President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The officials said they would not be deterred.
National Guard troops from Texas are now positioned outside Chicago, despite a lawsuit by the state and city to block their deployment. The troops’ mission is not clear but the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third largest city, and the president, contrary to statistics, has repeatedly claimed big cities run by Democrats are overwhelmed with crime.
Trump’s comments are the latest example of his brazen calls for his opponents to be prosecuted or locked up. The comments come as Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a criminal case that highlights the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of Trump.
Meanwhile, a debate between the House Speaker Mike Johnson and two Democratic senators spilled over to the hallways over the government shutdown fight and Johnson’s refusal to swear in an Arizona congresswoman-elect who won a special election two weeks ago. The IRS also announced it will furlough nearly half of its workforce as part of the shutdown.
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Trump announced on his social media site Wednesday night that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the “first Phase” of his peace plan.
“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump wrote. “All Parties will be treated fairly!
Newsom said it’s “shameful” that the Republican-controlled Congress hasn’t approved disaster aid to help thousands of people who are displaced after devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year.
“It’s been months, not a peep from the president of the United States,” Newsom said at an unrelated press conference. “Not a word from Speaker Johnson.”
Federal officials earlier today charged a 29-year-old man for sparking the Palisades Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in the state’s history. The fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
▶ Read more about the Palisades Fire
The president will get what the White House is describing as a “routine yearly checkup’ at Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday morning.
While press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it as a yearly exam, Trump actually got an annual physical at Walter Reed earlier in April, about six months ago. A physician’s note at the time says the president “remains in excellent health.”
On Friday, he’ll return to the White House afterward but may go to the Middle East, where negotiators are trying to finalize an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “shortly thereafter,” Leavitt said.
The note that Rubio handed Trump during an unrelated meeting at the White House implores the president to give his OK to a social post related to a Middle East deal.
“You need to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first,” the hand-scrawled note read, on White House stationary.
Rubio wasn’t part of Trump’s roundtable discussion with conservative influencers but walked into the room, handed Trump the note and whispered something to him.
As Trump fielded some questions from gathered reporters, Rubio stood off to the side, seemingly anxious for the president to come with him to turn toward the Middle East negotiations. Trump told the room “we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East” before he left but gave no other details.
Trump made that comment after Rubio handed him a note during an event at the White House on Wednesday.
Rubio entered the room where Trump had been holding a roundtable discussion with conservative influencers about anti-immigration enforcement protests in various U.S. cities.
Trump said earlier in that discussion that he might go to the region “sometime toward the end of the week.”
His top Middle East adviser, the prime minister of Qatar and other senior officials joined a third day of peace talks between Israel and Hamas at an Egyptian resort on Wednesday, a sign that negotiators aim to dive deeply into the toughest issues of an American plan to end the war in Gaza.
A federal judge in Chicago says immigration agents have repeatedly violated a 2022 consent decree outlining how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can make so-called “warrantless” arrests.
The ruling comes amid the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment and immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings has extended the consent decree until February. It comes out of an agreement between Chicago groups and the federal government. Among other things, it requires ICE to show documentation for each arrest it makes for people besides those being targeted.
The order applies nationwide, but remedies for individual cases have been focused in six Midwest states covered by the ICE field office in Chicago, where the lawsuit was filed.
Immigrant advocacy groups believe hundreds of people recently arrested around Chicago could qualify for reduced bond or have ankle monitors removed.
“This is likely the tip of the iceberg,” said Mark Fleming with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
The House may be out of session, but that hasn’t stopped its members from clashing in the Capitol’s hallways.
On Wednesday, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had a heated back and forth with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, hours after House Speaker Mike Johnson sparred with two Democratic senators over the government shutdown.
“You’re making a show of this to make yourself relevant,” Jeffries told Lawler – both New Yorkers — as Lawler held a bipartisan bill temporarily extending ACA tax credits and urged Jeffries to sign it. Jeffries called Lawler an “embarrassment.”
Jeffries previously called a one-year extension of ACA tax credits “laughable.” Little of substance was resolved in the exchange, as the two talked over each other.
“Why don’t you just keep your mouth shut,” Jeffries said.
“Is that the way to talk?” Lawler shot back.
Democratic leaders have said they don’t want National Guard on their streets because it’s not necessary.
Noem rejected their assertion after meeting with the Oregon governor and Portland mayor.
“They are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets,” she said. She said antifa wants “to destroy the American people and their way of life.”
The president said Wednesday afternoon that he may travel to the Middle East if a Gaza peace deal comes together.
“I may go there sometime toward the end of the week,” Trump said as he opened a roundtable event on a different matter.
Trump said he could go there on Sunday, adding that “negotiations are going along very well.”
The president is spending part of Wednesday afternoon hosting a roundtable that highlights the impact of antifa protesters.
Antifa is short for “anti-fascists” and is used to describe far-left-leaning militant groups. They include groups that resists fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.
The roundtable is set to include administration officials and conservative influencers who have been on the ground in Portland and other cities with demonstrations
The preliminary data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows the number of international visitors arriving to the U.S. on student visas declined 19% in August compared with the same month in 2024.
The numbers declined also in June and July, but August is the summer month that typically sees the most foreign student arrivals — 313,138 this year.
The dip is the latest sign of a hit to international enrollment at American colleges and universities as the Trump administration clamps down on student visas.
▶ Read more about foreign students
The Congressional Budget Office says the federal budget deficit was $8 billion less than the shortfall recorded during fiscal year 2024.
The agency says revenues increased by an estimated $308 billion compared to this time last year — and a boost in individual income tax collections and tariff income partly offset the decline in corporate tax receipts.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement that the nation’s debt is about the size of the entire U.S. economy and will exceed its highest ever record as a share of the economy soon.
“We are on track to borrow nearly $2 trillion per year for the next decade. How can anyone think this is sustainable?”
Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday reiterated that “the federal government has not communicated with us in any way about their troop movements.”
“I can’t believe I have to say ‘troop movements’ in an American city, but that is what we’re talking about here,” he told reporters.
When asked what he would do if a federal court rules in his favor to block National Guard deployment in Chicago yet they continue operations, Pritzker said he would do what is needed to enforce the ruling.
“We would enforce a judicial ruling,” he said. “You should hope that the federal government, the state government, the local government would be able to enforce a federal court’s order. That’s why we went to court.”
Reps. Derek Tran and Gabe Vasquez co-led a letter signed by 53 other Democrats calling for Johnson to bring a bill that would “ensure that military service members, as well as civilian personnel and contractors, will continue to receive pay during a government shutdown” to the House floor.
“We urge you to bring legislation to pay America’s service members to the House floor for a vote in time to ensure military personnel get paid on October 15th,” the letter reads. “If Congress does not act by October 15th, nearly three million military families will miss their next paycheck. That’s unacceptable — our military families and troops deserve better.”
Frustration is running high in the Capitol, spilling over in a hallway debate between House Speaker Mike Johnson and two Democratic senators.
Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego gathered reporters in front of the speaker’s office Wednesday afternoon to call on Johnson to swear in an Arizona congresswoman-elect who won a special election two weeks ago.
But Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was not about to let them stand outside his office without a challenge.
After quickly shaking their hands, Johnson said he would swear in Adelita Grijalva after the government shutdown: “We need the lights turned back on, so we encourage both of you to go open the government.”
Gallego argued that Johnson was trying to keep Grijalva from providing crucial support to force a vote on a bill to release the Epstein files.
“Get your people in and stop covering up for the pedophiles,” Gallego snapped at Johnson.
Top union leaders representing federal employees, along with allied labor groups, on Wednesday pressured both parties to reach a solution to end the shutdown.
“No American should ever have to choose between serving their country and feeding their family,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Union leaders criticized both parties in Congress but also targeted Trump, accusing him of using federal workers as “political pawns” after warnings Tuesday that back pay is not guaranteed.
“He intends to either violate the law, or degrade, frighten, antagonize hardworking federal employees whose only crime is caring and wanting to work for the American people,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.
“Congress, do your damn job,” added Erwin. “And president, you better start obeying the Constitution.”
Trump arrived in office in January 2017 as Comey, appointed to the FBI director job by President Barack Obama, was overseeing an investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The dynamic was fraught from the start, with Comey briefing Trump weeks before he took office on the existence of uncorroborated and sexually salacious gossip in a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy.
In their first several private interactions, Comey would later reveal, Trump asked his FBI director to pledge his loyalty to him and to drop an FBI investigation into his administration’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Comey said Trump also asked him to announce that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation as part of the broader inquiry into Russian election interference, something Comey didn’t do.
Comey was abruptly fired in May 2017 with Trump later saying he was thinking about “this Russia thing” when he decided to terminate him. The firing was investigated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller as an act of potential obstruction of justice.
Comey in 2018 published a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” that painted Trump in deeply unflattering ways.
The federal judge ruled Tuesday on the arrests that happened during the early days of President Trump’s second term.
The ACLU of Illinois and other Chicago immigration advocates sued DHS and ICE in March, alleging the January arrests of 26 people in the Midwest violated a 2022 consent decree that bans ICE from arresting people without warrants or probable cause.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered ICE to start making monthly disclosures of how many warrantless arrests agents make each month.
“Today’s decision makes clear that DHS and ICE — like everyone else — must follow the Constitution and the law,” Michelle García, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Illinois and co-counsel in the case, said in a statement. “The federal government’s reckless practice of stopping, harassing and detaining people — and then finding a justification for the action must end.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson is rejecting calls from some lawmakers for Congress to hold a stand-alone vote on paying military service members, who will potentially miss a paycheck next week if the shutdown isn’t resolved soon.
Johnson said the House already had that vote as part of a stop-gap spending bill that would have funded the federal government through Nov. 21.
“Every Republican and at least one Democrat had the common sense to say ‘of course we want the government to stay in operation, of course we want to pay our troops and our air traffic controllers and our border patrol agents, TSA and everybody else,’” Johnson said. “We did have that vote.”
“The House is done,” he added. “The ball is now in the Senate’s court. It does us no good to be here dithering on show votes.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson's comments during a news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday follow the Trump administration’s warning of no guaranteed back pay for federal workers during a shutdown, potentially reversing what has been long-standing policy for some 750,000 furloughed employees.
Johnson said he had yet to dig into legal analysis that is the basis for the administration’s warning.
But he said it is tradition “and I think it is statutory law that federal workers be paid.”
“And I think they should be,” Johnson said.
The criminal case has thrown a spotlight on the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of President Trump.
Comey pleaded not guilty through his lawyer to allegations that he lied to Congress five years go.
Comey entered the not guilty plea through his lawyer at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to allegations that he lied to Congress five years ago, kick-starting a process of legal wrangling in which defense lawyers will almost certainly move to get the indictment dismissed before trial, possibly by arguing the case amounts to a selective or vindictive prosecution.
The White House hasn’t released details about the meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Trump has said he plans to designate antifa, an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups, as a “major terrorist organization” but it’s not clear how that would work against the decentralized movement.
The president said in a Wednesday morning social media post that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritkzer, both Democrats, “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump was specifically objecting to with his post, but it was the latest example of his brazen calls for his opponents to be prosecuted or locked up, a break from longtime norms as the Justice Department traditionally sought to maintain its independence.
Authorities said a woman was shot over the weekend in Chicago when Border Patrol vehicles were boxed in and struck by other vehicles.
Outside Chicago, in the village of Broadview, there have been skirmishes between protesters and agents outside a detention center.
FILE - Former FBI Director James Comey, arrivex to testify under subpoena behind closed doors before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
President Donald Trump waits to greet Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, as Carney arrives at the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
