President Donald Trump on Monday announced he was suing The New York Times and several of its writers for $15 billion in damages (well over the paper’s $10 billion market value), accusing the outlet of publishing stories “specifically designed to try and damage” his “business, personal and political reputation.” The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, is part of a “presidential strategy to silence critical news coverage and curb free speech” through “legally dubious lawsuits,” said CNN. The suit also “reads like a pro-Trump op-ed,” said CNN media analyst Brian Stelter on X, with “page after page of gushing praise for the president.” 

The president has “intensified his crackdown” against media companies in his second term, including his $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on his extensive relationship with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, said Reuters. Trump has “already secured eight-figure settlements” from his suits against ABC and CBS this year, prompting “howls of outrage from liberals and free speech proponents” while supporters hail him for “finally bringing liberal media outlets to heel,” said Fox News.

The suit is an “attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting” that lacks “any legitimate legal claims,” a Times spokesperson said in a statement. It’s “probably good” that the administration is pursuing its anti-press lawsuits “all at once and so blatantly,” said The New York Times opinion columnist Elizabeth Spiers on Bluesky. “It forces the issue in the courts.”

With just weeks to go before Washington runs out of money at the end of this month, perennial threats of a federal government shutdown “might really happen this time,” said Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. Despite being just a “couple of weeks away from the fish-or-cut-bait moment,” lawmakers from both parties are “not even negotiating over a temporary, much less permanent, resolution.”

While Republicans “brush back Democratic demands” to spare health care from spending cuts, Democrats are “flexing a newfound willingness to play hardball” and risk a closure, said ABC News. Republicans are “daring Democrats to vote against a 50-day spending stopgap” that includes additional funds for congressional security, said Axios. The measure is a “total partisan proposal,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). 

Trump has meanwhile urged his party to “write a funding bill on their own” and “cut Democrats out of the process” of crafting a continuing resolution entirely, said NBC News. According to congressional Democrats, their conservative colleagues are “following Trump’s wishes and are refusing to negotiate, making a shutdown likelier.”

Within the GOP, however, there are signs that the unified front may be weaker than conservatives like to project. “I can’t wait to see” how voting for a continuing resolution “becomes a Trump loyalty test,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on X. “In all actual reality, it’s a disloyalty to him by passing a Biden policy-laden omnibus” that will ultimately leave Trump a “temporary president with temporary policies.”

The suspected assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk has some public figures pleading for restraint, while others agitate for violent reprisals