Trump administration threatens no back pay for federal workers in shutdown to pressure reopening

Matt Van Epps, a former commissioner in Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, won a crowded Republican primary Tuesday in the special election to replace a GOP congressman who left office this summer.

Van Epps clinched the victory with an endorsement from Trump that came after in-person early voting ended. Eleven Republicans were on the ballot for the seat vacated by former U.S. Rep. Mark Green. Among them, two candidates, including state Rep. Lee Reeves, suspended their campaigns after Trump weighed in, and they likewise endorsed Van Epps.

The Dec. 2 general election could gauge the popularity of Trump’s aggressive second-term agenda, especially with suburban Republican voters.

The seat is one of three districts that GOP lawmakers drew as safely red in 2022 by dividing left-leaning Nashville. Its voters elected Green by 21 percentage points in 2024 and by nearly 22 points in 2022.

The Senate confirmed Trump’s pick to fill a critical vacancy at the top agency for worker rights, restoring it to the full power needed to deepen his overhaul of civil rights enforcement.

The confirmation of Brittany Panuccio as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday established a Republican majority at the agency and restored the quorum needed to make major policy and enforcement decisions in pursuit of Trump’s civil rights priorities, including stamping out diversity and inclusion programs and rolling back protections for transgender workers.

The Senate voted 51-47 along party lines to confirm Panuccio and more than 100 other Trump nominees. The vote was taken under rules adopted by Republicans to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations.

▶ Read more about the confirmations here.

The Trump administration is waiving a long list of environmental protections and regulations seeking to expand barriers to immigration along the southwest U.S. border in New Mexico.

In a notice for publication Wednesday in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security is invoking an “acute and immediate need to construct additional physical barriers and roads” in an area near the border with Mexico.

The directive from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem describes the border area west of El Paso, Texas, as a traditional place of high illegal entry to the U.S. Noem is suspending federal regulations there aimed at protecting endangered species, clean water, migratory birds, sacred Native American sites and more.

Laiken Jordahl of the Center for Biological Diversity fears any new construction will take a toll on wildlife populations near the remote bootheel of southwest New Mexico.

The Democrats say they want the president to name the drug cartels he claims are in an “armed conflict” with the U.S.

Five U.S. representatives released a letter Tuesday that also asks the president to explain how he determined the cartels were designated terrorist organizations. The lawmakers also asked for the intelligence and the legal justifications behind the U.S. military’s four fatal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

Trump declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants in an administration memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press last week. The memo appears to represent an extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers, with Trump effectively declaring that trafficking of drugs into the U.S. amounts to armed conflict requiring use of military force.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he believes that Trump’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago are about stopping people from voting in Democratic areas in next year’s midterm elections.

Speaking Tuesday in Minneapolis, Pritzker said he believes Trump’s end game is to get people acclimated to having troops in major cities that generally vote Democratic. He said the troops would intimidate residents in ways that could block them from voting and possibly confiscate ballot boxes to count the votes themselves.

Pritzker appeared at the North Star Summit with fellow Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and also said he would not be surprised if the Trump administration eventually tried to arrest him.

A White House spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, later responded that local leaders like the Illinois governor have refused to stop “ongoing violent riots.”

“President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities like Pritzker is willing to do,” she said.

Trump’s efforts to send National Guard troops into U.S. cities — including Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Chicago — over the objections of Democratic mayors and governors have prompted a host of questions about the president’s authority and who controls the Guard. Some of those questions include:

• What are the rules for presidents activating the National Guard?
• How have presidents relied on the Guard before?
• How are the courts interpreting presidential authority over the Guard?
• Can National Guard troops enforce the law?
• What does the National Guard do?

▶ Click here to read a look at National Guard deployments and the legality of Trump’s efforts to send troops into Democratic-led cities.

A former immigration court judge and longtime Marine is going to be the next director of the federal office overseeing the nation’s immigration courts.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Daren K. Margolin will head the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Margolin has served as an assistant chief immigration judge and as a lawyer at the legal office prosecuting immigration cases. He also served in various legal positions during a nearly 30-year career in the Marine Corps.

Margolin takes over an immigration court system struggling with a ballooning case backlog. Immigration courts have also increasingly become hubs for immigration enforcement with ICE agents arresting people in hallways after their court proceedings.

Six former surgeons general said in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses a “profound, immediate and unprecedented threat” to the nation’s health.

The former public officials warned that Kennedy’s moves on vaccines, autism and other issues have undermined the public health system and amplified health misinformation instead of combating it.

An HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon, accused the past surgeons general of criticizing the first HHS secretary who is taking on the “decline in America’s public health” after they presided over it.

“We remain committed to restoring trust, reforming broken health systems, and ensuring that every American has access to real choice in their health care,” Nixon said.

Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said she met with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for about 20 minutes upon Noem’s arrival at the Portland airport on Tuesday. Kotek reached out to Noem after hearing through “unofficial channels” that Noem might be visiting.

“Today, in my meeting with Secretary Noem, I reiterated again that there is no insurrection in Oregon. Twice now, a federal judge has affirmed that there is no legal basis for military deployment in Portland,” Kotek said in a statement.

Noem then went to the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. News crews and some protesters lined up behind yellow police tape that cordoned off the blocks in front of the building.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that Trump has “identified a creative solution to transfer resources” from tariffs the administration has imposed on U.S. trading partners to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

Also known as WIC, the program provides vouchers to buy infant formula as well as fresh fruits and vegetables, low-fat milk and other healthy staples but was threatened by the government shutdown.

Leavitt did not provide details of how such funding transfers might work. But she wrote that the Trump White House “will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry.”

Trump has met with an American hostage freed from Gaza, and with the family of an American-Israeli soldier who was killed there but whose remains have yet to be recovered.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a photo online of Trump meeting in the Oval Office with Edan Alexander. He was taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that led to the Israel-Hamas war.

The meeting wasn’t public. But the picture also showed Trump with the family of Omer Neutra, whose body is still in Gaza.
Peace talks are being held in Egypt over Trump’s plan to end fighting between Hamas and Israel.

Trump also met this summer with Alexander, who was the last living American hostage in Gaza and released from captivity in May.

Hi Sherry, thank you for asking about this.

Americans are of varied opinions as to whom to blame for the shutdown, which has halted paychecks for thousands of federal workers across the country.

But regardless of the government being shut down or not, members of Congress — and the president — do get paid as normal, thanks to the continuity of their pay structures being delineated in the U.S. Constitution.

Some members of Congress from both parties have said publicly that they will turn down their paychecks until federal funding is fully restored for everyone. And Trump, during both of his terms as president, has donated his salary to various projects and entities.

Other federal employees are covered under a different law, which says agencies’ funding — including employee pay — is dependent on measures approved by Congress. So if those measures haven’t been approved, like the shutdown that is happening now, those workers don’t get paid.

In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.

Adelita Grijalva won a special election for a House seat on Sept. 24, but has been unable to actually represent her district in Congress until the speaker officially swears her into office. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has so far refused to accommodate her request to officially take office while the House is not conducting legislative business during the government shutdown.

Johnson did not elaborate on what he meant Tuesday by saying he would swear her into office as soon as she wants. However, Grijalva could be sworn in during one of the House’s pro-forma sessions. The next one is Wednesday.

Once she officially takes office, Grijalva has said she will join a legislative maneuver to force a vote in the House on a bill that would require the Department of Justice to release the case files on the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A judge Tuesday blocked the Trump’s administration from requiring recipients of federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to comply with Trump’s orders aimed at curtailing “radical indoctrination” and “gender ideology.”

The ruling is a victory for three Planned Parenthood affiliates that sued to try to block enforcement of a Department of Human Services policy document issued in July that they contend contradict the requirements of the grants as established by Congress.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, blasted the administration’s policy change in her written ruling, saying it was “motivated solely by political concerns, devoid of any considered process or analysis, and ignorant of the statutory emphasis on evidence-based programming.”

A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted two men after authorities said they made online threats against an ICE officer and his wife.

Frank Andrew Waszut and Anthony Patrick Noto are charged with knowingly making interstate threats of violence. Both men were indicted last month, and the indictments were unsealed Monday. They were both in custody and online court records did not show either man having a lawyer who could comment on the charges.

Federal prosecutors said in a news release Tuesday that Waszut posted a video on Instagram that identified and showed photos of the officer, who lives and works in Georgia. Waszut is accused of encouraging people to “make him famous” and urging anyone who sees the officer to “give him the cell block one treatment,” which prosecutors said means subjecting him to violence.

Noto posted a comment on Instagram under a photo of the officer’s wife that called her a “pretty good target” for anyone wanting to test out a semiautomatic rifle.

Waszut, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, was in jail in Texas, where he’s accused of making separate threats against Republican lawmakers. Noto, who lives in Ronkonkoma, New York, was in federal custody.

Thune is responding as President Trump’s administration has suggested that workers who have been furloughed during the government shutdown won’t be paid at all.

Still, he said “the answer to everything is to open up the government” as Democrats are demanding an extension of health care benefits.

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Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

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Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

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National Guard members from Texas are at an Army training center in Illinois. It’s the most visible sign yet of the Trump administration’s plan to send troops to the Chicago area despite a lawsuit and vigorous opposition from Democratic elected leaders.

The Associated Press saw military personnel in uniforms with the Texas National Guard patch at the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles (88 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. On Monday, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted a picture on social media showing National Guard members from his state boarding a plane, but he didn’t specify where they were going.

Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday that authorities made 237,565 arrests at the border with Mexico during the government’s fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. That’s down 84% from more than 1.5 million during the previous 12-month period and the lowest tally since 1970.

There were more than 2 million arrests in 2022 and 2023.

The latest number includes nearly four months of the Biden administration. Arrests fell sharply after the Biden administration imposed severe asylum restrictions in June 2024. They plummeted more after the Trump administration virtually eliminated asylum access and dispatched thousands of miliary troops to the border.

During September, authorities averaged 279 arrests a day. That’s up from 204 arrests a day in August but down from nearly 1,800 a day in September 2024.

As Attorney General Pam Bondi faced a Senate panel, Democrats time and again asked her what happened to $50,000 that White House “border czar” Tom Homan accepted last year from undercover agents posting as businesspeople.

The investigation into Homan was shut down by the Trump administration, but Democrats repeatedly questioned whether the money was recovered or whether Homan kept the money and reported it as income on his taxes.

“Do you know sitting here whether he took the money?” Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, asked Bondi during one particularly combative exchange with the attorney general.

Bondi said the decision to clear Homan of wrongdoing was made before she was sworn in as attorney general and defended Homan. She repeatedly refused to say what actually happened to the $50,000, though.

“You think you got a gotcha with Tom Homan our border czar who has been out there fighting for our country since Donald Trump took office,” Bondi replied to Schiff.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is suggesting that National Guard troops are not the best equipped to address crime in cities and that instead accountability for policing should remain with local officials.

“Is this deployment of the National Guard a part of an emerging best practice that I just don’t get yet?” Tillis asked Attorney General Pam Bondi during a Senate oversight hearing.

It was a bit of indirect criticism from Tillis, who is not seeking reelection next year, on how President Donald Trump is deploying National Guard troops to major cities as part of his crime and immigration agenda.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seems likely to side with a Christian counselor challenging bans on LGBTQ+ “conversion therapy” for kids as a violation of her First Amendment rights.

Most justices on the high court didn’t seem convinced that states can restrict voluntary talk therapy aimed at potentially changing feelings or behavior for kids who identify as gay or transgender.

Justice Samuel Alito said the Colorado law being challenged “looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination.”

The city and police department confirmed her visit in a joint statement after conservative podcaster and influencer Benny Johnson said on social media that Noem was going to Portland on Tuesday.

The city said it received notice of her visit to the Portland area but did not have full details about her agenda. Portland police “will provide the same routine support they would for any visiting dignitary.”

Her trip comes as local and state officials continue to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy the National Guard to the city.

A federal judge issued two restraining orders over the weekend blocking the deployment, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments in the case for Thursday morning. The court indicated the arguments could be canceled if judges determine they aren’t needed.

The president said of his Canadian counterpart that he is “a great prime minister,” and added: “He could represent me anytime.”

But, Trump said: “He’s a nice man but he can be nasty.”

When asked by a reporter what is holding up trade talks with Carney if he’s such a great man, Trump said: “Because I want to be a great man too.”

“I’ll be meeting him in South Korea,” Trump said, referencing a summit that he’s expected to attend there at the end of the month.

A meeting between the two leaders has not been formally announced.

The president appeared to dismiss a key achievement of his first term, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.

Trump says he’ll negotiate trade deals on Tuesday with the visiting Canadian prime minister.

But asked about USMCA — which took effect in 2020, replacing NAFTA — he offered a surprise. “We could renegotiate it or we could create a different deal,” Trump said.

He offered no further details.

The president said the Democrats “started” the shutdown fight and that the minority party was taking such aggressive tactics because “they have nothing to lose.”

“Well, they’re the ones that started it,” Trump said in response to a question about his message to Democrats. “They’re the ones that have it, and it’s almost like a kamikaze attack by them. You want to know the truth, this is like a kamikaze attack. They, they almost, you know, they have nothing to lose.”

Asked a second time about backpay for furloughed federal workers given that the requirement is spelled out in law, Trump said: “I follow the law, and what the law says is correct.”

But asked about what he meant previously about dealing with workers in “a different way” than backpay, the president ducked the question, suggesting reporters would have to find that out for themselves.

The Canadian prime minister pushed back at Trump’s characterization of the two nations being in “natural conflict.”

Carney pointed out that Canada is the United States’ second-largest trading partner and is also a major foreign investor. He said the relationship between the U.S. and Canada are “maybe not so much conflict” but that they “compete.”

“There are areas where we compete, and it’s in those areas where we have to come to an agreement that works,” Carney said. “But there are more areas where we are stronger together, and that’s what we’re focused on”

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, is suggesting that the FBI look into comments that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made during a recent interview in which he called the late financier Jeffrey Epstein the “greatest blackmailer ever.”

During a Senate hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi reiterated her previous stance that the Department of Justice has not uncovered evidence that could be used in relation to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teenage girls. But Kennedy said that the comments from Lutnick, who was formerly a neighbor with Epstein, suggested others were involved.

“Don’t you think that you ought to talk to him after this interview?” Kennedy asked Bondi.

The attorney general responded that Lutnick had not been interviewed and she was noncommittal about any future interviews.

The president said there’s a “natural business conflict” between the U.S. and its northern neighbor but said there’s also “mutual love.”

“There’s still great love between the two countries,” Trump said.

The president didn’t dismiss back pay for all workers, but added, “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way” without elaborating.

He also blamed Democrats for putting “a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy.”

Trump’s comments came as his administration threatened no back pay for federal workers in a memo Tuesday. That’s despite a 2019 bill Trump signed into law guaranteeing back pay.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the Trump administration has not told him where the National Guard is, when it may arrive in Chicago or what its task will be.

“None of that has been made clear,” Johnson said at a Tuesday news conference. “That is what is so difficult about this moment, you have an administration that is refusing to cooperate with a local authority.”

The City of Chicago and state of Illinois sued Trump on Monday, seeking to stop the sending of National Guard troops to Chicago.
The legal challenge came hours after a judge blocked the Guard’s deployment in Portland, Oregon.

Johnson said Trump’s federalizing of the national guard is “unconstitutional, it’s illegal and it’s dangerous.”

“The federal government is out of control,” Johnson said. “This is one of the most dangerous times in our nation’s history.”
Johnson said Trump is “unchecked” and “If Congress is not going to hold the president of the United States of America accountable, then I will.”

Mark Carney came to Washington for his meeting with Trump, arriving shortly before noon on Tuesday.

The two leaders shook hands after Carney stepped out of his vehicle. They ignored shouted questions about the war in Gaza and trade before going inside.

▶ Read more about what’s at stake with Carney’s White House visit

“Every single furloughed federal employee is entitled to back pay. Period. Full stop,” Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday, responding to a White House memo outlining a rationale it’s considering for denying back pay to federal workers during the shutdown.

“The law is clear,” Jeffries added. “And we will make sure that law is followed.”

“The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act is an obvious misinterpretation of the law,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, representing more than 820,000 workers.

“It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for the time they were out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown is over,” he said.

“The livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game,” Kelley added. “It’s long past time for these attacks on federal employees to stop and for Congress to come together, resolve their differences, and end this shutdown.”

Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has said that some 300 of Illinois’ guard troops were to be federalized over his objections and sent to Chicago, along with 400 from Texas.

“He wants to justify and normalize the presence of armed soldiers under his direct command,” Pritzker said, accusing the president of using troops as “political props” and “pawns.”

A federal judge in Chicago scheduled a hearing for Thursday on a legal challenge that describes Trump’s military mobilization plan for Illinois as unlawful and dangerous. A federal judge in Oregon blocked the Guard’s deployment to Portland.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted a picture on social media Monday showing Texas National Guard members boarding a plane, without saying their destination.

▶ Read more about National Guard deployments in American cities

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling for a thorough probe at the Department of Justice, as well as congressional hearings, on how the FBI analyzed the phone records of more than half a dozen GOP lawmakers as part of an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

During Bondi’s oversight hearing, both GOP senators and the attorney general pointed to the episode as proof that the department had become politicized under the Biden administration.

“We need a special prosecutor to be appointed whose sole responsibility will be to get to the bottom of what has happened,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, referring to the incident as well as others that he argued showed political bias.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has said he is still deciding whether to hold hearings on this question.

A White House draft memo is threatening no backpay for furloughed workers. But that would have no effect on the president and members of Congress.

The Constitution forbids a reduction in salary for the sitting president, thus guaranteeing the president of compensation regardless of any shutdown action, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Similarly, members of Congress are not subject to furlough and the Constitution states that members of Congress “shall receive” compensation for their services. It says no law varying their compensation can take effect until after the next congressional election.

Still, many lawmakers have sent letters to the Treasury asking that their pay be withheld during the shutdown.

The attorney general is refusing to discuss any legal analysis that the Justice Department may have provided to the White House for a series of military strikes on Venezuelan boats that the president alleges were carrying drugs.

“I’m not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have given or issued at the direction of the president,” Bondi said.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said he wanted to understand the government take on drug trafficking, and said this use of deadly military force is alarming.

“Due process is the cornerstone of our Constitution,” Coons said. “I’m deeply concerned about the authority our president seems to be asserting to summarily kill people suspected of criminal activity outside the law.”

Party leaders showed no signs of budging from their positions on Tuesday on the seventh day of the government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said as he opened the Senate floor that “there’s only one viable path out of the mess that the Democrats have created,” and that is to pass the GOP bill to extend funding to Nov. 21.

“We’re not asking Democrats to support any Republican policies,” Thune said. “We’re just asking them to reopen the government. It’s that simple.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson for keeping the House in recess while Democrats demand negotiations on health care.

“Democrats stand ready and willing to negotiate,” Schumer said. “We urge Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to do the same.”

The attorney general says she believes she’s carried out her promise from her January confirmation hearing, that she would not politicize the Justice Department.

Klobuchar reminded Bondi of that commitment at an oversight hearing on Tuesday.

Bondi replied that she believes she absolutely has upheld her pledge, and noted that she also pledged to end what she calls the weaponization of the Justice Department.

The indictment last week of former FBI Director James Comey has stirred concerns from Democrats that the department is being used as a political weapon.

The attorney general says she won’t answer any questions from Democratic senators on the dismissals of Department of Justice officials.

“I am not going to discuss personnel discussions,” Bondi replied to questions that Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota had on the dismissal of one career prosecutor.

“The personnel issue that I’m having right now is that all of my agents, all of my lawyers are working, my agents are on the street working without a paycheck because your party voted to shut down the federal government,” Bondi shot back.

The military assistance provided under the Biden and Trump administrations totals at least $21.7 billion since the Gaza war began on Oct. 7, 2023, according to a new academic study published Tuesday, the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks in Israel that provoked the conflict.

Another study, also published by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, says the U.S. has spent roughly $10 billion more on security aid and operations in the broader Middle East in the past two years.

The reports rely on open source material for most of their findings and offer some of the most comprehensive accountings of U.S. military aid to its close ally Israel as well as estimated costs of direct American military involvement in the Middle East.

▶ Read more about Israeli dependence on US funding

Miami-Dade County officials are being accused of violating Florida’s open government law when they gifted a sizable plot of prime downtown real estate to the state, which then transferred it to the foundation for Trump’s future presidential library.

The property next to the historic Freedom Tower on Biscayne Boulevard was appraised this year at more than $67 million. One real estate expert wagered it could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.

The lawsuit filed by local activist Marvin Dunn accuses the trustees of Miami Dade College of violating the state’s Sunshine Law by not providing sufficient notice before voting to give up its property. College representatives college didn’t immediately respond to a Tuesday request seeking comment.

A pre-meeting agenda didn’t say what property was being considered or why, and the meeting wasn’t livestreamed. “No one not already in on the deal would have had any idea” what the board was planning, the lawsuit says.

Rep. Mike Johnson says he doesn’t know the details about a Trump administration memo that provides the rationale for not retroactively paying furloughed federal workers. Nevertheless, he’s citing the memo as a reason for Democrats to pass a measure to fund the government.

Johnson said some legal analysts believe that retroactive pay is not something the government should do.

“If that is true, that should turn up the urgency and the necessity of the Democrats doing the right thing here. Even more pain, more than I just listed, for more people,” Johnson said.