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.

Senate Republicans aren’t ready to go ‘nuclear’ again to change the rules around the Senate filibuster as Senate Democrats dig deeper against the GOP’s push to reopen the government.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Republicans need at least eight Democrats to cross the aisle and vote for their continuing resolution (CR) to pass through the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

But only three Democratic caucus members have joined Republicans after six failed attempts to pass the short-term funding extension as the shutdown enters its second week.

Republicans have already turned to the ‘nuclear option’ to unilaterally change the rules this year to blast through Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats’ blockade of President Donald Trump’s nominees. But for many, the notion of changing the rules and nuking the filibuster is a third rail.

‘Never, never, ever, never, none,’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital when asked if he would consider changing the rules.

‘I’ve never heard that since the Democrats tried to do it, and I think we would all fight it pretty hard,’ he continued.

The last time the filibuster was put under the microscope was when Democrats controlled the Senate in 2022. Schumer, who was majority leader at the time, tried to change the rules for a ‘talking filibuster’ in order to pass voting rights legislation.

However, the effort was thwarted when then-Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., joined Republicans to block the change. Both have since retired from the Senate and become Independents.

Republicans are not actively discussing changes to the filibuster.

‘I don’t think that’s a conversation we’ve had,’ Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital. ‘Right now, we think that the Democrats’ position has been untenable, and the more they hear from their constituents of their unreasonable activities, that will break this because we got a clean CR, so we got the better argument.’

Because of the filibuster, spending bills like a CR are generally bipartisan in nature. However, Senate Democrats have panned Republicans’ bill to reopen the government as partisan and argue that they had no input on it before it passed through the House late last month.

‘I’m generally aware of how important it is to try to keep things bipartisan, using the filibuster as the tool to do that, but I also get the fact that after a while, the frustration just boils over,’ Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital.

Frustrations reached a new level in Congress on Wednesday, with Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., publicly arguing with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., over the shutdown. Then there was another public back-and-forth between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.

Still, neither side in the upper chamber is ready to budge from their positions.

Most Senate Democratic caucus members are rooted in their position that unless they get a deal on expiring Obamacare tax credits, they will not join Republicans to reopen the government.

Republicans have been adamant that negotiations on extending the subsidies — with reforms — can happen, but only after the government is reopened.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is the lone Senate Democrat who has voted with Republicans each time to reopen the government. He pointed out that Republicans had just changed Senate rules last month to advance Trump’s nominees.

‘I think we probably should. If you’re able to get out of the filibuster to prevent either party to make it a lot harder to shut the government down, I’d absolutely support that,’ Fetterman said. 

More than 2.8 million Brits have signed a petition as of Wednesday, calling on the U.K. government to reverse its mandatory Digital ID system over concerns it will lead to ‘mass surveillance and digital control.’

The ID program, dubbed ‘Brit Card’ and announced last week by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is set to be rolled out by August 2029 in an attempt by the Labour government to crack down on illegal immigration as it would bar anyone who doesn’t have a digital ID from working in the U.K.

But critics of the plan argue its effects on illegal immigration will not be significant enough to make up for the privacy concerns it poses. 

The White House confirmed to Fox News Digital that this controversial step to curb immigration is not currently being considered by President Donald Trump, despite his commitment to curbing illegal immigration and his security crackdowns in cities across the U.S.

But according to one security expert, digital ID is actually not nearly as concerning as most opponents of the system believe it to be.

‘When the government issues a digital ID, they’re issuing it to the individual. That means, just like your paper ID sits in your physical wallet, your digital ID sits in your digital wallet, it’s not stored at a central location,’ Eric Starr, founder and CEO of Ultrapass Identity Corp, told Fox News Digital.

‘When you pass your digital ID to a relying party, they don’t ping a central database,’ he continued. ‘They look at the digital ID you’ve presented, and through cryptography, can determine the authenticity of the digital document.’

Starr, whose company works with governments around the world to provide decentralized digital ID options, said the controversy around digital ID comes down to poor conception and a lack of understanding.  

The tech guru said he believes the U.K. went about its rollout of a digital ID the wrong way by making it mandatory and releasing few details on the system itself. 

Starr argued that governments have the right to know who its citizens are and nations, including the U.S., already have systems in place that keep track of its people, including by issuing social security numbers – a system that the U.S. has relied on since 1936.

When pressed about concerns relating to a government’s ability to enforce mass surveillance through the ease that the technology could offer, even if that is not the original intent, Starr said it comes down to establishing those protections for personal privacy from the get-go. 

‘We care deeply about personal freedom in ways that other countries don’t think about it, and generally speaking, individuals don’t want the federal government in their business every day,’ Starr explained in reference to the American public. ‘The fear that people have about digital identity is that it’s a surveillance opportunity.’

Starr explained that some are concerned that any time a digital ID is used, it will then alert or ‘phone home’ a government tracking system – a concern that privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have flagged.

‘It’s not about the technology, but managing fear and managing what actually gets deployed,’ he added, noting that safeguards can be put in place to counter these concerns.

Even though there is no federal version of a digital ID, more than a dozen states have already begun issuing mobile driver’s licenses.

A federal version of a digital ID would, in theory, just include an individual’s information that the government already has access to, including details like passport information.

But there’s another major concern people flag when it comes to digital IDs – how to ensure personal information is protected from identity theft, which has become a major concern in recent years amid mass cyber breaches.

According to Starr, the ‘architecture of digital identity’ is different from centralized databases used by institutions like hospitals, which have found themselves vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches.

Decentralized systems, as in the case of a digital ID, make hacking ‘nearly impossible’ because ‘the only way to hack a million IDs is to hack a million phones,’ he explained. 

 ‘There are solutions. It’s not a technology issue, it’s an education issue, it’s a fear issue,’ Starr said. ‘It’s also poorly conceived solutions that open the door for bad behavior.’