Nov. 4, 2025, 4:43 p.m. ETFederal workers and government contractors in vehicles lined up at United Community’s food pantry in Alexandria, Va., last month.Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesIt is federal law that furloughed workers receive back pay after a government shutdown, but the Trump administration has stopped clearly stating that workers will get their missed pay in some of its latest notifications about furlough status as the shutdown continues.At the beginning of the government shutdown on Oct. 1, notification about furlough status to employees at the Department of Agriculture included this language: “After the lapse ends, you will receive your ‘standard rate of pay’ for the furlough period in accordance” with a law that President Trump signed in 2019 during his first term.The most recent notification to Agriculture Department employees on Friday did not include any mention of that law or the back pay. This was the case for other agencies as well, including the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the National Park Service. In some cases, agencies, such as the State Department, left out mention of the law in their first furlough notices.The change in language was notable because Mr. Trump has already said that his administration could deny pay back to some federal workers. When he did so in early October, he was vague about which federal employees he was referring to. He said the matter “depends on who you’re talking about,” adding that there were “some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”This immediately raised concerns among federal workers who had weathered months of attacks on their work ethics and character and threats of termination.On Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the administration “was very much open to discussing with Democrats” paying back furloughed federal workers, suggesting it was something to include in a continuing resolution to fund the government.But the 2019 law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, already has that covered, said Kevin L. Owen, an employment lawyer with Gilbert Employment Law. Mr. Owen said that Congress would need to pass a law that nullifies the 2019 law to not issue back pay to unpaid workers after a government shutdown.Government Executive earlier reported the discrepancies in the furlough letters.Michael Crowley contributed reporting.Nov. 4, 2025, 3:52 p.m. ETThe Transportation Department cannot withhold billions of dollars in funding to states that refuse to comply with the Trump administration’s demands on immigration enforcement, a federal judge has ruled.In a 32-page memorandum, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. said the administration had “blatantly overstepped” its authority and engaged in “lawless behavior” by making grant money conditional on states assisting with the administration’s immigration crackdown.Judge McConnell, an Obama nominee who is chief judge of the District of Rhode Island, is also overseeing one of the cases that seeks to preserve funding for food stamps during the government shutdown.Nov. 4, 2025, 3:35 p.m. ETPresident Trump is expected to announce a deal on Thursday to lower the prices of popular weight-loss drugs for some patients. Currently, patients can use their own money to buy Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound for $500 per month in most cases.At a news conference last month, Trump suggested that patients could pay as little as $150 a month, but Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said negotiations were ongoing.Asked about the planned announcement on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declined to provide details but said the president was committed to lowering drug prices. The administration has also been considering expanding Medicare coverage of the weight-loss drugs, which are usually not covered for older people with obesity.Nov. 4, 2025, 3:09 p.m. ETThe White House had ordered federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that the president has criticized.Credit...Lucy Lu for The New York TimesA federal judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may reconsider the Biden-era approval of SouthCoast Wind, a wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.The decision dealt a setback to the developers of the project, a joint venture between the energy companies EDP Renewables and ENGIE. And it handed a victory to the White House, which has ordered a half-dozen federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the project developers would not “suffer immediate and significant hardship” if the Trump administration were allowed to reconsider the permit.The decision would effectively allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to re-evaluate its approval of the project’s construction and operations plan. The agency had approved the plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Mr. Trump’s second term began.As proposed, SouthCoast Wind would include 141 turbines in federal waters about 23 miles south of Nantucket. When completed, it would generate up to 2,400 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 840,000 homes in New England.The project is being developed in two phases and has not yet started construction. The first phase, known as SouthCoast Wind 1, would provide power to both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.Representatives for SouthCoast Wind did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an earlier filing in the case, Michael Brown, the chief executive of SouthCoast Wind, said the company had already spent more than $600 million on the project.“When making these investment decisions, SouthCoast Wind understandably expected that the federal government would follow valid statutes and regulations setting out criteria for issuance of permits,” Mr. Brown wrote.Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group that represents developers of offshore wind farms as well as companies that drill for oil and gas in the ocean, said he was disappointed by the ruling. “We’re concerned about any delays in any of these projects when they’ve already gone through the vetting and approval process,” Mr. Milito said in an interview Tuesday.The Trump administration said in September that it would weigh whether to revoke the Biden-era approval of the project. Months earlier, in March, the town of Nantucket sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in an effort to block the project. The town accused the agency of failing to comply with environmental and historical preservation laws when it issued the permit.Soon after returning to the White House, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping order to halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. His administration has since gone after several wind farms that had been given federal permits by the Biden administration and were either under construction or about to start.In April, the Interior Department ordered that work be stopped at Empire Wind, a $5 billion wind farm off the coast of New York that had received all necessary approvals from the Biden administration and was 30 percent completed. After several weeks and negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, the administration allowed Empire Wind to proceed.White House officials suggested they had relented only after Ms. Hochul agreed to approve new gas pipelines in the state. Ms. Hochul denied that any such deal had been made.Nov. 4, 2025, 3:04 p.m. ETSenator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, also denounced the antisemitic views of the prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes. “There should be no room whatsoever for antisemitism or other forms of discrimination,” he said at his weekly news conference at the Capitol. “That’s certainly not what our party is about.”Nov. 4, 2025, 2:58 p.m. ETSpeaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday condemned Tucker Carlson for conducting a sympathetic interview with the prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes, adding his voice to a growing chorus of Republicans distancing themselves from those views.“I don’t think we should be giving a platform for that speech,” he told National Review at the Capitol. “He has a First Amendment right, but we should never amplify it. So that’s not a good thing.”Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesNov. 4, 2025, 2:20 p.m. ETPresident Trump notably has yet to issue a statement on the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a fierce critic of the president. When asked whether the White House had been in touch with the Cheney family or involved in any planning for a funeral, Leavitt was notably terse. “I don’t believe the White House is involved in that planning, or at least hasn’t gotten to it yet,” she said. “I know the president is aware of the former vice president’s passing, and as you saw, flags have been lowered to half staff in accordance with statutory law.”Nov. 4, 2025, 2:14 p.m. ETLeavitt said the administration “was very much open to discussing with Democrats” the payment of furloughed federal workers as concerns mount that they may not be paid after the shutdown. She added that it was something that Republicans were currently discussing with Democrats. President Trump signed a law in 2019 that guaranteed backpay for such workers.Nov. 4, 2025, 2:13 p.m. ETAlan Rappeport and Colby SmithAlan Rappeport covers the U.S. Treasury Department. Colby Smith covers the Federal Reserve.“I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe Trump administration is wielding the possibility that parts of the economy are in a recession as it raises pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, hoping to ensure that the central bank will bear the blame for any economic weakness.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Stephen Miran, President Trump’s appointee to the Fed’s Board of Governors who is on a temporary leave from his job leading the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, this week struck a downbeat tone about the health of the world’s largest economy. Mr. Bessent went so far as to say some sectors were already contracting. He did not specify which sectors, but high mortgage rates have put housing and adjacent industries such as construction under pressure.“I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession,” Mr. Bessent said on CNN on Sunday. He described the economy as being in a “period of transition” because of a pullback in government spending to reduce the deficit. He called on the Fed to support the economy by cutting interest rates.Mr. Bessent’s remarks added to pressure on the Fed and deflected blame from Mr. Trump in case the economy does ultimately face a downturn, reinforcing a strategy that has been in place since the start of the year. As the administration has imposed aggressive tariffs on nearly all of America’s trading partners and slashed federal spending, potentially slowing growth, it has sought to pin blame squarely on the Fed in the event of an economic downturn.“This is all going to be put at the Fed’s feet,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM.For months, Mr. Trump has assailed Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, for moving too slowly to lower interest rates. That has included branding Mr. Powell as “Mr. Too Late” and a “numbskull.” Over the summer, he escalated his pressure campaign on the central bank and took more aggressive steps to reshape the top ranks responsible for making policy decisions.Mr. Trump is in a legal battle set to be decided by the Supreme Court after his attempt to oust Lisa Cook, a governor, from her position over allegations of mortgage fraud. In August he appointed Mr. Miran, who at the time was one of his top economic advisers, to the Fed’s Board of Governors after one member, Adriana Kugler, stepped down before her term ended.Since joining the central bank in September, Mr. Miran has pushed hard for substantially lowering interest rates. In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, he warned that the Fed risked causing an economic downturn if it did not do so.“If you keep policy this tight for a long period of time, then you run the risk that monetary policy itself is inducing a recession,” he said. “I don’t see a reason to run that risk if I’m not concerned about inflation on the upside.”But that view is not widely shared by other Fed officials or by most economists across Wall Street. At the past two policy meetings, Mr. Miran has been the lone dissenter in favor of a bigger, half-point cut. Last month, most policymakers backed a quarter-point reduction, while one official dissented in support of keeping interest rates steady because of his concerns about inflation.Mr. Bessent’s mention of a recession is unusual for a Treasury secretary; downturns can become self-fulfilling if consumers and businesses pull back in anticipation of a contraction.Despite Mr. Bessent’s comments, the Treasury Department said this week in its statement on the economy for the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee that it did not expect a recession.“Looking ahead to the next few quarters, the outlook for the U.S. economy faces upside and downside risks,” Treasury economists wrote. “However, on balance, economists view the risk of a recession as relatively low.”They noted that the federal government shutdown and declining federal employment were headwinds for growth. The labor market had been flashing some worrying signals in recent months before the shutdown caused, in effect, a blackout of government statistics. Job growth had ground to a halt, and the breadth of sectors actually hiring had narrowed.Those trends appear to have continued. And yet, Mr. Powell and other officials like John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have not conveyed much concern about the economy’s tipping into a recession.Mr. Powell, at a news conference after the Fed’s latest meeting to set rates, questioned whether there would be sufficient support to lower interest rates in December at a time when the Fed’s goals of low, stable inflation and a healthy labor market are in tension with each other.As Mr. Bessent and Mr. Miran have asserted, the housing market does remain under significant pressure, a trend that began in 2023. But the Fed’s ability to lower interest rates, which would help support the housing market through lower mortgage rates, is significantly constrained because of the price pressures resulting from Mr. Trump’s tariffs.Matthew Martin, a senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said he did not view a recession as the most likely outcome for the economy, though he conceded that the Fed was walking a “tight path” and that some cracks had emerged in the economy’s foundation.Some industries have felt more pain than others amid uncertainty over tariffs and other Trump administration policies. Perhaps the most noticeable, Mr. Martin said, was the pullback in the manufacturing sector despite the administration’s efforts to revive it.“That’s an area where tariffs increased uncertainty and decreased demand,” he said.Factory activity contracted for an eighth straight month in October, according to survey results released Monday by the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturers have also continued to shed workers.Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that while the national economy was not in a recession, it appeared to be struggling to avoid one. In an analysis last month, he found that 22 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia were in or near a recession and that the fate of the economy could hinge on how California and New York fare in the coming months.“Only a few industries are still adding to payrolls, mainly health care and hospitality,” Mr. Zandi said. “Construction, manufacturing, technology, finance, government and many professional services are shedding jobs.”Nov. 4, 2025, 2:12 p.m. ETLeavitt said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to brief congressional leaders on the continuing U.S. strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in international waters. In response to a question about why Democrats had been excluded from previous briefings on the strikes, which experts say are illegal and have targeted civilians, Leavitt said that the administration has held eight separate briefings, which have included Democrats, and that tomorrow’s will be the ninth.Nov. 4, 2025, 1:46 p.m. ETLeavitt, asked what President Trump was doing to end the government shutdown, said he was “pushing Republicans to keep voting” on a funding bill. She continues to accuse Democrats of playing politics. “All we need are five common-sense Democrats who have a little bit of courage” to vote with Republicans, she said.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesNov. 4, 2025, 1:39 p.m. ETKaroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the Trump administration was “fully complying” with a court order requiring it to pay for food stamps this month. Leavitt’s comments appeared to walk back President Trump’s social media post earlier Tuesday that threatened to deny aid to low-income Americans until the shutdown ends.Nov. 4, 2025, 1:37 p.m. ETSean Duffy, the transportation secretary, has warned repeatedly of looming disaster in the national airspace because of the shutdown.Credit...Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesSean Duffy, the transportation secretary, threatened on Tuesday to close parts of the national airspace as he warned of “mass chaos” by next week if the government shutdown continued.“You will see mass chaos, you will see mass flight delays, you will see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers,” he said during a news conference, where he accused Democrats of perpetuating what he called a “senseless shutdown.”Mr. Duffy has warned repeatedly of looming disaster in the national airspace, as controllers — who are among the essential federal employees forced to work through shutdowns without pay — face a second paycheck that is “a big fat zero,” as he put it on Tuesday. According to Mr. Duffy and the controllers’ union, many have taken on side jobs to make ends meet.But while Mr. Duffy has frequently pledged to reduce air traffic when controller absences rise, his threat to shut down airspace conveyed an increased sense of alarm.“The F.A.A., and us, will close the airspace down, we will restrict the airspace when we feel it’s not safe,” he said. As the transportation secretary, Mr. Duffy oversees the Federal Aviation Administration.For all of his warnings about the dangers shutdown poses to air travel, Mr. Duffy has firmly maintained that it is safe to fly. He repeated that assertion on Tuesday, with a caveat.“People always ask me is the system safe, and I would tell you yes, the system is safe — and if it wasn’t, we would shut it down,” Mr. Duffy said, echoing comments he has made in the past.“But with this shutdown, it would be dishonest to say that more risk is not injected into the system,” he added.Even before the shutdown, the work force of certified controllers was sorely overtaxed, with most routinely working overtime hours to compensate for the fact that about 3,000 of approximately 14,000 positions are vacant. The vacancies have also forced some controllers to cover two positions, and Mr. Duffy said on Tuesday that the shutdown was exacerbating that workload.“They have to work those two positions because their colleagues have called in sick or they’re waiting tables or they’re driving Uber,” Mr. Duffy said.He added that the F.A.A. was accustomed to enlisting different air traffic facilities to help avoid interruptions and maintain air travel safety when certain towers and centers faced a shortfall of controllers. Last Friday, which saw 35 facilities experience substantial shortfalls, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that nearly 80 percent of air traffic controllers assigned to facilities in the New York area were absent.But without an act of Congress, he said, there were no extraordinary measures he could take to compensate controllers for their labor.“We’ve tried to pull every dollar we can for different programs where we’re legally allowed to pull and fund,” he said. “But the truth is, the law doesn’t allow me to say, ‘the Congress hasn’t funded the government, I can just go find money and pay air traffic controllers.’ That’s not the way our Constitution works and our government works.”The F.A.A. has drawn on prior year funds to sustain some operations, including the agency’s academy that trains new controllers, through the shutdown. But the academy is expected to run out of those funds by Nov. 15, according to an F.A.A. spokeswoman. The Trump administration has also covered the salaries of active duty military by reprogramming federal funds, with a small percentage of the salaries being covered through a private donation.Nov. 4, 2025, 12:45 p.m. ETIf there was any question of whether President Trump was feeling the pressure of the first test of his power, popularity and policies during his second term as key elections are underway, it has been put to rest. The president has spent the morning sending a torrent of social media posts attacking Democrats, stoking fears about Republicans losing the midterms, ranting about local elections and disparaging voters.Nov. 4, 2025, 12:13 p.m. ETA federal court scheduled a hearing for Thursday at the request of cities and nonprofits who are fighting to secure the release of full benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.At the time of their request, the groups were challenging the Trump administration over its decision to make partial SNAP payments this month, after Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ordered it must try to fund the program.President Trump has since threatened to deny SNAP aid entirely.Nov. 4, 2025, 11:17 a.m. ETA bakery accepting food stamps in Chicago on Sunday.Credit...Nam Y. Huh/Associated PressPresident Trump threatened on Tuesday to deny food stamps for roughly 42 million low-income Americans until the end of the government shutdown, a move that would defy a federal court that had ordered the administration to continue the aid payments this month.In a post on social media, Mr. Trump said that benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”Hours after that ultimatum, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to walk back the president’s comments. She told reporters at a news briefing that the administration is “fully complying” with the court and would provide partial food stamp payments in November.“We’re complying with the court’s order, and we’re getting that partial payment out the door as much as we can, and as quickly as we can, but it’s going to take some time,” Ms. Leavitt said.The whiplash on Tuesday only added to the persistent sense of panic and anxiety among the roughly one in eight poor Americans who rely on SNAP, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program. The president’s comments once again raised the risk that these families could find themselves vulnerable to hunger and financial hardship, even though a federal court ordered Mr. Trump and his aides to restart nutrition assistance.To comply with that directive, administration officials told two separate courts this week that they would make only partial payments to people on SNAP, essentially halving their aid for November. That alone had proved insufficient for cities and nonprofits, which had returned to court on Tuesday — before Mr. Trump’s threat — to try to restore full benefit amounts and force the government to pay the money more quickly.“This is immoral. See you in court,” Skye L. Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, a legal organization representing one of the lawsuits that has repeatedly challenged the Trump administration, said in a post on social media.The White House declined to elaborate on Mr. Trump’s plans. The Agriculture Department did not respond to a request for comment.In the original order, published on Saturday, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island essentially gave the Trump administration a choice. He said it could provide full SNAP payments by Monday or partial benefits by Wednesday, while finding that the government had a legal obligation to sustain the program if the funds were available.The Trump administration chose the latter approach, financed using about $5 billion set aside for SNAP in an emergency reserve previously established by Congress. The Agriculture Department could have tapped an ample store of additional funds to provide full benefits to those enrolled in food stamps, but the agency declined to do so.As a result, families stood to receive about half as much in nutrition benefits this month than they would have normally — and, potentially, only after weeks or months of delay. Officials at the Agriculture Department had acknowledged these limitations in court filings, even as the administration refused to make other funds available for SNAP.By Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest he would halt food stamps entirely. He said on social media that the benefits were managed “haphazardly” and attacked Democrats, a set of comments that recalled his previous threat to punish the party and cut its favored programs during the shutdown.Some congressional Democrats expressed outrage over what they saw as a patently illegal act.“The president is not a king,” said Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the House’s leading agriculture committee. “He is not free to disregard the rule of law whenever it becomes politically inconvenient for him.”By that afternoon, Ms. Leavitt insisted that the president only sought to register his disapproval with using emergency funds to pay SNAP benefits. She said that Mr. Trump wanted those “funds preserved,” even though the administration had attested to a judge that it would exhaust that money during the shutdown.Before the president posted his threat on social media, local leaders and nonprofits had filed anew in federal court in the hopes of securing a clearer order from Judge McConnell, one that would force the Trump administration to pay benefits rapidly and in full.“Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger,” they wrote in their filing, prepared by lawyers from groups including Democracy Forward.They said that the court “did not contemplate that millions would be deprived of basic nutritional assistance for weeks” while the government readied its partial benefits. They asked the judge to force the Trump administration to “release the unlawfully withheld funding, in its entirety, for November SNAP benefits.”Nov. 4, 2025, 10:51 a.m. ETPresident Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico was asked about an NBC article reporting that the Trump administration may be planning to send American troops into Mexico to target drug cartels, and she rejected the possibility that such an operation could take place.“It’s not going to happen,” she told reporters on Tuesday, adding that Mexico rejects any kind of foreign intervention, a point she said she had made clear to President Trump.Credit...Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNov. 4, 2025, 10:37 a.m. ETSenator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, eulogized former Vice President Dick Cheney on the Senate floor. Cheney “believed very deeply in our country and brought his considerable knowledge and intelligence to its service,” Thune said.Nov. 4, 2025, 10:17 a.m. ETAfter weeks of attacking New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and threatening to punish the city by withholding funding should it elect him, President Trump made a last-ditch effort to influence the outcome of the election by disparaging Jewish New Yorkers who support Mamdani.“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Trump wrote.Mamdani has denied that he is antisemitic, made outreaches to the Jewish community and pledged to protect Jewish New Yorkers if elected.Nov. 4, 2025, 9:14 a.m. ETPresident Trump renewed his call for the termination of the filibuster to force through legislation ending the government shutdown, arguing that unless it is eliminated, Democrats were more likely to win elections in 2026 and 2028. The longstanding rule means most Senate legislation needs 60 votes to move forward.“If we do terminate the Filibuster, we will get EVERYTHING approved, like no Congress in History,” Trump asserted in a social media post. But Republicans in control of the Senate are unlikely to heed the president’s call. Many say they fear it would remove their ability to block Democratic legislation should they lose control of the chamber.Nov. 4, 2025, 7:40 a.m. ETTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to attend Supreme Court arguments on President Trump’s tariffs.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that he would attend the Supreme Court arguments this week over President Trump’s power to levy many of his tariffs, emphasizing how pivotal the case could be to Mr. Trump’s signature economic policy.“I’m actually going to go and sit hopefully in the front row and listen, have a ringside seat,” Mr. Bessent said on “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News.Mr. Trump, who has called the case one of the most important in the nation’s history, had mused about attending the arguments himself before backtracking. Had he shown up in court on Wednesday, he would have been the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court.Mr. Trump has made no secret that he would take a decision against him as a personal affront, and critics had said that his presence could have been seen as an attempt to intimidate the justices. But Mr. Bessent dismissed the idea that his own presence had any such purpose.“I am there to emphasize that this is an economic emergency,” he said. “National security is economic security. Economic security is national security. As the Treasury secretary of the United States, I’m in charge of maintaining both.”That is an argument the administration hopes resonates with the court as it considers the case, which could invalidate Mr. Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner. The effects of the decision, which is considered a tossup by legal experts, could ripple through Americans’ wallets and around the globe.The challengers to the tariffs say the 1977 law Mr. Trump is using to impose them was never meant to give the president such sweeping powers. The law, called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, has typically been used to impose sanctions and embargoes against other nations. While it allows the president to “regulate” imports, it does not mention the word tariffs, and the Constitution gives taxing authority to Congress.But Mr. Bessent, repeating the administration’s arguments, said the law did convey sweeping powers in national emergencies.“This is a matter of national security,” he said, before arguing that the tariffs had motivated China to better police production of ingredients for fentanyl and backpedal on plans to curtail the export of rare earth minerals. “If fentanyl is not a national emergency, what is?”Nov. 3, 2025, 10:09 p.m. ETKenneth P. VogelKenneth P. Vogel covers money and influence in government.The Democratic Party of Albania revealed payments totaling the equivalent of more than $1.62 million to the consulting firm of Chris LaCivita, shown here at a joint session of Congress in March.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesConsultants who worked on Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaigns were paid more than $1.6 million to advise a conservative Albanian opposition party on its strategy for parliamentary elections in May, according to a finance report filed on Monday.In the report, submitted to the Albanian election commission, the Democratic Party of Albania revealed payments totaling the equivalent of more than $1.62 million to the consulting firm of Chris LaCivita, who helped manage Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, and nearly $65,000 for polling by the firm of Tony Fabrizio, who has advised the Trump political operation.The Democratic Party of Albania lost badly in the May elections, despite efforts by Mr. LaCivita and Paul Manafort, who briefly ran Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, to position the party’s leader, former President Sali Berisha, as a sort of Trump-like figure.The payments, which were listed in Albanian currency, came over the course of less than four months, beginning in mid-February and ending in late May, according to the report.Mr. LaCivita worked as part of a team in Albania with Mr. Fabrizio and Mr. Manafort. The arrangement raises the prospect that Mr. LaCivita’s firm, Advancing Strategies, may have subcontracted with Mr. Fabrizio and Mr. Manafort, which is a standard structure for campaign consultants. The three men have pitched their services as a team to other overseas campaigns since Mr. Trump’s victory last fall.American political consultants who win U.S. presidential races are often in high demand around the world, and it is not unusual for them to reap lucrative paydays from foreign campaigns.Mr. LaCivita, who traveled to Albania multiple times during the campaign to stump for Mr. Berisha, declined to comment. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Fabrizio did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Manafort cast Mr. Berisha as the victim of a witch hunt engineered by domestic rivals and Democrats, including the billionaire megadonor George Soros, and the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Berisha is facing corruption charges in Albania in connection with a property deal, and in 2021 he was sanctioned by the Biden administration for “significant corruption,” according to a statement from former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He accused Mr. Berisha of misappropriating public funds and using his power to enrich his allies and family.After Mr. Berisha’s party lost to the ruling Socialist Party of Prime Minister Edi Rama, Mr. LaCivita amplified claims by Mr. Berisha that the election was rigged.A recount requested by Mr. Berisha’s party did not support those claims.Nov. 3, 2025, 10:07 p.m. ETJames B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has argued that the charges he is facing should be thrown out as an act of vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe federal prosecutors pursuing a criminal case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, disclosed evidence on Monday, including private emails, showing that he used a confidant to provide information to reporters — even though it was difficult to tell how some of the evidence was relevant to the specific charges detailed in the case.The evidence was included in a 48-page filing that appeared to be an effort to construct a narrative that Mr. Comey had leaked information to the news media without actually tying such assertions to the allegations made in the indictment brought against him.The filing, in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., was styled as a rebuttal of Mr. Comey’s claims that the charges he is facing should be thrown out as an act of vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration. He is accused of lying to and obstructing Congress in testimony on the investigation into Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, during which he was asked whether he had authorized anyone at the F.B.I. “to be an anonymous source in news reports.”Yet the prosecutors who wrote the filing spent as much time suggesting that Mr. Comey had used the confidant, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, as a conduit to the news media as they did seeking to reject allegations that the indictment was vindictive. Mr. Richman had worked at the F.B.I. as a “special government employee,” leaving in early 2017.Last month, lawyers for Mr. Comey accused President Trump of improperly ordering the Justice Department to prosecute him out of a deep personal animus reaching back to May 2017, when he was fired as F.B.I. director while overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation.The lawyers pointed to the extraordinary origins of the case: a public message on social media in which Mr. Trump ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to go after Mr. Comey, one of his most reviled adversaries. The demands came shortly after the president had ousted the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who had refused to indict Mr. Comey and replaced him with a neophyte prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, who quickly filed charges in the first criminal case she had ever handled.Mr. Comey’s lawyers have also argued that the case Ms. Halligan filed should be dismissed because Mr. Trump improperly appointed her to her post as U.S. attorney. But in a separate motion on Monday, prosecutors rejected that claim.The motion also included a highly unusual sworn statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi saying that on Friday, for “the avoidance of doubt,” she had retroactively named Ms. Halligan to a second post in the office — that of special attorney — with the authority to handle both Mr. Comey’s prosecution and a second case against Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and another of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies.While Mr. Comey’s lawyers described Mr. Trump’s social media message as “smoking-gun evidence” of vindictiveness, the prosecutors argued it was “hardly evidence at all” and merely part of “a mix of news reports, social-media posts and speculation” used to accuse the president of bias.The prosecutors also claimed that the indictment of Mr. Comey was not born out of animus but rather addressed “the societal interests” of bringing charges against “a former F.B.I. director who lied to Congress about his conduct while at the helm of the nation’s primary federal law-enforcement agency.”The indictment accuses Mr. Comey of lying to and obstructing Congress during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.At that hearing, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, asked Mr. Comey whether he had authorized someone at the F.B.I. “to be an anonymous source in news reports.” The indictment says Mr. Comey misled the committee by saying that he had not done so.Mr. Comey’s lawyers have attacked the indictment — as well as Mr. Cruz’s question — as imprecise and confusing. Moreover, they have said that Mr. Comey’s answer was not a detailed, direct response to Mr. Cruz, but was instead a “literally true statement” in which he said he stood by previous testimony he had given three years earlier when he was asked similar questions in a different congressional hearing.Even though they were supposed to be addressing the question of vindictiveness, the prosecutors filled the opening pages of their filing with quotations from personal emails and texts messages between Mr. Comey and Mr. Richman, as well those between Mr. Richman and reporters.While those communications could ultimately help prosecutors prove that Mr. Comey used Mr. Richman to communicate to the news media, it remained unclear what bearing they had on the specific charges in the case: namely, whether Mr. Comey was lying when he denied authorizing an F.B.I. employee to anonymously share information for news reports.Prosecutors have not made clear what new reports they were referring to or which reporters may have worked on them.Indeed, the new court filing quoted communications between Mr. Comey and Mr. Richman concerning several articles in The New York Times. Two cited in the filing touched on Mr. Comey’s controversial handling of the conclusion — and brief reopening — of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server close to the 2016 election in which she was the Democratic candidate.The first article was a graphic The Times published on Nov. 2, 2016, outlining the pros and cons of the choices available to Mr. Comey in his handling of reopening the Clinton investigation. It did not contain any new information about the inquiry or cite Mr. Richman — or anyone else — as a source.Still, the emails quoted in the filing suggest that Mr. Richman helped influence the abstract analysis presented in the article.Before the graphic was published, Mr. Comey had complained about The Times’s coverage and said to Mr. Richman, “Perhaps you can make him smarter.” It is not clear whether that was a reference to the same reporter who was working on the graphic, but after it appeared, Mr. Comey wrote to Mr. Richman, “Well done my friend.”The other article appeared to be an investigation published in April 2017 that scrutinized Mr. Comey’s handling of communications about the Clinton investigation. It featured on-the-record quotations from Mr. Richman. The indictment accused Mr. Comey of lying about authorizing an anonymous source to leak information to the news media.The filing also discussed The Times’s publication, days after Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey in May 2017, of information about Mr. Comey’s earlier conversations with the president. Mr. Comey later testified to Congress that he had directed Mr. Richman to share information about them, based on contemporaneous memos he had written.The filing quoted a text Mr. Richman sent the author of those articles, Michael S. Schmidt, saying that he “just got go ahead” — a possible reference to Mr. Comey agreeing to let him serve as a source. Even if that were true, it could not be a basis for the criminal charge because the indictment accuses Mr. Comey of lying about using an F.B.I. employee to leak information and Mr. Richman was no longer working at the F.B.I. by then.The new filing also disclosed an insinuating piece of evidence that did not appear to be related to either of the two charges detailed in the indictment. It instead appears related to a third charge that Ms. Halligan tried to bring against Mr. Comey, but that a grand jury rejected.That involved a memo the C.I.A. sent to the F.B.I. on Sept. 7, 2016, containing intelligence about Russia’s interference in that year’s campaign. The F.B.I. had recently opened an investigation into Russian interference and the nature of the Kremlin’s ties to associates of the Trump campaign.The memo itself broaches how Russian intelligence analysts had discussed purported emails saying that in late July 2016, Mrs. Clinton had supposedly approved a campaign plan centered on Mr. Trump and Russian hackers to distract from her own email scandal. Evidence gathered by a special counsel later showed that the purported emails were likely fabricated.At the September 2020 hearing, a senator had asked Mr. Comey about the memo, but Mr. Comey said he had no memory of seeing it. The third charge Ms. Halligan tried to bring was over whether Mr. Comey lied in saying that.The new filing said the F.B.I. had recently found handwritten notes from Mr. Comey, dated Sept. 26, 2016, that read: “HRC plan to tie Trump.”Even though that appeared to refer to Mrs. Clinton, it is not clear why those notes would support the failed charge, since they do no mention the Sept. 7 memo at issue. It has long been public that Mr. Comey knew about the allegation itself because he was present for a briefing in August at which it was mentioned.Nov. 3, 2025, 10:04 a.m. ETA long line for a food pantry in the Bronx on Wednesday. The fate of SNAP, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, has been up in the air as the government shutdown continues.Credit...Marco Postigo Storel for The New York TimesThe Trump administration will send partial payments this month to the roughly 42 million Americans who receive food stamps, offering only a temporary and limited reprieve to low-income families as the federal shutdown approaches its sixth week.The government revealed its plans in a set of court filings on Monday, just days after two judges found fault in the administration’s initial refusal to fund those benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, starting this month.But the roughly one in eight families that receive SNAP may still be at risk of imminent hunger and financial hardship. The Trump administration opted against using its full stable of available funds — totaling into the billions of dollars — to sustain the nation’s largest anti-hunger program. As a result, eligible households may receive only half as much in benefits compared with their usual amounts, officials said.It also remained unclear when food stamp recipients would actually receive their aid. The Trump administration had previously warned that it could take weeks to provision benefits on a partial basis, further underscoring the consequences of its budgetary decision on Monday.Many Democrats sharply condemned the White House in response, saying the administration had a legal and moral obligation to pay full benefits on time, especially given the fact that there were plenty of available funds.“It is not enough to do the bare minimum — the administration should stop playing politics with hunger and use all available resources to ensure Americans can put food on the table,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who leads her party on the chamber’s top agriculture panel.The White House did not respond to a request for comment.“There’s a process that has to be followed,” Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, told CNN on Sunday. “So, we got to figure out what the process is. President Trump wants to make sure that people get their food benefits.”For the millions of poor Americans who depend on SNAP, the whiplash has only compounded the real, financial consequences from a shutdown that has no end in sight. Still, Mr. Trump has made no real effort to negotiate an end to the fiscal stalemate roiling Washington, where Democrats refuse to back a Republican measure to reopen the government because it does not extend a set of subsidies that help Americans afford health insurance.The saga began last week, when the Trump administration said it would not tap billions of dollars that it had in reserve to continue funding nutrition benefits into this month, in a break with its own prior, public guidance. The move defied calls from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike, who wanted to see the White House protect the poor in the event that the shutdown continued for weeks longer.The decision prompted cities, states, religious groups and nonprofits to sue, as they looked to spare low-income families from experiencing hunger for as long as the government remained closed. Two different federal courts ultimately sided with those groups on Friday, and the judges imposed a deadline of Monday for the Trump administration to communicate its next steps.Only one of the judges, John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, explicitly ordered the Trump administration to restart SNAP payments immediately. In a written order, issued on Saturday, he said the Agriculture Department could either make full payments to SNAP recipients by Monday or partial payments by Wednesday.Judge McConnell gave the government those extra days after administration officials told the court that providing partial payments could take weeks in some cases because of technical constraints. In doing so, he encouraged the Trump administration to fund payments in full using a second account at the Agriculture Department, one comprised largely of tariff revenuesResponding on Monday, the Trump administration maintained that it could not legally source SNAP payments this way, even though it had tapped the money repeatedly to sustain another federal nutrition program during the shutdown. In a sworn declaration, Patrick A. Penn, a top official at the Agriculture Department, added that using the money to provide full food stamp aid would also “stray from congressional intent.”The assertion offered a stark contrast with the myriad other ways in which Mr. Trump has reprogrammed the budget during the shutdown to blunt some of its potential consequences. But SNAP is a function of government that Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have long aspired to cut and restrict, and one that Mr. Trump himself has associated with Democrats, whom he promised to punish as a result of the federal closure.Anti-hunger groups broadly condemned the White House for opting to release only partial benefits. Crystal FitzSimons, the president of the Food Research & Action Center, said the decision would force “state agencies to scramble under unclear guidance, which will further delay benefits.”But signs quickly emerged that the fight might not be over.Skye Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, which represented cities and nonprofits that had sued, said the group was “considering all legal options to secure payment of full funds.”“It shouldn’t take a court order to force our president to provide essential nutrition that Congress has made clear needs to be provided,” she added in a statement.Oct. 31, 2025, 10:13 p.m. ETA market accepting food stamps, in the Bronx, on Thursday.Credit...Marco Postigo Storel for The New York TimesA federal judge told the Trump administration on Friday to continue funding for food stamps during the government shutdown, a legal victory for local officials and nonprofits that sought to spare roughly 42 million Americans from losing the benefits in a matter of days.But in a post on social media on Tuesday, President Trump threatened to deny payments of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, until the end of the government shutdown — the latest of the president’s moves that flirt with lawless defiance of court orders.Hours after that ultimatum, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to walk back the president’s comments, saying that the administration was “fully complying” with the court and would provide partial food stamp payments this month.It is unclear when recipients of food stamps will actually receive their aid, as the federal shutdown stretches on with no end in sight. Here’s what we know:What are SNAP benefits?The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is how the federal government helps people buy food if they cannot afford it. About 42 million Americans, living in 22 million households, use SNAP — representing roughly one in eight people in the United States. The benefits, commonly known as food stamps, average around $187 a month and cost the federal government about $8 billion monthly.How does the shutdown affect SNAP?Lawmakers must regularly approve money for SNAP through their normal budget process, which is currently paralyzed by a legislative impasse in Congress. Though the government shut down at the beginning of October, SNAP benefits were not expected to run out of funds until the beginning of November.What can the government do to fund SNAP?SNAP maintains a sizable reserve as a kind of rainy-day fund to cover any emergencies or shortfalls.Many congressional Democrats and Republicans had encouraged the Trump administration to use this funding to preserve food stamps into November and protect the poor as the government continued to remain closed.But the Trump administration declined to dip into those funds, even though the Agriculture Department had said previously that it could reprogram money to prevent benefit cuts. Administration officials have maintained that they could do little to rescue SNAP, despite the fact that they had moved around billions of dollars to sustain other functions of government while federal funding had lapsed.More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration in an effort to unlock those funds before benefits ran out.What have the courts said?Two different federal courts ruled on Friday that the Trump administration had acted unlawfully in trying to hold back SNAP’s emergency funds. The twin court defeats amounted to a major rebuke of the White House — though only one of the judges, John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, explicitly ordered the Trump administration to restart SNAP payments immediately.Mr. Trump said late Friday that the administration would provide the funding for food stamps, in what appeared to be a signal that the administration would ultimately obey the ruling.But on Monday, the Trump administration instead said it would only partially fund SNAP in November, offering a temporary and limited reprieve to low-income families. Officials claimed in court filings that the administration could not legally use some funds available to the Agriculture Department — composed largely of tariff revenues — even though it had tapped that money repeatedly to sustain another federal nutrition program during the shutdown.Then, on Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested he would not fund SNAP at all, saying on social media that SNAP benefits would be distributed “only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”Ms. Leavitt appeared hours later to suggest Mr. Trump’s statement was false, telling reporters that “we’re complying with the court’s order, and we’re getting that partial payment out the door as much as we can, and as quickly as we can, but it’s going to take some time.”Lawyers for the administration had also previously suggested it could take weeks to disburse the benefits during the shutdown.The Trump administration’s legal position on food stamps is a stark contrast with the myriad other ways in which Mr. Trump has reprogrammed the budget during the shutdown for his own agenda. SNAP is a function of government that Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have long aspired to cut and restrict, and one that Mr. Trump himself has associated with Democrats, whom he promised to punish as a result of the government shutdown.How much do people get to spend?The amount is adjusted each year, according to federal guidelines. In 2025, the maximum monthly benefit for one person is $292. For a household of four, it’s $975.The amount also depends on which state recipients live in, and on factors like whether anyone in the household has a steady income or is a dependent.How do people use SNAP?The system is fully electronic, eliminating the paper food stamps that used to be presented at checkout. Each month, a dollar amount is loaded onto a card, which is used like a debit or credit card.What can SNAP be used for?Almost any food sold at a grocery store, including soda, chips, candy and snacks. (Some states have enacted rules that prevent SNAP money from being spent on soda and candy.) It can’t be used, however, for hot or cooked food, or for anything other than food.Where can SNAP be used?At most retailers, farmers’ markets and pharmacies that sell food, like Walgreens and CVS. SNAP cards can also be used to order from online markets like Walmart and Amazon.Do recipients have to be U.S. citizens?In most cases, yes. But people who are refugees, have been granted asylum, are from Cuba or Haiti, or belong to certain other groups are eligible if they meet income requirements. Green-card holders and permanent residents must wait five years to receive benefits.Julia Moskin and Tony Romm contributed.