firings

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

October 29, 2025

Today is the twenty-ninth day of the government shutdown, and the House of Representatives is still on break as House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to force the Senate to pass the House measure to fund the government without negotiating over the Democrats’ demand for the extension of the premium tax credit without which healthcare premiums will skyrocket.

Yesterday air traffic controllers received their first “zero” paycheck. For weeks, flights have been delayed across the country as air traffic controllers call in sick. Also across the country, states are bracing for food insecurity among the 42 million Americans who depend on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits when those payments don’t go out on time on November 1. The administration maintains it cannot distribute the $6 billion the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) holds in reserve to cover for November 1.

Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported on Monday that even some Senate Republicans want to fund SNAP in a stand-alone bill, but yesterday House speaker Johnson dismissed Democrats’ attempts to pass stand-alone measures to fund federal workers and SNAP, calling them a waste of time. Also yesterday, governors and attorneys general from 25 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued the USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the Office of Management and Budget along with its director Russell Vought, and the United States itself over the government’s refusal to use the USDA’s reserves to fund SNAP.

The lawsuit argues that Congress has mandated SNAP payments and has made appropriations for them, including the $6 billion the USDA holds in reserve. Another USDA fund has more than $23 billion in it. The USDA took money from it earlier in the shutdown to fund another nutrition program, the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program. The lawsuit notes that the USDA itself initially said it could use reserve funds; the decision saying it cannot is recent.

The lawsuit notes that the “USDA’s claim that the SNAP contingency funds cannot be used to fund SNAP benefits during an appropriation lapse is contrary to the plain text of the congressional appropriations law, which states that the reserves are for use ‘in such amounts and at such times as may become necessary to carry out program operations’ under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008.”

Today, ignoring Johnson’s insistence that he would not recall the House to debate stand-alone funding for SNAP and WIC, Democrats led by Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico introduced a measure to fund both.

The loss of SNAP benefits will hit not only the 42 million Americans who depend on them but also the stores that accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. At the same time, the cost of healthcare insurance premiums is soaring because of the expiration of the premium tax credits. Medical debt is central to throwing families into bankruptcy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which under President Joe Biden tried to remove medical debt from credit reports, yesterday published a rule to make sure states cannot stop companies from including such debt on credit reports. The acting director of the CFPB is Russell Vought.

So, just as the government stops addressing food insecurity and as healthcare costs skyrocket, the administration permits credit-reporting agencies to put medical debt back onto people’s credit scores even if state laws say they can’t.

This is happening as higher costs, economic uncertainty, and increased use of AI mean hiring is slow and jobs are disappearing across the economy. Lindsay Ellis, Owen Tucker-Smith, and Allison Pohle of the Wall Street Journal reported last night on layoffs at Amazon, UPS, Target, Rivian, Molson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton, and General Motors that together mean the loss of tens of thousands of white-collar jobs.

The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill of July, the law they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and made dramatic changes to SNAP, including cuts of $187 billion from SNAP over ten years. Crucially, the Republicans designed those cuts to go into effect after the 2026 midterm elections.

But their refusal to extend the premium tax credits and end the government shutdown has given Americans an early taste of what those changes will mean.

Despite the growing crisis in the U.S., President Donald J. Trump broke precedent to leave the country during the shutdown. His erratic behavior on that trip has drawn attention. On October 27, Greta Bjornson of People noted that Trump seemed to be referring to a dementia screening when he boasted on Air Force One that he got a perfect score on an “IQ test” that required him to identify “a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe.” Physicians have been giving Trump the test since at least 2018. In Japan, during a welcome ceremony on October 28, Trump appeared to wander, leaving Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi behind.

While Trump is out of the country, the White House has made dramatic changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Sasha Rogelberg of Fortune reported last week that law enforcement agents from ICE are still getting their paychecks, including overtime, thanks to the injection of an extra $75 billion into ICE’s budget from July’s budget reconciliation bill. Nonetheless, ICE is claiming the shutdown means it no longer has any legal obligation to permit congressional oversight visits to its detention facilities.

On October 24, Hamed Aleaziz and Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported that the White House was frustrated that deportations are not moving quickly enough to meet what deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller has said is the target of a million deportations in Trump’s first year.

On October 27, Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner broke the story that the White House was reassigning ICE field officers and replacing them with officers from Customs and Border Patrol (CPB). Greg Wehner and Bill Melugin of Fox News reported that the shift will affect at least eight cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, El Paso, and New Orleans. They reported that the changes reflect a split within the Department of Homeland Security. In one camp, so-called border czar Tom Homan and ICE director Todd Lyons have focused on arresting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes or who have final deportation orders. The other includes Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, special government employee Corey Lewandowski, who advises Noem, and Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol sector chief who has been overseeing the agency’s operations in Los Angeles and Chicago. That faction, Wehner and Melugin say, wants to arrest all undocumented immigrants to boost their deportation numbers.

One senior official told Wehner and Melugin: “ICE is arresting criminal aliens. They [Border Patrol] are hitting Home Depots and car washes.” A border patrol agent, though, told the journalists: “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself—anyone in the U.S. illegally is on the table.”

Bovino has been the official face of CBP’s violence. On October 6, journalists and protesters in the Chicago area sued the Trump administration for a “pattern of extreme brutality” designed to “silence the press and civilians.” On October 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to restrict federal officers’ use of flash-bang grenades, tear gas, pepper-spray and other “less-lethal” weapons and tactics against journalists, peaceful protesters, and religious leaders in and around Chicago. On October 16, after videos emerged of agents throwing tear gas canisters into crowds and charging protesters, Ellis required officers to wear body cameras.

Last Thursday, a video showed Bovino throwing what seemed to be a tear gas canister at protesters without warning, and plaintiffs called Ellis’s attention to it, arguing that his actions violated the TRO. Immigration officers claimed a “mob” of “hostile and violent” rioters had thrown a rock at Bovino and hit him in the head, although none of the videos from the protest show such an event. On Friday, Ellis ordered Bovino to appear in court on October 28, yesterday. Michelle Gallardo, Mark Rivera, and Cate Cauguiran of ABC Eyewitness news in Chicago shared the Department of Homeland Security’s boast that Bovino would “correct Judge Ellis of her deep misconceptions” about what it calls “Operation Midway Blitz.”

In fact, according to WTTW Chicago politics reporter Heather Cherone, Ellis took time to read her initial TRO to Bovino and reminded him that agents must give warnings before throwing tear gas. She called out an incident in Little Village when an agent pointed a pepper gun and then a real gun at a combat veteran lawfully standing on the side of the road and allegedly said: “Bang, bang,” and “You’re dead, liberal.” She also called out an incident in Old Irving Park on the North Side of Chicago in which federal agents threw tear gas near a children’s Halloween costume parade. “Those kids were tear gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “[T]heir sense of safety was shattered.” “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat. They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them,” she said.

When Bovino told Ellis he does not wear a body camera and has not been trained in their use, she ordered him to get one by Friday and undergo training, reminding him that the camera would enable him to back up claims like the rock-throwing incident.

Bovino promised to abide by the TRO. Ellis ordered him to submit to the court all the reports and all the body camera footage of use of force incidents in and around Chicago by Friday. She also ordered Bovino to come to her court every day at 6:00 p.m. to keep her informed of agents’ actions.

Meanwhile, there are also changes underway at the Pentagon. Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced three strikes on four boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed another 14 people. This brings the total of those dead to at least 57. Hegseth says one person survived the recent strikes.

Phil Stewart of Reuters reported yesterday that officials in the Defense Department have asked subordinates to sign non-disclosure agreements concerning the administration’s expanding operations in Latin America. This is, as Stewart puts it, “highly unusual,” especially as lawmakers are complaining the administration is not disclosing information about the strikes that would support its claim that those killed were trafficking drugs. Military officers are already required to keep national security issues out of public view.

Administration officials briefed Republican lawmakers today about the U.S. military strikes but excluded Democrats. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration had shut Democrats out of a briefing on the military strikes. “Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” he said. “Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party. For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress’ constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

October 24, 2025

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has canceled House business again next week, meaning that over the last 17 weeks, the House of Representatives will have worked on Capitol Hill for just 20 days. It also means that the House will not be back at work before November 1, when at least twenty-five states have said they will not be able to provide the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits more than 42 million Americans rely on to put food on the table.

Jennifer Ludden of NPR notes that about one of every eight Americans gets an average of $187 a month in food assistance. Most of those who use SNAP are children, older Americans, veterans, people with disabilities, and working people, chief executive officer Joel Berg of Hunger Free America told Ludden. “If the SNAP program shuts down, we will have the most mass hunger suffering we’ve had in America since the Great Depression.”

Republicans are trying to convince Americans that the Democrats are responsible for the pain of the shutdown. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service website, a banner reads: “Due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown, this government website will not be updated during the funding lapse. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.”

In addition to being an open violation of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits the use of government resources for partisan purposes, this statement badly misrepresents what’s going on in Washington, D.C. President Donald J. Trump is refusing even to talk with Democrats, let alone negotiate to reopen the government, and Republican lawmakers are following his lead. He and MAGA Republicans are trying to muscle Senate Democrats into passing the continuing resolution the House passed on September 19 before they left town.

For their part, the Democrats are refusing to agree to fund the government until the Republicans work with them to extend the premium tax credits that support access to the Affordable Care Act marketplace for healthcare insurance. In their “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” of July, Republicans extended tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations but permitted the premium tax credits to expire. Democrats have also asked for Congress to put back into Medicaid the $1 trillion the Republicans took out of it in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit healthcare research foundation, the loss of the premium tax credits will cause nearly 5 million people to lose their health insurance in 2026. The cost of premiums will force healthy Americans out of the pool as they decide to drop their coverage, sending premium prices skyrocketing for millions more. The Commonwealth Fund also projects that the loss of the premium tax credits will cost almost 340,000 jobs, including about 154,000 in healthcare-related industries and 185,000 in other sectors. Those losses will cause a $2.5 billion decline in local and state tax revenues.

Trump is trying to make the impasse between the parties about the shutdown, but that obscures the actual fight at hand. What is at stake is the theory behind the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act: the destruction of the modern American government that was put in place in the 1930s by Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and expanded from then until 1981 under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Today’s fight is about the cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” and cuts made after Musk left the administration by Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought.

Republicans have embraced the destruction of the modern government, slashing SNAP benefits, Medicaid, cancer research, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and so on. The Democrats are defending the government that has been in place since the 1930s, focused on leveling the playing field between the very wealthy and ordinary Americans.

Trump is determined to resurrect the pre–New Deal system in the United States and refuses to entertain any notion that his vision will not work. That refusal to be crossed showed over the past twenty-four hours when he exploded over a Canadian advertisement aired last night that quoted an April 25, 1987, speech in which Republican president Ronald Reagan criticized tariffs as “trade barriers” that “hurt every American worker and consumer.”

“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,’’ Reagan said in both the speech and the advertisement. “The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.”

During the 2024 campaign, Trump insisted that tariffs like those imposed in the late nineteenth century would nurture the economy and fund the government alone, permitting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. He rejected economists’ assessment that tariffs are paid by consumers and that they would slow economic growth.

Last night, apparently furious at the implied criticism of his tariffs with the words of a Republican icon, as well as the fact that Canadians bypassed him by appealing directly to the American people, Trump announced on social media that “TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A.” He continued: “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Today he continued to post pro-tariff messages, saying, for example: “THE UNITED STATES IS WEALTHY, POWERFUL, AND NATIONALLY SECURE AGAIN, ALL BECAUSE OF TARIFFS!” and “THE STOCK MARKET IS STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE BECAUSE OF TARIFFS!”

In fact, the government’s inflation report, released today, shows that inflation has climbed to 3%, and the White House says it will likely not release October inflation report because of the government shutdown. At the same time, the administration’s cuts to the government have not created the savings promised: yesterday the U.S. debt passed $38 trillion. This was the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars of debt outside of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the U.S. hitting $37 trillion in August and $38 trillion just two months later.

Distrust of Trump’s economic vision is showing in polls. As G. Elliot Morris noted today in Strength in Numbers, an Economist/YouGov poll shows that 53% of Americans think the economy is getting worse. The latest Gallup poll shows that Americans now think Democrats, rather than Republicans, are the better party to keep the country prosperous, by a margin of 47% to 43%. This is a shift of 18 points in just over two years.

Trump appears to want the world to conform to his ideology in foreign affairs as well as in the domestic sphere, claiming the ultimate power over life and death without regard to the rule of law. When a reporter asked him yesterday why he didn’t ask Congress for a declaration of war against those South American drug cartels he claims are at war with the United States, Trump answered: “Well, I don’t think we’re gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them. You know? They’re going to be, like dead. OK?”

Today Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the military has struck yet another boat in the Caribbean, for a total of ten so far. Six people on the boat died in the strike.

Trump talks about the administration’s strikes on boats in the region as an attempt to stop the importation of drugs into the U.S., but observers suggest the administration is really attempting to encourage Venezuelans to rise up against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Hegseth announced today he was sending the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford and its strike group of five destroyers to the waters off South America. The group will join the growing military buildup in the region. Alayna Treene, Kylie Atwood, and Katie Bo Lillis of CNN reported today that the Trump administration is considering targeting drug routes and cocaine facilities in Venezuela itself.

Today the administration also imposed sanctions on leftist President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, as well as his family and a member of his government, claiming they are participants in the global drug trade.

And yet, for all the administration’s insistence that it can shape the world as it wants, it seems worried about the American people. Yesterday Trump dismissed the No Kings protests of last Saturday, saying the “crowds were not big at all” and claiming the signs were “all made professionally in a printing shop. Looks like on Madison Avenue someplace.” He said: “Some guy is paying for all that stuff…. These people are going crazy, they’re going crazy ‘cause they’re getting paid. ‘Cause there’s no reason for them to be going crazy, but you watch some of them, and they’re professional agitators, and we are finding out who’s paying them. Yeah. We have a lot of information about who they are. You’re gonna be very surprised when you find out.”

And, today the Department of Justice announced it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions in the upcoming November 4 elections. The observers will go to California and New Jersey, two Democratic-dominated states that will be holding elections with national consequences.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American