A Shutdown Where None of the Normal Rules Apply

Transcript

Speaker 1 We all have moments when we could have done better.

Speaker 3 Like cutting your own hair.

Speaker 1 Yikes.

Speaker 4 Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato.

Speaker 2 Ouch. Could have done better.

Speaker 6 Same goes for where you invest.

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Speaker 11 From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Speaker 11 Under normal circumstances, the profound pain of a government shutdown compels both parties to negotiate as quick a resolution as possible on behalf of the American people.

Speaker 11 But so far, nothing about this shutdown is normal.

Speaker 11 Today, As the federal shutdown enters its 17th day, three of my colleagues, White House reporter Tyler Pager, Congressional reporter Katie Edmondson, and economic policy reporter Tony Rahm, explain what's making it feel so different.

Speaker 11 It's Friday, October 17th.

Speaker 11 Katie, Tyler, Tony, welcome to the roundtable.

Speaker 12 Thanks so much, Michael.

Speaker 13 Good to see you, Michael.

Speaker 14 How you doing?

Speaker 11 Doing great.

Speaker 11 I just need to observe that saying those names in quick succession makes me feel like you're a family like maybe a family of tigers katie tyler tony katie tyler tony tony the tiger they're great

Speaker 11 uh

Speaker 11 welcome to a special shutdown edition of the roundtable it's a topic that i think benefits from having specialized reporting experience brought to the topic.

Speaker 11 And I think each of your specialties can emerge as we go. I just want to start with a simple observation.
This is a real weird shutdown. Yes or no?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 13 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 14 Yeah, without a doubt.

Speaker 11 And let's talk about the ways in which it is a weird shutdown, Tyler, starting with you.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we have never seen a White House or an administration weaponize the federal government against the opposing party the way in which we're seeing it happen right now.

Speaker 11 Right. In a shutdown.
I mean, clearly people have weaponized perhaps Trump, especially government in the past, but you're saying weaponizing a shutdown.

Speaker 12 Yes, absolutely. They are trying to use the closure of government to pursue their political goals and also inflict political pain on the Democratic Party.

Speaker 11 And what's the most vivid example of that?

Speaker 12 Aaron Powell, if you were to log on to any federal government website, you will be greeted by a message from that department or agency.

Speaker 12 If you look on the Treasury Department website, it says right now, quote, the radical left has chosen to shut down the United States government in the name of reckless spending and obstructionism.

Speaker 12 You know, you can look at airport videos.

Speaker 12 There are more than a dozen airports around the country refusing to display a video of Christy Noam, the Homeland Security Secretary, who put together a new video blasting Democrats for the government shutdown and any travel disruptions that may result from it.

Speaker 11 Right. And those are just message weaponizations, right, Tony? There's actually funding and job cut weaponizations as well.

Speaker 14 Right, absolutely. This is not just rhetorical.
This is an attempt to inflict real pain on the president's political enemies, in this case, Democrats. And they have done this on a number of fronts.

Speaker 14 They have taken steps to halt or cancel billions of dollars that the federal government had previously approved for cities and states and congressional districts led by Democratic leaders.

Speaker 14 They have taken steps to fire thousands of federal workers who serve at agencies that the president, at least, believes to be, quote, Democrat agencies or on Democrat programs.

Speaker 11 How can an agency be Democratic under a Republican president?

Speaker 14 Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the president has used this phrase Democrat agencies or Democrat programs as shorthand to describe kind of two different things.

Speaker 14 The first is agencies and programs that largely track the areas that Democrats increased when President Joe Biden was in power. Things like health and education and housing and research.

Speaker 14 But I think second, more broadly, this White House sees the function of government as inherently democratic.

Speaker 14 And they see the cuts to the work of government as bringing government more in line with their vision that Washington and the bureaucracy should have less of a role in people's lives and in the management of the economy.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 11 Katie, I want to talk about another very weird element of this shutdown, which is the manner in which, even as the president has weaponized it and used it to wield partisan warfare, he's simultaneously immunized many corners of the government and the public from the traditional consequences of a shutdown.

Speaker 13 Well, that's right. And I think the biggest example, Michael, is that he has taken a number of actions to ensure that U.S.

Speaker 13 military personnel, that the troops continue to get paid, despite the fact that Congress has not passed any spending bill to ensure that they would be able to get their paychecks as normally scheduled.

Speaker 11 Where did he find that money?

Speaker 13 Well, it's a great question, Michael. We're still trying to figure that out exactly ourselves.

Speaker 13 They initially told us the administration initially indicated that there were some unspent funds over at the military meant for research and development, probably of weaponry.

Speaker 13 Again, we don't, I think, exactly know.

Speaker 11 Tony, can the president just move money around like that in a shutdown? Like take money from pot X to pay people Y?

Speaker 14 Well, I think the best way to answer that question is maybe.

Speaker 14 You know, as a general rule, Congress writes laws. It tells the president how to spend money, and the president has to spend money on those things that Congress told him to spend the money on.

Speaker 14 There's a provision in law that allows the president to move some money around at the Department of Defense, but the amount is capped and the use of that money is restricted.

Speaker 14 You can't just grab a bucket of money from the Department of Homeland Security and use that to, you know, pay for something at the Department of Energy.

Speaker 14 And so that's what's made the president's actions so remarkable and in some ways unorthodox here, because he has pushed the limits of his ability to reprogram parts of the budget without Congress.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 11 And Katie, is it right to think that very few people have any incentive to sue the president to stop him from paying troops with money, even if the origin of that money violates the spirit of a law.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I can't think of anyone who would want to take up that particular fight.

Speaker 13 And we saw that reflected up on Capitol Hill, where you actually had Democratic leaders, including Hakeem Jeffries of New York, say that he was happy to see the troops continue to get paid.

Speaker 14 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And privately, though, when you talk to some of these folks on the Hill and elsewhere, they will tell you that they are super concerned.

Speaker 14 Because even though they like paying the troops, they have this concern about this ends justify the means argument that the administration is sometimes making with the budget.

Speaker 14 Because for, you know, right now it's okay that he's using money for a purpose that both parties would like to see him spend it on with the troops, but nothing is to say that the president will continue to push that envelope in ways that would see him use the money for more controversial purposes, perhaps in defiance of what Congress has said.

Speaker 11 Got it. Katie, where else has the president been able to immunize the normal pain points of a shutdown?

Speaker 13 Aaron Ross Powell, well, I do just want to return sort of quickly back to the idea of keeping the troops paid.

Speaker 13 I think, Michael, a lot of people thought that this first deadline in which the troops were going to miss their regularly scheduled paycheck, they thought that that was going to cause Democrats to buckle and to cave and to say, all right, you know, we view ourselves as the responsible governing party, and so we can't let this happen, right?

Speaker 13 We will vote for this Republican stopgap bill to reopen the government.

Speaker 13 And in deciding essentially that he wanted to insulate himself from the blame of the troops not getting paid, President Trump also sort of extended that insulation, I would say, to Democrats, right, who now will not be getting calls from angry troops, wives of troops, right, saying, where's our paycheck?

Speaker 11 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Right. He took away, the president, the urgency of ending the shutdown, kind of on all sides.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's right. That was a big one.
Now, obviously, there are a number of other federal employees outside of DOD who are missing those paychecks, right? And we should not forget about them.

Speaker 13 But the troops has always been sort of one of the biggest pain points. I mean, we're also seeing, and again, this is more insulation, I would say, of the president himself.

Speaker 13 He said that he is going to take similar actions to ensure that law enforcement agents continue to get paid. We believe that is going to include FBI agents, ICE agents, potentially.

Speaker 13 And that is an area now where you have Democrats, if not angry, certainly extremely uncomfortable because you are seeing the White House pick and choose which agencies they they want to continue to fund and which they don't.

Speaker 11 Well, I wonder if we can linger for a second on the federal workers who are not being paid like the troops are, who is not getting paid, who is being fired, and who is not getting their normal funding in a way that is genuinely impacting them.

Speaker 14 Yeah, with a few exceptions, most of the government remains shut down.

Speaker 14 And so as a result of that, there are hundreds of thousands of civilian employees at agencies that touch on functions like housing and health and education who are furloughed right now.

Speaker 14 They're out of work, they're not receiving pay, and the administration has not taken any steps to reprogram the budget in a way for these individuals to be paid.

Speaker 14 In fact, the president and his aides at times have suggested that some of these hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers may not even be automatically

Speaker 14 entitled to back pay once the shutdown ends.

Speaker 11 Meaning they're permanently unpaid for this work.

Speaker 14 Potentially. I mean, there is a law that, in fact, President Trump himself signed at the end of the longest shutdown in U.S.
history that

Speaker 14 guaranteed these individuals back pay. But the White House has tried to interpret that law in a way that may suggest that they won't provide that automatic back pay.

Speaker 14 So there are hundreds of thousands of people who really do have their finances at risk here. And that's on top of those that the White House has now said it's potentially looking to fire.

Speaker 14 Because Because President Trump and his aides have made very clear that in their attempts to weaponize this shutdown, they also want to conduct another round of mass layoffs.

Speaker 14 And they began to take the steps to do that.

Speaker 14 last week when they announced an initial batch of about 4,000 federal workers across eight major agencies that they were going to cut from government in a process that will take about 60 days.

Speaker 14 That has been the subject of litigation.

Speaker 14 A federal judge recently blocked the administration from proceeding with those layoffs, but the president and his aides have made clear that they're not backing down and they really do want to cut government.

Speaker 14 And so if those people are in fact laid off, that's just another financial blow on top of what they're already experiencing.

Speaker 11 Tyler, how does the White House, your beat, how does it talk about its strategy during this shutdown of essentially weaponizing the shutdown to in theory hurt Democrats?

Speaker 11 I have to imagine that when you're laying off 4,000 people from a bunch of agencies, and I think one of them was Homeland Security, there's absolutely no way you can contain the negative impacts to one party.

Speaker 12 Yeah, look, the White House is taking a very hardline stance on this.

Speaker 12 And they are saying that it's up to the Democrats to reopen the government, and then they are willing to negotiate over health care subsidies, which is at the core of why Democrats are not reopening the government.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 12 And I think, you know, the big picture is the polling on this is muddled and somewhat mixed with, you know, the latest poll showing that both Democrats and Republicans are receiving blame for keeping the government closed.

Speaker 12 When some of this new polling came out, I was at the White House and showed it to a senior White House official who told me that that was good news for the White House.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 12 Because historically, the president receives most of the blame for a government shutdown and the political blowback because Americans assume that it's in the control of the president and his party to keep the government open.

Speaker 11 Is there a sense in the White House that that can last if, for example, air traffic controllers don't get paid, stop showing up at work, and suddenly air traffic is a nightmare across the country?

Speaker 11 Or when healthcare premiums are

Speaker 11 going up at the end of this year, which is what Democrats are banking on happening, And it's why they shut the government down because the president and Republicans won't work with them to

Speaker 11 reestablish those subsidies. Is that their thinking? Or do they recognize that the politics could shift from 50-50 back to something much more damaging for the president?

Speaker 12 Michael, it's a really good question. And one of the other unique features about this shutdown is the lack of energy within Congress and in the White House to try to get a deal done.

Speaker 12 In past shutdowns, we would see the president going to Capitol Hill or holding meetings with congressional leadership in the White House trying to hammer out a compromise or a deal.

Speaker 12 The president held one meeting with top Democrats and Republicans from Capitol Hill, and beyond that, he's had very little engagement.

Speaker 12 And so the sort of frenzied energy you would see has been replaced by the president's focus on other issues, on the Middle East peace deal. He's expected to go to Asia next week.

Speaker 12 He's talking about Venezuela. He's making an announcement about IVF.

Speaker 12 There's just so many other things the president is more interested in talking about and focusing on that the shutdown is not even the top issue animating the White House at this point.

Speaker 11 But do you remember, Tyler? And I bet you do, and Katie and Tony, feel free to weigh in on this.

Speaker 11 There was a brief moment about five or six days into the shutdown where the president, I believe in the Oval Office, looks at the cameras and says, I think we should probably negotiate with the Democrats to come up with some good solution.

Speaker 11 And by good solution, I mean we should be talking to them about health care.

Speaker 11 And it was like, oh, the president recognizes that the healthcare situation in the country is potentially bad for him, bad for his party. He wants to do a deal.

Speaker 11 And then it never happened again, as if like someone had said to him, that's a very bad idea.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I mean, the sense is that Republicans on Capitol Hill didn't think that was the right message.

Speaker 12 Republicans have been very adamant that they want to reopen the government and then negotiate on healthcare. And Trump trampled over that messaging by basically opening the door to negotiations.

Speaker 12 And that is not the stance of the Republican Party. And it was really a rare moment in this presidency where Trump was forced to sort of redirect his messaging based on feedback from Congress.

Speaker 12 But the question, Michael, is how long he's willing to do that as this shutdown continues to drag on.

Speaker 11 Okay, well when we come back, I want to, Katie, ask you what this all looks like from the Hill, from Congress, and whether you think Tyler's right that Congress is driving the agenda in this shutdown, or whether it's really the president.

Speaker 11 So we'll be right back.

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Speaker 11 Katie, right before the break, and Tyler, please tell me if I'm correctly channeling you, you suggested that congressional Republicans to a degree are dictating how long will the shutdown go on and under what terms will it end?

Speaker 11 Even as Trump, it seems, is very much dictating who experiences the pain of the shutdown. Again, Tyler, correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 11 I want to understand then, on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats are at complete loggerheads over the idea of reopening the government, who is likeliest, potentially, to lower their guard and abandon their position here and bring the government back to life.

Speaker 12 Well, Well, Michael, I think what is interesting about this moment is that every time in Trump's second term that he's wanted Congress to do something, they've done it.

Speaker 12 And so if Trump decides at any given point that he's had enough and he wants the shutdown to end, he has shown the ability to persuade the Republican Party to fall in line.

Speaker 12 And so far, he has largely kept an arm's length away from the shutdown.

Speaker 12 He has railed against Democrats for keeping the government closed, and he has weighed in on which workers should get paid like the troops, but he has not really dived into the fight going on on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 11 Katie, since Tyler just talked about the Republican side of this, can you talk about how the Democrats on Capitol Hill are seeing this moment, seeing the polling, seeing the weaponization that's directed at them, and seeing the question of health care that they think makes this all worthwhile?

Speaker 13 Well, they think that they have found a winning issue in centering this shutdown around health care.

Speaker 13 Their bet is that as people continue to get letters in the mail informing them how much their healthcare premiums are going to go up, that they are only going to get more and more public support.

Speaker 13 And that even I think in a worst case scenario for them, if the ACA subsidies are not extended, then they have a ripe issue to run on in the midterms.

Speaker 13 But I think, Michael, part of what is fueling the impasse on the Hill is real anger from Democrats over the way that the administration administration is weaponizing this shutdown.

Speaker 13 In the days before the government actually shut down Russ Vote, the budget director teased the idea that they would use a shutdown to accelerate their campaign of mass layoffs of federal workers.

Speaker 13 And I think the calculation from the White House was that that was going to cow a number of centrist Democrats, maybe those in particular who have large numbers of federal workers in their states.

Speaker 13 I'm thinking of people like Mark Warner of Virginia, Tim Kaine of Virginia, two pretty centrist members who sort of pride themselves on negotiating through gridlock.

Speaker 13 I think the calculation was that maybe the White House would be able to peel off a handful of Democrats like those men and get them to join Republicans in keeping the government open, or in this case now, reopening the government.

Speaker 13 And if that was the calculation, it has completely backfired, right? These are two normally pretty affable men, having covered them for seven years now, and they are furious.

Speaker 13 And they have constituents who are federal workers who have been coming up to them in the grocery stores, telling them, you know, look, I started the year getting the Doge email, being asked to report five things I did this week.

Speaker 13 Now I'm laid off. This administration is out of control.
Keep up the fight.

Speaker 11 Wow.

Speaker 13 That is the message they are getting now.

Speaker 11 Not bring the government back so I can get paid. Keep up the fight.

Speaker 13 Well, that's right.

Speaker 13 And to hear these Democrats tell it, they're saying, look, if you're going to say that you're using this shutdown to lay off federal workers, well, you were already doing that before the shutdown happened.

Speaker 13 You actually already did that back in March when I, as a Democrat, voted to keep the government open. So why should I vote to reopen the government now?

Speaker 12 And I think just to add on to Katie's point, this is one of the first moments in Trump's second term where Democrats have had any leverage. as it relates to the functioning of government.

Speaker 12 They are in the minority in both the Senate and the House. And a big part of the the Democratic base has been agitating for Democrats to try to stand up in some way to Donald Trump.

Speaker 12 The last time Chuck Schumer helped Republicans keep the government open, there was serious backlash to him.

Speaker 12 And there is this energy in the Democratic Party to try to pressure their leaders to do something, to really stand up to Trump, because Republicans need a handful of them to go along with anything to reopen the government.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think Katie is absolutely right that this is emboldening Democrats to keep fighting, even though they have seen pretty staggering cuts in some cases to their states and districts as the president has weaponized this shutdown.

Speaker 14 But I think the reason that's happening is because they have this deeper worry about the ways in which the president has asserted his power to rearrange the budget and to do so in a way that disregards what Congress may say about what he must spend or what he must not spend.

Speaker 14 Many of the areas that the president has looked to cut and the layoffs that he has looked to make, particularly during the shutdown, track with the things that he proposed to do as part of his 2026 budget.

Speaker 14 He wanted to cut agencies like housing and health and energy and education, which are the very programs that he has targeted during the shutdown, with the layoffs that the court has now blocked and with the other sorts of, quote, permanent cuts that he has said he is pursuing and could potentially put out later this week.

Speaker 11 Okay, but let me point something out.

Speaker 11 You said in that answer that a reason why the Democrats believe in this shutdown is because they see it as an act of resistance to an executive branch under Trump that's getting bigger and stronger and doing things that Congress is supposed to do.

Speaker 11 And yet, is it right to think that the shutdown is giving the administration a chance to basically experiment with treating the entire federal budget as the province of the executive branch rather than needing to follow the direction of the legislative branch, which appropriated and passed the money.

Speaker 11 I'm thinking about the fact that that money to pay the troops was basically borrowed from some research fund, right? I mean, is that kind of stuff happening throughout the government right now?

Speaker 11 Is the executive branch basically acting like Congress when it comes to who's getting paid, who's not getting paid, who's being punished by being defunded?

Speaker 14 I think that this administration is always trying to test that, and that this this shutdown has just been the latest stage where they're trying to act that out.

Speaker 14 And I think the president himself has said this. I mean, on numerous occasions, he has described the shutdown as a, quote, unprecedented opportunity to make changes to the budget.

Speaker 14 Because I think on some level, the White House does see this as a little bit of a win-win.

Speaker 14 Like, I don't think that they want the government to be shut down, but I think that they're going to extract the greatest number of benefits that they can out of it while the government is shut down.

Speaker 14 And they're going to do that with the help of folks like Russ Vogt, who runs the Office of Management and Budget, and has long preached this idea that the president should have expansive power to set the nation's spending levels and to defy Congress.

Speaker 14 So, this has just been, at least in the eyes of the president, a great opportunity to push further down this road of taking power over the nation's budget from lawmakers.

Speaker 11 Katie, what do you say to that? When this shutdown is over, is there a fundamental rebalancing of power away from Congress to the president?

Speaker 13 Michael, I think that had already happened before the shutdown. I think the shutdown has sort of twisted the knife even more in sort of this wound in regular appropriations, if you will.

Speaker 13 I mean, look, I went and talked to a Senate Republican who is on the Appropriations Committee, is a chairman.

Speaker 13 And I asked him, look, there's a real trust deficit right now between Democrats and your party, between Democrats and the White House.

Speaker 13 Is there anything that you can do to try to give some sort of assurance that in the future, when Republicans and Democrats on the Hill come to some sort of a propes deal, that the White House is not going to unilaterally try to undermine it?

Speaker 13 What can be done? And his response was, well, I don't think the president would approve any of those safeguards. And so we're not going to have the votes for it here on the Hill.

Speaker 13 So we're just going to have to work through that.

Speaker 11 Aaron Powell, Jr.: In other words, the president will never agree to essentially respect the traditional role of Congress.

Speaker 13 Exactly. And that was a sobering thing to hear from someone who sits on the Appropriations Committee.

Speaker 11 So how does this come to an end? And when does it come to an end?

Speaker 11 I wonder if each of you can just briefly offer us what I hope is not an irresponsible prediction, given how weird this shutdown is, as we've firmly established, and the complex disincentives to end it right now.

Speaker 12 I'll posit two things.

Speaker 12 One is, Michael, as you alluded to earlier, if we start to see real impacts on Americans' daily experience beyond federal workers, if planes are being delayed, air traffic controllers are not showing up to work, if we really start to see acute impacts from the continued shutdown.

Speaker 12 I think a second thing is when and if President Trump really does get engaged. He has focused on other things during this period.

Speaker 12 He's referenced the shutdown and discussed the shutdown, but he has not made it a priority of his to end.

Speaker 12 The White House feels confident that the shutdown is more harmful to Democrats than it is to the president and his political party.

Speaker 12 If the fortune changes there and Trump decides he wants to end this once and for all, I think that will be a key turning point.

Speaker 11 What do you say, Tony?

Speaker 14 I would just echo exactly what Tyler said specifically on the impacts of the shutdown.

Speaker 14 You know, before we all sat down here, I was talking to some state officials who administer the program called Food Stamps. It's federal nutrition assistance for low-income Americans.

Speaker 14 And they told me that because of the shutdown, because of how long it had gone, in some cases, they've had to stop accepting applications for new benefits.

Speaker 14 And they're worried about being able to pay benefits in the month of November. That's not something that's shown up in the data, right? It has not hit Americans' pocketbooks just yet, but it will.

Speaker 14 It'll happen soon. And I think as you start to see cases like that throughout the economy, on top of the broader hits of the U.S.

Speaker 14 economy at a moment where things are pretty fragile, I think that's the kind of thing that might start to get folks in the room and actually trying to make a deal against the backdrop of a White House that hasn't always stuck to the deal when it comes to federal spending.

Speaker 11 And Katie, I'll stand with you.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think it depends on what the deal looks like.

Speaker 13 Democrats are banking on President Trump's instinct of wanting to make a deal, wanting to protect his party from devastating health care attack ads in the midterms.

Speaker 13 They're really counting on that instinct kicking in and on President Trump engaging and negotiating some kind of deal with them. I think that's one potential off-ramp.

Speaker 13 I think there's another potential off-ramp, which I think is not palatable to Democrats at this moment in time, but could be down the road in which they agree to reopen government at the same time they get a vote on the ACA subsidies that they know will fail.

Speaker 13 And then they can say, we voted for this, we tried to do this, and then campaign on that in the midterms.

Speaker 11 That's what we call half a loaf.

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. And that's why I think a lot of Democrats think that that would be an unpalatable option right now down the road, particularly if we start to see some of those painful impacts kick in.

Speaker 13 I think that could maybe change. But I do think there are a number of off-ramps here that are quite obvious, frankly.
And it's just that no one is interested in taking them right now.

Speaker 11 And does that almost by definition mean that this is going to be the longest shutdown in U.S. history and that it could even go to the end of the year?

Speaker 13 I mean, I think a lot of people view Thanksgiving as being a potential inflection point because of travel, the air traffic controllers.

Speaker 13 But right now, I don't know.

Speaker 12 And also, I think one of the things is the administration is unlikely to be able to continue to move funds around to keep programs open and troops paid.

Speaker 12 And so that pain point has been nullified for the time being.

Speaker 12 But White House officials have privately conceded to me that is not a long-term solution.

Speaker 11 And so when that runs out. When that runs out.
And when might that be?

Speaker 12 I think that's unclear.

Speaker 12 Some officials have posited to me that they could do it through the end of the month, but given the sort of unique and non-traditional ways they've been doing it and the lack of transparency, we don't even precisely know exactly how the money is being found to pay them right now.

Speaker 12 It's hard to exactly predict how much longer they're able to do this, but it's not a forever solution. And so, should that run out, that could be a turning point as well.

Speaker 11 All right. Well, Tyler, Tony, Katie,

Speaker 11 like I said, you sound like a family of tigers.

Speaker 11 Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Speaker 12 Thanks so much, Michael. Thanks, Michael.

Speaker 13 Thanks.

Speaker 11 On Thursday night, the Times reported on President Trump's latest unusual budget maneuver during the shutdown.

Speaker 11 He now plans to pay ICE officers by drawing from funds approved in a tax cut bill passed in July.

Speaker 11 That would circumvent Congress, which did not approve new spending for ICE before the government shut down on October 1st.

Speaker 11 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 11 Here's what else you need to know today.

Speaker 11 The military commander overseeing the Pentagon's escalating attacks against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean, which have so far killed at least 27 people, now plans to resign.

Speaker 11 The Times reports that the commander, Alvin Holsey, has raised concerns about killing the alleged drug traffickers.

Speaker 11 Many legal experts say that the airstrikes carried out against those alleged traffickers have no legal justification.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 on Thursday, a grand jury in Maryland indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton over his handling of classified materials.

Speaker 11 Bolton, an outspoken Trump critic since leaving his administration, is the latest Trump enemy to be targeted in the second term.

Speaker 11 after former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Speaker 11 But unlike the the Comey and James cases, the investigation into Bolton began during the Biden presidency and appeared to follow normal procedures within the Justice Department.

Speaker 11 Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Shannon Lin, and Stella Tan.

Speaker 11 It was edited by Chris Haxall and Paige Cowitt, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Sophia Landman, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Speaker 11 That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Bobaro.

Speaker 11 See you on Monday.

Speaker 1 Yikes.