[Fox News]
<•Contributing pundit Jerry Lanson says 7 million No Kings demonstrators is not enough On the Left.
Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay discusses President Trump’s latest pardon and commutation On the Right•>
•Read contributing pundit Rich Corbett’s ‘President Donald J. Trump the Peacemaker’ – Click The Gray Area.
If Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is elected its mayor Tuesday, “it is highly unlikely” President Trump will allow New York City to receive federal funding beyond “the minimum required” (per Politico). Trump has not endorsed Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, but rather, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent.
MONDAY 11/3/25
SNAPped Up – So the 41.7 million Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will get some of it this month after all. The Agriculture Department will use $4.65 billion of its $6 billion contingency fund for November SNAP payments, department spokesman Patrick Penn said, TIME magazine reports. In a “normal” month, the Ag Department would spend about $8 billion on food stamps to about one in eight Americans. –TL
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SNAP Judgment – Seems simple enough. Last Friday, US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid, which consists largely of the Supplemental Nutritional Aid Program covering about 42 million Americans, while US District Judge Indira Talwani, of Massachusetts, ordered the administration to say whether it will make available emergency funding to keep the food stamp program up and running (USA Today).
The White House reply?
“President Trump just Truthed out that he needs to hear from the courts how this is to be done,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning show.
In other words, it appears the Trump administration is attempting to delay adhering to a court order by asking the court for further instructions. Tapper noted that the Trump administration has about $5 billion to $6 billion in emergency SNAP funds to keep the program going for two to three weeks.
Bessent reiterated the GOP position that all it takes is for five or six Democratic senators to cross the aisle and pass the House’s continuing resolution, HR 5371, to fund the government through November 21.
About that Chinese deal … On SOTU Bessent also responded to Tapper’s questions about an editorial by the notoriously pro-business right-wing, mostly MAGA Wall Street Journal criticizing Trump’s trade deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week as zero sum after April 4 and October 8 negotiations over rare earth material imports.
“The deal mostly restores the status quo that prevailed in May,” the WSJ editorial kvetches.
Bessent said the US got a one-year suspension from China’s licensing restrictions on rare earth metals imported to the US.
“Everything that came out of the summit between President Trump and President Xi gives the US more leverage,” he said. –TL
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FRIDAY 10/31/25
UPDATE: It’s ‘a 12’ – President Trump’s deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Thursday was mostly a modest retreat of the extremes to which both sides pulled. Trump reduced the stiff tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for a “crackdown” on the trade of chemicals used to make fentanyl, while China eases exports of rare earth materials and purchases “tremendous amounts” of US soybeans, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“Overall, I guess on the scale of zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump told reporters on the Air Force One flight home.
Xi and Trump – Chinese leader Xi Jinping met up with President Trump in South Korea Thursday to negotiate over such issues as Trump’s 100% tariff on China and China having dropped US soybean imports from $12 billion last year to zero today. Trump told reporters on Air Force One after departing South Korea that he and Xi had reached a deal to resume soybean imports from the US, CNN's The Story Is reports.
Trump also said he plans to visit China next April.
Before their meeting, Trump said the US would resume nuclear arms testing in order to keep up with other nuclear powers.
“I think we’ve already agreed to a lot of things, and we’ll agree to more right now,” Trump said after he shook hands with Xi, The Wall Street Journal reports. “President Xi is a great leader of a great country, and I think we’re going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time.”
Speaking through an interpreter, Xi said it “feels very warm” to see Trump.
“We do not always see eye-to-eye with each other, and it is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then.”
•••
Fed On Edge –- With jobs growth slowing to a crawl and the Consumer Price Index returning to the 3% level, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by one quarter of a point for its second reduction this year. But another rate cut, as demanded by President Trump does not look likely for the Fed’s last meeting of the year, in December, according to The New York Times.
The Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the rates, had “strongly different views” on what to do this time, Chair Jerome Powell said, including newly appointed (by Trump) official Stephen Miran, who had called for a half-point cut. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa