Welcome to the online version of From the policy officea newsletter bringing you the latest reporting and analysis of the NBC News Politics team from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, our team on Capitol Hill looks at how a series of deadlines this week could increase pressure on lawmakers to end the government shutdown. In addition, Andrea Mitchell reviews President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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– Adam Woolner
Off, Day 29: Pain points start escalating
Written by Sahil Kapoor, Scott Wong, and Brennan Leach
The pain of the government shutdown is expected to intensify this week as a full month of funding is about to expire with no solution in sight.
A series of deadlines in the coming days may have negative consequences for Americans.
Food aid: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, are set to expire on November 1 without congressional action, affecting an estimated 40 million low-income Americans across red and blue states. New York, Texas, and Florida each have about 3 million SNAP recipients, According to KFFa nonpartisan research group.
health care: Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act begins Nov. 1, a month before subsidies that have helped keep premium costs low expire. Insurers have set higher rates for 2026 if these subsidies are not renewed, with some Americans seeing their premiums double or triple for next year.
If Congress moves soon to extend the money, reversing the sticker shock for enrollees will be complicated, but insurers could find ways to lower bills for them next year. However, the parties do not appear to be close to reaching a solution.
Federal worker salaries: Federal employees are being furloughed or forced to work without pay for the duration of the shutdown. Tuesday marked the first time during this shutdown that some “exceptional” workers, such as Transportation Security Administration agents and air traffic controllers tasked with keeping the skies safe, lost their entire paycheck.
The longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which spanned 34 days in late 2018 and early 2019, ended after air traffic controllers and TSA agents began calling in sick, severely threatening air travel. One of the biggest travel holidays of the year, Thanksgiving, is coming up in just a few weeks.
Pay troops: Two weeks ago, the White House alleviated a major pain point of the shutdown by shifting money to ensure active-duty military personnel would not miss out on pay. Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to find the money needed to pay troops. The Pentagon reallocated billions of dollars from research and development programs to serve members’ pay.
Moreover, a private donor, from New York Times He was later identified as billionaire Timothy Mellon, and contributed $130 million to help pay the troops. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly $6.5 billion the Pentagon needs to fund Friday’s payrolls. The Trump administration is now desperately looking for other sources of funding to tap.
Price tag: The shutdown is costing the economy about $7 billion a month, which will not be recovered when the government reopens, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Read more →
Trump seeks a truce in a trade war of his own making
Analysis by Andrea Mitchell
As President Donald Trump completes his self-proclaimed victory tour in Asia after a truce in the escalating trade war with China, you can imagine hearing sighs of relief from Midwest soybean farmers and inflation hawks in Washington.
The unanswered question is whether this was a win in the contest that Trump was running against himself.
In fact, even before he sat across from Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing had signaled that it would resume buying US soybeans — though just a down payment on what had been its annual purchases. Treasury Secretary Scott Besent said U.S. negotiators succeeded in coming up with a framework for China to postpone threatened export controls on rare earth metals and ultimately crack down on the Chinese-made chemical precursor to fentanyl that has claimed the lives of several American victims.
But in the eyes of many economists, foreign leaders and corporate executives, Trump’s retaliatory tariff regime was an inadvertent mistake, imposing a hidden tax on consumers, risking inflation, and needlessly alienating allies from Canada to Japan and South Korea.
The reputational cost may be most painful in neighboring Canada, America’s second-largest trading partner when counting goods and services, and an important ally of NORAD’s leadership. Already stung by what would have been a classic Trump troll about Canada becoming the 51st nation, Ottawa is now reeling from the cancellation of bilateral trade talks last weekend after the president became upset about a television ad that used a speech by Ronald Reagan to attack his tariff policy.
The conclusion by many commentators in the Canadian media? They can no longer trust their closest neighbors.
There were also unintended consequences. Given the highly integrated cross-border trade, tariffs on Canadian aluminium, steel and cars have punished industries and consumers in states south of the border, especially in the Rust Belt that helped propel Trump to victory.
Despite criticism that he was eccentric, there was potential benefit from what some on Wall Street derided as Trump’s tariff threats. It is the strong man’s theory of diplomacy that it is better to be feared than loved. Leaders from Tokyo to London have offered concessions in trade talks with Washington, even if most of them are frameworks that fall short of detailed, binding agreements.
There were also real successes in Trump’s Asian trip. In the short term, a trade truce with the world’s only other economic superpower provides a great deal of global economic security. The real risk may be the opportunity costs resulting from the White House’s preoccupation with tariffs since Emancipation Day in April. While the administration is enjoying what could be an AI-fueled stock market boom, it is putting future economic progress at risk by cutting back on biomedical research at leading universities, firing top scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and cracking down on foreign student visas.
Meanwhile, China is recruiting disillusioned American scientists. Xi is also rapidly expanding his country’s scientific and manufacturing base, adding to its advantages in nuclear energy, rare earth metals and chips. Trump may win the battle and lose the war.
🗞️ Other top news of the day
- ✂️ FED Monitor: The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point for the second time this year, a move that could provide financial relief to consumers and businesses — but also carries risks as inflation rises. Read more →
- 🫗 Cold water: Trump said it was “very clear” that he was “not allowed to run” for a third term, a move prohibited by the Constitution but floated by the president and some of his allies. Read more →
- 🗺️ Redistricting: Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson said the Senate would not attempt to redraw the state’s congressional map despite pressure from national and local Democrats. On the other hand, Republicans in Louisiana voted to postpone their election schedule to give them time to redraw the congressional map if the US Supreme Court weakens a key part of the Voting Rights Act.
- 🗳️Sprint until November: Democrat Abigail Spanberger remained laser-focused on economic and anti-Trump messaging in Virginia’s final stretch as last-minute outside developments threatened to upend the governor’s race. Read more →
- 📱 Sprint through November, follow: New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zahran Mamdani hosted an exclusive press conference for influencers, highlighting his campaign’s media strategy. Read more →
- 🔴 We look forward to next November: Georgia is one of the few unsettled Republican Senate primaries on the 2026 map where Trump has yet to issue an endorsement. Read more →
- ⚖️ In the courts: A federal grand jury has indicted Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abu-Ghazaleh along with other protesters who allegedly blocked vehicles outside a federal immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois. Read more →
- ⚖️ In the courts, follow: A federal judge ruled that the acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California — the nation’s largest federal judicial district — was “serving illegally” in the position, in part because the Senate had not confirmed his appointment. Read more →
- 🕺Blitz on the dance floor: The White House fired all six members of the Commission on Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that was to review the Trump Hall construction project. Read more →
- 🇧🇷 Tariff Tariff: Five Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Trump’s tariffs on billions of dollars in goods from Brazil. Read more →
That’s all from the Policy Office for now. Today’s newsletter is compiled by Adam Woolner.
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