Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, October 8th, 2025. This is USA Today's The Excerpt.

Today, breaking down Trump's threats over furloughed workers and back pay, plus the Supreme Court deals with a ban on conversion therapy, and the baseball

playoffs roll on. The federal government's partial shutdown has entered its eighth day, and there are

still no signs of a visible budget deal between Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile,

President Donald Trump is threatening to block furloughed federal workers from receiving back pay once the shutdown is over.

I spoke with USA Today, White House correspondent Joey Garrison, for more.

Joey, thanks for wrapping on.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Just starting with these latest comments, Joey, what did Trump say here about furloughed workers and back pay?

Yeah, so President Trump basically threatened to block federal workers who are on furlough right now during the shutdown,

block them from receiving back pay once they return to work when the shutdown ends.

He was asked pointedly during the Oval Office whether he thinks furloughed workers are owed back pay under federal law.

And he then went on to say, some people don't deserve the pay.

And so really opened up the door that this could be a possibility.

It was definitely a threat that the administration could choose to withhold payments to workers once they start again.

And this comes as there's been

floated in new legal interpretation of federal law that the Office of Management and Budget

within the White House has put out there, which they don't think that furloughed workers are

automatically guaranteed back pay. And so, you know, this is another threat from Trump really aimed at Senate Democrats

saying, hey, this is something that could happen, you know, unless you join with Republicans

to reopen the government. He's already threatened mass layoffs of workers, among other things,

cutting programs that Democrats have supported. It's already put these threats

...