US supreme court announces funding will run out this weekend
The US supreme court is expected to run out of federal funding on Saturday, according to Patricia McCabe, the court’s public information officer.
“At that point, if new appropriated funds do not become available, the Court will make changes in its operations to comply with the Anti Deficiency Act,” McCabe said in a statement, referring to the law that prohibits government agencies from spending money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.
“As a result, the Supreme Court Building will be closed to the public until further notice,” reads the statement. “The Building will remain open for official business. The Supreme Court will continue to conduct essential work such as hearing oral arguments, issuing orders and opinions, processing case filings, and providing police and building support needed for those operations.”
Key events
After Donald Trump announced he commuted George Santos’ sentence, the former representative’s lawyer told the Associated Press that he was “very, very happy with the decision.”
“The defense team applauds President Trump for doing the right thing,” Andrew Mancilla told the AP. “The sentence was far too long.” He added that it is unclear at this point when Santos will be released.
On Monday, Santos published what he called a “passionate plea to President Trump,” praising him and pleading for “the opportunity to return to my family, my friends, and my community.”
In an open letter published by the South Shore Press on Long Island, Santos said he had been in isolation in prison since late August while the FBI investigated a death threat against him and the experience left him “in limbo, caught between uncertainty and silence.”
“Mr. President, I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for fairness — for the chance to rebuild,” Santos wrote.
He acknowledged making mistakes in his past and said he has faced his share of consequences and takes full responsibility, but nobody “deserves to be lost in the system, forgotten and unseen, enduring punishment far beyond what justice requires.”
“I want nothing more than to begin again — to contribute, to serve, and to rebuild my life from the ashes of my past.”
White House to extend tariff-relief programs for US auto and engine production
The White House announced it would extend current tariff-relief programs for auto and engine production in the US. Trump is also setting a 25% tariff on imported medium- and heavy-duty trucks and parts starting 1 November, as well as a 10% tariff on imported buses.
Trump’s order makes automakers eligible for a credit equal to 3.75% of the suggested retail price for US-assembled vehicles through 2030 to offset import tariffs on parts.
The proclamation says that medium- and heavy-duty truck parts compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement “will not be subject to tariffs imposed in the Proclamation until the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with US Customs and Border Protection, establishes a process to apply tariffs to the non-US content of the parts”.
Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the United States. A study released in January said imports of those larger vehicles from Mexico have tripled since 2019.
Donald Trump says he has commuted the sentence of former Republican representative George Santos
Donald Trump said he had commuted the sentence of the disgraced Republican former representative George Santos, who is serving more than seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft charges.
“I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
Santos was sentenced in April after he lied extensively about his life story before and after entering the US Congress, where he was the first openly LGBTQ+ Republican elected to the body. He admitted to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his family members, to fund his winning campaign.
He also made up strings of fantastical stories about his life, identity and experiences.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote.
Santos served in Congress barely a year before his House of Representatives colleagues ousted him in 2023.
The University of Virginia turned down an invitation from Donald Trump to sign onto his administration’s 10-page college compact that would overhaul university policies in return for preferential access to federal funding.
“We seek no special treatment in exchange for our pursuit of those foundational goals. The integrity of science and other academic work requires merit-based assessment of research and scholarship,” Mahoney wrote in a message to the Department of Education released Friday afternoon. “A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education.”
Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is a proposed agreement that would impose restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limit international student enrollment.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first to decline the deal last week, saying it would limit free speech and campus independence. Similar concerns were cited in rejections from Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Those that have not yet announced a decision are Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University.
US supreme court announces funding will run out this weekend
The US supreme court is expected to run out of federal funding on Saturday, according to Patricia McCabe, the court’s public information officer.
“At that point, if new appropriated funds do not become available, the Court will make changes in its operations to comply with the Anti Deficiency Act,” McCabe said in a statement, referring to the law that prohibits government agencies from spending money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.
“As a result, the Supreme Court Building will be closed to the public until further notice,” reads the statement. “The Building will remain open for official business. The Supreme Court will continue to conduct essential work such as hearing oral arguments, issuing orders and opinions, processing case filings, and providing police and building support needed for those operations.”
The Catholic bishops who chair key committees for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) denounced the Trump administration’s new initiatives expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) measures, warning that IVF is immoral.
“Though we are grateful that aspects of the Administration’s policies announced Thursday intend to include comprehensive and holistic restorative reproductive medicine, which can help ethically to address infertility and its underlying causes, we strongly reject the promotion of procedures like IVF that instead freeze or destroy precious human beings and treat them like property,” bishops Robert Barron, Kevin Rhoades and Daniel Thomas said in a joint statement on Friday.
“Without diminishing the dignity of people born through IVF,” they continued, “we must recognize that children have a right to be born of a natural and exclusive act of married love, rather than a business’s technological intervention. And harmful government action to expand access to IVF must not also push people of faith to be complicit in its evils.”
The comments come after the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover IVF and other infertility treatments, cutting a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.
Following a meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end the war.
“Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts,” Trump said in a Truth Social post after he met with Zelenskyy. “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide.”
Rachel Leingang
US cities to resist Trump’s crackdown on dissent with No Kings protests: ‘We will not be bullied’
Donald Trump has promised to crack down on dissent and sent troops into US cities. His allies are claiming antifa, the decentralized antifascist movement, is behind plans to protest. He is looking for any pretext to go after his opponents.
Still, this Saturday, even in cities with troops on the ground, millions of people are expected to march against the president as part of a second “No Kings” protest. The last No Kings protest in June drew several million people across more than 2,000 locations. This time, more than 2,500 cities and towns nationwide are hosting protests.
Organizers expect this Saturday’s protests to draw more people than the June events as the American public sees the excesses of the Trump administration more clearly.
“Their goal is to dissuade you from participating,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, the progressive movement organization with chapters around the US that is a main organizer of No Kings. “That doesn’t mean that everybody has the same threat level. It doesn’t mean that people should ignore what the threats are, but it does mean we’re going to need to see a lot of courage out there on Saturday.”
Read more details about tomorrow’s protests here:
Joseph Gedeon
The agency that maintains the US nuclear arsenal will be sending home 80% of its workforce as the government shutdown drags through its 17th day and into the weekend, now the longest full funding lapse in US history.
House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers said in a Friday press conference that the National Nuclear Security Administration had now exhausted its carryover reserves.
“We were just informed last night that the National Nuclear Security Administration, the group that manages our nuclear stockpile, that the carryover funding they’ve been using is about to run out,” said Rogers, a Republican from Alabama. “These are not employees that you want to go home. They’re managing and handling a very important strategic asset for us.”
The NNSA, which operates as part of the Department of Energy, does not directly control operational nuclear weapons – a Pentagon responsibility – but plays a strategic role in keeping warheads secure and functional without conducting explosive tests. The agency also runs non-proliferation programs aimed at preventing nuclear materials from reaching hostile nations or terrorist organizations.
Read the full story here:
Trump administration asks supreme court to allow deployment of national guard in Chicago area
The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to allow the deployment of national guard troops in the Chicago area.
The move would escalate President Donald Trump’s conflict with Democratic governors over using the military on US soil.
The emergency appeal to the high court came after a judge prevented, for at least two weeks, the deployment of Guard members from Illinois and Texas to assist immigration enforcement.
About 300 federalized Illinois national guard members and about 200 troops from Texas were deployed to the Chicago area, according to US Northern Command. They have been activated for 60 days.
Lawyers for the state of Illinois had called the sending of national guard soldiers to the city – which was opposed by Chicago and state political leaders – a constitutional crisis.
At least 11 detained after protesters and police clash outside Chicago Ice center
Marina Dunbar
At least 11 people were taken into custody outside the Broadview Ice detention center in the Chicago area after heated confrontations between Illinois state police and protesters on Friday.
Authorities had instructed demonstrators to remain in designated “protest zones”, but tensions escalated when officers moved to clear the roadway.
According to the Chicago Tribune, at about 8am, protesters advanced toward the building. Within minutes, dozens of troopers equipped with helmets and batons moved in to push the crowd back. Officers tackled and dragged several individuals. Much of the clash was captured on video and posted to social media.
At one point, protesters tried to intervene as a fellow demonstrator was detained. Later in the day, groups blew whistles at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entering and leaving the facility.
As arrests took place, chants of: “Who do you protect?” echoed through the crowd during tense exchanges with police, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Protester and congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh voiced frustration over the restrictions. “A free speech zone implies that everywhere else is not a free speech zone,” she told the Associated Press. Abughazaleh said she was struck in the face with a baton and witnessed an officer push a woman to the ground.
Read the full story here:
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump said today that a “drug-carrying submarine” was the target of the administration’s latest strike in the Caribbean. “Just so you understand, this was not an innocent group of people,” the president said. Secretary of state Marco Rubio didn’t respond directly to questions from reporters, but said the White House may issue more information on the strike later today. “These are terrorists, let’s be clear,” Rubio added. According to officials, the US seized survivors from the operation, believed to be at least the sixth strike in the waters off Venezuela since early September. Trump also said that the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, doesn’t want to “fuck around” with the US as tensions escalate between the two nations.
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The office of management and budget director Russell Vought said that $11bn worth of army corps of engineers’ projects will be paused immediately due to the ongoing government shutdown. For context, this is the branch of the army which manages constructs public projects like waterways, bridges and military bases. “The Corps will be immediately pausing over $11bn in lower-priority projects & considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore,” Vought wrote on X. Notably all Democratic-run cities.
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Former Trump adviser turned adversary John Bolton has pleaded not guilty to charges of mishandling classified information. The justice department filed federal charges against Bolton in federal court in Maryland on Thursday, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act. Bolton surrendered in Greenbelt, Maryland, today, with the hearing itself lasting only 15 minutes, according to CNN.
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Trump hosted Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House today – the Ukrainian’s third meeting in Washington in 10 months. During the bilateral meeting, Trump showed hesitance on supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles. “One of the reasons we want to get this war over is … that it’s not easy for us to give you … massive numbers of very powerful weapons,” Trump said. My colleague, Maya Yang, has a helpful summary of talks.
Per my last post, it’s worth noting that of all the cities that Vought mentioned in his announcement on social media, they are all Democratic-run cities, in states with Democratic governors.
White House budget office says $11bn in public engineering projects to be paused
The office of management and budget director Russell Vought said that $11bn worth of army corps of engineers’ projects will be paused immediately due to the ongoing government shutdown. For context, this is the branch of the army which manages constructs public projects like waterways, bridges and military bases.
“The Corps will be immediately pausing over $11 billion in lower-priority projects & considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore,” Vought wrote on X.
Senate Republican political committee shares deepfake video of Schumer
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which helps to elect GOP candidates to the Senate, has shared a video on social media that includes a deepfake of the minority leader, Chuck Schumer.
In the video, posted on the NRSC’s X account, Schumer is seen saying that every day that the shutdown continues “it gets better for us”. This was a quote that Schumer told to Punchbowl News, but “not in this setting or on camera”, per the outlet’s founder Jake Sherman.
The New York Times’ political correspondent, Shane Goldmacher, first noted that the video was not real. However, the NRSC communications director, Joanna Rodriguez, has said “AI is here and not going anywhere. Adapt & win or pearl clutch & lose.”
Trump repeats misleading claim that government shutdown is to fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants
While hosting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president has, once again, repeated the misleading claim that Democrats have refused to advance a House-passed funding bill to reopen the government because they want increased spending to fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants.
“They came into our country illegally, from prisons, from mental institutions, gang members. They want to give them healthcare and take it away from our citizens,” Trump said.
A reminder that undocumented immigrants remain ineligible to access federally funded healthcare insurance. The only exception is emergency Medicaid – which is required under federal law.
Democrats have pushed a funding extension that would reverse many of the cuts to Medicaid that were enacted when Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – his sweeping domestic policy agenda.
This includes allowing lawfully present noncitizens – which includes several groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and survivors of domestic abuse and human trafficking who are awaiting visas or documentation – to still enroll in certain federal health care programs. All of these immigrants have entered the country legally and are accounted for by the federal government.
