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Hi all,

It’s time for another mailbag post! Drop your questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Let me know what you’re wondering about in the world of politics and if there’s anything I can help clear up for you:

In the meantime, here are a few things I’m tracking this morning…

Another incident of political violence. A gunman opened fire at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Dallas on Wednesday, killing one detainee and critically wounding two others. No ICE personnel were injured. Authorities have not yet identified a motive for the shooter, who took his own life at the scene, although the FBI said that the message “ANTI-ICE” was etched on one of his bullets.

• Meanwhile, in The Atlantic: Riley McCabe and Dan Byman, one of my former Georgetown professors, analyzed a dataset of 750 attacks and plots in the U.S. and report that “2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.”

Trump’s shutdown threat. I’ve been writing for months about how increased power would flow to President Trump during a shutdown. On Wednesday, the White House threatened to use it for the first time, issuing a memo instructing agencies to prepare mass layoffs — not just temporary furloughs — in the event government funding expires on September 30.

• The White House didn’t say if this was the exact authority they were using, but as I noted in March, there is a legal interpretation that suggests if a government shutdown lasts for more than 30 days, the Trump administration could unlock a faster layoff process than the one they’ve been using since January. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signaled that he plans to march towards a shutdown anyway: “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government,” he said of the memo.

Political prosecutions looming. Lindsay Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney whom he has tapped as his new U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, is planning to ask a grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey as early as today. The requested indictment is expected to accuse Comey of lying to Congress in September 2020 testimony; the statute of limitations for such charges is set to run out next week. Per ABC, prosecutors have presented Halligan with a detailed memo recommending that she not charge Comey, telling her that they do not believe probable cause exists to indict (much less the even higher bar for conviction, beyond a reasonable doubt).

• If the charges really are that flimsy, there’s a non-zero chance the grand jury will decline to indict, an incredibly rare development which has nonetheless happened to the Trump administration repeatedly. The government’s case will also hardly be helped in trial if there is a memo from the administration’s own prosecutors floating around making Comey’s defense for him. Speaking of the Trump administration making prosecutions harder for themselves: A judge said Wednesday that the president and other administration officials may have violated the law with public statements about Luigi Mangione, impacting the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter’s ability to receive a fair trial.

Also: A federal judge temporarily blocked the University of South Dakota from firing a professor who criticized Charlie Kirk after his death, saying his First Amendment rights were likely violated … the Trump administration is asking hundreds of federal employees who were laid off by DOGE to return to work … and Trump seemed to change his rhetoric at the UN based on who he was speaking to, continuing a trend I wrote about yesterday.

Have questions about any of that, or anything else in government, history, politics, or Wake Up To Politics? I’ll see you in the comments section!

— Gabe