Trump administration seeks emergency pause of court order to fully fund November Snap benefits
The Trump administration has moved block full food stamp payments for millions of low-income Americans after it asked the first circuit court of appeals for an emergency pause of US district judge John McConnell’s order requiring it to fully fund Snap benefits by today using other funding sources.
“This Court should allow USDA to continue with the partial payment and not compel the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program with no certainty of their replenishment,” it writes, as quoted by NBC News.
“To the extent they require USDA to expend funds beyond the SNAP contingency fund, the Court should stay the district court’s orders of October 31 and November 6 pending appeal and grant an immediate administrative stay.”
The government asked the appeals court to render a ruling by 4pm ET, we’ll bring you more as we get it.
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Updated at 10.36 EST
Key events
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US consumer sentiment weakened to the lowest level in nearly 3-1/2 years in early November amid worries about the economic fallout from the longest government shutdown in history, a survey showed today.
The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers said its Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 50.3 this month, the lowest level since June 2022, from a final reading of 53.6 in October.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index would dip to 53.2.
“With the federal government shutdown dragging on for over a month, consumers are now expressing worries about potential negative consequences for the economy,” Joanne Hsu, the director of the Surveys of Consumers, said in a statement. “This month’s decline in sentiment was widespread throughout the population, seen across age, income, and political affiliation.”
The government shutdown, now in its second month, has led to cuts in benefits, including food stamps, for millions of lower-income households. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed and others are working without pay, while travellers are facing delays at airports as flights are grounded.
The survey’s measure of consumer expectations for inflation over the next year increased to 4.7% this month from 4.6% in October. Consumers’ expectations for inflation over the next five years eased to 3.6% from 3.9% last month.
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The Trump administration’s appeal came even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people, the Associated Press reports.
Wisconsin governor Tony Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said today that some Snap recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.
“We’ve received confirmation that payments went through, including members reporting they can now see their balances,” she told the AP.
California, Michigan and Oregon also said they had already started to process full food stamp payments, per the NYT.
Yesterday, US district judge John McConnell had gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap. But the administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund.
The court wrangling prolongs weeks of uncertainty for the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which serves about 1 in 8 – or 42 million – low-income Americans.
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Updated at 10.56 EST
Trump administration seeks emergency pause of court order to fully fund November Snap benefits
The Trump administration has moved block full food stamp payments for millions of low-income Americans after it asked the first circuit court of appeals for an emergency pause of US district judge John McConnell’s order requiring it to fully fund Snap benefits by today using other funding sources.
“This Court should allow USDA to continue with the partial payment and not compel the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program with no certainty of their replenishment,” it writes, as quoted by NBC News.
“To the extent they require USDA to expend funds beyond the SNAP contingency fund, the Court should stay the district court’s orders of October 31 and November 6 pending appeal and grant an immediate administrative stay.”
The government asked the appeals court to render a ruling by 4pm ET, we’ll bring you more as we get it.
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Updated at 10.36 EST
Trump pardons Tennessee Republican convicted of federal public corruption charges
Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee state House speaker and a onetime aide of public corruption charges after the White House said the Biden administration justice department “significantly over-prosecuted” both for a minor issue.
Glen Casada, a former Republican state representative, was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.
Casada said in a statement to WSMV in Nashville: “Yes the president called me today and granted me a full pardon. I am grateful of his trust and his full confidence in my innocence through this whole ordeal.”
The moves continued a pattern of Trump, a Republican, using his second presidency to bestow unlikely pardons on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of defrauding the public.
Many of the clemencies he granted have targeted criminal cases once touted as just by the justice department. They also have come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails – including the firing of the department’s pardon attorney and the near-dismantling of a prosecution unit established to hold public officials accountable for abusing the public trust.
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The Senate is scheduled to convene at noon today, as the record-setting government shutdown enters its 38th day.
Majority leader John Thune is expected to tee up another vote on the House GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution again (this will be the 15th time), but Politico reports he’ll likely add some changes in the form of a possible new end date in January and a trio of appropriations bills to last the whole year, including for food aid and veterans programs.
This new deal has emerged from bipartisan talks that have gathered momentum in recent days, but Democrats have indicated that they will likely block it again and continue pushing for further healthcare concessions.
But as yet there’s been no new GOP offer on healthcare, with Republicans willing to commit only to a future vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies by an agreed-upon date – but only if the government reopens first.
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As the longest federal government shutdown in US history enters its 38th day, House speaker Mike Johnson is due to hold his regular news briefing shortly. I’ll bring you all the key lines from that here.
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Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik announces run for New York governor
Marina Dunbar
Elise Stefanik, a Republican New York representative and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, has officially launched her long-anticipated campaign for governor.
Reports indicate that Stefanik has already been working behind the scenes to secure endorsements from key Republican figures and local officials.
She has recently amped up her attacks on Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, frequently labeling her as “the worst governor in America” on social media and accusing her of having “bent the knee to Commie Mamdani,” referring to the now mayor-elect of New York City.
Stefanik, who has billed herself as “ultra-Maga” and “proud of it”, was not always a Trump evangelist. She first won her congressional seat in 2014, then the youngest woman ever elected to the job, aged 30. Her early voting record was relatively moderate.
She appeared to change her strategy in about November 2019, during the House intelligence committee’s Trump impeachment hearings. Stefanik was among the Republican lawmakers who backed litigation that attempted to force the US supreme court to overturn Joe Biden’s election win. Although she did condemn the January 6 Capitol attack, she also voted to reject Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
Trump had tapped Stefanik to be the US ambassador to the United Nations shortly after winning re-election in November. Earlier this year, however, he announced that he was pulling Stefanik’s nomination after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.
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Updated at 09.21 EST
Andrew Roth in Washington and Flora Garamvolgyi in Budapest
Viktor Orbán will visit the White House today as Hungary’s far-right prime minister tries to broker another summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Orbán’s advisers claim could help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Orbán, who has proposed hosting the summit in Budapest, will also seek an exemption from US sanctions against Russian energy in what will be a major test of Trump’s tougher line on the Kremlin after he accused Putin of slow-rolling negotiations to end the conflict.
Yet Orbán’s priority, insiders say, is to get Trump to visit Hungary as he faces an unprecedented domestic challenge from a new opposition leader ahead of the parliamentary elections in April. A visit by Trump would reinforce Orbán’s role as a statesman and energise his conservative base, his advisers believe.
“Orbán wants Trump to come to Budapest before the elections,” said a source working for a Hungarian government foreign policy institution. “This is a top priority. They will discuss the Russian gas issue, but the thing Orbán cares about the most is the elections.”
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Oliver Holmes and Edward Helmore
A US government order to make drastic cuts in commercial air traffic amid the government shutdown has taken effect, with major airports across the country experiencing a significant reduction in schedules and leaving travellers scrambling to adjust their plans.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the move is necessary to maintain air traffic control safety during a federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution, where air traffic controllers have gone without pay.
While airlines have started to reduce domestic flights, global hubs such as JFK in New York and LAX in Los Angeles will be affected, meaning delays and sudden changes that could have a cascading effect on international air traffic.
“We are seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely,” said Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator.
As of this morning, more than 800 US-linked flights had been cancelled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The data showed about four in five cancelations globally were related to the US.
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Donald Trump due to meet Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at 11.30am ET
Per the president’s schedule, he is due to meet Hungary’s far-right prime minister – and his longtime ally – Viktor Orbán at 11.30am ET for a bilateral lunch at 11.45am. Trump is expected to discuss with his longtime ally Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil – and Ukraine is no doubt waiting with bated breath to see if Trump will grant Hungary a pass from new sanctions. It’s closed press for now but we’ll let you know if that changes. Then at 3.30pm Trump will travel to Palm Beach, Florida.
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Updated at 09.28 EST
Russia urged the United States on Friday to clarify what it called contradictory signals about a resumption of nuclear testing, saying such a step would trigger responses from Russia and other countries.
President Donald Trump last week ordered the US military to immediately restart the process for testing nuclear weapons, Reuters reported. But he did not make clear if he meant flight-testing of nuclear-capable missiles or a resumption of tests involving nuclear explosions – something neither the US nor Russia has done for more than three decades.
“If it is the latter, then this will create negative dynamics and trigger steps from other states, including Russia, in response,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“For now, we note that the signals emanating from Washington, which are causing justified concern in all corners of the world, remain contradictory, and, of course, the real state of affairs must be clarified.”
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Major airports across America’s east coast have reported some of the highest numbers of delayed flights amid the long-running government shutdown.
Fox Business reported that Newark, Washington DC and Boston have seen the most delays, closely followed by Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey recorded the highest number of flight delays this week among 28 major US airports, with 1,237 delays, followed by Chicago O’Hare at 1,196, according to FlightAware.
Overall, more than 14,900 flights across the U.S. have been delayed this week, and over 450 have been canceled, FlightAware reported.
Southwest and United are the airlines facing the most delays, Fox Business reported.
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Hugo Lowell
The US Senate on Thursday blocked a Democratic war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to seek congressional approval to launch strikes in Venezuela, allowing the president to remain unchecked in his ability to expand his military campaign against the country.
The 49-51 vote against passing the resolution, mostly along party lines, came a month after a previous effort to stop strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in international waters similarly failed, 48-51.
The new resolution narrowed its scope to attract Republicans, but senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski remained the only two Republicans to cross party lines to support the resolution. Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, who had expressed reservations about the strikes, voted against.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has ramped up its military campaign against drug cartels – and to destabilize the Venezuelan government – deploying the United States’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, just days after Trump announced the US would next hit land-based targets.
“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” Trump told reporters at the White House on 23 October. “We’re going to kill them, you know. They’re going to be, like, dead.”
The administration has also developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela, according to two people familiar with the matter, and Trump’s aides have asked the justice department for additional guidance that could provide a legal basis to strike targets other than boats.
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Maya Yang
The supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.
The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, hailed the decision, saying in a post on X: “Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport. In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
Meanwhile, the court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the decision a “pointless but painful perversion”.
She added: “Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern. So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded. This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification.
“What the Government needs (and what it does not have) is an explanation for why it faces harm unless the President’s chosen policy is implemented now. It suggests that there is an urgent foreign policy interest in dictating sex markers on passports, but does not elaborate as to what that interest might possibly be,” Jackson wrote.
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Lucy Campbell
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to find the money to fully fund food stamps for 42 million low-income Americans in November by Friday, in a rebuke to the government’s plan to only provide reduced aid during the shutdown.
US district judge John J McConnell Jr criticized the administration’s plan to partly fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits in November, saying it had failed to comply with an order he issued on Saturday requiring the government to ensure Americans received full or partial benefits no later than Wednesday.
He also said the administration plowed ahead with a plan to partly cover benefits without addressing – as required– the fact that in many states, it could take weeks or months to implement the reduced benefits.
“The evidence shows that people will go hungry, food pantries will be overburdened, and needless suffering will occur,” McConnell said. “That’s what irreparable harm here means.”
The judge added: “This should never happen in America.”
McConnell gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, though it is unlikely that the people who rely on it will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund Snap,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
This type of order is usually not subject to an appeal, but the Trump administration has challenged similar rulings before.
The plaintiffs want the Snap program, which is a major component of the nation’s social safety net and serves about one in eight Americans, to be fully funded. Some states, including New York, Oregon and Virginia, declared states of emergency last week to provide funds that would keep benefits available. But the amounts provided were expected to amount to a fraction of normal federal government funding. The federal costs of Snap amounts to about $8bn a month across the US.
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Trump to meet Hungary’s Orbán to discuss Russian oil
President Donald Trump will hold talks with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán on Friday, as the two leaders are expected to discuss Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil at a time when Trump has been working to wean nations off of it.
Orbán, a long-time Trump ally, will be meeting the US president for the first time bilaterally since Trump returned to the White House in January.
The two leaders are like-minded in their anti-immigration stances, but a potentially difficult topic involves Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil. Trump has been insisting that European nations stop buying it as a way to dry up Moscow’s funding for its invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary has maintained its reliance on Russian energy since the start of the 2022 conflict in Ukraine, prompting criticism from several European Union and Nato allies.
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Updated at 06.39 EST
US airlines cancel flights after aviation agency directive to cut air traffic
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of US politics with the effects of the record-breaking government shutdown continuing to bite as flight reductions at 40 major US airports begin at 6am ET.
United, Southwest and Delta airlines already began cancelling flights last night with airports in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to be affected after the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said air traffic must be reduced by 4% from this morning.
On Thursday evening, Delta said it will be cancelling 170 flights on today and “fewer” on Saturday because it is a lighter travel day. Southwest said it will cancel 120 flights for Friday and United said it plans to cut 4% of its flights Friday through Sunday.
There’s a full list of affected airports here.
On Thursday evening, Delta said it will be cancelling 170 flights on Friday and “fewer” on Saturday because it is a lighter travel day. Southwest said it will cancel 120 flights for Friday and United said it plans to cut 4% of its flights Friday through Sunday.
The FAA has said flights are being reduced to maintain air traffic control safety during the ongoing federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution between Republicans and Democrats to end the federal budget standoff, now in its 37th day.
Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to find the money to fully fund food stamps for 42 million low-income Americans in November by Friday, in a rebuke to the government’s plan to only provide reduced aid during the shutdown. US district judge John J McConnell Jr criticized the administration’s plan to partly fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits in November, saying it had failed to comply with an order he issued on Saturday requiring the government to ensure Americans received full or partial benefits no later than Wednesday.
The supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity. The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out.
As the US federal shutdown enters its second month, government workers are accusing the Trump administration of being “out of control” and bullying people who are “simply trying to do their best”. About 700,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay, and about 700,000 additional federal workers have been working without pay through the shutdown.
Nancy Pelosi, a California Democratic representative and the first woman to serve as speaker, announced on Thursday she will retire from Congress, two years after stepping down from House leadership. Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco in Congress for nearly 40 years, said in a video address to her constituents that she would “not be seeking re-election”.
Donald Trump announced a plan on Thursday to reduce the costs of some weight loss drugs for certain patients and expand access to them for people on public health insurance. The agreement will make oral versions of GLP-1s, which aren’t yet to market but are expected to be approved in the coming months, available at $150 per month for starting doses.
The US Senate on Thursday blocked a Democratic war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to seek congressional approval to launch strikes in Venezuela, allowing the president to remain unchecked in his ability to expand his military campaign against the country.
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