Members of Congress say they’re happy military troops are getting paid during the shutdown — but not necessarily that President Donald Trump is claiming vast power over the federal spending process to do it.

In a sweeping order last week, Trump gave both the Pentagon and the White House budget office the green light to use “any funds” left over for the current fiscal year to bankroll paychecks for active-duty servicemembers, which were due to be withheld last Wednesday amid the government funding standoff.

The move took the onus off lawmakers to vote on standalone legislation to pay troops during the funding lapse — something House and Senate GOP leadership had resisted, fearing it would reduce pressure on Democrats to vote for the Republican plan to reopen the government as the minority party demands bipartisan negotiations on health care.

The Senate is scheduled to consider legislation this week that would allow members of the military and other federal workers to receive pay while the government remains shuttered. It’s far from certain it will attract the necessary 60 votes to advance or would ever be brought to the floor in the House, which has been in recess since passage of the GOP-backed stopgap more than a month ago.

Against this backdrop, lawmakers who oppose Trump’s troop funding gambit have been careful to couch their criticism of the method with support for the end result.

“Look, I want the troops to be paid,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a senior appropriator and likely the Senate’s next Democratic whip. “But, as usual, they find the most illegal way to do everything.”

But Republicans are also among the many lawmakers highly skeptical about the legality of Trump’s actions. The president invoked his authority as commander in chief to claim missed paychecks would pose an “unacceptable threat to military readiness” — but the law requires the president to seek approval from Congress before moving around money, and there are many constraints to what can be done even with lawmakers’ passive consent.

“While it’s a desired outcome, there’s a process that’s required — by Constitution and by law — for Congress to be not only consulted but engaged,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview last week.

And the issue isn’t going away. According to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly, Trump will continue to use funding for military paychecks during the shutdown, if Congress doesn’t pass a government funding bill before the next pay date at month’s end.

At the same time, Trump administration officials have not provided top congressional appropriators with details about how much cash the White House believes is available for use, nor have they submitted requests to Capitol Hill to reprogram any money.

“There’s a way we take care of this. It’s called appropriations. It’s called reprogramming. And I don’t think that process is being respected,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another leading Republican appropriator and frequent Trump critic.

The Trump administration privately told lawmakers that it tapped $6.5 billion from a pot of about $10 billion in unspent military research and development funding to pay troops ahead of the Oct. 15 paycheck date.

“The appropriations committee in general believes that it should get more information and that we should receive a list of canceled work” and “contracts,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters last week.

On Friday the White House sent lawmakers a five-page document detailing its argument for why the president has the power to use funding for a different purpose than Congress mandated in law. The bulleted list of talking points cites examples like then-President George Washington tapping military funding in 1794 for the militia to respond to the Whiskey Rebellion.

But administration officials have not relayed how much other money they believe could be used to pay troops when the next paychecks are due on Oct. 31.

The White House is already hunting for any available money to address other funding shortfalls during the shutdown to support politically popular programs. That includes options to pay at least a segment of federal workers, and potentially reopen key loans for struggling farmers amid quiet pressure from Senate GOP Leader John Thune and other farm-state lawmakers, according to two Trump officials and two senior Hill Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.

White House officials also need to figure out how to manage the dilemma over SNAP, the country’s largest food assistance program that serves 42 million low-income Americans, which will start to run out of funds Nov. 1.

The federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, typically weighs in on the legality of shifting funding during a government shutdown. When Trump was president during the last, lengthy funding lapse that ended in early 2019, GAO concluded that his administration twice violated the law with its funding moves, warning that officials would face fines and up to two years in prison for future violations.

This time around, however, GAO has yet to receive any lawmaker requests to review Trump’s maneuver to pay members of the military — even as the independent oversight agency is working to determine whether the administration has violated the law by firing federal workers during the shutdown.

“GAO has a process it goes through to determine whether we do work and when, which we are working through,” a spokesperson for the office said in a statement.

Meanwhile, not everyone is questioning the legal standing of Trump’s actions.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he supported Trump’s move “once the House made it plain that they were unwilling to come back to do a military pay bill.”

He added, “I’m glad they were able to find undesignated dollars within the defense budget they could use. As long as they keep it within defense, I think that they’re on solid ground.”

Republicans also know there’s at least one major deterrent for lawmakers to legally challenge Trump’s maneuvers to send paychecks to military troops: any outspoken critic risks being branded as unpatriotic.

“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week, “bring it.”

Connor O’Brien and Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday questioned the wisdom and legality of President Donald Trump’s policies toward Venezuela and suspected drug dealers coming from its coast.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Kentucky Republican again raised concerns about the legality of the Trump administration’s strikes on boats that it claims are carrying drug traffickers, as well as the president’s statement that the United States might conduct direct attacks on Venezuela’s territory.

“When you kill someone, you should know, if you’re not at war, not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name at least,” Paul said. “You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.”

He said that given the distance these boats are from the United States, it’s more likely that if there are indeed drug smugglers, they are bringing them to nearby islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, instead of the U.S.

Paul added: “For decades, if not centuries, when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters, you announce that you’re going to board the ship and you’re looking for contraband, smuggling, or drugs. This happens every day off of Miami. But we know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25 percent of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25 percent of the people might be innocent.”

He also wondered about the wisdom of telling another country that the United States planned to conduct secret operations aimed at its government.

“If you announce that you’re going to have covert CIA action, it’s no longer covert,” he said to host Kristen Welker. “So if you’re going to spy on a country you usually don’t announce that you’re going to spy on a country. So it’s a little bit unusual there. I do think there are members of his administration who have been agitating for war with Venezuela for a long, long period of time.”

This is not the first time that Paul has challenged American policy on Venezuela, particularly the extra-judicial killing of possible drug smugglers. “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul wrote on X in September after Vice President J.D. Vance praised the policy.

Paul also said that though he is critical of Trump in some areas, he holds him in very high regard.

“I’ve known the president for over a decade,” Paul told Welker. “I’ve played golf with him many, many times. I enjoy his company. I was one of his biggest defenders on impeachment and would do so again. I think he’s one of the best presidents, if not the best president, of my lifetime. But it doesn’t mean I will sit quietly and say, ‘Oh well, whatever you want to do.'”

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday doubled down on his criticisms of millions of protesters who joined Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the nation, decrying the widely peaceful demonstrations as evidence of “a rise of Marxism in the Democratic Party.”

In an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week,” the Louisiana Republican said the protests were “political cover” for Democrats as the government shutdown continues.

“They needed a stunt,” Johnson said. “They needed a show. Chuck Schumer has — needs cover right now. He’s closed the government down because he needs political cover, and this was a part of it.”

Demonstrators gathered across the country in an estimated 2,700 separate “No Kings” rallies Saturday to protest what they call President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. It was the third mass mobilization against the Trump administration since he returned to the White House in January.

Reports of the protests show demonstrators dressed in costumes of inflatable animals, dancing in the streets and holding signs criticizing Trump and his administration. Organizers estimated that almost 7 million people took part.

Though he congratulated protesters on a “violent-free, free speech exercise,” Johnson on Sunday condemned what he said were “hateful messages” of the demonstrations.

“We have video and photos of pretty violent rhetoric, calling out the president, saying fascists must die and all the rest. I mean, I don’t think that’s loving speech. I don’t think that’s friendly speech. And I don’t think it’s pro-American to say those kinds of things,” Johnson said.

Johnson had been a vocal critic of the rallies leading up to the weekend. He and other allies of the president called the demonstrations “Hate America rallies” and sought to tie the protests to Hamas and antifa.

“The irony of the message is pretty clear for everyone. If President Trump was a king, the government would be open right now,” Johnson said. “If President Trump was a king, they would not have been able to engage in that free speech exercise out on The Mall, by the way, which was open because President Trump hasn’t closed it.”

Leading up to Saturday’s nationwide protests, Trump told Fox News that people are “referring to me as a king. I’m not a king.” But shortly before a Washington rally began Saturday, the Trump War Room account posted an image of a smirking Trump wearing a crown.

Still, Johnson on Sunday said the message of the protests pushed an “un-American” Marxist ideology.

“It’s not about the people, it’s about the message. It’s about the ideology,” said Johnson. “It is a dangerous ideology, and it is anti-American. It goes against everything that we stand for.”

The IRS recently filed notices of a federal tax lien against Republican Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia — the latest example of ongoing financial troubles that have trailed the former governor, members of his family and their network of businesses over the years.

One of the documents from the IRS — obtained by POLITICO — lists Justice and his wife, Cathy, as having a total balance of more than $8 million in unpaid assessments.

The documents represent the only instance of the IRS filing a lien against Justice personally, according to a public Greenbrier County database that goes back decades.

A spokesperson for Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the IRS decided to move forward with the lien at this time. The IRS filed two documents. Both indicate they were prepared and signed Sept. 30, and stamped Oct. 2 by a clerk for Greenbrier County.

But according to the IRS website, “generally the IRS can pursue collection of a tax liability up to 10 years from the date it was assessed. A Notice of Federal Tax Lien may be filed any time within that 10-year period.”

One of the assessments from the IRS is dated Nov. 25, 2015, appearing to put the agency near the end of its 10-year window for taking action.

The IRS, reached for comment on the lien against Justice, said that “by law federal employees cannot discuss specific tax situations” and referred to a general FAQ on liens on the agency’s website.

A reliable ally for President Donald Trump, Justice joined the Senate in January by flipping the seat previously held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, a long-time Democrat-turned-Independent. The tax periods listed on the latest IRS document are 2009, 2017 and 2022, the first of which was before Justice was governor and all of which were before he announced his Senate bid.

Justice served as governor for two terms in West Virginia. During that time he faced a steady drip of news reports about the finances of his business empire and his family, which he repeatedly bristled against and repeatedly vowed that things would work out in the end.

“I’m super respectful and I try to answer any question,” Justice told reporters during a briefing in West Virginia in 2021.

“I’ve told everyone that if you’ll tend to the business of the state of West Virginia as I’m tending to the business of the state and you’ll just stay out of my family’s personal stuff you’ll find the final outcomes will be exactly what I’ve told you they’ll be. They’ll be worked out,” he added.

President Donald Trump granted clemency on Friday evening to George Santos, whose lies about his biography and misuse of campaign funds emerged after he won a seat in Congress from New York and ultimately landed him in prison.

Santos had served less than three months of a seven-year term for wire fraud and identity theft when Trump announced in a social media post that he would commute the rest of the sentence.

The president cited the former New York lawmaker’s political support in the announcement.

“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote in the post. “George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY.”

In imposing the prison sentence in April, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert decried Santos’ “flagrant thievery,” describing him as “an arrogant fraudster talking out of both sides of his mouth.” The former lawmaker wept as the sentence was announced, telling the court: “I betrayed the confidence entrusted to me by constituents, donors, colleagues and this court.”

His crimes spanned a range of fraudulent activity. He acknowledged he used his campaign fundraising apparatus for personal gain and admitted to submitting false reports to the FEC during his congressional run. He also admitted to stealing the personal identity and financial information of elderly and cognitively impaired campaign donors.

He admitted to stealing from donors by persuading them to contribute money to a company that he claimed was a social welfare organization or super PAC, and then using their contributions to put himself up at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, shop at Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers, pay off his credit cards and gift himself thousands of dollars in cash.

But Santos was perhaps best known for scores of lies he told about his educational and professional background, many of which were revealed by the criminal investigation and a separate congressional inquiry. He also advanced other falsehoods, including that his mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Santos had repeatedly sought clemency from Trump since the president’s reelection last year. After reporting to prison, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a letter to the Department of Justice to formally request Santos’ sentence be commuted.

In his social media post, Trump compared Santos’ actions to those of Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, an administration critic who has admitted that he mischaracterized his military service by several times suggesting he had served in Vietnam during the war when he was, in fact, stationed in the U.S.

“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!,” Trump said of Blumenthal’s statements.