The White House reportedly is exploring ways to bypass a federal law mandating government employees furloughed during a shutdown receive back pay once the government reopens. President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he would not be paying some federal workers — not based on job type but on some other metric.

Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich on Tuesday asked the president, “Is it the White House’s position that furloughed workers should be paid for their back pay?”

“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump replied.

READ MORE: ‘Imminent Danger’: Experts Sound Alarm Over Trump’s Insurrection Act Threat

He then attempted to blame Democrats.

“I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you’re talking about,” Trump said. “But for the most part, we’re gonna take care of our people.”

He did not explain who he meant by “our people.”

“There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way. Okay?” Trump added.

NBC News reported that a draft White House memo “clashes with a 2019 law that requires back pay for federal workers. The law, called the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, says all federal employees, whether furloughed or deemed essential and working without pay, must receive back pay after a shutdown ends.”

President Trump signed that legislation into law.

READ MORE: ‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

Critics blasted the president’s remarks.

The Steady State, a consortium of over 330 former national security officials, wrote that “the President of the United States [was] explaining how he will ‘take care’ of his people, and ‘take care’ of some others — the second ‘take care’ is Tony Soprano. This is how dictators take and hold power.”

Similarly, Sophia A. Nelson, an award-winning author and journalist, wrote: “This is how Tony Soprano talks. Not the President of the United States.”

NEW: President Trump tells me White House does not believe all furloughed federal workers are necessarily entitled to backpay during the shutdown:

TRUMP: “I would say it depends on who we’re talking about. I can tell you this. The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk… pic.twitter.com/ZKsxHTbZ81

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) October 7, 2025

READ MORE: Supreme Court Appears Poised to Strike Down Ban on Anti-LGBTQ ‘Conversion Therapy’

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The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to strike down a Colorado ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors — a practice that purports to alter the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people but has been denounced by every major medical organization in America as harmful and potentially dangerous. The decision could have nationwide consequences for LGBTQ youth in more than twenty states.

Conversion, or reparative, therapy is not backed by science, and those who have experienced it have likened it to torture. There is evidence that it can lead to suicide.

A Christian therapist who does not perform the practice has challenged Colorado’s ban on First Amendment free speech grounds. The New York Times and NBC News both report the Supreme Court appears likely to strike down the ban, which could possibly end bans nationwide.

The Times, describing oral arguments at the high court as “lively,” reported that attorneys for the therapist, from the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Trump administration, “said there were no studies indicating such therapy causes harm. The state’s lawyer countered that there is a ‘mountain of evidence’ that conversion therapy is ineffective and harmful.”

READ MORE: ‘Imminent Danger’: Experts Sound Alarm Over Trump’s Insurrection Act Threat

Talking Points Memo reported that “no amount of medical consensus can convince the Court’s majority that conversion therapy is a debunked, harmful practice — they poke holes in the mountain of evidence on the anti-conversion therapy side (this time, that the many studies weren’t precisely tailored to the case at hand) and elevate pseudoscience on the other.”

Slate on Monday reported that the case is “riddled with distorted facts, fabricated injuries, and flimsy evidence.”

“For instance, the plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, has disclaimed any desire to change her minor patients’ sexual orientation or gender identity, so it is unclear why she has standing to challenge the law in question. Her lawyers insist that banning conversion therapy hurts patients who voluntarily seek it out, but their proof for this assertion is anonymous Reddit posts. Chiles’ attorneys also claim that even LGBTQ+ advocates believe sexual orientation can be altered—but according to the very researchers cited in their brief, they ‘profoundly misrepresented’ those findings through ‘deceptive’ quotations.”

READ MORE: ‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

Legal organizations responded.

“Colorado’s law on conversion therapy targets precisely the type of treatment by professionals that states have a strong interest in, and long history of, regulating,” the Constitutional Accountability Center said in a statement. “The First Amendment does not prohibit states from protecting its residents through this sort of regulation simply because the medical treatment that mental health professionals provide is done through speech.”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement: “We don’t have to imagine the devastation forcing children to go to conversion therapy causes. It’s already well-reported: anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder are just some of the horrific and preventable outcomes for the young people subjected to this dangerous, unethical practice.”

READ MORE: ‘Pre-Crime’: Hundreds of National Security Experts Warn Trump Order Threatens Democracy

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Military, legal, and political experts are warning after President Donald Trump vowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if he deems it necessary — a move some see as the culmination of an authoritarian trajectory he has been telegraphing since taking office. No president has used the law in more than three decades, and then only in limited, localized crises.

In the Oval Office late Monday afternoon, asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the president replied, “Well, I’d do it if it was necessary.”

“So far, it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he continued. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that.”

“If people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up? Sure, I do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”

READ MORE: ‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a well-known MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst, on Substack wrote, “It’s hard to mistake what’s happening here. This is a president in the process of looking for excuses and seeing how far he can go until someone—right now it’s the courts—reins him in.”

“The Insurrection Act is the primary vehicle for circumventing Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the use of the military on American soil to enforce laws against American citizens,” she explained. “That is not the role the military plays in American democracy. The Insurrection Act is reserved for extreme situations like rebellions or invasions. Trump is fully capable of spinning a narrative that would claim one of those preconditions, even while having no resemblance to the truth.”

Indeed, on Monday night, President Trump was asked on Newsmax about his remarks.

“It is a way to get around” opposition to his efforts, Trump said. “If we don’t have to use it I wouldn’t use it.”

“If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, that’s insurrection, that’s pure insurrection” he added.

The Lincoln Project’s Gregory Minchak commented, “The Insurrection Act is NOT a way to ‘get around’ anything. It’s a break glass law in case of extreme and dire emergency. NOTHING in this country even remotely qualifies.”

Barely hours after Trump made his first set of remarks, Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker had told reporters:

“The Trump administration is following a playbook: Cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.”

READ MORE: ‘Pre-Crime’: Hundreds of National Security Experts Warn Trump Order Threatens Democracy

Other experts also responded to the president’s remarks.

“This has always been the plan,” declared political and national security analyst, and well-known veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff. “Most Americans won’t realize it until he does it.”

Rieckhoff was not alone in that observation.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a Berkeley professor of public policy, wrote: “Everything Trump is doing now is a preamble for his regime’s real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act. I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly.”

On Wednesday on Substack Professor Reich wrote: “The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.”

He also laid out what he believes the “plan” is to invoke the Insurrection Act, noting that “Trump and his enablers have worked this out in advance.”

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) wrote: “We have the Insurrection Act for a reason—But it’s not so a President with 34 felonies can ignore court orders and punish cities he doesn’t like with military intimidation. Especially not when the courts are telling him his claims of insurrection are ‘untethered to the facts.'”

U.S. Rep. Primala Jayapal (D-WA) commented, “Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the National Guard to our cities — completely ignoring federal judges’ orders. This is authoritarianism — and from someone who actually incited an insurrection on Jan 6th.”

READ MORE: ‘Literally What’s Happening’: White House Blasted for Raging at Military Takeover Talk

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