Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending for the day. Thanks for reading along with us. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
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The US Senate approved a package on Monday that would end the longest government shutdown in US history. The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. The bill now passes to the House, which is expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington “right now,” given shutdown-related travel delays.
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The House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, said that Chuck Schumer should stay in place as leader of the party – despite calls from progressive members of the caucus for him to step down. When asked by a reporter at a press conference today if the Jeffries viewed Schumer “as effective and should he keep his job”, the congressman from New York responded with “yes and yes”. More here.
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Donald Trump said he returned to the supreme court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) frozen during the government shutdown, bringing uncertainty to the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on the food aid. The move comes after a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration needs to fully fund Snap food aid payments.
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Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, both close former political allies of Donald Trump, are among scores of people pardoned by the president over the weekend for their roles in a plot to steal the 2020 election. The maneuver is in effect symbolic, given it only applies in the federal justice system and not in state courts, where Giuliani, Meadows and the others continue facing legal peril. More here.
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Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats. Democrats on the House judiciary committee announced on Monday that they had received information from a whistleblower that indicates that the British former socialite, 63, is working on filing a commutation application. More here.
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Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC and welcomed the resignations of two of its most senior figures after a campaign against the broadcaster that reached fever pitch over criticism that its flagship documentary programme in 2024 used a misleading edit of a Trump speech. Lawyers for the US president said that the BBC must retract the Panorama documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1bn (£760m), according to US media outlets who cited the letter. The BBC has confirmed it had received a letter and said it will respond in due course. More here.
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Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. Trump’s lawyers argued in a lengthy filing with the high court that allegations leading to the $5 million verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him.
Key events
Senate approves package that would end the longest government shutdown in US history
The US Senate approved a compromise on Monday that would end the longest government shutdown in US history.
The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.
The bill now passes to the House, which is expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington “right now,” given shutdown-related travel delays.
“We have to do this as quickly as possible,” said Johnson, who has kept the House out of session since mid-September, when the House passed a bill to continue government funding.
Senate moving forward with bipartisan bill to end government shutdown
The Senate is advancing a plan to reopen the government through January, which would bring the longest shutdown in history to a close after a small group of Democrats struck a deal with Republicans.
Should the plan pass, the shutdown could last a few more days as members of the House, which has been in recess since mid-September, return to Washington to vote on the legislation.
Democratic senators Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Jackie Rosen and Jeanne Shaheen again voted in favor. Senator Angus King, an independent who votes with Democrats, also voted yes.
The Senate will soon finalize its vote on a bill to end the government shutdown after a series of procedural votes and votes related to amendments.
If the bill is approved, the measure will then head to the House for a vote before it is sent to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed.
Democratic senators Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Angus King (an independent), Jackie Rosen and Jeanne Shaheen voted with Republicans to advance the bill.
MoveOn, a liberal group that has encouraged Democrats to hold firm in their demands, is calling on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from his role after some Democrats joined with Republicans to work to end the government shutdown, according to a statement sent to The Guardian.
“With Donald Trump and the Republican Party doubling health care premiums, weaponizing our military against us, and ripping food away from children, MoveOn members cannot accept weak leadership at the helm of the Democratic Party,” said MoveOn political action executive director Katie Bethell.
“Americans showed a growing surge of support for Democrats who fought back—both at the ballot box last week and peacefully in the streets last month,” Bethell added. “Inexplicably, some Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer’s watch, decided to surrender. It is time for Senator Schumer to step aside as minority leader to make room for those who are willing to fight fire with fire when the basic needs of working people are on the line.”
The Senate has blocked a Democratic effort to extend the expiring tax credits that make health insurance coverage more affordable for millions of Americans.
Senator Tammy Baldwin led an effort to try and extend current law for one year. It was blocked as part of a party-line vote.
“My Republican colleagues are refusing to act to stop health care premiums from doubling for over 20 million Americans,” the senator from Wisconsin said. “I just can’t stand by without a fight.”
No Republican spoke against her failed effort, though Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, has promised a Senate vote later this year on a tax credit extension.
Donald Trump criticized Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer during an interview with Fox News, saying he “went too far” in trying to challenge Republicans.
“He thought he could break the Republicans, and the Republicans broke him,” Trump said.
Schumer led the Democrats’ weeks-long stand against reopening the government without an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.
“We have good policy, they [Democrats] have bad policy,” Trump said.
The Senate is currently taking a series of procedural votes to finalize the deal between Republicans and some Democrats that would end the government shutdown.
After Donald Trump criticized air traffic controllers for refusing to work without pay during the 41-day government shutdown and promised $10,000 bonuses to those who did not take time off, he was asked where the funds would come from.
“I don’t know,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News. “I’ll get it from someplace.”
“I always get the money from someplace,” he added. “Regardless, it doesn’t matter.”
During an interview on Fox News that aired Monday, Donald Trump criticized Obamacare, calling it “horrible health insurance at a very high price.”
The president said he wants to replace it with a system where government funds go directly into individual accounts for people to buy their own plans. He said this system could be called “Trumpcare.”
“I want, instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people, where the people buy their own health insurance,” Trump told Fox’s Laura Ingraham.
He added: “It’s so good, the insurance will be better. It’ll cost less. Everybody’s going to be happy. They’re going to feel like entrepreneurs, they’re actually able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance, and they can use it only for that reason.”
Trump attempts to overturn E Jean Carroll’s $5 million verdict
President Donald Trump asked the US supreme court to review the $5m verdict that found he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.
In a filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that allegations leading to verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him.
Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room. Trump first denied her claim in June 2019, telling a reporter that Carroll was “not my type” and had concocted the story to sell her memoir What Do We Need Men For?
He repeated his comments in an October 2022 Truth Social post, leading to the $5m verdict, though the jury did not find that Trump had raped Carroll.
Trump’s supreme court petition describes Carroll’s sexual assault allegations as “facially implausible” and “politically motivated,” and calls on the justices to intervene and overturn several evidentiary rulings that he claims tainted the trial.
US has sent $7.5m to Equatorial Guinea to accept noncitizens deportees
The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.
The money sent to Equatorial Guinea is the first taken from a fund apportioned by Congress to address international refugee crises – and sometimes to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the US – that has instead been repurposed under the Trump administration to hasten their deportation.
According to government data, the sum from the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) emergency fund was sent directly to the government of Equatorial Guinea, whose president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in power for the last 46 years, and who is accused along with his son, Nguema Obiang, the vice-president, of embezzling millions of dollars from the impoverished nation to fuel their lavish lifestyles.
Read the full story by The Guardian’s Andrew Roth and Joseph Gedeon:
Donald Trump said that Republican House member Marjorie Taylor Greene had “lost her way” with her criticism of the administration’s focus on foreign policy.
“I don’t know what happened to Marjorie. She’s a nice woman, but I don’t know what happened. She’s lost her way, I think,” Trump told reporters earlier today.
“But I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally. I mean, we could have a world that’s on fire, where wars come to our shores very easily, if you had a bad president,” Trump added.
“I haven’t lost my way. I’m 100% America first and only!” Greene told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, according to an X post.
Earlier today, Greene criticized Trump for hosting Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, instead of focusing on domestic issues like health care.
Senate agrees on time to vote on the compromise funding package – report
The Senate is expected to vote on the government funding bill today at around 5pm, CBS reports.
Senate majority leader John Thune set up a series of six to eight votes, with the process slated to begin after remarks from top appropriators Patty Murray and Susan Collins.
If approved, the House will have to return and adopt the deal before it is sent to President Trump’s desk to be signed.
Earlier today, when Donald Trump was asked if he supported the Senate agreement to end the government shutdown, he said he would “abide by the deal.”
“If it’s a deal I heard about, that’s certainly, you know, they want to change the deal a little bit, but I would say so,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “I think based on everything I’m hearing, they haven’t changed anything, and we have support from enough Democrats, and we’re going to be opening up our country.”
“I’ll abide by the deal,” he added. “The deal is very good.”
The Trump administration is working with Switzerland on a deal to lower tariffs, the president told reporters earlier today, but he did not provide any details.
“We’re working on a deal to get their tariffs a little bit lower,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I haven’t said any number, but we’re going to be working on something to help Switzerland along. We hit Switzerland very hard. We want Switzerland to remain successful.”
On tariffs, Trump added: “We’re working on them, and some others, and we’re working on others to increase them a little bit, too.”
Sources told Bloomberg that Switzerland could secure a 15% tariff on its exports to the US. The European country has been scrambling to secure a trade agreement after Swiss imports were hit by a 39% tariff rate in August, among the highest duties levied in his global trade reset.
A deal may be concluded within the next two weeks, Bloomberg reports.
After the US Senate secured enough votes to pass a compromise bill reopening the federal government – with seven Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in support – Democratic senator Tim Kaine defended his decision in an interview, as the agreement didn’t include guarantees to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“There was no path to any fix on health care with the government closed,” Kaine told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “So I supported the Democratic position in this from the very beginning until [the] middle of last week.”
“We had no path forward on health care because the Republicans said, we will not talk about health care with the government shut down,” he added. “And we had Snap beneficiaries and those relying on other important services who were losing benefits because of the shutdown, so no path to a health care fix, Snap beneficiaries suffering.”
Trump renews supreme court appeal to keep full Snap payments frozen
Donald Trump said he returned to the supreme court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) frozen during the government shutdown, bringing uncertainty to the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on the food aid.
The move comes after a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration needs to fully fund Snap food aid payments.
Today’s move marks the second time administration officials have asked the federal appeals court to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid the federal government shutdown.
The Trump administration argued that lower court orders requiring the full funding of Snap wrongly affect ongoing negotiations in Congress about ending the shutdown.
The high court is expected to rule on Tuesday.
