Sunday marked the 39th day of the government shutdown, with confusion and chaos affecting millions of people.
Travel disruptions continued to be hectic all weekend, with thousands of flights either canceled or delayed.
In a reversal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that states that issued full November SNAP benefits to recipients following a lower court decision should “immediately undo” the distributions and that failure to comply could result in the cancellation of future federal funds.
Workers at some overseas U.S. military bases are going without pay, with employees on at least one base in Germany directed to food pantries before local officials stepped in.
And as for Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday morning that Democrats would not be willing to compromise on their demands to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.
Republicans are “not acting in good faith as it relates to dealing with a health care crisis that they’re visiting on the American people,” the New York Democrat told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an exclusive interview.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who appeared on the program after Jeffries, blasted Democrats over the shutdown, telling moderator Kristen Welker, “This shutdown is not about health care. This shutdown was really about Democrats saying they want to show their resistance to President Trump. They want to show they’re fighting. They want to be able to energize their base.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, floated directly paying Americans for their health care costs and giving out $2,000 dividends from tariff revenue, ideas that administration officials later said were not formal proposals being sent to the Senate.
Politics in brief
- BBC shake-up: The BBC said that Director-General Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness both announced their resignations after Britain’s public broadcaster was criticized for editing remarks President Donald Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, before protesters attacked the Capitol.
- Bidenomics?: Trump is doubling down on the economy despite a strong rebuke from voters who are struggling to make ends meet — a strategy that is not dissimilar to when Joe Biden ignored inflation, NBC News’ Jonathan Allen writes.
- Not a repeat: Graham Platner gets the concerns, but the Maine Democrat insists he’s no John Fetterman.
- An exceptional exemption: Trump handed his authoritarian Hungarian ally Viktor Orbán a special exemption from Russian energy sanctions.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s prison emails show she is ‘happier’ at minimum-security Texas facility
Within days of her arrival at a Texas prison camp in early August, Ghislaine Maxwell gushed in emails to her friends and family over the cleanliness and safety of her new surroundings.
“The institution is run in an orderly fashion which makes for a safer more comfortable environment for all people concerned, inmates and guards alike,” Maxwell wrote.
NBC News has reviewed emails, obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, that were sent by the Jeffrey Epstein accomplice during her first few months at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, where she was moved days after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche this summer.
One photo, a deluge of threats: Inside the Arizona high school turned upside down by right-wing activists
A group of Arizona high school teachers — some of whom were fans of Charlie Kirk — had their lives turned upside down this week over false accusations about a Halloween photo.
In the photo, Cienega High School math teachers wore matching white T-shirts on Halloween stained with red blotches and reading “Problem Solved.” Right-wing influencers were claiming that the educators were mocking conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Though the district quickly announced the shirts were a math joke and unrelated to Kirk, conservatives and some Republican officials from around the country amplified the image and portrayed it as a glorification of political violence. In the following days, the high school and its staff received more than 3,000 hateful messages, including dozens of death threats, and so many obscene calls that they disconnected the phones. Teachers stayed home. Sheriff’s deputies stepped up patrols on campus. Confused students asked if they were safe at school.
The disruption reminded Vail School District Superintendent John Carruth of a cyberattack, which the district has dealt with before.
“Except instead of bots, it’s people,” he said.
‘Wicked: For Good’ director Jon M. Chu discusses the importance of identity in his films
“Wicked: For Good” director Jon M. Chu has built his career on turning stories about outsiders into celebrations of belonging. But in an interview with “Meet the Press,” the filmmaker opened up about following his own yellow brick road: one marked by rejection and resilience.
“My whole life, I’ve been trying to prove myself, that I can be here, that I can be in this business,” Chu told moderator Kristen Welker. “And I think I was always searching for that kind of validation. But through the process of making movies and doing it over — and I had a whole long career before ever doing ‘Wicked’ — I think I got killed many times.”
“Wicked: For Good,” the second chapter in his adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, will hit theaters on Nov. 21. It is loosely based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel — a creative reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Feds accuse 2 Cleveland Guardians players of rigging pitches in betting scheme
Federal prosecutors charged two Cleveland Guardians pitchers with allegedly rigging their pitches in a sports betting scheme that “betrayed America’s pastime,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said.
Emmanuel Clase de la Cruz, 27, and Luis Leandro Ortiz Ribera, 26, allegedly worked with co-conspirators to place bets on their performance to rake in roughly $450,000 over two years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. The prosecutor’s office released a previously sealed complaint against the two men accusing them of defrauding sports betting platforms.
Both men are charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy.
According to the unsealed complaint, the alleged scheme began with Clase and two unidentified “bettors” in May 2023.
More sports
- Justin Herbert vs. Aaron Rodgers: The 6-3 Chargers host the 5-3 Steelers on “Sunday Night Football.” NBC News is covering all the action.
- Paul Tagliabue dies at 84: The former NFL commissioner, who helped bring labor peace and riches to the league but was criticized for not taking stronger action on concussions, died from heart failure.
Notable quote
I have no change of clothes. I only have one pair of underwear that I’m putting on at the beginning, and they’ll still be on my body come to other side of the continent. It’s not pretty out there.
Colin o’brady, an explorer attempting a solo crossing of Antarctica
Packed with 500 pounds of equipment — and, yes, just one pair of underwear — explorer Colin O’Brady is attempting to be the first person to cross one of Earth’s most remote places alone: a 1,800-mile stretch of Antarctica from ice shelf to ice shelf.
In case you missed it
- Young people online are challenging themselves to sit idle, with no external distractions, and simply do nothing for a set period of time.
- A a 65-year-old man fell 130 feet to his death at Grand Canyon after slipping over edge.
- Four people were killed and 11 others were injured after an alleged street racer lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a crowd of people in Tampa, authorities said.
- Middle-class Indians trying to lose weight are embracing drugs such as Mounjaro, which is also used to treat diabetes in a country that has been called the world’s diabetes capital.
- A fifth of the federal cases against protestors in L.A. have fallen apart in what some former prosecutors say is a rare rebuke of the U.S. attorney’s office’s credibility.
- A Florida sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot with his own weapon while responding to a vehicle crash, according to police.
- Kim Kardashian vowed that she isn’t giving up on her dream of becoming a lawyer after failing to pass the California bar exam this summer.