President Donald Trump said the U.S. economy is strong and insisted polls showing Americans are feeling economic pain are "fake" during an interview on Fox News that aired on Monday night.

Trump said bad news about the economy amounted to a "con job by the Democrats," adding Democrats "feed" major news network anchors with the message the economy is bad and then "every anchor" does "exactly what they say."

"I'll never forget, they used a word like 'manufactured,'" Trump said in the interview. "You remember the word 'manufacture'? It's a 'manufactured' economy. Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke in 'manufactured.' They do exactly what they say. It's such a rigged system."

The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.8% in the second quarter in the government's final estimate, besting a 3.3% rate issued in its second estimate and far exceeding a 3% initial estimate. But consumer prices rose 3% in September compared to a year ago, with inflation at its highest level since January, the most-recent government data showed. The inflation reading came in lower than economists' expectations.

Trump defended his handling of the economy, saying that costs are "way down" across the board.

"So are you ready? Costs are way down," Trump said. "Gasoline is going to be hitting $2 pretty soon, or around $2.

The average consumer price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. was $3.072 on Tuesday, according to AAA, which said the average price was $3.083 a gallon a year ago.

Trump was also pressed about a rollout by his administration for a 50-year mortgage option, something that faced criticism on social media as critics pointed out that the extended payoff timeline would mean Americans would pay more in interest than they would through the life of a shorter loan.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-downplays-economic-woes-partisan-spin-costs/story?id=127407410

The senate has reached a deal and the shutdown is ending tonight. Republicans are folding like lawn chars.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/09/government-funding-deal-on-track-to-advance-sunday-night-00644110
Senate reaches deal on ending the shutdown

Senators have reached a deal to end the government shutdown.

The agreement, which was negotiated in part by Sens. Angus King, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan as well as GOP senators, has “more than enough” members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to advance, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose the terms.

Senate Republicans are expected to support the agreement.

The Senate is poised to vote later Sunday night to advance the House-passed stopgap, which will later become the vehicle for the larger funding deal.

That vote would tee up consideration later this week of a legislative package that would fund the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects, and the operations of Congress, for the full fiscal year — the product of months of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations. All other agencies would be funded through Jan. 30, according to text of a continuing resolution released Sunday.

As part of Democrats’ agreement to end the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is promising Senate Democrats a vote in December to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year short of Congressional action. Democrats will also get to determine what extension bill gets a vote.

The government-opening agreement also guarantees that federal employees laid off during the shutdown are re-hired and gives federal employees backpay.

> Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VDuLiqCmDE

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/11/politics/trump-domestic-talent-jobs-h1b-visas

> Trump says United States doesn’t have talented people to fill jobs domestically

President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Tuesday night the United States doesn’t have talented workers to fill jobs needed domestically, defending the H1-B skilled worker visa program.

Pressed by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on whether his administration would reduce H1-B visas over concerns it would depress wages for American workers, Trump told Ingraham, “I agree — but you also do have to bring in talent.”

When the Fox host responded, “We have plenty of talented people here,” Trump replied, “No, you don’t, no you don’t … you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’”

The president pointed to the September ICE raid of a Georgia Hyundai facility, which saw authorities arrest and deport hundreds of South Korean contractors over their immigration status, as evidence of the country’s need for skilled foreign workers.

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2025/11/10/pittsburgh-airport-terminal-opening-1/stories/202511070097?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.newsweek.com/panic-on-us-aircraft-carrier-island-after-us-venezuela-strikes-report-10975598
Tension is rapidly growing in the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago after a U.S. newspaper reported that the U.S. was poised to strike military targets in Venezuela, as the U.S. military buildup in the region continues.

The Miami Herald wrote on Friday that the Trump administration had decided to attack military installations inside Venezuela, information it said it obtained from sources with knowledge of the situation.

According to these same sources, the strikes, which they claimed would be the latest escalation in the president’s campaign against the Soles drug cartel, could “come at any moment”—whether that is a matter of days or even hours.

However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has flatly denied the Miami Herald’s story.

Why It Matters

President Donald Trump has recently increased pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to curb the flow of drugs from the country into the U.S. Over the past several weeks, the U.S. military has conducted a number of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea which the Trump administration said it suspected of smuggling narcotics, killing more than 60 people.

Maduro has accused Trump of trying to topple his government and seeking a regime change in Venezuela, which in recent years has suffered an economic collapse and is still in the midst of a socioeconomic and political crisis.

Trump, on the other hand, has accused Maduro of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organization—an accusation that the Venezuelan leader has repeatedly denied.

https://thehill.com/newsletters/5601265-federal-thc-ban-send-hemp-companies-scrambling/

The Senate late Monday passed a funding package that would reopen the government and fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Tucked into the funding bill is a provision that would re-criminalize many of the intoxicating hemp-derived products that were legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waged a last-minute fight to try to keep the provision out, threatening to drag out the process of debating the underlying bill until he got a vote on an amendment to strip the language.
He got the vote on Monday; Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were the only Republicans who voted in favor.
“The bill, as it now stands, overrides the regulatory frameworks of several states, cancels the collective decisions of hemp consumers and destroys the livelihoods of hemp farmers,” Paul said on the floor ahead of the vote. “And it couldn’t come at a worse time for America’s farmers. Times are tough for our farmers.”

Kristi Noem reportedly tried to buy 10 engineless Spirit Airlines planes that airline didn’t own

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/08/kristi-noem-spirit-airlines-planes

The secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, reportedly authorized the purchase of Spirit Airlines jets before discovering the airline didn’t actually own the planes – and that the aircraft lacked engines.

The bizarre anecdote was contained in a Wall Street Journal report released on Friday, which recounted how Noem and Corey Lewandowski – who managed Donald Trump’s first winning presidential campaign – had recently arranged to buy 10 Boeing 737 aircraft from Spirit Airlines. People familiar with the situation told the paper that the two intended to use the jets to expand deportation flights – and for personal travel.

Those sources also claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials had cautioned them that buying planes would be far more expensive than simply expanding existing flight contracts.

Complicating matters further, Spirit, which filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time, in August, did not own the jets and their engines would have had to be bought separately. The plan has since been paused, according to the Journal.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the House appropriations committee said in October that during this fall’s record-long government shutdown, the DHS had already acquired two Gulfstream jets for $200m.

“It has come to our attention that, in the midst of a government shutdown, the United States Coast Guard entered into a sole source contract with Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation to procure two new G700 luxury jets to support travel for you and the deputy secretary, at a cost to the taxpayer of $200m,” Democratic representatives Rosa DeLauro and Lauren Underwood wrote in a letter to the DHS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ghislaine-maxwell-prison-emails-minimum-security-bryan-texas-rcna242218
Within days of her arrival at a Texas prison camp in early August, Ghislaine Maxwell gushed in emails to her friends and family over the cleanliness and safety of her new surroundings.

“The institution is run in an orderly fashion which makes for a safer more comfortable environment for all people concerned, inmates and guards alike,” wrote Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting minors to be sexually abused by her longtime confidant, the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell’s unexpected move to the all-women’s Federal Prison Camp Bryan, which houses inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes in dormitory-style quarters, drew immediate condemnation from current and former federal Bureau of Prisons employees. They said it was very unusual for prisoners with sex offenses on their records to be incarcerated in such an unconstrained setting, indicating Maxwell was receiving preferential treatment.

Maxwell, 63, had been in a low-security federal correctional institution in Tallahassee, Florida, following her conviction in December 2021 on federal sex trafficking charges. FCI Tallahassee is more restrictive than a camp like FPC Bryan, where inmates have access to work programs, recreation and other activities and are often serving shorter sentences. Maxwell was moved days after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.

NBC News has reviewed emails Maxwell sent during her first few months at FPC Bryan, which were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee. The emails describe Maxwell’s relief at being in a calmer facility without violence, where staff was polite and the food was better. "My situation is improved by being at Bryan," she wrote in one email.

>Gregory Bovino was called out by a judge only two days earlier for lying about being assaulted by a protester

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/08/border-patrol-gregory-bovino-chicago

A border patrol chief claimed on Saturday that his agents came under fire in Chicago while conducting immigration enforcement operations, just two days after a federal judge said that he had lied to her about having been struck by a rock during a previous confrontation with protesters in the city.

Gregory Bovino, the border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, said on social media that his agents had been “shot at”, and subjected to “vehicular assaults, physical assaults, impeding, violent mobs, vehicular blockades”, for a number of hours.

In a written statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that border patrol agents were “conducting immigration enforcement operations near 26th Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, when an unknown male driving a black Jeep fired shots at agents and fled the scene”.

The agency said that the “Chicago Police Department was called for assistance and cleared the scene. The shooter and vehicle remain at large, and this is a dynamic situation.”

Chicago police said they responded but found no signs of anyone having been struck by gunfire where the alleged shooting took place. “There are no reports of anyone struck by gunfire,” the Chicago police said in a statement.

According to the police, one officer was in good condition after being struck by a vehicle during the operation, and the driver was ticketed.

>No video evidence has yet surfaced of the alleged shooting, but social media clips and news photographs did show heavily armed agents in camouflage, including Bovino, confronting protesters, deploying tear gas and detaining people in the city’s Little Village neighborhood.