President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to illegally revoke Americans’ health care benefits if Democrats in Congress don’t agree to do it themselves.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump floated pulling the plug on certain programs if Democratic lawmakers didn’t give up their funding fight to extend tax credits for the Affordable Care Act.

“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” Trump said.

Trump threatened to direct his attack dog, White House budget director Russell Vought, to “trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way.”

“So they’re taking a risk by having a shutdown. Because of the shutdown, we can do things medically—and other ways, including benefits, we can cut large numbers of people out. We don’t want to do that, but we don’t want fraud, waste, and abuse,” Trump continued.

Trump didn’t get more specific about what programs he planned to cut, but “medically” implies he may strip health care benefits, the very thing Democrats have been battling to protect. An estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their insurance by 2034 if ACA funding expires at the end of the year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Trump and other Republicans have claimed Democrats want to lavish undocumented immigrants with health care subsidies—but undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the tax credits Democrats hope to extend.

Trump isn’t the only one trying to outright intimidate lawmakers. The White House Office of Management and Budget wrote Congress last week urging them to pass a short-term measure to keep the government open through November. If lawmakers fail to agree on a deal, Vought’s office has warned federal agencies to prepare for another round of mass firings, with a focus on eliminating positions where funding has been discontinued or that do not align with Trump’s agenda.

If a deal cannot be reached, the government will shut down at midnight Tuesday.

A federal judge used an anonymous pro-Trump threat he received to open his scathing 161-page ruling on how President Trump broke the law with his authoritarian deportations of students for standing against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Trump has pardons and tanks,” the scribbled threat to senior U.S. District Judge William Young (a Reagan appointee) read. “What do you have?”

Young responded directly.

“Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, we the people of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution,” Young replied. “Here’s how that works out in a specific case—”

Young proceeded to explain to Mr. or Ms. Anonymous just how exactly the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk.

“Secretaries Noem and Rubio … acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech. They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right,” Young wrote. “Moreover, the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.”

He also called out Trump specifically and his obvious “problem” with the First Amendment.

“Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution.’ ‘I am your retribution’ he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.”

While tanks and pardons are quite formidable weapons, as Trump has shown, at least some judges still seem to believe in the power vested in the Constitution and their right to enforce it, even as they receive strange threats from the president himself or his anonymous fans.

“I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should. Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young,” Judge Young concluded in his response to the anonymous threat. “P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice. It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that ‘Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.’”

The Trump administration is appealing to its ideological base to fill vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security.  

White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced to his followers on X Monday night that the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was looking for “homeland defenders” to approve or deny immigration applications.

“Calling all patriots. USCIS is now hiring ‘HOMELAND DEFENDERS,’” Miller wrote. “Your job will be to interview applicants for green cards, work visas and citizenship for approval or denial. Great pay, flexible hours, stay local. Sign up to be a Homeland Defender today!”

It was not immediately clear if “homeland defender” would be a new position at USCIS, or if it would differ in any significant way from the work already done by immigration service officers at the agency. But whether Miller is referring to a new title or an old one, the pay doesn’t seem to be all that he’s chalking it up to be: a batch of new job listings for immigration officers at USCIS describe the starting salary as nearly $35,000. (Job listings for similar roles in other areas of the country pay up to $107,000, according to USCIS’s career website.)

The openings come just weeks before DHS is set to introduce a more rigorous application process for wannabe green card holders. Those changes will go into effect on October 20.

Miller’s coded language paints a vivid picture of exactly who the white nationalist would like to see dictating the demographics of admitted immigrants. The 40-year-old has tasked federal agents with arresting 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day—a quota so astronomical that it has forced the agency to find unconventional subjects of detention, including noncriminal legal residents and even U.S. citizens. The result has been........

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