October 27, 2025
PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Shutdown hardens: SNAP crisis looms, Senate eyes narrow relief bills
Happy Monday morning.
This is Day 27 of the government shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to this crisis.
The House hasn’t voted since Sept. 19 (that’s 38 days). The Senate is spinning its wheels on nominations and doomed-to-fail funding votes that aren’t moving the needle. Committee work has completely stopped in the House. The annual appropriations process is nowhere. Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was elected more than a month ago.
Congressional leaders in both parties — locked in a cycle of defiance and denial — hold daily press conferences to blame the other side for the shutdown, which has been a disaster for Congress as an institution. President Donald Trump is on his second overseas trip since Oct. 1, this one a high-profile foray highlighted by an expected Thursday meeting in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Yet the political calculus is slowly changing. The fallout from the shutdown is growing worse by the day. The risk for Democrats is that these impacts begin to overshadow the health-care issues they’re trying to fix. For the GOP, it looks like they can’t govern.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers missed a full paycheck last week, causing hardship for them and their families. Air traffic controllers, already dealing with staffing shortages leading to delays at major hubs, will miss a paycheck this week. More on this in a bit.
Trump mandated that military service members get paid on Oct. 15, but it’s unclear what will happen with this week’s paycheck. The Trump administration accepted a $130 million gift from a Trump donor to help pay the troops, although that’s only a fraction of what’s needed.
Now that SNAP benefits are slated to run dry Nov. 1 — and the White House doesn’t believe it can do anything to stop that — the shutdown is truly breaking through in local media. Look at this collection of front pages from the Sunday newspapers.
— Shreveport (La.) Times: “SNAP benefits to stop in Nov.” This is Johnson’s hometown paper.
— New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Shutdown’s impact looms on state’s horizon: Much of Louisiana hasn’t seen effects yet, but as stalemate continues, consequences will broaden”
— N.Y. Daily News: “Nearly 3 million New Yorkers face losing SNAP benefits in November”
— Utica (N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch: “SNAP benefit disruption shows local challenges”
— Independent Mail (Anderson County, S.C.): “Starving SNAP: Food pantries brace for more families as government shutdown threatens funds”
— The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain: “SNAP benefits for 40,000 Puebloans put on hold”
— Miami Herald: “New shutdown problem: Miami is the U.S. capital for seniors on food stamps.”
None of these headlines cast blame on one party or the other. The question becomes whether food stamps drying up — or something else — pushes Congress to a solution.
Rifle-shot bills. That brings us to our next point: The Senate’s potential votes this week on narrow funding bills to pay members of the military and air traffic controllers.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has teased possible votes this week on those so-called “rifle-shot” bills.
An initial procedural vote on either bill could occur as soon as Wednesday, but Thune hasn’t made a final decision on whether to tee up these votes. The goal would be to try to make Democrats look bad for blocking them.
Senate Democratic leaders aren’t yet saying how they’d handle these votes. Democrats filibustered a GOP bill last week that would have paid federal employees who have been forced to work during the shutdown, arguing it would’ve given Trump too much power.
It’ll be harder to apply that argument to these two bills. Paychecks for air traffic controllers are especially urgent. While Trump has been actively looking for ways to pay troops, the same hasn’t been the case for air traffic controllers.
Since the shutdown began, five Senate Democrats have already voted for either the House-passed Nov. 21 CR or the GOP bill to pay non-furloughed federal workers. If all five support a “rifle-shot” bill, getting to 60 votes suddenly doesn’t seem impossible.
Plus, allowing either or both of these to pass could serve a political purpose for Democrats too — put pressure on Johnson to bring the House back. Last week, Johnson ruled out returning to pass an air traffic controllers bill, which undoubtedly factors into Thune’s decision-making. If the Senate sends Johnson a bill to pay these workers, he’d be hard-pressed to maintain that stance.
Something else to consider with these bills: Removing pain points only makes both sides more entrenched and doesn’t get them any closer to ending the shutdown. The White House doesn’t want Congress to send them these bills because they believe it’ll just bail Democrats out and shift the focus away from solving the shutdown.
Another thing to watch for this week. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is working with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on potentially merging their two bills to pay federal workers. Last week, Democrats blocked Johnson’s, which covers non-furloughed workers. Van Hollen’s bill covers all federal workers and bars layoffs during the shutdown. Thune has said he’s open to a compromise.
— Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio
Tomorrow: Join us at 9:30 a.m ET for a conversation with Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas). We’ll sit down with Van Duyne to discuss news of the day and the economic impact of creators across the country. RSVP now!
REDISTRICTING WARS
Jeffries heads to Illinois to push redistricting
News: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is in Illinois this morning, meeting with state Democratic lawmakers to urge them to consider a mid-decade redistricting.
Jeffries will huddle with the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and Black members from the state’s congressional delegation, according to sources familiar with his plans. This is a significant step toward winning over the necessary support for a new House map that could net Democrats one seat.
The Illinois Senate Black Caucus, via its chair, state Sen. Willie Preston, issued a public warning to Jeffries that it won’t support a map that dilutes Black voting population in historically Black districts. Preston is running for Rep. Robin Kelly’s (D-Ill.) seat, one of those districts. Kelly is running in the Democratic Senate primary.
Jeffries’ trip to Chicago is an acknowledgment that support from Black lawmakers will be crucial toward passing a new map. Preston will also be in the meeting today, per a person familiar with his plans.
Illinois has three historically Black districts held by Kelly and Democratic Reps. Danny Davis and Jonathan Jackson. Black lawmakers have voiced concerns that squeezing another seat out of the state could lower the number of Black voters in those districts, potentially hurting Black representation.
The state currently has 14 Democrats and three Republicans. Democrats hope to draw out one more Republican to counter President Donald Trump’s push to gerrymander in red states.
Jeffries has been working hard to get the congressional delegation on board. But Springfield has been the larger roadblock.
And there is a tight timeline on this. The ballot filing deadline closes Nov. 3. The legislature will convene this week for a veto session.
– Ally Mutnick
THE SENATE
Senators appeal to SCOTUS on Trump tariffs ahead of key floor votes
News: A bipartisan group of senators filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court over the weekend in support of a lower court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s expansive global tariffs.
The brief comes ahead of oral arguments next month on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate the appeals court’s ruling, which found that Trump abused emergency powers to impose the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
It also comes as the Senate is set to vote this week on three joint resolutions to overturn the national emergency declarations that Trump used to levy the global tariffs, in addition to the separate tariffs targeting Canada and Brazil.
Over the weekend, Trump escalated his trade war against Canada by cutting off trade talks and hiking tariffs by 10% in response to an anti-tariff ad that aired in Canada and invoked former President Ronald Reagan.
The brief. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations and Finance committees, respectively — led the group of 36 senators on the amicus brief. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has long opposed the tariffs, was the lone GOP co-signer. Additionally, 171 House Democrats have signed on.
The Democratic senators argue that the high court should deny the Trump administration’s request to stay the lower court decision, which relied in part on the fact that Congress hadn’t authorized the tariffs.
In the brief, the Democrats argued that IEEPA doesn’t delegate tariff authority to the executive branch, noting that Trump is the only president to ever invoke the law to impose tariffs. You can read the full brief here.
The votes. Senate Democrats, joined by a handful of GOP senators, are set to force votes this week on resolutions of disapproval for the three types of tariffs. These resolutions are privileged, meaning they can hit the floor without leadership buy-in.
The Senate passed the measure overturning Trump’s Canada tariffs back in April, with four Republicans joining all Democrats: Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Murkowski.
Later that month, Republicans successfully blocked passage of the resolution of disapproval for Trump’s global tariffs — but only because of absences.
Absent similar attendance issues, both of these are likely to pass this week, perhaps with additional GOP support. Some Republican senators who opposed the disapproval resolutions in April said they’d consider voting for them in the future if Trump hadn’t made significant progress on trade deals.
The Brazil measure is coming up for a vote for the first time. Over the summer, Trump declared a national emergency to impose these tariffs after Brazil’s government prosecuted Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, who happens to be a close Trump ally.
Trump did meet with current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday.
It’s important to note that these Senate votes are little more than symbolic because House GOP leaders, in an unprecedented move, engineered a rules change that effectively bars floor votes on challenges to Trump’s tariff authority.
— Andrew Desiderio
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What we’re watching
Tuesday: The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing to consider a number of Defense Department nominees.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on “politically violent attacks.”
Wednesday: The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on “Big Tech and silencing Americans” with officials from Google and Meta. The Senate Finance Committee will consider a number of nominees, including Arjun Mody to be deputy commissioner of Social Security.
Thursday: The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Vice Admiral Richard A. Correll to be the commander of U.S. Strategic Command.
– Jake Sherman
… AND THERE’S MORE
A new Hunt memo and some Warren crypto news
Campaign scoop: Rep. Wesley Hunt, a recent entrant into Texas’ Senate GOP primary, is sending a fiery memo to donors, urging them not to support incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
This memo is from Hunt’s campaign, so of course, this is their posture. But Hunt’s team lays out some interesting points and some of their own internal numbers that are worth noting.
– Hunt’s big takeaway: The massive onslaught of TV spending for Cornyn has dragged down Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but hasn’t substantially improved Cornyn’s numbers in a three-way contest, where he remains in the high 20s to low 30s in recent public and private polling.
– Hunt disclosed previously unreleased polling from early October of 725 likely voters that showed him leading both candidates in runoffs. Hunt led Cornyn 48% to 37% and Hunt led Paxton 43% to 40%, according to this survey. But Hunt has to get to second place in the three-way to make the runoff and most recent polling shows him in third.
– One more notable stat: Cornyn’s re-elect number is tough. Just 20% said they would vote for him and 62% said they want someone else. And this is before Cornyn has seen significant negative advertising against him.
Crypto news: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will try this evening to pass a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon Changpeng Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance. Zhao pled guilty in 2023 to allowing billions in illicit funds to be laundered through his crypto exchange.
In a “Dear Colleague” letter that Warren will distribute this morning, Warren says Zhao’s pardon “followed months of an increasingly intertwined business relationship between Zhao and the Trump family.” The arrangement has created some queasiness among Republicans, too.
Ad news. VoteVets is partnering with “Yes on 50” to run an ad buy in support of the California redistricting ballot measure. The spot, airing on streaming services and backed by an initial $150,000 investment, features two veterans discussing the need to stand up to Trump.
The American Prosperity Alliance is running a new ad in Philadelphia, urging voters to call Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) to thank him for passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Watch the spot here.
– Ally Mutnick, Jake Sherman and Max Cohen
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Every day at Duke Energy, we’re focused on keeping prices low and supporting growing energy needs across our footprint. From enabling modern energy infrastructure investments to accelerating technology advancements, our progress will not be slowed.