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Trump and First Lady Greet Trick-or-Treaters at White House Halloween Celebration
(Thursday, October 30th)
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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greeted a younger constituency than normal on Thursday during a White House event where the two handed out Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters.
A line of children and young teens accompanied by their parents made their way across the White House grounds to speak to the president and first lady, receive full-size candy bars, and have autographs signed.
Military families, law enforcement families, foster and adoptive families, and administration officials with children were among the guests.
Children dressed as everything from dinosaurs to astronauts and princesses, and ranged from infants carried by their parents to pre-K children who walked up to the president and first lady on their own. The oldest trick-or-treaters were young teenagers.
Occasionally, the two paused to speak to a child or their parents. Members of the press were too far away to make out what was said.
Jack-o'-lanterns and other Halloween-themed decorations were set up on the White House’s South Lawn and the South Portico, and a variety of spooky Halloween music played over loudspeakers.
The first lady decorated the State Dining Room with skeletons hung from wall lights, jack-o'-lanterns, and shocks of dried corn. (The Epoch TImes) Read more here. [Be sure to see the many pictures that are shown here!]
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presented in this article. Thank you.
- "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" (Luke 23:34)
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Daily Digests: M 10/27 • T 10/28 • W 10/29 • Th 10/30 • F 10/31
Senate — Votes — Legislation: New: 54 (D, R), Action: 15, Voted: 6, Passed: 13
M 10/27/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All–SLR, PDF • Chronicle • Summary
T 10/28/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All–SLR, PDF • Chronicle • Summary
W 10/29/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All–SLR, PDF • Chronicle • Summary
- Senate Record — Wednesday, 10/29/2025
- Thune: “Throwing $350 billion—taxpayer dollars—at the problem in the form of enhanced tax credits will do nothing to stop ObamaCare premiums from going up by double digits … I know Democrats think you can solve any problem simply by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it—the record is pretty clear on that—but you can't. Genuine remedies for the problem of soaring healthcare costs are not going to be arrived at with a brief, late-night session, behind closed doors, in the Democrat leader's office. We need extended, serious bipartisan work, with input from all Senators, and we need Democrats to reopen the government so that work can start.”
- Alabama Solicitor General Confirmed To Federal Bench for the Northern District of Alabama.
- Senate declined to consider a resolution to stop the Department of the Interior from hiring the killing 453,000 barred owls for $3,000 each, spending $1.3 billion supposedly to protect the spotted owl (S.J.Res. 69) • Senate declines to halt plan to kill off half-million barred owls by Fish and Wildlife Service
- Senate declined to pass a bill to appropriate funds to ensure uninterrupted benefits under the supplemental nutrition assistance program and the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children and declined to pass the level-funding continuing resolution to fund the U.S. government through 11/21 (S. 3071, H.R. 5371)
- Thune: “So you think this buys some time. You want the shutdown to go on for another month, and then we are going to have other people come down here: Well, let's carve this out or carve this out. Why don't we just open the government? … We think that ObamaCare and, particularly, the enhanced subsidies, are in desperate need of reform. … There are millions of Americans who don't even know they have coverage because the way that program is structured, the payments go directly to the insurance companies. Insurance companies are out there auto-enrolling people and making bank. … Now, you all are going to blame the doing away with the Biden bonus payments in that legislation for the increase. But the fact of the matter is, that will be a very small part of that because of the way the program is structured in the first place. There is no incentive to constrain or control costs. … what you are trying to do and accomplish here is mak(ing) it harder, not easier, to get the government opened up again and to make sure everybody else gets paid.” Thune blasts Democrats on Senate floor over SNAP, shutdown: 'This isn't a political game'
- Sen. Murray: “Please join us at a negotiating table, not out here on the floor just throwing things around. Join us. The majority leader can call the minority leader and the President and get them in the room, which is what we always do when we have a challenge in front of us.” • Note: Maybe Democrats are finally starting to get it: Having the debate on the Senate floor is exactly what Majority Leader Thune has been trying to do for a month. The Senate has been known as the world's greatest deliberative body and its floor is not a place for “just throwing things around.”
- Senate votes to end tariffs on Canada with bipartisan support: (S.J.Res. 77) The Senate passed the resolution 50-46 vote
Th 10/30/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All–SLR, PDF • Chronicle • Summary
House — Votes — Legislation: New: 88 (R, D)
T 10/28/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All PDF, Extensions All PDF • Activity, Votes
F 10/31/2025 — Prayer, Digest, Record All PDF, Extensions All PDF • Activity, Votes
- House Record — Friday, 10/31/2025
- 1:04:48 p.m. - DISTRICT WORK PERIOD - Pursuant to clause 13 of Rule I, the Chair announced the Speaker's designation of the period from Monday, November 3, 2025, through Sunday, November 9, 2025, as a "district work period".
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National Security — Committees: Senate, House
Speaker Johnson backs Trump on nuclear testing: 'It’s a deterrent'
Foreign Policy — Committees: Senate, House
On Ukraine, European leaders and top senators are in sync Senators try to coordinate effort for new sanctions and using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine
Luna says Omar defended Trump to European politician: 'you will respect our president'
Markey pushes for nuclear arms talks with Russia, citing 'House of Dynamite' example
Constitution
Tuberville introduces 2 bills to end Sharia law in the US: “Wake up, America.” (S. 3008, S. 3009)
Trade
House tax chair: Argentinian beef imports would be 'devastating' to US cattle producers • 14 lawmakers say Argentinian beef imports 'undermine American cattle producers' in new letter
Federal Spending — Committees: House, Senate — FY 2026 bills, table
Massive Lobbying Dollars Aid Health Care Insurers in Protecting Their Obamacare Jackpot • Top Hill Dems Won’t Say If They Coordinated Shutdown Strategy with Health Care Insurer
Congress under the gun on military pay as Trump's $8 billion dries up: The last pay cycle cost roughly $6.5 billion, leaving only $1.5 billion leftover for the looming Oct. 31 payday, which is expected to cost $6 billion to $7 billion
Pressure rising on multiple fronts to end shutdown • Democrats Say Federal Workers Don't Want Them to Cave. Their Union Says Otherwise. • Largest government union calls for clean CR to end shutdown • Major Labor Unions Urge Senate Democrats to Pass the Clean CR and End the Democrat Shutdown • Union call to reopen government exposes pain point for Democrats • Democrats brush off shutdown pressure from union
Nation’s largest airlines press Democrats to pass funding stopgap to reopen government
The Nation’s Top Businesses Push For End Of Government Shutdown: The associations proposed a compromise to negotiate major policy issues in a longer-term funding package rather than a continuing resolution.
Retail association calls on lawmakers to pass clean funding bill
Jared Golden (D-Maine) says Democrats 'lying' about shutdown strategy, noting it was his own colleagues who included a sunset for the subsidies in 2022. “I’m just uncomfortable lying about the strategy to win and shutting down the government. We’ve never been the party that does that.” “I’m not willing to shut down the government over health care subsidies for households making $300,000” • Democrat Jared Golden accuses party of lying about government shutdown strategy: Golden was the only House Democrat to support the Republican-led clean continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through Nov. 21. The House passed the bill last month, but it has been held up in the Senate.
Democrats: Shutdown is About “Leverage,” Not the American People
Ron Johnson says he has offered Senate Democrats a proposal to pay all federal employees amid shutdown, working or not: Johnson said he will encourage Senate Majority Leader John Thune to bring his bill back up for another vote with the compromise amendment if the Senate fails to pass the House's continuing resolution to reopen the government. • Thune: 'Strong' Republican support for paying all federal workers during shutdown • Democrats possibly open to plan to pay all federal workers during shutdown
Democrats Signal They’ll Hold the Line Even as SNAP funding runs out: Murphy: “From the beginning, we’ve been willing to sit down and compromise” • Note: The place to sit down and compromise is the Senate floor. It's not negotiating to say, “Give me everything I want or you get nothing.”
Dems Swivel Shutdown Strategy to Relieve Pressure Points Rather than Seek Solution • Democrats seize on food stamp funding as latest rallying cry Push to extend food stamps marks a diversion from Democrat focus on health care subsidies • Schumer says Democrats would vote for Hawley's SNAP bill • Hawley Is Making The Wrong Argument For More Food Stamp Welfare: “It’s awe-inspiring that a leader of this country, a Republican no less, can acknowledge that more than 40 million people — a tenth of the population — supposedly can’t feed themselves without a welfare program and instead of proposing a solution to eliminate that problem, he calls on the government to ensure that the rest of us get to keep paying it” • Judges in different regions issue conflicting rulings on SNAP
'Rifle shot' shutdown bills, and why Republican leaders are opposed
Democrats wobble as pressure to end shutdown ramps up: Democrats are feeling intense pressure to end the shutdown, and they haven’t yet said what exactly it would take to get enough votes to reopen government.
CBO: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of the Government Shutdown on the Economy Under Three Scenarios, as of October 29, 2025: CBO estimates, depending on its length, the government shutdown will reduce annualized real GDP growth in that quarter by 1.0 to 2.0 percentage points and between $7 billion and $14 billion (in 2025 dollars) will not be recovered. • Shutdown will cost up to $14 billion in economic losses: CBO analysis
Thune says he hopes to speak to Senate Democrats about ending government shutdown soon: Senate Republicans have been meeting with some Democrats in the upper chamber informally in hopes of getting enough bipartisan support to end the shutdown, which began Oct. 1. • Bipartisan talks to end shutdown gaining steam, senators say • Senate GOP, Democrats looking for 'off-ramp' to end shutdown next week any political benefit of extending the shutdown is about to be outweighed by the harms inflicted • Senators Leave Town Cautiously Optimistic That Shutdown Talks Are Progressing: • JD Vance urges Democratic senators to end government shutdown: Several Senate Democrats have already voted with Republicans to reopen the government, but Republicans only hold 53 seats and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has consistently voted against current funding levels as being too high. • Lots of talk but no deal as shutdown heads for the record books
Appropriations chairman bullish on full-year spending bills after shutdown: First spending package ready to move quickly, Cole says
Executive — Committees: House, Senate
Judge extends block on government shutdown layoffs
Over 160 Republicans potentially investigated in FBI’s Arctic Frost inquiry, House GOP says: The size and scope of the Biden-era Arctic Frost investigation continues to be revealed to be larger than known as more internal DOJ & FBI records are released. • Sen. Marsha Blackburn floor speech on being targeted • Two phone carriers responded to Jack Smith's subpoenas for GOP lawmakers records in Arctic Frost probe: Both companies were also given nondisclosure orders, which were signed by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the companies not to notify the lawmakers of the subpoenas for a year.
House Oversight Committee deems some of Biden’s autopen orders ‘invalid,’ asks DOJ to investigate: The findings come after a monthslong probe into the Biden administration’s use of an autopen for executive decisions and pardons. • House GOP asks DOJ to probe Biden autopen use to 'void' pardons, other actions • House chairman Comer calls on AG Bondi to invalidate all Biden pardons, orders signed by autopen: “We've handed this to Pam Bondi on a silver platter. We've done all the heavy lifting,” the House Oversight Committee Chairman tells Just the News.
Graham says lawmakers to be briefed on potential Venezuela land attack
Senate Democrats riled over exclusion from Venezuela briefing • Warner responds, demands intel sharing • House Democrats on Venezuela drug boat briefing: 'I heard no strategy': House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers said there will be more briefings on the strikes in the future, and White House spokesperson Anna Kelly slammed House Democrats for trying to distract from the government shutdown. There have been nine bipartisan briefings on the strikes so far. • Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio): lawmakers were “very frustrated” • SASC leaders press DOD for legal justification of boat strikes, strike orders
WH: Nominations and Withdrawal Sent to the Senate
Health Care Policy — Committee: Senate
Blackburn: “Here is what is set to expire at the end of the year: It is President Biden's COVID-era bonus credits that were put in place. This is something that the Democrats did in 2021. The Biden COVID credits eliminated the 400-percent income cap, allowing households that are making over—get this—a half million dollars a year, $500,000 a year—they could benefit from this subsidy program. So let's say you were buying health insurance on the ObamaCare exchange and you were making over a half million dollars a year. You too—you too—could get a taxpayer-funded insurance subsidy for ObamaCare. Bear in mind, the subsidy does not go to the individual. The subsidy goes directly to the insurance company.”
Speaker Johnson says GOP working on Republican health care plan amid shutdown (RSC framework, 58-page PDF, FAQ PDF, ACA comparison PDF)
The political reversal of ACA: Republicans now embrace a policy sued out of existence in 2017 — Democrats now block their original policy as insufficiently generous and instead exclusively push for the most inefficient option available
6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced ACA Subsidies Expire:
- Nearly half of all Exchange enrollees currently qualify for “free” premiums.
- CBO and others have found millions of fraudulent enrollees, costing tens of billions of dollars annually.
- If the enhanced subsidies expire, the federal government will still pay 75-80 percent of enrollees’ premiums on average.
- Most households will face premium increases of no more than $100 per month if the enhanced subsidies expire.
- Red states are “most hurt” by enhanced subsidies expiration because federal policies have encouraged fraud in their states.
- Extending enhanced subsidies would expand taxpayer funding of plans covering procedures many Americans find morally objectionable.
Senators have outline for drug price program, but vote is elusive • (It's not unusual for price controls to have unintended consequences.)
Science/Technology Policy — Committee: House, Senate
Senators unveil bipartisan chatbot safety bill (S. 3062)
Congress — Committees: House, Senate
Appeal to God: Members of Congress Join to Pray for Nation
Trump calls on Republicans to use 'nuclear option' and get rid of Senate filibuster • Senate Republicans have long opposed move to gut legislative filibuster • Speaker Johnson warns of consequences of nuking filibuster: traditionally, very important safeguard • Thune’s support for filibuster 'unchanged'
Late disclosure of House Republican Conference Chair McClain's husband's tax-deferred account stock trades Violated the STOCK Act: The stocks were worth between $360,000 and $900,000 and up to $450,000 worth of sales during June of stock in government contractor Palantir Technologies.
Scalise Thanks Chief of Staff for 15 Years of Service, Announces Eric Zulkosky as New Chief of Staff
Pirro: third suspect in death of congressional intern has been arrested
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Committee Activity — Meetings: 14 • Reports: 3 • Legislative action this week:
All committee legislative action • Senate (Subcommittees) • House (Subcommittees)
Senate wants answers from NBA commissioner on gambling scandal: The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is requesting information from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver about how he plans to address a massive gambling scandal that rocked the league as it opened it season this month.
Senate panel approves step on new FBI headquarters plan (Meeting, Congress.gov)
Senate delays confirmation hearing for Trump surgeon general pick Casey Means as she goes into labor: It is unclear as to when the hearing will be rescheduled
House Judiciary accuses Biden FBI of retaliating against whistleblower: The special agent blew the whistle on the bureau's alleged misuse of "law-enforcement authorities," which prompted the bureau to prolong his security clearance evaluation process, and the FBI asked Emily Fertitta to participate in a two-day interview.
House Oversight drops schedule for transcribed interviews with online forum reps on radicalization: The general counsel for Steam will go first on Nov. 4, followed by Discord on Nov. 12, Reddit on Nov. 18 and Twitch on Nov. 20.
Comer opens probe into whether UNRWA obstructed US oversight into staff's alleged ties to Hamas: Comer noted that the United States has been the biggest contributor to the UN, including by supplying 22% of its general budget, 25% of its peacekeeping budget, and 40% of its humanitarian budget. The contributions includes funds for the UNRWA.
Floor Outlook
House of Representatives — Rules Committee: Legislation
House next looking at end-of-January CR: One House Republican familiar with leadership conversations said that members should brace for a jam-packed schedule when the chamber returns.
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3 p.m., Monday, November 3, 2025
Program for Monday: After the transaction of any morning business (not to extend beyond 5:30 p.m.), Senate will vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Eric Chunyee Tung, of California, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit.
Oct 30: 51-47, Senate agreed to bring debate to a close on the nomination of Joshua D. Dunlap to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the First Circuit.
Thursday, 10/30/2025, Senate began consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 5371, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026.
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The House meets in Pro Forma sessions during district work periods.
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