Trump Makes New Claim About Furloughed Workers

President Trump is back in the White House after his surprise trip to Iraq, and he's also back on Twitter. On Thursday, he made headlines with a bold, if unsubstantiated, claim about federal workers furloughed in the ongoing shutdown, reports the Hill. They're mostly Democrats, he says. "Have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need Border Security and a Wall on the Southern Border," he wrote. "Need to stop Drugs, Human Trafficking,Gang Members & Criminals from coming into our Country. Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?" An estimated 350,000 federal employees are at home without pay, and Trump didn't offer evidence to back up his assertion about their party affiliation, notes the Washington Post.

In any event, the remarks are a shift from earlier in the week, when the president suggested that furloughed workers were on his side and supported his decision to hold out for money to build a border wall, notes NBC News. "Many of those workers have said to me, communicated, 'stay out until you get the funding for the wall,'" he said on Tuesday. Politico points out that Trump's tweet about people not getting paid could have been referring to people being cut off from government benefits during the shutdown. (Trump says he's waiting to hear from Democrats on his demand for more than $5 billion.)