The White House slammed Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for making a ‘disgusting and revealing’ comment about the ongoing shutdown.

Schumer spoke with Punchbowl News, an outlet based in Washington, D.C., and said that as the shutdown continues, things keep getting ‘better’ for the Democrats.

‘Every day gets better for us,’ Schumer reportedly told Punchbowl News. ‘It’s because we’ve thought about this long in advance, and we knew that health care would be the focal point on Sept. 30, and we prepared for it… Their whole theory was — threaten us, bamboozle us, and we would submit in a day or two.’

Republicans have blamed Schumer for the shutdown, saying it was meant to appease the Democrat Party’s progressive wing, particularly in his home state as Zohran Mamdani maintains the lead in New York City’s mayoral race and buzz swirls regarding Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., potentially challenging Schumer in the next primary. She has not formally declared a Senate bid.

‘Chuck Schumer just said the quiet part out loud: Democrats are gleefully inflicting pain on the American people over their push to give illegal aliens free health care,’ White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement provided exclusively to Fox News Digital. 

‘Workers are missing paychecks; travelers are missing flights; businesses are struggling; military families are forced to rely on food pantries; but to Chuck Schumer that means ‘every day gets better.’ No matter what Chuck Schumer thinks, Americans struggling is not good and the Democrats must stop inflicting this pain on them and reopen the government now,’ Jackson added.

In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, Schumer’s office sent an excerpt from his remarks on the Senate floor.

‘Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown, the worse it gets for Americans — and the clearer it becomes who’s fighting for them. Each day our case to fix healthcare and end this shutdown gets better and better, stronger and stronger because families are opening their letters showing how high their premiums will climb if Republicans get their way. They’re seeing why this fight matters — it’s about protecting their healthcare, their bank accounts and their futures,’ Schumer said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also took issue with Schumer saying that the shutdown was good for the Democrats.

‘While federal workers stress over missed paychecks, military families turn to food pantries, and airports around the country face delays — Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are bragging that ‘every day gets better’ for them,’ Leavitt wrote on X. ‘What a disgusting and revealing statement. Democrats are gleeful about inflicting pain on the American people.’

On Wednesday, the White House said it would be ramping up consequences for the shutdown.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) floated plans that would not guarantee that federal workers currently furloughed from the shutdown would receive backpay — upending a 2019 law from President Donald Trump’s first administration in the aftermath of a 35-day shutdown, Fox News Digital learned.

The threat of furloughed workers failing to receive backpay increases the stakes every day that Congress fails to pass a funding measure — and puts greater pressure on Democrats as Trump continues to accuse them of creating the crisis.

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy, Deirdre Heavey and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., organized a prayer vigil for the federal government on the ninth day of the ongoing shutdown.

The House Democratic leader organized the event, called the ‘Interfaith Rally and Faith Vigil for Health Justice,’ outside a church in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders alongside other Democratic lawmakers.

They pushed congressional Republican leaders to find a bipartisan route to fund the federal government that also includes concessions from Republicans on healthcare policy.

House Democratic leaders’ appearance is a contrast to their absence from the Capitol Hill vigil held by GOP lawmakers last month in honor of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Several rank-and-file Democrats did attend that vigil, but when reporters asked Jeffries at the time why he was not there, he answered simply, ‘I had a meeting.’

At his event Thursday, Jeffries said, ‘I grew up in church learning, of course, that what the Bible teaches us is to stand up for the least amongst us — the lost, the left behind, those whose stations in life may not have always dealt them the best of hands.’

‘And unfortunately, what we’re dealing with right now in the United States Congress is a group of people who we sometimes say they go to church, and they pray on Sunday. But then they come to Washington, D.C., and they prey — p-r-e-y — on the American people for the rest of the week, prey on the poor, prey on the sick, prey on the afflicted.’

He referenced a verse from the New Testament, ‘We are troubled on every side, but not distressed, perplexed, but never in despair,’ to further hammer Republicans’ resistance to Democrats’ demands.

‘I think it’s fair to say that we’ve got trouble all around us. A hater in the White House, haters in the Congress, haters throughout the Cabinet, trouble all around us. But we’re not distressed because we believe in the resilience and the goodness of the American people,’ Jeffries said.

Other lawmakers who spoke included House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The government shut down at midnight on Oct. 1, the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2026, after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a spending deal.

The House passed a bill last month to keep the federal government funded at FY2025 levels through Nov. 21. It was largely free of policy riders, save for an added $88 million in security spending for lawmakers, the White House, and the judicial branch. 

That measure, called a continuing resolution (CR), was aimed at giving congressional negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal for FY2026.

But Democrats in the House and Senate were infuriated by being sidelined in federal funding talks. They have been pushing for an extension of Obamacare subsidies enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Democrats have also introduced a counter-proposal for a CR that would keep the government funded through Oct. 31 while reversing the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid made in their ‘one big, beautiful bill.’

The counter-proposal would have also restored federal funding to NPR and PBS that was cut by the Trump administration earlier this year.

Republicans have panned that plan as a nonstarter full of partisan demands, while pointing out that Democrats have voted for a ‘clean’ measure similar to the GOP proposal 13 times during former President Joe Biden’s time in office.

Another speaker, the Rev. Leslie Copeland-Tune of the National Council of Churches, criticized Republicans’ policy bill during her remarks at the rally.

‘I declare to you today, not having healthcare for 24 million people so that rich people can be richer is terror on the Earth. I declare to you today that cutting food stamps and SNAP and other food programs is terror on the Earth,’ she said. 

‘We pray, Oh God, that you would turn stony hearts to flesh and turn those who would do wrong to make them do right. God, we pray that you would help us to meet this moment, to do our assignment, and to be courageous while we do it.’

Senate Democrats have now sunk the GOP’s plan in six separate votes and are poised to do so again on Thursday.

The White House issued a blistering response to former Vice President Kamala Harris after she suggested the administration is filled with ‘crazy’ ‘mother—ers.’

‘Kamala Harris should listen to an audio recording of her cackle of a laugh before calling anyone crazy,’ White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News Digital in a Tuesday statement.  

Desai was responding to clips spreading like wildfire on social media of Harris speaking at an invite-only event in Los Angeles Monday where she took an apparent jab at the Trump administration while addressing 

‘There’s so much about this moment that is making people feel like they’ve lost their minds. When, in fact, these mother—ers are crazy,’ Harris said Monday during an event in Los Angeles called ‘A Day of Unreasonable Conversation.’ 

‘I call this, ‘The Freedom Tour,” she added, according to the Hollywood Reporter. 

Harris did not identify the Trump administration by name during her remarks. Her comments followed her discussing why she wrote her latest memoir, ‘107 Days,’ which walks readers through the unprecedented 2024 election, when then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and passed the mantle to Harris as the Democrat Party attempted to thwart a second Trump administration. 

‘One of the other reasons I wrote it is history is going to write about this,’ Harris told attendees. ‘And it was important to me that that be told with my voice being present. And I would say that that everyone, we are living history right now. And you all as storytellers are living this. You’re not passive observers. You know that. You’re living it.’ 

‘And I’m gonna ask you that all the emotions that we are feeling, give those emotions, give that experience to those people that you are writing about and writing for. It gets back to my point about helping people just put a label on it, even if it doesn’t change the circumstance,’ she continued. 

Harris is in the midst of a book tour to promote the memoir, making stops in New York City, Houston, San Francisco and other cities before also taking the tour to Canada and the U.K. later in October and November. 

The event in Los Angeles was not included on her official book tour agenda. ‘A Day of Unreasonable Conversation’ is an annual event in Los Angeles that brings together ‘creators of culture – television writers, artists, producers, executives, and digital storytellers’ to cultivate a ‘meaningful connection between those shaping pop culture and those driving social change,’ according to the event’s website. 

Harris’ laugh and public remarks that were dubbed ‘word salads’ by critics have long been mocked by Trump’s orbit, including President Donald Trump calling Harris ‘laughing Kamala’ from the 2024 campaign trail, as well as the campaign running ads spotlighting Harris’ laugh and instances of her past rambling remarks at the time. 

‘She’s worse than Bernie Sanders,’ Trump said during an interview on Fox News in July 2024, just days after Biden dropped out of the race. ‘Now, she’s trying to come back. She got rid of the laugh, I noticed. I haven’t seen the crazy laugh. She’s crazy. That laugh? That’s a laugh of a crazy person. But I noticed she’s not using that laugh anymore. Somebody convinced her, ‘Don’t, just don’t laugh. Don’t laugh under any circumstances.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Harris’ office for additional comment related to her ‘crazy’ comment in Los Angeles and the White House’s response but did not receive replies. 

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from forcing recipients of federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to follow new rules targeting ‘radical indoctrination’ and ‘gender ideology.’

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said President Donald Trump’s order was ‘motivated solely by political concerns, devoid of any considered process or analysis, and ignorant of the statutory emphasis on evidence-based programming.’

The ruling marked a victory for Planned Parenthood affiliates in California, Iowa and New York, who sued to try to block enforcement of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) policy change. The ruling will apply to all organizations that receive grants. 

HHS, which oversees the program, declined to comment on Tuesday’s ruling.

HHS had previously said in a policy document issued in July that the guidance for the program ‘ensures that taxpayer dollars no longer support content that undermines parental rights, promotes radical gender ideology, or exposes children to sexually explicit material under the banner of public health.’

Planned Parenthood affiliates argued the new directives conflicted with the program’s requirements and were so vague that it was unclear how to comply.

Howell agreed, writing in her ruling that the HHS policy provided ‘incomprehensibly vague’ requirements and ‘seemingly relied on irrelevant ideological factors, and did not justify its change in position.’

The changes to the pregnancy prevention program were part of a series of executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in the White House.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.