Live updates: U.S., South Korea finalize trade deal before trump-Xi meeting; government shutdown nears 30-day mark

A special federal grand jury has indicted Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh alongside other protesters who allegedly blocked vehicles outside of a federal immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois.

The indictment, which was filed Oct. 23, alleges that Abughazaleh “physically hindered and impeded” an agent who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators.” Abughazaleh was charged alongside five other people, including two other political candidates.

She faces one count of conspiracy along with one charge alleging that she “forcibly impeded, intimidated, and interfered” with an officer.

Read the full story here.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said today that the Pentagon carried out another "lethal kinetic strike" at trump's direction on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed four men.

“Earlier today, at the direction of President trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on yet another narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) in the Eastern Pacific,” Hegseth wrote on X, using the Defense Department’s secondary title.

It’s the 12th known time the trump administration has launched military strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in recent months.

Read the full story here.

An appeals court has temporarily paused an order that required U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino to appear each day in federal court in Chicago. 

Just before Bovino was to report to a judge at 5:45 p.m. local time today, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to “temporarily” grant a government’s request for a reprieve.

The ruling comes a day after Bovino showed up in Chicago’s federal court to answer questions about a series of aggressive immigration actions in the area since September.

Read the full story here.

trump wrote on social media this evening that South Korea will build a nuclear-powered submarine in the United States following trade negotiations.

"Our Military Alliance is stronger than ever before and, based on that, I have given them approval to build a Nuclear Powered Submarine, rather than the old fashioned, and far less nimble, diesel powered Submarines that they have now,” trump wrote on Truth Social.

trump provided limited details about the submarine's construction, writing in a subsequent post that it will be built "in the Philadelphia Shipyards, right here in the good ol’ U.S.A."

trump said earlier today that in tariff negotiations, South Korea agreed to $350 billion in investments.

The Senate voted 50-46 tonight to block trump’s tariffs on Canada after Democrats used a legislative tool to force a floor vote without consent from the Republican majority.

Four Republicans joined 46 Democrats in supporting the resolution. Only a simple majority was needed for passage.

The Republicans who crossed the aisle were Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The Senate voted in April to reject trump’s tariffs on Canada, and the same four Republicans voted with Democrats then. The measure has not advanced in the House.

The newly passed resolution is also unlikely to be brought up in the House, which is not allowing votes on measures challenging trump's tariffs until next year at the earliest.

In a reversal, a majority of Americans now favor a policy of cooperation and engagement with China and oppose higher tariffs on it, according to a new survey.

The survey by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 53% of respondents said the United States should undertake friendly cooperation and engagement with Beijing rather than actively work to limit its global influence, up from 40% last year. The preference was significantly higher among Democrats (66%) than Republicans (33%).

For the first time since the council asked the question in 2020, a majority of Americans (54%) also oppose higher tariffs on Chinese goods, according to the poll, which was conducted from July 18 to 30. Opposition was 81% among Democrats and 58% among independents, while Republicans were 67% in support of higher tariffs.

trump and Xi are expected to meet in South Korea in what will be their first meeting since trump returned to the Oval Office.

trump and Xi will meet in Busan, South Korea, tomorrow morning (10 p.m. Wednesday ET) as they look to cool an increasingly heated relationship.

The two sides are expected to discuss moves on tariffs, combating fentanyl and access to rare earth minerals, while leaving bigger targets for later. The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. local time.

With a Nov. 10 deadline to reach a tariff deal approaching, what began as trump’s crackdown on the flow of fentanyl into the United States has broadened into a longer list of trade and security issues.

The working expectation is that trump and Xi will agree on a pause in the fight rather than finalize a sweeping deal, a person familiar with the meeting planning said. Beijing could ease export curbs on strategically crucial rare earth minerals, Washington could hold off on broad tariff hikes, and both sides could reach for gestures, such as expanded purchases of U.S. farm goods by China.

Read the full story here.

Former President Barack Obama urged Pennsylvanians to vote to retain three Democratic state Supreme Court justices in next week's election.

The justices face up-or-down votes on whether they should remain on Pennsylvania’s highest court, where Democrats hold a 5-2 majority, for another 10 years. If all three lose, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court could be deadlocked at 2-2 through the end of 2027.

The high stakes the outcome will have for the battleground state in the 2026 and 2028 elections have drawn increased money and attention to the usually sleepy down-ballot contests.

Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., today endorsed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York mayor's race, in which Cuomo is running as an independent.

"I’m a Democratic Capitalist, not a Democratic Socialist. I endorse Andrew Cuomo. I can not back a declared socialist with a thin resume to run the most complex city in America," Suozzi wrote on X this afternoon.

Early voting got underway Saturday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have endorsed Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not made an endorsement.

This evening, Senate Democrats, led by Tim Kaine, D-Va., and joined by Rand Paul, R-Ky., will force a vote to undo trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs on Canada.

The resolution would terminate the emergency declaration trump implemented to impose tariffs on Canadian imports.

Like the vote to block tariffs on Brazil last night, the measure is “privileged,” meaning it can be brought to the floor without the consent of the majority.

Privileged resolutions have a 51-vote threshold, so if just a few Republican senators vote with Democrats, the resolution could pass. However, it remains mostly symbolic, since it would be very unlikely to be brought up in the House.

The Supreme Court is asking for a supplemental briefing it addresses a specific question it wants answered in the Illinois National Guard emergency docket case.

“Whether the term 'regular forces' refers to the regular forces of the United States military, and, if so, how that interpretation affects the operation of" the statue that the trump administration has cited to justify its planned deployment of the guard, the court said.

The court wants a response from both parties by Nov. 10. Replies will be due by Nov. 17.

That means a ruling isn't expected until after Nov. 17.

The Justice Department placed two federal prosecutors on administrative leave after they described the Jan. 6 defendants pardoned by trump as a “mob of rioters,” five people familiar with the situation told NBC News.

The prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, used the phrase in a sentencing memo filed yesterday in the case of Taylor Taranto, a MAGA enthusiast who prosecutors say stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and was involved in a “scuffle” with police officers trying to force the mob out of the building.

While trump pardoned Taranto and about 1,500 other Jan. 6 rioters, the pardon did not cover Taranto’s other actions in 2023, when, prosecutors said, he perpetuated a bomb hoax and then showed up at former President Barack Obama’s neighborhood with weapons and ammo in his van. Taranto was convicted in May of “illegally carrying two firearms without a license, unlawfully possessing ammunition, and false information and hoaxes.”

Taranto, 39, is set to be sentenced tomorrow, and it is unclear who will appear in court on the government’s behalf. The government sought 27 months of incarceration, but Taranto is likely to be released because he already served time while he was being held pretrial.

Read the full story here.

Senate Democrats will bring to the floor a stand-alone funding bill to keep SNAP and WIC afloat this afternoon, attempting to pass it by unanimous consent, meaning all 100 senators would need to agree with no roll call vote. The bill is led by Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M.

"Let me be clear: the trump administration has the authority and the funds to keep SNAP running. No child, veteran, grandparent, or hardworking American should go hungry because of partisan politics," Luján said in a statement.

The government shutdown is costing the economy about $7 billion per month that won’t be recovered when it reopens, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

In a letter to House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the CBO offered estimates for three scenarios regarding the length of the shutdown, which began Oct. 1 and is nearing a full month.

The CBO projected real gross domestic product declining by $7 billion in a four-week shutdown, $11 billion in a six-week shutdown and $14 billion in an eight-week shutdown.

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During a small spring dinner at the Georgia Governor’s Mansion, the pressure campaign to get Gov. Brian Kemp to run for the Senate was the subject of uneasy punch lines.

Kemp, a popular Republican governor with a prebuilt fundraising machine, was the top recruit of national Republican organizations looking to snag a primary field-clearing candidate to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a state that will present one of the most challenging and expensive races of the 2026 midterms.

“They are calling the wrong Kemp,” joked Marty Kemp, the governor’s wife and an influential voice in his political decision-making, according to two Georgia Republicans, who, like others, spoke under condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The comment was made in jest: Kemp himself was always the hardest one to sell on the idea of running for the Senate, but it underscores the intensity of the push to get Kemp in the race.

Kemp ultimately announced in May that he would not run for the Senate. But he is very much involved in the race — and in the fact that it remains one of the few unsettled primaries Senate Republicans have on the board ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Read the full story here.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that bipartisan conversations have “ticked up significantly” and that he thinks “there’s a possibility” that there is enough interest from moderate Democrats to change the situation. 

“Their leadership, at least I think, is kind of out of the equation,” Thune said. “I mean, they just don’t have any room to maneuver, but there are a lot of rank-and-file members that continue to, I think, want to pursue solutions and to be able to address the issues they care about.”

Thune said that as of right now, the plan is to vote tomorrow and then break for the weekend, but “if something starts to gel, come together, then I think that could be a different conversation.”

Other senators, on both sides of the aisle, contradicted Thune this morning, telling NBC News that they feel no closer to a deal to reopen the government on Day 29 of the shutdown. 

Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “futile exercise” to bring the House back to pass a new continuing resolution with a new date when asked about the Nov. 21 deadline in the House-passed CR approaching. 

“Wouldn’t that be a futile exercise when we have a CR that’s been sitting over there since Sept. 19,” Johnson said. “If I brought the House back and we passed another CR, it would meet the exact same fate from Chuck Schumer. He would mock it, they would spike it, and they would try to blame it on us. So what is the point?” 

Asked how the trump administration can justify giving Argentina a bailout when Americans are in dire situations with the shutdown ongoing, Johnson said he gives “foreign policy, the execution of foreign policy, to the executive branch.” He then told reporters to ask “about the government shutdown.” 

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson dashed Democrats’ hopes the state would join the national redistricting battle, telling colleagues that the chamber would not try to redraw the state’s congressional map.

“The Senate is choosing not to move forward with mid-cycle congressional redistricting,” Ferguson said in a three-page letter to state Democratic lawmakers that was shared with NBC News. “In short, the risk of redrawing the congressional map in Maryland is too high, making the unlikely possibility that we gain a seat not worth pursuing.”

Maryland is among the Democratic-led states the party has been eyeing to respond to Republicans enacting new gerrymandered maps in three states at President Donald trump’s urging ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has held discussions with members of the Maryland delegation and Gov. Wes Moore, and state Sen. Clarence Lam introduced a bill to draw new district lines.

Ferguson did not respond to a request for comment and Lam declined to comment.

Read the full story here.

After Abigail Spanberger took the stage at a campaign event in Norfolk on Sunday afternoon, she delivered an impassioned speech casting next week’s gubernatorial election as a chance to reject President Donald trump and the chaos she said his administration’s policies have sowed in Virginia’s economy.

It’s a message Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, has remained laser-focused on in the closing stretch of the campaign, even as a series of new outside developments and lines of attack threatened to upend the race against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears.

Read the full story here.

Amazon subsidiary Amazon Web Services will invest $5 billion in South Korea by 2031 to build artificial intelligence data centers across the East Asian nation, an announcement that comes just months after the company had already pledged $4 billion. 

Local media reported that the agreement was announced following a meeting between the country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, and AWS Chief Executive Matt Garman on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in Gyeongju, a city in southeastern South Korea. 

Earlier this month, AWS suffered an outage affecting millions of users on a wide range of sites.

As his father prepares to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, Donald trump Jr. spoke at a conference in Saudi Arabia, where he says the U.S. is working with allies and looking at “stopping the stranglehold from China.”

The U.S. is “working with partners around the world, allies around the world with a similar mindset to help grow that similar base, and stopping the stranglehold from China is probably one of the most fundamental things we can do,” he said, according to Reuters. 

trump said he expects his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping tomorrow to last up to four hours.

"I'm meeting with President Xi tomorrow morning. Three-hour meeting, three, four hours," he was heard saying while chatting with other leaders at the dinner hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

Today, South Korea awarded trump the country’s highest civilian honor and a golden crown, a day after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi gifted him a golf club that belonged to his friend, the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But the U.S. allies are still dealing with the fallout of several of trump’s “America First” policies.

It was just over a month ago that 475 workers at a South Korean-owned battery plant in Georgia were arrested in an immigration raid as part of a broader deportation drive by the trump administration.

The raid greatly angered South Korea, which had just won some reprieve from trump’s tariffs by pledging hundreds of billions in U.S. investment. That only brought the tariff rate down to 15%, from the previous 25% that trump had set.

Japan, which has pledged $550 billion in U.S. investment, also faces a 15% duty on its exports to the U.S. Both countries have also been hard hit by trump’s 50% tariff on steel, a major export for both.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung asked trump today to allow his country to have fuel for nuclear-powered submarines.

Lee made the remarks during a meeting with trump, continuing Seoul’s efforts to revise a nuclear pact with the U.S. that only permits South Korea to enrich uranium below 20% with consent from Washington and forbids it to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, according to the country’s Yonhap News Agency.

“I hope you will make a decision to allow us to have supply for nuclear-powered submarines,” Lee said, adding that in that case, Seoul can build submarines to defend the waters around the Korean Peninsula and ease U.S. military work.

Lee also stressed that South Korea won’t use the fuel supply to build nuclear-armed submarines, attributing his request to the limited underwater navigation capabilities of diesel-propelled submarines.

The U.S. has historically opposed South Korea’s repeated attempts to build nuclear-powered submarines over concerns about nuclear proliferation.

trump has been touting all the agreements he has signed or expects to sign during his Asia trip, though experts say many of them are mainly symbolic.

“We’re signing one trade deal after another to balance our relationships on the basis of reciprocity,” he said at the APEC CEOs luncheon earlier today, citing agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia and Japan.

Some of the agreements, such as the one with Japan, merely reaffirm handshake trade deals that were announced earlier this year, the details of which are still being negotiated.

Still, U.S. and South Korean trade delegations have hashed out the details of their handshake agreement in July, including the hundreds of billions South Korea has pledged to invest in the U.S.

trump also expressed hopes for a trade deal with China out of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is scheduled for tomorrow.

“I think it’ll be a good deal for for both,” trump said. “That’s better than fighting and going through all sorts of problems.”

A South Korean official laid out more information about the terms of a trade agreement between South Korea and the U.S., including a $350 billion investment package that trump has been seeking.

South Korea will invest $200 billion in the U.S., capped at $20 billion a year, and also join in a shipbuilding partnership valued at $150 billion, South Korea's senior secretary for policy, Kim Yong Beom, said. Mutual tariffs will remain at 15%, and tariffs on South Korea’s cars and auto parts will be cut to 15%, the secretary said.

The shipbuilding efforts will be led by Korean companies, the secretary said.

China said ahead of the trump-Xi summit that it’s willing to strive for peaceful unification with self-ruling Taiwan but would never promise to give up the use of force.

Beijing is ready to “create broad space for peaceful unification” of the democratically-governed island with “utmost sincerity and best efforts,” which requires both sides of the Taiwan Strait to “move toward each other,” said Peng Qing’en, spokesperson of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

In recent days, Chinese state media has launched a rhetorical blast on what it calls “separatist forces” in Taiwan. But such intimidation from Beijing is “so normal in Taiwan that it really falls on deaf ears, even if there’s slightly more these days,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor of politics at National Taiwan University.

These messages are “far more” for people on the Chinese mainland than Taiwan, Nachman said, adding that more than 8 out of 10 Taiwanese oppose Beijing’s “one country, two systems” model, according to an April poll backed by the government in Taiwan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry signaled goodwill toward the U.S. ahead of an in-person meeting between trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping scheduled tomorrow.

Head of state diplomacy plays an “irreplaceable strategic guiding role” in China-U.S. relations, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a regular briefing in Beijing today.

Guo added that trump and Xi will have “in-depth communication on issues of strategic and long-term importance to China-U.S. relations, as well as major issues of mutual concern.”

“We are willing to work together with the U.S. side to promote positive outcomes from this meeting, provide new guidance for the stable development of China-U.S. relations, and inject new momentum,” he said.

China defended itself today as “the country most resolute in drug control” while expressing sympathy for people in the U.S. who have suffered in the fentanyl crisis.

Asked about trump’s comments that he would lower tariffs on China for Beijing’s help in curbing the fentanyl flow into the U.S., the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said the country has the world’s “best record” in drug controls with the “most comprehensive policies.”

“China expresses sympathy for the American people who suffer from the fentanyl crisis,” Guo said at a regular briefing in Beijing. “We have provided assistance in the past and achieved positive results, and remain open to continued cooperation with the U.S. side.”

Guo urged the U.S. to “take concrete actions to create the necessary conditions for such cooperation.”

In 2019, China banned all fentanyl-related substances and tightened controls, but U.S. officials say enforcement gaps persist.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung awarded trump with the Grand Order of Mugunghwa and a replica of the Silla gold crown during a meeting at the Gyeongju National Museum today.

trump is currently at a dinner hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, in what is their final scheduled event for the day. 

Other guests include Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, as well as leaders from key regional partner nations, including New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore.

Lee started with a toast to world peace. Guests will be served trump Chardonnay and trump Cabernet Sauvignon, both from the winery run by Eric trump.

trump said a trade deal has been "pretty much finalized" with South Korea, without giving details.

President Donald trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during a welcome ceremony in Gyeongju, South Korea, today. Mark Schiefelbein / AP

"We did. We reached a deal and we did a lot of different things. We had a great session," he told reporters ahead of his dinner hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

But just moments later, as he spoke again at the dinner, he appeared to hedge his previous statement, saying, "We made our deal pretty much finalized."

It’s unclear if a complete agreement was reached with South Korea or if trump was making a symbolic statement. Neither the White House nor South Korea has provided further details.

The pain of a U.S. government shutdown is poised to intensify this week as the funding lapse nears a full month with no resolution in sight.

A series of deadlines in the coming days could have negative consequences for ordinary Americans, cutting off food assistance for low-income people, raising health insurance premiums for millions on Obamacare, and depriving air-traffic controllers, TSA agents and other federal workers of paychecks.

Read the full story here.

trump appeared optimistic ahead of his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping tomorrow, saying aboard Air Force One earlier today that he expects that Beijing will help with fentanyl, and in exchange, he could lower tariffs on the country.

Beijing has signaled it's also approaching the in-person meeting between trump and Xi tomorrow with a positive outlook.

Head-of-state diplomacy plays an “irreplaceable strategic guiding role” in China-U.S. relations, foreign ministry ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a regular briefing today.

He added that trump and Xi will have “in-depth communication on issues of strategic and long-term importance to China-U.S. relations, as well as major issues of mutual concern.”

“We are willing to work together with the U.S. side to promote positive outcomes from this meeting, provide new guidance for the stable development of China-U.S. relations, and inject new momentum,” Guo said.

The highly anticipated meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping was the “focus” for his Asia visit, trump has said.

trump says meeting with Xi will ‘work out very, very well for everybody’

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“That was something that obviously is very important to the world, all of us,” he said as he met with the South Korean leader, adding he thinks, “it’s going to work out very, very well for everybody, and we, I look forward to seeing him.”

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung awarded trump with the country’s highest decoration, the Grand Order of Mugunghwa.

trump was told through a translator that he was the first U.S. president to receive the award, which has a laurel leaf design that symbolizes prosperity.

“It’s a great honor,” trump said. “I’d like to wear it right now,” he added.

trump was also gifted a replica of the golden Cheonmachong crown, a 1,500-year-old artifact that was found in a tomb in Gyeongju and is among the heaviest gold crowns ever found.