Trump says ‘looking at’ exemption for Hungary from Russian oil, gas sanctions
Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán are taking questions from the press now, with the first being about whether the US president would give Hungary an exemption from American sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
“Sure, we’re looking at it, because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said of Orbán. “As you know, they don’t have the advantage of having sea. It’s a great country, it’s a big country, but they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem.”
Key events
Trump warns of ‘slog’ in Congress if filibuster is not dismantled
Donald Trump again demanded that Republican senators vote to end the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires most legislation to receive 60 votes to advance.
With the GOP holding only 53 Senate seats, the filibuster allows Democrats to block many of their bills, including a proposal to reopen the government that the Senate has failed to pass 14 times.
With no signs of Democrats backing down in their standoff over funding – in which the party is demanding that Trump and the GOP agree to extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans – the president has called for Republicans to vote to change the rules.
“ If the filibuster is not terminated, then we will be in a slog with the Democrats, and very little for either party will be done. So it’s a good thing,” Trump said.
He also outlined a wishlist of conservative policies that he said Congress could turn into law if the filibuster was done away with and the Democrats’s power curbed:
Here’s some of the things that we’d pass if we terminated the filibuster: voter ID, no mail-in voting, no cash bail, no men in women’s sports, no welfare for illegals. You could go on and on, this is two pages of things we’d do if you did that.
Without it, I don’t know that you pass anything because you can’t deal with them. They’re they’re really irrational.
Many Republican senators oppose changing the rules, wary of what might happen if a Democratic majority comes back into power in the future.
Trump reiterated that if he meets Vladimir Putin, he would like to do it in the Hungarian capital Budapest, but sees no reason to have that meeting now.
The president had earlier said that Putin’s inflexibility over Ukraine made him decide not to go forward with plans for a second round of face-to-face talks. Here are Trump’s latest comments:
I’d like to keep it in Hungary, in Budapest. That meeting, it turned out I didn’t want to do that meeting, because I didn’t think anything was going to be happening of significance. But if we have it, I’d like to do it in Budapest.
You will not be surprised to learn that Trump, a proponent of hardline immigration laws, went on to praise Orbán’s embrace of a restrictive approach to refugees in Hungary.
“I think they should respect Hungary and respect this leader very, very strongly, because he’s been right on immigration,” Trump said of the European Union, whose leaders are not great fan’s of Orban’s policies on the issue.
“Look what’s happened to Europe with the immigration they have people flooding Europe, all over the place, and it’s hurting it.”
Trump says ‘looking at’ exemption for Hungary from Russian oil, gas sanctions
Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán are taking questions from the press now, with the first being about whether the US president would give Hungary an exemption from American sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
“Sure, we’re looking at it, because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said of Orbán. “As you know, they don’t have the advantage of having sea. It’s a great country, it’s a big country, but they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem.”
Trump says ‘always a chance’ of him meeting Putin in Budapest as he welcomes Orbán to White House
At last Donald Trump has emerged!
He greets Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and the two exchange a few words before posing for the cameras.
Asked by a reporter about the chances of him meeting Vladimir Putin in Budapest at some point, Trump says: “There’s always a chance, a very good chance.”
Asked if Hungary should be allowed to purchase Russian oil, Trump just pointed to his longtime ally and said: “Very good leader.”
Cornell reaches deal with Trump administration to restore research funds, NYT reports
In the meantime, Cornell University is the latest to reach a deal with the Trump administration that would restore hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds, the New York Times reports.
The paper, citing university and government officials, said that under the terms of the deal, Cornell is expected to pay a $30m fine to the government, while the government would also end its investigations over accusations of antisemitism and discrimination in admissions at the Ivy League school.
In April, citing what it called insufficient efforts to curb antisemitism, the administration froze over $1bn in funding to the university. University leaders told the NYT that the school had been feeling extraordinary financial strain.
It follows similar agreements reached following a pressure campaign from the administration to secure policy changes at higher education institutions in return for federal funding. Brown, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia have all struck deals with the government, while MIT and Dartmouth are among those to have rejected the administration’s proposals.
Things appear slightly delayed. Vice-president JD Vance just walked into the White House, though, so hopefully we won’t be waiting too much longer.
Donald Trump due to greet Viktor Orbán at White House soon
Donald Trump is due to greet his longtime ally Hungary’s far-right PM Viktor Orbán at the White House shortly.
For some time Orbán has been trying to broker another summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin, which he has offered to be held in Budapest, and he’s also seeking an exemption from US sanctions against Russian oil. That will be a major test of Trump’s tougher line on the Kremlin after he accused Putin of slow-rolling negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. But, ahead of parliamentary elections in April, Orbán’s priority is said to be securing a visit to Hungary from Trump in a bid to energize his conservative base.
We’ll bring you any key news lines out of the meeting as we get them.
US consumer sentiment weakened to the lowest level in nearly 3-1/2 years in early November amid worries about the economic fallout from the longest government shutdown in history, a survey showed today.
The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers said its Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 50.3 this month, the lowest level since June 2022, from a final reading of 53.6 in October.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index would dip to 53.2.
“With the federal government shutdown dragging on for over a month, consumers are now expressing worries about potential negative consequences for the economy,” Joanne Hsu, the director of the Surveys of Consumers, said in a statement. “This month’s decline in sentiment was widespread throughout the population, seen across age, income, and political affiliation.”
The government shutdown, now in its second month, has led to cuts in benefits, including food stamps, for millions of lower-income households. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed and others are working without pay, while travellers are facing delays at airports as flights are grounded.
The survey’s measure of consumer expectations for inflation over the next year increased to 4.7% this month from 4.6% in October. Consumers’ expectations for inflation over the next five years eased to 3.6% from 3.9% last month.
The Trump administration’s appeal came even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people, the Associated Press reports.
Wisconsin governor Tony Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said today that some Snap recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.
“We’ve received confirmation that payments went through, including members reporting they can now see their balances,” she told the AP.
California, Michigan and Oregon also said they had already started to process full food stamp payments, per the NYT.
Yesterday, US district judge John McConnell had gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap. But the administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund.
The court wrangling prolongs weeks of uncertainty for the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which serves about 1 in 8 – or 42 million – low-income Americans.
Trump administration seeks emergency pause of court order to fully fund November Snap benefits
The Trump administration has moved block full food stamp payments for millions of low-income Americans after it asked the first circuit court of appeals for an emergency pause of US district judge John McConnell’s order requiring it to fully fund Snap benefits by today using other funding sources.
“This Court should allow USDA to continue with the partial payment and not compel the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program with no certainty of their replenishment,” it writes, as quoted by NBC News.
“To the extent they require USDA to expend funds beyond the SNAP contingency fund, the Court should stay the district court’s orders of October 31 and November 6 pending appeal and grant an immediate administrative stay.”
The government asked the appeals court to render a ruling by 4pm ET, we’ll bring you more as we get it.
Trump pardons Tennessee Republican convicted of federal public corruption charges
Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee state House speaker and a onetime aide of public corruption charges after the White House said the Biden administration justice department “significantly over-prosecuted” both for a minor issue.
Glen Casada, a former Republican state representative, was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.
Casada said in a statement to WSMV in Nashville: “Yes the president called me today and granted me a full pardon. I am grateful of his trust and his full confidence in my innocence through this whole ordeal.”
The moves continued a pattern of Trump, a Republican, using his second presidency to bestow unlikely pardons on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of defrauding the public.
Many of the clemencies he granted have targeted criminal cases once touted as just by the justice department. They also have come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails – including the firing of the department’s pardon attorney and the near-dismantling of a prosecution unit established to hold public officials accountable for abusing the public trust.
The Senate is scheduled to convene at noon today, as the record-setting government shutdown enters its 38th day.
Majority leader John Thune is expected to tee up another vote on the House GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution again (this will be the 15th time), but Politico reports he’ll likely add some changes in the form of a possible new end date in January and a trio of appropriations bills to last the whole year, including for food aid and veterans programs.
This new deal has emerged from bipartisan talks that have gathered momentum in recent days, but Democrats have indicated that they will likely block it again and continue pushing for further healthcare concessions.
But as yet there’s been no new GOP offer on healthcare, with Republicans willing to commit only to a future vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies by an agreed-upon date – but only if the government reopens first.
As the longest federal government shutdown in US history enters its 38th day, House speaker Mike Johnson is due to hold his regular news briefing shortly. I’ll bring you all the key lines from that here.
Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik announces run for New York governor
Marina Dunbar
Elise Stefanik, a Republican New York representative and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, has officially launched her long-anticipated campaign for governor.
Reports indicate that Stefanik has already been working behind the scenes to secure endorsements from key Republican figures and local officials.
She has recently amped up her attacks on Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, frequently labeling her as “the worst governor in America” on social media and accusing her of having “bent the knee to Commie Mamdani,” referring to the now mayor-elect of New York City.
Stefanik, who has billed herself as “ultra-Maga” and “proud of it”, was not always a Trump evangelist. She first won her congressional seat in 2014, then the youngest woman ever elected to the job, aged 30. Her early voting record was relatively moderate.
She appeared to change her strategy in about November 2019, during the House intelligence committee’s Trump impeachment hearings. Stefanik was among the Republican lawmakers who backed litigation that attempted to force the US supreme court to overturn Joe Biden’s election win. Although she did condemn the January 6 Capitol attack, she also voted to reject Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
Trump had tapped Stefanik to be the US ambassador to the United Nations shortly after winning re-election in November. Earlier this year, however, he announced that he was pulling Stefanik’s nomination after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.
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