said.
"Pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, IJs (Immigration Judges) are inferior officers who are appointed and removed by the Attorney General," the spokesperson added. This means that the cuts came come if there are performance problems or there is less need for judges, and fewer immigrants gaining entry under asylum could have something to do with it.
The focus of immigration courts has shifted from asylum-seeking to deportations, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. "But the way the Trump administration is approaching immigration courts reflects a really high prioritization of immigration enforcement and [the administration] has really made deportations this whole-of-government effort," Bush-Joseph said.
Meanwhile, Trump is cracking down on asylum claims and expediting the process for those in the system to close the loophole for as many as 10 million illegal immigrants who claimed asylum under Biden. Instead, they're being sent home, and the 1.1 million who have pending asylum claims will see their pleas denied.
Because they're eliminating asylum and conducting raids on illegal immigrants, the number of newcomers is expected to shrink considerably as others are simply turned away at the border. "Between explicit policy changes and implicit threats to get in line or get fired, [asylum] judges on the whole seem to be following [Trump] orders to deny, deny, deny," researcher Austin Kocher wrote.
"This is not an accident—this is a policy decision," he added. Indeed, it is.
According to the BBC, Trump has severely limited asylum claims, which were liberally permitted under Biden. Just about anyone from a nation whose economic or political condition was worse than that of the U.S., which encompasses most of the world, was given asylum under the previous regime. Trump has changed that, and of course, some are crying racism.
The Trump administration has reduced the number of refugees from 125,000 under Biden to approximately 7,500, which is expected to be the number admitted for the year. The BBC is particularly upset that the priority will go to white South Africans, which is surely an attempt to claim this is a white supremacist policy.
However, the administration said that the new criteria require the refugee status to be "justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest." This seems to track with broader immigraiton decisions based on what Trump has said about the Afrikaners, who are descendants of French and Dutch settlers, and the way they're being starved out of South Africa.
During a White House meeting in February with South Africa's ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, Trump showed the video of the situation there for the white farmers and the danger posed by their own government. Some have called it a "dog whistle," including the ambassador, but the truth is that they are being targeted in their own country and should be eligible to receive help.
There is no reason to admit so many refugees into the U.S. every year when the system is already stretched so thin. It's noble to help the less fortunate, but the policies initiated under Biden have inexplicably admitted more people than the nation can handle, and Trump is doing all he can to roll back those measures.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said Wednesday that an Illinois lawmaker lied when he accused agents of targeting a preschool teacher and entering a daycare center to arrest her.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D) posted on X that the agents "abducted a preschool teacher without a warrant — in front of children."
But the Department of Homeland Security quickly called Quigley out and said that the situation was quite different than how Quigley and other officials portrayed it.
Congressman, you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
ICE law enforcement did NOT target a daycare and were only at this location because the female illegal alien fled inside.
Here is the real story:
Officers attempted to conduct a targeted traffic stop of this female… https://t.co/a5BdcbhnwC
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 5, 2025
"Congressman, you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts," the agency rebutted. "ICE law enforcement did NOT target a daycare and were only at this location because the female illegal alien fled inside."
The real story, DHS posted, was that agents tried to pull over a car containing a female illegal immigrant from Colombia, but the male driver would not stop.
After a chase, he drove the car into a shopping center and both the male and female fled into the daycare center, barricading themselves in the vestibule.
She was arrested in the vestibule, not inside the daycare center, DHS said. It was the Colombian immigrant who put the children and adults inside the daycare at risk, not the ICE agents.
But of course, the narrative put forth by Quigley dovetails exactly with what they want to believe about ICE's activities: that ICE agents are targeting innocent people and putting people at risk with their brutal and violent raids.
It seems like rumors abounded when passersby or shoppers saw the raid happen, and Quigley was quite content to spread the disinformation without bothering to verify any facts.
ICE further said that the woman who was arrested lied about her identity and claimed not to know the man driving her car during the traffic stop and chase.
According to her, she picked up a perfect stranger at the bus stop and let him drive her car. This scenario is highly unlikely, of course.
But the left is so desperate to make ICE the bad guys that the truth really doesn't matter at all.
This kind of hateful misinformation is going to get ICE agents killed, but that will only make partisans like Quigley even happier, I'm afraid.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Muslims follow the Quran, which instructs them to behead Jews and Christians. Many Muslim organizations around the world even today include in their agenda the destruction of Israel – and Jews.
So now that a radical Muslim has been elected mayor in New York, which has one of America's largest populations of Jewish families, the Anti-Defamation League has confirmed plans to watch him.
His agenda already is known to include a wide range of pro-communist points, as Zohran Mamdani openly has declared his allegiance to "democrat socialism" including ideals like high taxes, government-owned stores, reduced property rights and massive government controls. He waited only hours after his election to start telling people he needed more money and to send it to him.
"We are deeply concerned that those individuals and principles will influence his administration at a time when we are tracking a brazen surge of harassment, vandalism and violence targeting Jewish residents and institutions in recent years," explained Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the nation's biggest organizations promoting Jews.
He accused Mamdani of promoting "anti-Semitic narratives" and showing "intense animosity toward the Jewish state that is counter to the views of the overwhelming majority of Jewish New Yorkers."
A report from the Center Square explained what's being launched is called the "Mamdani Monitor" to check on anti-Semitism.
The ADL described the effort as plans to scrutinize Mamdani appointees "and review the funding of organizations tied to the Israel-critical administration to gauge hostility to Jewish people," the report said.
A phone hotline to report offenses also is in the works.
Mamdani faces open doubts about his actions because of his "alignment with pro-Palestinian groups, criticism of the Israeli government, and his use of the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' which has been linked to acts of violence against Jewish people," the report confirmed.
He also brazenly posted a photograph of himself with Siraj Wahhaj, who was linked to those behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Also of concern is his "previous" support for the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions agenda.
"We will hold the Mamdani administration accountable to this basic standard," said Greenblatt. "If New Yorkers experience anti-Semitism, where they work or where they worship or where they shop or where they socialize, tell us at ADL, and we will make sure that the authorities follow up."
The report noted the New York Board of Rabbis has warned that Mamdani "holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community's deepest convictions and most cherished values."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
During COVID, the federal government handed out trillions of dollars.
American taxpayers bought massages chairs for a teachers' lounge in Montana, spent $6.6 million on a sprinkler system at a Colorado Springs golf course, paid $2,000 for a bowling party in Connecticut, another $10 million on rodeos because of course rodeos are needed, $7,675 on a marching band and some $2,400 on "swag."
Stunningly, given the circumstances, some money wasn't spent. And one U.S. senator says in just one part of that program, intended to help state and local governments, there was $65 billion left over. She wants it back.
"The COVID cash bonanza was a $4.5 trillion all-you-can-eat buffet of waste, fraud, and abuse, with the cost eaten by taxpayers," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, confirmed. "At $38 trillion in debt, the federal government shouldn't have secret slush funds or be spending them on golf carts, bowling parties, and high school drag shows. While too much money has already been sent out the door, we have a chance to return the remaining $65 billion to the American people."
Her legislative plans targets money that was part of a $350 billion allocation for state and local governments to cope with the economic fallout from COVID and all those business shutdowns.
According to a report at the Washington Stand, the $350 billion went to the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, and the Economic Policy Innovation Center said the motivation there was "to replace state and local tax revenue based on the assumption that these governments would experience shortfalls like those experienced during previous recessions."
But, the organization revealed, "The reduction in state and local revenues never materialized to the extent that Congress anticipated at the time of enactment."
So various officials decided to use the money, allocated in a bill signed by Joe Biden, for other projects, and there was little to no oversight.
EPIC has confirmed, "More than $185 million has been approved for projects related to golf courses (such as updating irrigation systems or buying golf carts), more than $400 million has gone to improve swimming pools, almost $80 million has gone to sports stadiums, $34 million has gone to building tennis and pickleball courts, $10 million has gone to rodeos, and one town even got $15 million to install showers and a commercial kitchen at a site to host the circus and local flea market."
Enough, said Ernst.
She is going after unspent money in that allocation, as well as funds under "the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Divisions M or N of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act of 2021, the CARES Act, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, and the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2020."
Her bill calls for the funds to be put in the general fund of the nation's Treasury to be used for deficit reduction.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Texas, the Lone Star State, has long been the beating heart of American patriotism and a fierce defender of border security. Indeed, for years Texas led the charge against the Biden administration's reckless open-border policies, calling for sovereignty, safety and jobs for its own citizens.
But when the conversation shifted from illegal immigration to legal immigration – the kind that quietly replaces thousands of white-collar professionals through rampant abuse of America's H-1B visa program – Texas has remained largely silent, offering no clear defense of its citizens in this new front of the immigration battle.
OPINION: H-1B VISA HOLDERS ARE KEY TO THE TEXAS ECONOMY
The Trump administration's decision to raise H-1B visa application fees to $100,000 reignited a long-ignored but crucial debate: Who really benefits when American companies import foreign workers instead of hiring American citizens? The H-1B system, popular among tech giants and India-based outsourcing firms, was originally billed as a way to fill rare skill shortages. In practice, however, it has become a giant corporate loophole to lower costs and sidestep the U.S. labor force.
Brown University Professor Dany Bahar recently told Austin-based daily radio news show Texas Standard that Trump's new $100,000 H-1B filing fee is crippling, saying: "It's a way to shoot yourself in the foot, because essentially what it's doing, it's keeping foreign talent away from the United States."
He added, "It's telling people 'do not come,' but a very specific group of people, people who bring talent that is very hard to find in the United States." Although Bahar describes this policy as if it unfairly rewards only a "very specific group," that's the entire point of the policy: Americans' immigration system was designed to favor the genuinely exceptional, not every foreigner that wants to replace Americans by working at a lower cost to the employer.
The new frontier of legal immigration
Few states depend more on these visas than Texas. The issue isn't a shortage of homegrown talent, it's the surge of India-based tech multinationals that have built sprawling U.S. operations across the state.
In Plano, Wipro run sprawling tech hubs. HCLTech calls Frisco home for its American operations. L&T Technology Services and TCS have set up "innovation centers" in Houston, Austin and Dallas – not to train Texans, but to anchor their imported workforces. Each year, these firms dominate the list of H-1B petitioners nationwide.
2023 State Immigration Statistics: Nonimmigrants
Politically, Texas has built its image around protecting borders and defending American jobs. Yet many of the same leaders who vow to guard against illegal crossings remain silent, or complicit, when it comes to legal immigration programs that hand advantages to multinational corporations at the expense of Americans.
The result is an economic contradiction: While working-class Texans are told their state is fighting for them, white-collar professionals are quietly replaced by foreign labor marketed as "specialty skills." The damage is the same: Local jobs disappear, wages stagnate and the next generation's opportunities shrink.
Dismantling the deception: The hidden scale
Bahar frames H-1B as "a very, very small program" capped at 85,000 and filled only after employers "can't" hire Americans. However, Bahar, a professor of international and public affairs, appears to be wildly out of touch with immigration reality.
While Bahar calls H-1B "small," capped at 85,000 visas per year, that number is a sleight-of-hand. Universities, nonprofits and government contractors are exempt from the cap, creating a shadow stream of approvals that dwarfs the official limit.
When dependents are added, H-4 visas for spouses and children, the real figure balloons. In 2024, according to the U.S. State Department, 219,659 H-1B and 139,874 H-4 visas were issued, 359,533 total. That's four times higher than Bahar's figure. For years, this statistical illusion has been used to downplay the true scale of foreign labor inflow and its effect on American employment.
The H-1B program isn't a precision instrument to fill national shortages; it's a lottery. Visas are distributed at random, not by skill, wage level or economic need. Employers aren't required to prove they've exhausted domestic candidates before hiring abroad. That safeguard only appears in the PERM (Permanent Labor Certification) stage, when companies apply for green cards. If there truly were a skilled labor shortage, corporations would embrace that safeguard. Instead, they cleverly design myriad ways to avoid finding qualified Americans.
Job ads are drafted with inflated requirements that few domestic candidates will meet. Notices are intentionally placed where they are unlikely to be seen. Ads are run only in the bare-minimum formats required by regulation. Immigration lawyers routinely advise firms to pause PERM filings during layoffs to avoid being forced to offer the same jobs back to recently fired Americans. It's a giant charade of compliance.
The manufactured myths of 'high skill' and 'labor shortage'
Bahar claimed "firms in the United States … were not able to fill those vacancies in the local markets and therefore they are asking the government through a visa process to let them bring a foreign worker who will be able to fill that vacancy." That statement ignores years of documented cases where H-1B workers weren't brought in to fill shortages; they were brought in to replace Americans at lower cost.
In 2015, Disney made headlines when American IT employees were ordered to train their own H-1B replacements supplied by HCL. At Southern California Edison, hundreds of U.S. tech workers were displaced by imported contractors. The University of California required staff to train incoming HCL hires. AT&T, fresh off a $3 billion tax break, outsourced 16,000 American jobs and shut down 44 call centers. At Bank of America, employees were forced to train their replacements, a practice the company called "essential for knowledge transfer."
These are not isolated anecdotes, but are part of a pattern: American workers are displaced while visa pipelines remain open and expanding.
Yet Bahar, arguing that the program is small and beneficial, insists the H-1B is a "high-skilled" program concentrated in technology and high-tech industries. It's true that computer-related jobs make up over 60% of H-1B roles, but that's not because of a lack of American talent. It's because outsourcing firms have captured the system. Studies show 94% of Indian engineering graduates lack employable skills and fewer than 5% can complete a basic programming task. Still, Indian nationals now dominate the vast majority of H-1B approvals, particularly in the very tech jobs U.S. graduates are losing.
Supporters often frame H-1B hiring as access to rare, high-end talent. But the government's own numbers show otherwise. Employers must classify H-1B jobs under one of four wage levels: Level 1 (entry-level) through Level 4 (experienced professional). Employer records reveal that 83% of H-1B registrations fall into Levels I and II, both below the U.S. median wage.
In computer and math occupations, the largest category, 271,000 of 315,000 filings were placed at these lowest tiers. In business and finance, nearly 80% fell into the same category. Across the top five industries, as little as 14% reached the higher wage levels.
If the H-1B truly addressed "rare shortages," employers would be offering higher wages, not lower ones. Instead, the filings cluster at the bottom, proof that the program isn't about innovation or scarcity. It's about cost-cutting. The H-1B system has become a corporate discount program, replacing qualified Americans with cheaper labor under the false promise of "global competitiveness."
Admitting the truth
When asked whether the U.S. is capable of producing its own talent, Bahar framed the issue as a question of global competition, arguing that America must "produce at a lower cost" to remain competitive and that "foreigners bring the experience and know-how" to make that possible.
That statement reveals more than he likely intended. It's the quiet confession of the globalist mindset, one that measures strength not by independence, innovation or self-sufficiency, but by how cheaply Americans can be replaced. Bahar's argument reduces U.S. competitiveness to labor cost, not capability. It's the same justification multinational corporations have used for decades to offshore manufacturing jobs to China and now white-collar careers to India.
By that logic, America's future depends on importing low-cost talent instead of investing in its own people, which isn't competition – it's capitulation. The notion that "the most talented people around the world want to come to the U.S." may sound flattering, but it's strategically misleading. The H-1B system doesn't primarily attract the best and brightest; it imports the cheapest and most compliant. The majority of these workers are funneled through outsourcing and body-shop firms whose sole purpose is to undercut U.S. wages while transferring intellectual property, data and innovation abroad.
Bahar's rhetoric, "produce at a lower cost," is the exact phrase global consulting firms use in their offshoring manuals. It's the vocabulary of de-industrialization, the same reasoning that hollowed out America's factories, small towns and middle class. Only now it's being repackaged as a "high-tech" strategy to justify the same betrayal under a new name.
If America's path to "global competitiveness" is to pay its engineers, programmers and analysts less, then the model itself is broken. True strength lies in raising American capability, not in racing to the bottom of the global wage scale. A nation that can build rockets, power grids and AI systems certainly doesn't need to outsource its intelligence. What it needs is leadership willing to defend it.
The false gospel of 'global competitiveness'
Asked whether Trump's higher H-1B fees might strain U.S.-India relations, Bahar's focus turned immediately to tariffs and "integration into the global economy." He warned that such policies could make relationships "difficult" and suggested that America's effort to protect its own labor force amounts to "isolation."
That framing exposes the real priority – not the wellbeing and prosperity of American workers, but the preservation of India's economic access to the United States. Bahar wasn't warning about harm to diplomacy; he was lamenting a threat to a system that allows India to extract jobs, wages and intellectual property from America under the label of "partnership."
By calling efforts to secure American industry "isolation," Bahar mirrors the same rhetoric used for decades by multinational lobbyists and foreign trade groups. The message is always the same: Global integration equals progress and any defense of national interest is regression. But behind that polished language lies a stark reality: dependence. The more America "integrates," the more it is outsourcing its production, its workforce and its sovereignty to nations that view the U.S. market as an economic feeding ground.
India's dominance in the H-1B system isn't a side effect of globalization, it's the centerpiece of a deliberate strategy. Through aggressive lobbying, trade negotiations and influence networks like the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India has built its economic growth model on exporting its labor while importing America's wealth. Bahar's comments align neatly with that strategy: Pressure U.S. policymakers to keep the pipeline open, label resistance as "isolation," and frame dependence as "cooperation."
However, what he calls diplomacy is, in reality, dependency and what he calls integration is the erosion of economic sovereignty. Protecting American workers from systemic displacement isn't isolationism; it is survival. A strong nation trades on fair terms. A captured one bargains away its future.
The human cost of corporate globalism
The victims of this system are not theoretical. Across the country, thousands of U.S. professionals have been forced to train their own replacements, foreign contractors imported through the same visa channels Bahar praises. At Disney, Southern California Edison and Bank of America, American employees were replaced en masse, their experience devalued and their loyalty betrayed.
When Texas-based employers chase low-cost foreign labor, they aren't just saving a dollar, they're putting American families' livelihoods on the line. The surge of visa-driven recruiting and corporate outsourcing across the Lone Star State signals a profound shift – away from American workers and toward offshore profit. And everyday Texans are paying the price.
Bahar called the H-1B program a gateway for "high-skilled workers" that helps the U.S. "stay competitive globally." But as the interview progressed, he repeated the same talking points – the "small program" myth, the "shortage" excuse and the "high-skill" trope, recycled lines that have been used for years to sanitize exploitation.
That's why dismantling these myths with verifiable data, hard evidence and documented harm is no longer optional; it's a national imperative. Because until the truth is restored, it won't be foreign contractors or corporate lobbyists who pay the price. It will be Americans, the very people the U.S. government's system was supposed to protect, who lose their jobs, their futures and their country's promise, one "visa" at a time.
Right-wing journalist Laura Loomer has gained press credentials at the Pentagon, bringing possible headaches for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and others on President Trump's national security team whom she has targeted, the Daily Mail reported.
Online, Loomer is known for feuding with other right-wing figures whom she considers to be disloyal to Trump and his "America First" agenda, and she has played a role in driving out some Trump foreign policy staffers over ideological disputes.
Recently, Loomer threatened to boycott the 2026 midterms over Secretary Hegseth's move to host a Qatari air force facility at a U.S military base in Idaho.
But she has also expressed support for Hegseth's anti-woke reforms. "He says being a fat soldier is 'unacceptable'. He's correct," shew wrote in September.
Her access at the Pentagon comes even as many legacy media outlets have cleared out of the building in protest of new press restrictions.
The new rules bar reporters from soliciting unauthorized information, in what Hegseth calls a common sense move to protect national security.
With a few exceptions, the rules were rejected by most news organizations, including right-of-center ones like Fox News.
Loomer now joins a group of right-wing journalists who have agreed to the Pentagon's new press restrictions, including LindellTV and The Gateway Pundit.
"I look forward to covering the Pentagon and breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security. I have developed a Rolodex of sources and if you have any tips, feel free to contact the Loomered Tip Line: the most influential Tip Line in all of DC," Loomer wrote in her announcement on X.
Loomer is still not credentialed at the White House, although the administration has shaken up the press corps there as well to include more pro-MAGA voices.
While known for her fierce devotion to Trump, Loomer is equally vocal about criticizing those in his orbit whom she sees as out of step with his agenda.
Among the Pentagon figures Loomer has targeted are Col. Earl G. Matthews, the Pentagon's top lawyer, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who revoked the appointment of a Biden official to West Point's staff after Loomer criticized the pick.
Loomer has also feuded with MAGA politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA.), who has recently taken a perceived turn against Trump on various issues.
“I know she’s known as a ‘radical right,’ but I think Laura Loomer is a very nice person,” Trump told reporters in August. “… I think she’s a patriot, and she gets excited because of the fact she’s a patriot, and she doesn’t like things going on that she thinks are bad for the country. I like her.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday that he no longer supports a continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of December, The Hill reported. Time is ticking after the stopgap measure that was first passed in the House in September languishes in the Senate.
The continuing resolution they were first pushing would have only funded the government through November 21 anyway. Now, Johnson is trying to avoid the familiar problem of a large spending bill being voted on just in time for Christmas and instead is asking for temporary funding that brings the budget issue into January.
"A lot of people around here have PTSD about Christmas omnibus spending bills. We don’t want to do that," Johnson said during a news briefing. "It gets too close, and we don’t want to have that risk," he added.
Johnson believes a short-term funding bill that brings the issue into the new year "makes sense," but that it's by no means an easy feat at this point. "There’s some discussion about it. We’ll see where it lands," Johnson said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is on board with Johnson's timeline and confirmed this to reporters on Monday. "The longer runway is better," the South Dakota Republican said.
Johnson said that the House would come back to session if a deal could be struck for a continuing resolution. However, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, is not convinced and would instead like to see the government funded through Dec. 19.
Meanwhile, Democrats have dug into their position that they won't budge on reopening until Republicans roll over on extending their healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act. Still, Thune said he was "optimistic" the government could reopen by Friday if both parties struck a deal, but that was before Tuesday's elections, which were favorable for Democrats.
Now it seems that their strategy of holding out was the right one politically, or at least it didn't hurt them the Democrats in elections around the country. As Fox News reported, this could make the shutdown go on even longer, as they think they have the upper hand against President Donald Trump and the GOP.
New Jersey elected Mikie Sherrill for governor in a decisive defeat against the Republican Jack Ciattarelli, and Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) believes this points to the president's failing. "This was a resounding defeat for Donald Trump. He should have woke up this morning and just immediately said, ‘I — we need to negotiate. We need to find an end to this shutdown,'" Kim claimed.
While Democrats remain steadfast in their opposition to striking a deal, Republicans are similarly obstinate, though Trump appears to recognize that perhaps it played a role in getting so many Democrats elected on Tuesday. During a White House breakfast on Wednesday, Trump conceded that the "shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans."
Others, like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), believe that it was a temporary setback, but that the blame will ultimately fall on the Democrats. "I think the Democrats, you know, may feel emboldened by it, but I think that people are going to get past election results fairly quickly and start remembering that they've just unilaterally decided to shut down the government," Tillis told Fox News Digital.
"So I think it could be maybe a weak bump, but at the end of the day, we're going to get back to the reality that we've got to fund the government," Tillis added. As Politico reported, Tuesday's elections were not necessarily a referendum on Republicans, especially considering that they were held in an off-year, but there's no denying that they favored Democrats.
The losses were significant, as Democrats flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, as well as three statewide races. Californians voted to redraw the congressional maps in favor of Democrats, and New Jersey, which had looked like it might turn red after Trump's showing in the 2024 election, voted Sherrill in by 13 points.
Tuesday's results were not great for Republicans, but it doesn't necessarily mean any particular issue was the reason. The government shutdown is bad for both parties and looks more like a political stunt than real governance, even to Republicans.
Hold onto your grocery carts, folks—Senate Republicans just slammed the brakes on a Democratic bid to fund food assistance amid a government shutdown.
Over the weekend, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which supports 42 million Americans, ran dry due to the ongoing federal stalemate, and this week, a Democratic effort to replenish it with $8 billion was shot down by GOP senators who insist the real fix lies in reopening the government, The Hill reported.
As the shutdown dragged on, SNAP funds evaporated, leaving millions of families in a lurch while political gridlock tightened its grip.
On Monday, Senate Republicans stood firm against a Democratic attempt to restore full funding for SNAP benefits.
By Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., stepped up with a resolution via unanimous consent, aiming to secure $8 billion for the Department of Agriculture to cover SNAP for November.
But Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., wasn’t having it, objecting to the measure and effectively blocking it during the session.
Barrasso argued that the only sensible path forward is to end the shutdown entirely, rather than patching programs like SNAP with temporary fixes.
“If Democrats really wanted to help struggling families, they’d stop blocking a clean continuing resolution,” Barrasso said. That’s a sharp jab at the left, and it’s hard not to wonder if endless partisan posturing is the real hunger problem here.
Merkley, meanwhile, made his plea with a dramatic flair, holding up a placard reading “Trump is weaponizing food for the sake of MAHA”—a play on “Make America Hungry Again.”
“Let’s all together say ‘fund SNAP’ not weeks or months from now, but right now so America’s families … will benefit,” Merkley urged. Noble words, sure, but when resolutions need unanimous consent, one objection is all it takes to spoil the pot.
Barrasso didn’t mince words either, calling the Democratic move a hollow gesture meant for headlines, not results.
The Trump administration, for its part, has stepped in with a partial solution, scraping together $5 billion from existing Agriculture Department funds to cover some SNAP benefits—but it’s far short of the full need.
That $5 billion Band-Aid won’t feed all 42 million recipients for long, and it sidesteps the bigger question of why Congress can’t get its act together.
Conservatives might argue that reopening the government is the cleanest way to restore stability, not just for SNAP but for every stalled federal program. Piecemeal resolutions, while well-intentioned, risk becoming political theater instead of policy wins.
Yet, there’s no denying the human cost of this standoff—families counting on SNAP are caught in the crossfire of a Washington power struggle, and that’s a bitter pill no matter your politics.
President Trump will tap emergency funds to continue paying some Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also known as food stamps, for the month of November after two federal judges ordered him to keep the welfare program running.
The administration said Monday that it would use up a $4.65 billion contingency fund to disburse partial payments, but officials say full benefits cannot be guaranteed until Democrats agree to end the government shutdown, which was set to become the longest in U.S. history on Wednesday. The contingency plan only covers half of the $8 billion that SNAP consumes each month.
SNAP benefits lapsed over the weekend for the first time ever, making the shutdown very real for 42 million Americans who rely on benefits to buy food.
A pair of judges, Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island and Indira Talwani of Massachusetts, ordered the White House last week to keep SNAP benefits flowing and to present a plan by Monday.
Lawyers for the administration told McConnell on Monday that the entire contingency fund would be used to make partial payments for November, but it would not be appropriate to tap additional funding sources like the school lunch program.
"Section 32 Child Nutrition Program funds are not a contingency fund for SNAP,” Patrick Penn, who oversees the SNAP program at Department of Agriculture, wrote Monday.
“Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances,” he continued.
Democrats voted a fourteenth time to keep the government closed on Tuesday, sending the shutdown into a record 36th day on Wednesday. Led by Chuck Schumer (D-Ny.), Democrats have refused to fund the government without Republicans making extraneous concessions on healthcare.
The Trump administration has said disbursing partial SNAP payments is more complicated than giving out full benefits, and that Democrats are to blame for any delays that SNAP recipients experience in the coming days and weeks.
The White House clarified Tuesday that the partial payments will continue after Trump suggested SNAP funding might be withheld as leverage to force Democrats to end the shutdown.
"SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” Trump wrote in the post.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that “the administration is fully complying with the court order" concerning SNAP.
“The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to understand it’s going to take some time to receive this money, because the Democrats have forced the administration into a very untenable position," she said.