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.

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.

An expected sixth vote to reopen the government didn’t come to fruition on Tuesday, but lawmakers face a new wrinkle: the possibility that furloughed employees won’t be paid. 

The government shutdown marched into its seventh day with both Senate Republicans and Democrats still at odds on a path forward, and no real clear end in sight. The Senate was expected to vote on the GOP’s plan again, but no agreement could be reached to bring the bill, along with the Democrats’ counter-proposal, to the floor. 

Both sides are still entrenched in their positions, too. Senate Democrats want a firm deal on the extension of expiring ObamaCare tax credits to earn their votes to reopen the government, while Senate Republicans have promised that negotiations on the credits can happen once the government is open again.

Lawmakers failed to hold a sixth vote to reopen the government Tuesday as a new White House memo warned that furloughed workers may not get paid.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has continued to ramp up his messaging that Americans broadly support their push, and blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Republicans for not being in session as a major roadblock to progress. 

‘Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed and thousands more are working without pay. And meanwhile, House Republicans are getting paid and not working,’ Schumer said. ‘So federal workers working and not getting paid. House Republicans paid and not working. Very bad. Very bad thing for them. Very bad picture for them.’

While lawmakers traded barbs and discussed an off-ramp on Capitol Hill, the latest memo from the White House, first reported by Axios, signaled that up to 750,000 nonessential furloughed federal workers may not be paid.

The memo adds fresh uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of federal employees caught in the political crossfire.

When asked if it was the White House’s position whether federal workers should be paid back pay, President Donald Trump said, ‘I would say it depends on who we’re talking about.’

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

Many lawmakers had just learned about the memo as of Tuesday afternoon. It suggested that a 2019 law signed by Trump that guaranteed back pay for furloughed workers in future shutdowns may not have to be followed.

‘I just heard that,’ Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., said. ‘My phones are lighting up.’

When asked if the memo hurt or helped talks, she said, ‘It could get more urgent, it also could tick a lot of people off.’

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that the memo was ‘probably not a good message to send right now to people who are not being paid.’

‘I’m not an attorney, but I think it’s bad strategy to even say that sort of stuff,’ Tillis said. ‘We got a lot of hard-working people there on the sidelines now because the Democrats have put them there.’

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that she believed that issue had been settled with the 2019 law, but as a ‘back up,’ Congress could pass a bill that any ‘obligations that were incurred during the shutdown are authorized to be paid.’

And Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, argued that regardless of the memo, the law said ‘shall.’

‘I left my law degree in the car, but ‘shall’ is relatively straightforward,’ he said. ‘I think it doesn’t matter at all, because we’re fighting for healthcare.’

The latest pressure tactic on Senate Democrats comes after the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed in a previous memo that mass firings could be on the horizon beyond the typical furloughs during a shutdown.

It also comes after OMB Director Russ Vought announced nearly $30 billion in federal funding was set to be withheld from blue cities and states. 

Both Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., wanted to see federal workers get paid, but contended that the issue would go away if Schumer and Senate Democrats reopened the government.

‘My assumption is that furloughed workers will get back pay,’ Thune said. ‘But that being said, this is very simple. Open up the government and this is a non-issue. We don’t have to have this conversation. Everybody gets paid when the government is open.’

Meanwhile, the previous tactics did little to nudge Democrats from their position, and so far, have not killed talks between either side.

But Sen. Jean Shaheen, D-N.H., who has been a key communicator for Senate Democrats in bipartisan talks, said that Vought’s actions weren’t helping matters.

‘It would be a lot easier to resolve the situation if Russ Vought would stop talking,’ Shaheen said. 

Former FBI Director James Comey will be arraigned in federal court Wednesday morning after being indicted on charges of alleged false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.

Comey has said he is innocent.

The former FBI director is set to have his first court appearance at 10 a.m. Eastern Time in the Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The judge presiding over the hearing is District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff.

Comey was indicted in September by a federal grand jury on two counts: alleged false statements within jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.

The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.

The indictment also alleges Comey made a false statement when he stated he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment, that statement was false.

Fox News Digital exclusively reported in July that Comey was under criminal investigation by the FBI. The probe into Comey centered on whether he lied to Congress during his Sept. 30, 2020, testimony about his handling of the original Trump–Russia probe at the FBI, known inside the bureau as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’

‘No one is above the law,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X after the indictment, adding that it ‘reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.’

FBI Director Kash Patel said ‘previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust.’

‘Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on,’ Patel said. ‘Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose.’

He added: ‘Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch.’

Comey, after being indicted, posted an Instagram video, denying the allegations.

‘My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,’ he said. ‘We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right.’

‘But I’m not afraid,’ Comey added.

‘My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,’ Comey said.

Fox News Digital also exclusively reported that former CIA Director John Brennan is under criminal investigation related to the Trump–Russia probe. 

Under federal law, prosecutors have five years to bring a charge, with the five-year mark occurring Tuesday.

The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in July 2016, known inside the bureau as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’ 

President Donald Trump, during his first term, fired Comey in May 2017. 

Days later, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to take over the FBI’s original ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation.

After nearly two years, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded in March 2019, yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election.

Shortly after, John Durham was appointed as special counsel to investigate the origins of the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ probe.

Durham found that the FBI ‘failed to act’ on a ‘clear warning sign’ that the bureau was the ‘target’ of a Clinton-led effort to ‘manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes’ ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

‘The aforementioned facts reflect a rather startling and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s investigative decision-making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,’ Durham’s report states.

‘Indeed, had the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment and, in turn, gathered and analyzed data in concert with the information from the Clinton Plan intelligence, it is likely that the information received would have been examined, at a minimum, with a more critical eye,’ the report continued.

Durham, in his report, said the FBI ‘failed to act on what should have been — when combined with other incontrovertible facts — a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.’