Summary
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
-
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy warned of the impacts of the shutdown on the aviation industry and blamed Democrats for the closures. If the shutdown drags into the Thanksgiving holiday season, Duffy warned of “mass issues” with air travel. “It’ll be a disaster in aviation,” he said, adding: “October is a slower air travel month, and we have great weather in October, and so you’ve seen minimal disruption because of good weather and slower travel.”
-
For a third time this week, a bipartisan group of senators rallied to nullify the global “reciprocal” tariffs imposed by the Donald Trump on more than 100 US trading partners. The 51-47 tally came just hours after Trump emerged from crucial trade talks with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a meeting the US president described as “amazing” and “truly great”. Trump said Chinese imports would now be subject to a 47% tariff, down 10 percentage points.
-
The Trump administration announced plans to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans. The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.
-
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has declared a state of emergency to raise $65m to help food banks as federal funding for the national food stamps program is set to expire on Saturday due to the government shutdown. The move comes after Oregon and Virginia also declared emergencies to make funds available to cover the anticipated short fall in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which provides food aid to nearly 42 million people.
-
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday said that the US would enact a one-year suspension of Entity List restrictions that make it harder for Chinese firms to use affiliates to buy off-limits technology. The moratorium comes after President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were able to discuss big picture issues with great respect at their meeting earlier in the day in South Korea, Bessent said in an interview on Fox Business Network.
Key events
Rachel Leingang
Extremists are exploiting political violence on online platforms to recruit new people to their causes and amplify the use of violence for political goals, according to a new report that monitored social platforms after recent attacks.
Researchers at New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights tracked social media feeds for several months this year, including in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“Violent extremist groups systematically exploit trigger events – high-profile incidents of violence – to recruit supporters, justify their ideologies and call for retaliatory action,” the findings say.
The US is experiencing an increase in political violence and extremism, with high-profile incidents targeting Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, Kirk, an ICE facility, a church, a Jewish museum and more. Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the violence is coming solely from the “radical left” and sought to clamp down on left-leaning groups. Republican members of Congress took testimony in a House subcommittee this week about rising political violence.
For the full story, click here:
New York representative Gregory Meeks, who is also a ranking member of the House foreign affairs committeee, issued criticisms after briefing with defense department officials over the Donald Trump administration’s military strikes across the Caribbean and Pacific.
On Thursday, Meek called the briefing “incredible for how little information was shared, how little time the briefers stayed to answer questions, and how completely absent any credible legal rationale was for the administration’s unauthorized, ongoing expansion of these strikes”.
He went on to add: “Here remain many questions unanswered, and I am more concerned of this administration’s conduct today than I was yesterday. It’s time for Republicans to end their six-week vacation, schedule public hearings and demand answers from senior administration officials.”
Meeks’ comments come as the Trump administration face growing backlash from Democrats over its lack of disclosure on details of the strikes which are said to be targeting alleged smuggling boats.
Speaking to the New York Times on Thursday, California representative Sara Jacobs said that Pentagon officials acknowledged that they did not know the identities of everyone who was killed in the strikes.
“They said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes,” she told the outlet, adding: “Part of why they could not actually hold or try the individual that survived one of the attacks was because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
She added that, according to officials in the briefing, the strikes were aimed solely at cocaine targets and not at fentanyl, a far more lethal drug and the leading cause of overdose deaths across the United States
“They admitted that all of the narcotics coming out of this part of the world is cocaine … They … talked a little bit about the connection between cocaine and fentanyl, although I’m not convinced that what they said was accurate,” Jacobs told the outlet.
California’s Democratic Senators have asked the Justice Department to immediately cancel its “blatantly partisan plan” to deploy election monitors to the state during next week’s special election that will decide whether to move forward with new Congressional maps.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla warn that “these highly unusual, unwarranted deployments” could intimidate voters and help bolster the president’s attacks on the legitimacy of the redistricting ballot measure, which was crafted in response to his request that Texas approve a gerrymander to protect Republicans’ fragile House majority.
“This deployment is clearly linked to President Trump’s continued perpetuation of lies relating to alleged fraud in our elections and his opposition to California’s Proposition 50,” the senators write.
“Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is!” Trump claimed in a recent Truth Social post, referring to the ballot measure.
California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, has said the state, in response, will dispatch its own observers to monitor federal election watchers deployed by the Trump administration.
Rachel Leingang
Next Tuesday is election day and there are many races to watch for clues about the mood of the electorate, and in particular the state of the Democratic party. One under-the-radar test is in Minnesota, where Omar Fateh, the so-called “Mamdani of Minneapolis” hopes to defeat the incumbent mayor Jacob Frey with a leftwing campaign focused on affordability, wages and public safety, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports.
Fateh, a 35-year-old who became state senator by ousting an incumbent, has gained attention for comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist on track to win New York City’s mayoral contest. They’re both young, both part of the insurgent left, both Muslim, both state lawmakers. Their platforms, with a focus on affordability, align. Their campaigns tap into grassroots organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Their races use ranked-choice voting, allowing for alliances against the incumbent.
Instead of a primary, Minneapolis holds caucuses and a city convention. Fateh earned the endorsement of the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, but it was then revoked by the state party after the electronic voting system failed to capture all votes in the contest, the Minneapolis DFL acknowledged, leaving the race without an endorsed candidate.
A new analysis by Guardian journalists José Olivares and Will Craft found that ICE increasingly keeps people in holding rooms with little oversight, as some facilities see a 600% rise in detention length
They report that these holding facilities – located at ICE offices, in federal buildings and other locations around the country – are typically used to detain people after they have been arrested but before they are transferred or released. In many cases, they consist of small concrete rooms with no beds and are designed to only be used for a few hours.
Previously, ICE was prohibited by its own internal policies from detaining people for longer than 12 hours in these holding facilities. But in a June memo, the agency waived the 12-hour rule, saying people recently arrested by ICE can be detained in the holding rooms for up to three days.
Here are their major findings:
-
ICE has used at least 170 ICE holding facilities nationwide, including at 25 ICE field offices.
-
The Trump administration and its campaign of mass deportation has led to a near across the board increase in the time people are forced to spend in detention in holding rooms. After Donald Trump’s inauguration, the average time that people spend in detention increased at 127 hold rooms across the country.
-
Despite ICE’s rule change in June, the agency is continuing to violate its own policy by detaining people at these sites for multiple days at a time.
-
In some cases, such as a New York City holding facility located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, time in detention increased by nearly 600% on average after the June rule change.
-
In one case the Guardian discovered by looking through agency data, ICE documented that a 62-year-old man was held inside that same New York City holding facility for two and a half months.
-
The Guardian also found an additional 63 people at the site who were held there for longer than one week, between Trump’s inauguration and late July.
Asked about Trump’s announcement that the Pentagon would “immediately” resume nuclear weapons testing, Vance said the president was acting to ensure the US’s arsenal “actually functions properly”.
“Sometimes you’ve got to test it to make sure that it’s functioning and working properly,” Vance said, before clarifying: “To be clear, we know that it does work properly, but you got to keep on top of it over time and the President just wants to make sure that we do that.”
Asked if air travel was safe for Americans, Vance said he believed it was.
“I don’t think Americans should be afraid to fly, because we’ve got great airline professionals who are keeping the safest aviation industry in the world afloat,” Vance said.
He added: “What I worry more about is that, if you have, let’s say a pilot who’s now missed two paychecks, who’s now telling his kids that they can’t do things that they’d like to do, who’s now worried about feeding his family, maybe that guy doesn’t show up to work, maybe goes and gets a different job. That means greater delays for the American people.”
Sean Duffy, transportation secretary, warns of ‘mass issues’ with air travel if shutdown drags into Thanksgiving season
Emerging from a closed-door meeting at the White House on Thursday, vice-president JD Vance and transportation secretary Sean Duffy warned of the impacts of the shutdown on the aviation industry and blamed Democrats for the closures.
“I give the president of the United States great credit and the entire team for trying to make this as painless as possible,” Vance told reporters after the meeting. “The Democrats are acting irresponsibly. … Right now, this government, this administration, we’re like guys running around with a leak in a damn wall, trying to plug it with bubble gum.”
If the shutdown drags into the Thanksgiving holiday season, Duffy warned of “mass issues” with air travel. At that point, air traffic controllers will have missed multiple paycheck and would probably start missing work as they look for another job.
“It’ll be a disaster in aviation,” he said, adding: “October is a slower air travel month, and we have great weather in October, and so you’ve seen minimal disruption because of good weather and slower travel.”
Gavin Newsom’s redistricting proposal, designed as a counterweight to Republican redistricting in Texas and known as Prop 50, appears on track for victory, according to the latest polling released on Thursday.
Six in 10 likely voters in California support the measure, which would redraw the district boundaries to improve Democrats’ chances of winning five additional House seats in next year’s midterm elections – designed to “neutralize” a Republican gerrymander in Texas, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. By comparison, just 38% said they opposed it.
Among those urging a yes vote are California resident and former vice-president Kamala Harris.
In a video posted on X, Harris fills out her ballot, slaps on an “I voted” sticker and urges fellow Californians to vote by mail or in person on Election Day, 4 November.
“We as Californians are standing up to level the playing field,” Harris says.
I voted YES on Prop 50 because we cannot let anyone silence the will of the people.
California is fighting fire with fire and standing up for democracy everywhere. Vote yes on Prop 50 by mail or in person on Election Day, this Tuesday, November 4. pic.twitter.com/qGcZDl08Qt
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 30, 2025
Marina Dunbar
The Senate hearing for Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, has been postponed after the nominee went into labor with her first child, Marina Dunbar reports.
Means had planned to make history as the first nominee to appear virtually before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee due to her pregnancy on Thursday. The hearing was originally scheduled for two days after her due date, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. It remains unclear when the hearing will be rescheduled.
In a statement shared with the Guardian, Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the department of health and human services (HHS), said: “Everyone is happy for Dr Means and her family. This is one of the few times in life when it’s easy to ask to move a Senate hearing.”
Trump nominated Means in May to serve as US surgeon general, the president’s second pick for the role often referred to as “the nation’s doctor”. Means, a wellness influencer and physician with an inactive medical license, follows the abrupt withdrawal of Trump’s first nominee, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, whose confirmation hearing was canceled amid rightwing criticism and questions about her credentials.
Senate votes to end Trump’s global tariffs
For a third time this week, a bipartisan group of senators rallied to nullify the global “reciprocal” tariffs imposed by the Donald Trump on more than 100 US trading partners.
The 51-47 tally came just hours after Trump emerged from crucial trade talks with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a meeting the US president described as “amazing” and “truly great”. Trump said Chinese imports would now be subject to a 47% tariff, down 10 percentage points.
Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats in favor of the resolution, as they did to repeal the levies on Canada and Brazil earlier this week.
The measure, however, is all but certain to stall in the House, where the Republican majority approved new rules to ensure such resolutions do not reach the floor for a vote. Nevertheless it shows a rare degree of Republican push back against a president who has had no qualms trampling Congress’s power. It has also proven to be an effective way for out-of-power Democrats to expose cracks between the president and members of his party, forcing Republican senators to choose between their long-standing support for free trade and Trump’s tariff policy.
US slashes number of refugees and give priority to white South Africans
The Trump administration announced plans to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.
The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.
The administration published the news Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.
No reason was given for the drop in numbers, which are a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling set under the Biden administration of 125,000.
The Associated Press previously reported that the administration was considering admitting as few as 7,500 refugees and mostly white South Africans.
Senate voting on resolution to terminate ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs that Trump imposed on more than 100 trading partners
The Senate is in the process of voting on a resolution to terminate the “Liberation Day” tariffs that Trump imposed on more than 100 trading partners.
This is the third vote the chamber has taken this week to rein in the president’s global trade war. In a bipartisan show of resistance, a handful of Republican senators joined all Democrats to overturn the national emergencies that Trump used to slap levies on Brazil and Canada.
Today’s vote appeared likely to pass in the Republican controlled-Senate, though it would almost certainly be rejected by the House, where Republicans have passed new rules that effectively prevent such resolutions from reaching the floor for a vote.
New York declares state of emergency to help food banks in shutdown
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has declared a state of emergency to raise $65m to help food banks as federal funding for the national food stamps program is set to expire on Saturday due to the government shutdown.
The move comes after Oregon and Virginia also declared emergencies to make funds available to cover the anticipated short fall in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which provides food aid to nearly 42 million people.
New York receives nearly $650m a month in federal funding for Snap benefits, according to Department of Agriculture figures.
Oregon governor Tina Kotek on Wednesday pledged $5m to food banks and declared a 60-day food security emergency. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin has said the state will draw on surplus funds to pay for up to a month of Snap benefits.
The declarations come amid an ongoing standoff between the Trump administration and the Republicans, on one side, and the Democrats, over a federal government funding package. Neither Congress nor the White House has acted to fund November Snap benefits, which cost around $8bn a month.
