WASHINGTON – Attorney General Pam Bondi added to the rising acrimony on Capitol Hill this week, the second of the government shutdown.
Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, a combative Bondi repeatedly dodged questions from U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and other Democrats on the panel and lobbed personal attacks on many of those Democrats.
When U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked Bondi whether Trump had consulted her before his deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, Bondi shot back, “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”
Bondi was dismissive when Klobuchar questioned the star witness.
Klobuchar noted Bondi’s resistance to discussing U.S. Justice Department work. Yet she persisted, saying, “I was going to ask you if you received advice, instruction or request from anyone at the White House to direct the department to engage in any investigations, prosecutorial actions, including decisions not to investigate or prosecute anyone?
“I’m not going to discuss any conversations,” Bondi responded.
Klobuchar tried again.
“But then how about the Truth Social post on Sept. 20, 2025, in which the president said, ‘We can’t delay any longer, Pam,’ using your name, ‘not bringing criminal charges are killing our reputation,’ his words and credibility, and then goes on to tell you to prosecute a member of this committee to prosecute the attorney general of New York and to prosecute James Comey?” Klobuchar said. “Do you consider that a directive to the Justice Department?”
Bondi replied that “President Trump is the most transparent president in American history. And I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years.”
Related: Pam Bondi withholds federal funding from “sanctuary cities”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil case against Trump, was indicted by the Justice Department on Thursday.
During four-and-a-half hours on the witness seat, Bondi avoided questions about the Jeffrey Epstein files, the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities and U.S. lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking boats.
Several Democratic senators asked Bondi about the vows she made during her confirmation hearings in January, in which she said “politics would play no part” in her role as attorney general.
“I absolutely have upheld that commitment,” Bondi said.
From Bondi to Vought, the grim reaper
U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-3rd District, tore up social media this week with a torrent of posts that ranged from decrying Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat a newly elected Democratic member of the House to a video President Donald Trump made to the soundtrack of Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”
Morrison, a freshman and an OB-GYN, has made the Democrats’ push for health care funding in the fight over funding the government personal.
She attacked Trump this week for posting an AI-generated video of Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought as the grim reaper, with the Blue Oyster Cult’s hit as the soundtrack.
Wielding a scythe, Vought walks through an office of government workers and hoists a bag emblazed with a dollar sign. The video also features Trump playing a cowbell as part of a band of skeleton musicians and Vice President JD Vance on drums.
“Joking about Americans dying is not funny,” Morrison said in posts on X and Bluesky. She said the video “stopped me cold in my tracks.”
Why? Not because the video is another attempt by Trump to threaten mass firings during the shutdown, but because “at the very center of this funding fight is whether people will be able to get health care,” Morrison said.
“The Republican health care policies will literally kill people,” Morrison said.
Democrats have rejected a GOP stopgap bill that would have temporarily kept the government running after the end of the federal fiscal year Sept. 30. They want any short-term spending bill to repeal the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that lower the cost of premiums for 90,000 Minnesotans.
Morrison said these cuts to health care spending will result in 51,000 American deaths each year.
Rosen confirmed
The focus on the shutdown overshadowed the confirmation this week of Daniel Rosen as Minnesota’s newest U.S. attorney.
Rosen was confirmed late Tuesday as one of 107 of President Donald Trump’s nominees.
The mass confirmations, which included ambassadors and agency officials, happened after Senate Republicans changed the rules last month to allow most executive branch nominees to be confirmed as a group. Before then, lawmakers had to hold a vote on each one.
Rosen had been waiting since May for his confirmation vote. The rules change, however, does not extend to Cabinet picks or judges.
“We are confident that Mr. Rosen will fight to protect Minnesotans, and their hard-earned tax dollars, from the scourge of crime and fraud we’ve seen in our state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, in a statement. Emmer had included Rosen in a short list of candidates he sent to the White House.
A veteran attorney, Rosen has been involved in GOP politics. He was the campaign attorney for Kendall Qualls, a businessman who ran for governor in 2021 but dropped out of the race after he failed to win his party’s endorsement. Qualls is running for governor again.
In other news
▪️MinnPost inaugurated a shutdown blog that will keep track of government shutdown-related events in Minnesota and Washington D.C.
▪️Brian Martucci covered a forum featuring the candidates for St. Paul mayor “as the campaigns hit their pace.” Trying to break from the pack were incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter and his most-prominent challenger, DFL state Rep. Kaohly Her. Candidates Yan Chen, Adam Dullinger and Mike Hilborn, also made their cases at the forum.
▪️ When she began criticizing Israel 25 years ago, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum was among a minority of lawmakers from her party doing so. But no more as her fellow Democrats have recently moved toward the Minnesota lawmaker on the United States’ relationship with Israel. MinnPost interviewed McCollum just before news of what could be a breakthrough in the war in Gaza.
This and that
A reader wrote in with a comment about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was sparked by our story about U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum and her long-held concerns about the Jewish state.
“It is unfortunate that people speak about Israel and its people, when the problems result from having Netanyahu in power,” the reader said. “He has been as cruel, dishonest, incompetent, corrupt and arrogant as Trump. He has used the Hamas attack, which he failed to repel, to stay in power and delay prosecution on corruption charges. He is totally dependent on an ultra-conservative base that wants all Palestinians to go away. I find his lack of remorse about killing thousands of Palestinian children unforgivable.”
Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to respond.
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
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