The Latest: Trump targets ‘the enemy from within’

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Although the military is designed to handle foreign threats, President Donald Trump emphasized his vision of using it for domestic purposes during a speech to top U.S. military officials on Tuesday.

“It’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” the president said. His remarks referred to criminals and immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Trump was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the unusual gathering of hundreds of U.S. military leaders who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world for an unveiling of new directives to end “woke” culture in the military.

The president has already demonstrated an eagerness to deploy troops against U.S. citizens, having deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement protests earlier this year and most recently in Portland, despite objections from leaders in both states.

Here's the latest:

Tourists walking through the Capitol halls stopped to watch the looped video message on a wide screen TV stationed in front of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.

It began with a title screen “Democrats on shutdowns in their words” and showed past comments from lawmakers when they condemned potential shutdowns. The videos included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Rep. Katherine Clarke, the Democratic Whip, as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.

“Under President Trump their tune has suddenly changed…” a message reads before shifting to news headlines that describe how Democrats have called for a government shutdown if a bipartisan deal isn’t reached to extend the current federal budget.

The Argentinian government said on X that its president, Javier Milei, will meet with Trump on Oct. 14.

The meeting comes after the U.S. government announced plans to extended a $20 billion swap line to Argentina that helps to backstop its economy with access to American dollars. The move by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was shortly ahead of Argentina’s Oct. 26 midterm elections.

Milei is also an political ally of Trump, having spoken in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. Trump, in his remarks at the event, praised Milei. “We’re very proud of you,” he said.

Janessa Goldbeck, who served in the Marines and is now CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, said the defense secretary’s speech Tuesday was more about “stoking grievance than strengthening the force.”

She said Hegseth’s plan for loosening the rules for discipline in the military confuses abuse with toughness and is the “mark of someone who’s never seen the real thing.”

“It takes no strength to hit a recruit — it takes real strength to teach one,” she said.

“I had a front-row seat every day to the extraordinary training our recruits receive from the most disciplined, professional Marines in the fleet,” Goldbeck said of her experience at Marine boot camp in California, while Hegseth “never served as a drill instructor and never trained a recruit.”

The secretary “has a cartoonish, 1980s comic-book idea of toughness he’s never outgrown,” she said. “Instead of focusing on what actually improves force readiness, he continues to waste time and taxpayer dollars on He-Man culture-war theatrics.”

Police in a small Chicago suburb that houses a federal immigration building have launched three separate criminal investigations against federal agents.

Two involve alleged hit-and-run incidents while a third delves into allegations that agents fired chemical agents toward a reporter.

Armed immigration agents outside the center in Broadview have used increasingly aggressive tactics that local police say are unnecessary, dangerous to residents and raise serious concerns.

“We are experiencing an immediate public safety crisis,” Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills told reporters Tuesday.

The processing center in Broadview, a community of about 8,000 people, has been at the front lines of a Chicago-area immigration operation.

U.S. District Judge William Young agreed with several university associations that the policy they described as ideological deportation violates the First Amendment. The Tuesday ruling came after a trial.

An email to the Homeland Security department for comment wasn’t immediately returned.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, said the Secretary of Defense’s speech Tuesday seemed more geared toward generating public relations content than “aligning the leadership around a set of ideas that the Trump administration is going to pursue.”

Clark said there had been some expectation that Pete Hegseth was going to delve into budget priorities, military investments or the new national defense strategy, which the Pentagon is expected to release sometime in the near future.

Clark said the message didn’t match the gravity of an event that drew hundreds of senior military leaders into one room.

“You’d think that the purpose of that would have been something more dramatic and important than grooming standards and physical fitness standards,” he said.

Elisa Cardnell, president of the Service Women’s Action Network, criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statements about female troops and physical fitness, noting standards haven’t been lowered for women serving in combat roles.

She said he erroneously conflated combat standards with physical requirements for military service, which are adjusted for gender and age.

“A 50-year-old man, like a general, isn’t going to be doing the same number of push ups as a 17-year-old female,” Cardnell said.

But the requirements for serving in the infantry, for example, are the same for men and women, whether it’s carrying a certain amount of equipment or marching a certain distance, Cardnell said.

“Women and men going into combat roles meet the same high standards,” she said. “And those have never been lowered.”

Trump and fellow Republican leaders in Congress have been falsely claiming that Democrats are threatening to shut down the government unless they can get money to pay for health care for people living in the U.S. illegally.

Asked to explain what he means, Trump lashed out at the reporter and answered by talking about his crime crackdown in Washington, D.C.

Trump said no health care system can handle the amount of people that have come into the U.S. illegally.

“We all have big hearts. I have a bigger heart than you do,” he told CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang.

The Republican president then spoke for several minutes about reduced crime in the nation’s capital.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has met with the vice president of Equatorial Guinea in Washington after the Trump administration approved a waiver of corruption sanctions that allowed him to travel to last week’s U.N. General Assembly and other U.S. cities.

The State Department says Landau met with Teodoro “Teddy” Nguema Obiang on Monday and “reaffirmed joint commitments to deepen commercial and economic ties, combat illegal immigration, and advance security cooperation.”

Obiang is accused of pilfering his impoverished country’s resources to feed a lifestyle of luxury cars, mansions and superyachts but earlier this month was given a temporary pass on U.S. corruption sanctions to travel to the U.N. and cities such as Miami and Los Angeles. The Associated Press reported in early September that Obiang was likely to get the waiver.

“I don’t think they have thought through what I believe the OMB director is going to do while government is shut down, I think they’re going to make it very painful,” said Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican.

Kennedy said he had “no inside information” about how Russ Vought, the White House’s director for the Office of Management, planned to respond to a potential government shutdown.

“I just know Russ, and he is an expert on the budget, and he’s an expert on pressure points,” Kennedy said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Russ punishes them the rest of their natural lives, or at least during a shutdown.”

Trump’s top negotiator expressed confidence Tuesday that the Supreme Court will uphold Trump’s use of a 1977 law to impose massive taxes — tariffs — on almost every country.

“We believe the court will defer to the president,’’ U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a discussion at the Economic Club of New York.

Trump has invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare national emergencies (over trafficking of drugs and immigrants and the nation’s longstanding trade deficits) to impose double-digit tariffs on most countries and specific ones on China, Canada and Mexico.

But a specialized trade court in New York in May ruled Trump had overstepped his authority in using the law to impose sweeping tariffs. And last month, a federal appeals court largely upheld that decision. The Supreme Court is set to hear the case in November.

Greer also said his 250-person agency will stay open even if Congress can’t break an impasse and keep the government open after 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. “We’re going to be going on all pistons even if we shut down,” he said.

The president’s library foundation is celebrating after officials in Florida approved a deal that will allow Miami Dade College to serve as the future home of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.

“No monument can fully capture the scale of my father’s legacy, but this library will stand as a tribute to the leader who reshaped history and restored America’s strength,” said Eric Trump, president of the library’s foundation. He said that, “Once completed, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library will be visible for miles into the Atlantic, a bold landmark on Miami’s skyline and a lasting tribute to the achievements my father continues to deliver for this nation.”

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet voted Tuesday to give nearly three acres of prime downtown Miami real estate next to the historic Freedom Tower, appraised at more than $66 million, to the foundation that’s planning the president’s post-administration archives.

They argued the property would provide a “greater benefit to the public” and “increase economic development activities” as Trump’s library.

The president continued to attempt to blame congressional Democrats, despite Republicans controlling both chamber of Congress and the White House.

“They are shutting it down, we’re not shutting it down,” he said.

Trump also threatened political retribution unless a funding deal is reached.

“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible that are bad for them, and then irreversible by them,” he said, suggesting reductions to federal programs Democrats support.

Trump didn’t elaborate but said actions during a shutdown could include “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

As he announced a new partnership with Pfizer that would lead to more investments and lower prices, Trump said other drug manufacturers will follow suit.

And if they don’t, the president threatened to impose tariffs on those companies.

“Nobody wants to play that game. So they’re all gonna be good,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter.

He said Pfizer was “right at the top,” while the Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly “has been fantastic also.” Other companies are coming to the White House next week and “we’re making deals with all of them.”

Asked about the Democrats’ message to federal workers getting furloughs and layoffs in a shutdown, one said the Trump administration has already fired tens of thousands of employees — before any shutdown.

“They’re letting people go left and right,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, because “it’s working at dismantling the federal government.”

“We do not want to shut the government down,” she said. “The Republicans are in charge here. They need to come to the table.”

Hegseth announced Tuesday an overhaul of military standards, saying that if women can’t meet the requirements, “it is what it is.”

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who served in the Iraq War, called Hegseth’s comments “appropriate.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Ernst said. “There should be a same set of standards for combat arms. I think that’s what he probably was referring to.”

Ernst had previously expressed misgivings about Hegseth’s nomination, citing his public opposition to women in combat roles. She ultimately voted to confirm him after raising the issue during a confirmation hearing.

“Our women that go through Ranger School, they’re subjected to the same standards as the men. If they’re going into the infantry, same standards as the men,” Ernst said Tuesday. “I think that’s appropriate.”

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong says a federal judge ruled from the bench Tuesday that a new federal funding cap on state-run energy programs is illegal and violates reimbursement regulations for Department of Energy grants to states.

Tong, a Democrat, announced that U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai in Oregon granted a motion for summary judgement filed by 19 attorneys generals and two governors, finding the agency’s new cost-cutting policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The states argued the policy would have slashed long-covered reimbursements for staffing and administrative costs under the State Energy Program, jeopardizing states’ ability to keep them running.

“This was about Donald Trump trying to make it harder for states like Connecticut to drive down unaffordable energy costs and to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” Tong, a Democrat, said in a written statement.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Department of Energy.

House Democrats filled the House chamber as they tried to show they were ready to take up government funding — as long as it is on their terms.

The House was holding a pro forma session — a session where the House chamber is quickly opened and closed without any legislative business — but Democrats, who are in Washington to show support for their government shutdown fight, filled their side of the chamber.

They took the opportunity to try to offer up their bill to fund the government while also funding their health care priorities.

Still, the session was closed without the Democrats gaining acknowledgement.

The lawmakers protested, some of them chanting “shame on you,” while others snapped photos of the crowd in the chamber.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed each day of a shutdown, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400 million, according to an analysis of federal agencies’ latest contingency plans and the Office of Personnel Management.

The estimate released Tuesday comes in response to Sen. Joni Ernst’s request for an analysis of the impact of what she calls a “Schumer Shutdown” which includes a series of questions about how much damage to the economy would be caused and the expected daily costs to the federal government in lost efficiencies.

“The effects of a shutdown depend on its duration and on an Administration’s decisions about how to proceed,” the CBO says in its Tuesday analysis, largely using work CBO published in 2019 after the five-week partial shutdown from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019.

The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if the Senate does not pass a House measure that would extend federal funding for seven weeks while lawmakers finish their work on annual spending bills.

The Environmental Protection Agency says a contingency plan for a possible government shutdown would leave more than 10% of its staff in place to handle “significant agency activities” that are required by law or necessary to protect life and property.

Activities that would continue include protection of EPA land, buildings, equipment and ongoing research, as well as law enforcement and criminal investigations and emergency and disaster assistance, according to a contingency plan obtained by The Associated Press.

Response work on certain Superfund clean-up sites also would continue, especially in cases where a failure to maintain operations would pose an imminent threat to human life, the memo says.

More than 1,700 employees would be required to go to work if a shutdown begins on Wednesday, the memo said. The agency had about 15,000 employees when Trump began his second term in January but has laid off hundreds of employees and offered voluntary retirement or deferred resignations to thousands more as part of a broader effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to downsize the federal workforce.

Trump’s proposed budget for EPA says 12,856 employees are expected in the budget year that starts Wednesday.

The president said that Pfizer would only charge Medicaid what he called “Most Favored Nation” prices for its pharmaceutical drugs, which means that the cost would match the lowest prices charged in other developed nations.

Trump said that going forward “all new medications introduced by Pfizer” would be sold using the same price structure.

The president also said that Pfizer would invest $70 billion in domestic manufacturing facilities, though it’s unclear what the timeline of that would be or how it compares to previous investment commitments.

Trump claimed — as he has done repeatedly during his second term — that there will be “14, 15, 1,600 percent reductions” to prescription drug prices.

But this is impossible. Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications.

Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center, told the AP in August that Trump’s prediction would amount to drug companies paying customers, rather than the other way around.

The full fact-check.

It’s just a routine “pro forma” session of the House — gavel in, gavel out — no business to be conducted.

But not if House Democrats have their say.

Democrats are gathering at the House chamber in protest as they push their demands to save health care funds as part of any deal to avert a federal government shutdown.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says about 97% of its workforce will continue to work if there’s a government shutdown and its medical centers, clinics and vet centers will stay open.

But some programs, such as transition program assistance, career counseling and benefits regional offices, won’t be available, according to the federal agency’s contingency plans. The agency will continue to deliver benefits, perform burials at VA cemeteries and operate suicide prevention programs.

In an unusually partisan statement, the agency blamed “radical liberals in Congress” for a shutdown and said, “If they succeed, they will stop critical Veterans care and assistance programs.”

A coalition of 12 attorneys general has filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration’s recent decision to reallocate federal homeland security funding away from their states.

According to the lawsuit filed in Rhode Island’s federal court late Monday, the attorneys general argue that the funds were reduced due to their states’ “sanctuary” jurisdictions. In total, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency reduced more than $233 million from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

The funding decision and the new lawsuit come just days after a federal judge ruled in a separate legal challenge that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions to get FEMA disaster funding.

Emails seeking comment were sent to the DHS and FEMA.

After flying back from his speech at Quantico, Trump talked with his administration’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the colonnade outside the White House.

The group then spent several minutes looking at portraits of himself and past presidents that Trump has ordered hung along the colonnade.

The president is already well behind schedule for a planned Oval Office announcement unveiling the ‘TrumpRx’ direct-to-consumer website. Yet the group seemed in no hurry.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says President Trump’s post of an AI-generated video mocking House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and himself was offensive.

The video impersonated Schumer’s voice and included Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache after their meeting with Trump and Republican leaders at the White House.

“Listen to this America, hours away from a shutdown, which we don’t want, the American people don’t want, the president is busy trolling away on the internet like a 10-year-old,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

He said the video is a “proof-point” that Americans will blame Trump for the shutdown that’s expected to begin with the start of a new budget year on Wednesday.

Rights groups in New Orleans warned that bringing National Guard troops into the city would lead to the targeting and harassment of Black and immigrant communities. They were already organizing protests for what they described as a “military occupation.”

“The use of the our nation’s military for ‘law enforcement’ is not only immoral and unnecessary, it is illegal,” said Clare Leavy, chair of the group Indivisible New Orleans. “People of conscience must do everything possible to protect our communities from persecution and abuse.”

“We demand our elected officials who side with democracy to stand up alongside us with some real backbone in this fight,” said Toni Jones, chairwoman of the New Orleans Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “We say ‘No Trump, No Troops!’ and we will be in the streets to make our voices heard.”

Most New Orleans officials have bristled at the prospect of the National Guard roaming the city’s streets. But Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat who faces federal corruption charges, responded placidly after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry requested Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth activate National Guard troops in the state’s major cities.

Terry Davis, a spokesperson for Cantrell, referred to a previous statement in which the city and the New Orleans Police Department expressed gratitude for the federal government’s role in improving public safety in the city.

“Our federal and state partnerships have played a significant role in ensuring public safety, particularly during special events for a world-class city,” the Sept. 3 statement said. “The City of New Orleans and NOPD remain committed to sustaining this momentum, ensuring that every neighborhood continues to feel the impact of these combined efforts.”

Internet users on Tuesday spotted a banner on the website for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that some argue breaches a law designed to limit political activity by federal employees.

The banner, which pops up when navigating to the website’s homepage, includes political messaging about the congressional standoff that will lead to a government shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if the two sides can’t agree.

“The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands,” the banner reads. “The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”

Some internet users suggested this would violate the Hatch Act, an 80-year-old law that restricts partisan political activity by U.S. federal employees. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.