Senator John Kennedy is once again cutting through Washington’s theatrics with brutal honesty.
The Louisiana Republican accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of staging political drama instead of doing his job to reopen the government.
In an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, Kennedy described the shutdown as a “political performance,” not a genuine policy disagreement.
He said Schumer is more concerned with keeping up appearances for his party’s radical wing than with serving the American people.
“It will end eventually,” Kennedy said, “when Senator Schumer goes to six or eight of his members and Democrats and says, ‘Do me a favor. Vote to open it back up. I may have to criticize you. I’m not going to vote with you, but I need a way out of this.’”
Kennedy made clear that Schumer’s priority isn’t compromise — it’s saving face.
“He’s gonna tell ‘em, ‘Now, look, I gotta vote no. And I gotta dogcuss you a little bit. We gotta have some play acting and make this look good. And then we come out of the shutdown,’” Kennedy said, describing how Schumer will secretly orchestrate the outcome he publicly opposes.
According to Kennedy, the government shutdown is less about real disagreements and more about political optics. Schumer, he said, is acting out a script to appease the far-left members of his caucus — what Kennedy calls the “moon wing” of the Democratic Party.
“I know him. Well, this shutdown is not about policy. It’s about politics,” Kennedy said.
“And Senator Schumer, this is what’s going on. He is trying to get the moon wing, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, which is in control, to love him. And they will never love him.”
That blunt assessment paints a damning picture of the Democratic leadership. Schumer, Kennedy argues, is beholden to extremists who refuse to compromise, even at the expense of the country.
The Louisiana senator said Schumer’s strategy is simple: keep the government closed until Republicans and President Trump agree to hand over billions in new spending — spending that Democrats will control. “What he’s saying,” Kennedy explained, “is we’re going to keep government shut down until you Republicans and President Trump give the Democrats $1.5 trillion, and they’re going to tell us how to spend it.”
Kennedy ridiculed the idea that Schumer is fighting for “the people.” In his view, Schumer is fighting for power, money, and media attention — and the shutdown is just another stage for him to perform on.
“He’s boning if it looks contrived,” Kennedy warned. “He can’t look like he’s having a mutiny.” That’s why, Kennedy says, Schumer must choreograph his next steps carefully, pretending to fight while quietly coordinating votes behind the scenes.
Kennedy’s description of this “play acting” matches what many Americans have long suspected: that the partisan battles on the Senate floor are largely theater designed to manipulate the public.
Schumer, Kennedy said, is obsessed with being seen as strong by the socialist faction of his party — even though that same faction will never accept him. “He’d be better off doing what he did back in March and just calling it like he saw it and keeping government open,” Kennedy added.
The senator’s comments came after Schumer led most Democrats in voting down the Republicans’ spending bill earlier in the week, prolonging the shutdown. Kennedy said that move was pure political posturing.
Waters Ordered To Pay Massive Fine For Violating Campaign Finance Laws
The campaign of progressive California Rep. Maxine Waters has agreed to pay a $68,000 fine after an investigation revealed that it broke many election regulations.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) stated in a batch of documents that the longtime House lawmaker’s 2020 campaign group, Citizens for Waters, violated many campaign finance regulations.
The FEC accused Citizens for Waters of “failing to accurately report receipts and disbursements in calendar year 2020,” “knowingly accepting excessive contributions,” and “making prohibited cash disbursements,” according to one document that appears to be a legally binding agreement that allows both parties to avoid court.
Waters’ committee agreed to pay the civil fine as well as “send its treasurer to a Commission-sponsored training program for political committees within one year of the effective date of this Agreement.”
“Respondent shall submit evidence of the required registration and attendance at such event to the Commission,” the document said.
According to the inquiry, Citizens for Waters took inappropriate campaign contributions from seven persons totaling $19,000 in 2019 and 2020, even though the maximum allowed individual contribution is $2,800.
The committee offloaded those excessive donations, albeit in an “untimely” fashion, the document said.
Waters’ campaign committee also “made four prohibited cash disbursements that were each in excess of $100, totaling $7,000,” the FEC said.
The campaign committee “contends that it retained legal counsel to provide advice and guidance to the treasurer and implemented procedures to ensure the disbursements comply with the requirements of the Act.”
Leilani Beaver, Citizens for Waters’ attorney, wrote to the FEC last year, claiming that the campaign financing infractions were “errors” that “were not willful or purposeful.”
Waters, the leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, has been in Congress since 1991.
OpenSecrets was the first to report the fresh movements in the inquiry.
Waters has previously drawn public attention for a very similar thing.
In 2023, a Fox News Digital investigation discovered that Waters’ campaign paid her daughter $192,300 for a “slate mailer” operation between January 2021 and December 2022.
Waters reportedly paid her daughter a single dollar out of thousands for campaign labor.
The FEC dismissed a charge alleging Waters’ campaign accepted improper campaign donations in 2018 by a 5-1 vote.
Waters previously made headlines when she made a series of nasty comments about First Lady Melania Trump.
Waters called on President Donald Trump to investigate and potentially deport First Lady Melania Trump during an anti-DOGE protest in Los Angeles last weekend.
Clips of the rant went viral as Waters suggested that the first lady’s citizenship status- she’s been a U.S. citizen since 2006- should be scrutinized as a means of pushing back on the president’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship.
“When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America. If he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters was seen saying from the stage of a rally in Los Angeles, per a number of videos posted online.
“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look,” the aged congresswoman continued.
Prior to that, she erupted in outrage and screeched her disapproval of both Trump and tech mogul Elon Musk at an event in Washington, D.C.
At a rally held by Democratic lawmakers protesting Musk’s access to information at the Treasury Department, Waters accused him of overstepping his boundaries without the consent of voters during her speech.
“We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could get all of our private information. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country,” Waters yelled.