federal workers Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Almost all Senate Democrats rejected a bipartisan bill Friday evening to pay active-duty troops and federal employees reporting to work, including Capitol Police officers, during the 38-day government shutdown.

Lawmakers voted 53 to 43 to advance the federal worker pay bill, falling seven votes short of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. The failed vote marks the second time a majority of Democrats have blocked legislation to pay some federal workers during the funding lapse.

Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia were the lone Democrats to cross party lines to support Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s Shutdown Fairness Act. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who supported the bill on Oct. 23, did not vote. Luján notably voted against the bill in October.

All federal employees have missed at least one full paycheck since the beginning of the shutdown on Oct. 1.

“Let me be clear about what a ‘no’ vote means,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, the second-highest-ranking Senate Republican, said during floor remarks Friday. “A NO vote is a vote to refuse to pay air traffic controllers who are working. Refuse to pay TSA agents who are working. Refuse to pay military members who are serving around the world. Refuse to pay Capitol Police officers who are here in this building working.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune also criticized Democrats for choosing to prolong the shutdown despite its toll on essential federal employees working unpaid during the funding lapse.

“If I were a Democrat I would be embarrassed – I mean, flat-out embarrassed – to walk into this building every day,” Thune said Friday. “To walk past the men and women of the Capitol Police, who are not getting paid thanks to Democrats. To walk past junior staffers, many of whom are undoubtedly frantic by this point as they wonder how they’re going to pay their rent and continue to buy food.”

Democrats said they opposed the legislation because it did not cover all federal workers. However, the caucus has refused to reopen the government, which would ensure all federal workers are paid.

The failed vote comes as some progressive Democrats have vowed to continue fighting, claiming voters gave the party a mandate to keep the government shuttered following Tuesday night’s election victories.

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy is one of a handful of Democrats who have argued the ending the funding lapse could jeopardize lawmakers’ standing with the party’s base.

“The 2026 election is just 12 months away,” Murphy told Punchbowl News on Thursday. “And if we surrender without having gotten anything, and we cause a lot of folks in this country who had started to believe in the Democratic Party to retreat again, I worry that it will be hard to sort of get them back up off the mat in time for next fall’s election.”

Republicans rejected an offer from Democrats on Friday afternoon to extend Obamacare subsidies slated to expire at the year’s end in exchange for ending the shutdown.

GOP lawmakers have been adamant throughout the 38-day shutdown that they will not negotiate on health care policy until Democrats vote to fund the government.

“Democrats want to give $35 billion next year to insurance companies for subsidies with no fraud controls and to benefit the wealthy. Hard no, Chuck,” Senate Republicans’ X account wrote, referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

President Donald Trump called on the Senate to stay in session over the weekend to hammer out a deal. If lawmakers do not come to an agreement, Trump called on Republicans to invoke the nuclear option and kill the Senate’s legislative filibuster to pass a funding measure on their own.

Thune told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that Republicans lack the votes to nuke the longstanding procedural rule.

“Not even close,” the majority leader said of the whip count.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Reporter

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The IRS replaced its left-leaning top spokeswoman who worked at the agency for 27 years but did not announce or explain her removal.

Jodie Reynolds, formerly the chief of communications for the agency who was often quoted in news stories, was previously arrested for driving while intoxicated, according to court documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The IRS quietly removed Reynolds’ name from an organizational chart after the DCNF reached out on Thursday about her history. The updated chart shows there is a new “acting” chief.

A conservative group that investigated Reynolds’ background said her case showed hypocrisy in the taxation agency tasked with enforcing the law on Americans.

“Jodie Reynolds is a perfect case study of the rot inside the IRS,” American Accountability Foundation (AAF) president Tom Jones told the DCNF. “This is an agency that will hammer working Americans over a paperwork mistake, yet it kept a top official on payroll after she was arrested for drunk driving.”

Reynolds, 50, led an office handling the IRS’ relations with Congress, other government agencies, the news media and other groups, according to the IRS website. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF, and the IRS’ media office did not answer questions about her employment status.

After the DCNF reached out, Reynolds deleted her X and LinkedIn accounts.

Reynolds had posted on LinkedIn in April that she was looking for another job. The IRS told the DCNF on Tuesday that Reynolds still held her chief position — before the DCNF inquired about her criminal record. The agency did not specify when she was removed.

While working under both Republican and Democratic presidents, Reynolds displayed disapproval of both Trump administrations’ policy moves in her social media postings.

She posted “#familiesbelongtogether” on Twitter in 2018, referencing a social media campaign against so-called family separation that critics say resulted from President Donald Trump’s border policies. She also liked an April LinkedIn post by a lawyer who announced that she had sued to stop Trump from firing her from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the DCNF found.

Reynolds was pulled over and arrested by Knightstown, Indiana police in October 2015 for speeding, nearly veering off the road and “failing to signal lane changes,” the local police department’s affidavit says. The arrest occurred while she was employed as a media relations specialist at the IRS, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Reynolds, who was living in Indiana at the time, told police officers that she had consumed five beers that evening, adding “that she has a government job and that she will lose it if she gets into trouble,” according to the affidavit.

Reynolds remained at the IRS under the Obama administration after having worked there since 1998 — and went on to become a branch chief, acting director and finally, in 2023, rose to become the head of its communications office, a highly visible and influential position.

The affidavit said Reynolds acted in an “abusive” manner toward police during the 2015 encounter and refused to take a chemical test to determine her blood-alcohol content. “She was very argumentative and showed mood swings,” an Indiana state trooper wrote.

In Indiana, refusing a breath test upon request of a law enforcement officer is in itself a crime. One officer said Reynolds refused despite him explaining the law to her.

“I read Indiana Implied Consent to Miss Reynolds,” the officer wrote. “Miss Reynolds said that she will not take anymore tests without a lawyer present. I asked Miss Reynolds if she is refusing to take a chemical test and she said ‘yes I am.’”

Police later obtained a warrant to have Reynolds’ blood drawn at a hospital, revealing she was unlawfully drunk while driving.

The document also said that Reynolds had five other traffic violations going back to the 1990s, four of which were for speeding. She failed to pay the fine for one of the offenses and had her license suspended in 1995.

Reynolds pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle while intoxicated and served one year of probation, though a judge found that she could have also been charged with public intoxication, records show. She initially requested a jury trial to fight her charges, but due to her probation, Reynolds walked away from the 2015 incident with no conviction on her record.

Reynolds asked a court to grant her limited driving privileges less than two months after her arrest, and a judge agreed in December, finding that she did not refuse a chemical test “knowing and willfully.”

“Defendant’s employment with the IRS requires that Defendant sometimes travel to Washington D.C.,” Reynolds’ lawyer wrote in one motion.

“Reynolds could’ve killed someone, and instead of firing her, the IRS handed her a promotion,” the AAF’s Jones told the DCNF. “If that doesn’t tell you everything about the culture of that agency, nothing will.”

The IRS began laying off workers by the dozens in February amid scrutiny from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump’s agency working to shrink government bureaucracy. The IRS reportedly fired almost a third of its tax auditors and about 50 IT executives by March, with DOGE planning to cut its total staff by up to two-thirds.

Reynolds made her left-leaning views public in 2017, by approvingly reposting a video on Twitter by a Black Lives Matter activist. The post declared: “If you’re tired of going to work and making money for other people, then you’re probably tired of capitalism.”

AUTHOR

Hudson Crozier

Contributor.

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Adam Pack

Hudson Crozier