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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is surrounded by congressional reporters looking for updates on a plan to end the 38-day government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 7, 2025. | Scott Applewhite/AP | SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN: The Senate is wrangling to find a way out of the shutdown as it stretches well into day 38. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is threatening weekend work for the first time since the shutdown began in hopes of forcing an end to the standoff, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney reports. But no breakthrough seems imminent. Thune exploded on the floor this past hour after Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) objected to an attempt by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to unanimously pass legislation paying federal employees working during the shutdown as well as active-duty troops. “This isn’t leverage,” Thune shouted. “This is the lives of the American people.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is set to come to the floor and lay out the Democratic proposal for ending the shutdown in the coming hour. But hopes that briefly erupted yesterday that a shutdown-ending deal was drawing closer have now faded away. Thune said the Senate would vote soon on Johnson’s worker pay bill, but there are no immediate plans to try and advance the House-passed CR or any other spending legislation. “We will continue to proceed forward in hopes at some point that we’ll get a chance to vote — whether that’s today or tomorrow — on a package of bills that we have been negotiating with Democrats,” he said. Yet Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) sounds unsure if the weekend work would be worthwhile. “There's a lot of people that have got other plans in terms of things they need to do as well and if they're going to come here and sit, they're not going to be very happy,” Rounds told Jordain. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — The view from the White House: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke to Lara Trump for an interview on Fox News’ “My View with Lara Trump” at 9 p.m. tomorrow. Leavitt said Democrats are holding out on ending the shutdown “because they wanna play games with Donald Trump and they’re trying to pit the blame on him. And it’s not working, by the way.” Democrats have “totally lost the plot,” Leavitt said. “And now you look at the grave consequences of what is happening.” Watch the clip SNAP decision: The scuttle over SNAP is far from over. A day after a federal judge blasted the Trump administration for politicizing the nation’s biggest anti-hunger program, DOJ lawyers are racing to block his order to pay full benefits, POLITICO’s Marcia Brown reports. The DOJ attorneys claimed in their filing that the judge’s order “has thrust the Judiciary into the ongoing shutdown negotiations and may well have the effect of extending the lapse in appropriations, exacerbating the problem that the court was misguidedly trying to mitigate.” Meanwhile, even in deep-red Louisiana, frustration is rising in Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, WaPo’s Cleve Wootson Jr. and Lydia Sidhom report. Residents feel the pinch but hesitate on who’s to blame. “Johnson’s district — a reliably red slice of western Louisiana — has one of the highest usage rates of the Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program in the nation, with nearly 1 in 5 households here relying on benefits. But in interviews, several people who rely on SNAP and voted for Johnson and President Donald Trump did not fault the Republican leaders.” On the ground: “We followed four Americans as they navigated a week without SNAP,” by WaPo: “Washington Post reporters fanned out this week to food banks and grocery stores across the nation to document the personal impacts of the delay. Here are some of the people — a cosmetology student in Illinois, a mother of four in Colorado, a barber in Houston and a home health care aide in Virginia — all trying to fill holes in a fraying social safety net that has become a fixture in the lives of many low-income Americans.”
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Explore our ongoing work. | | | | THE NUCLEAR OPTION: Meanwhile, OMB Director Russ Vought ratcheted up the filibuster fight, throwing his weight behind President Donald Trump’s call to scrap the Senate filibuster. “It’s time,” Vought said on X, reposting the White House’s call to “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” And Trump was out with a new push today: “If we do it, we will never lose the midterms. And we will never lose the general election,” Trump told reporters at the White House. Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop us a line at rumansky-castro@politico.com and birvine@politico.com. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Learning lessons: On tonight’s episode of C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire” with Playbook’s Dasha Burns, two former chairs of the party apparatuses detail how they built their operations around the success of the opposite party. “We learned something from the Republicans, especially in the Trump era,” former DNC Chair Donna Brazile said. “You have to go out and find the influencers. Find people at the grass-root level.” Former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said Republicans took a good deal from former President Barack Obama: “Getting involved, getting in the ground game,” she said, “how do we get into communities, how do we engage voters?” Watch the clip Speaking of influencers: “How Gavin Newsom built an online influencer machine,” by POLITICO’s Melanie Mason
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President Donald Trump meets with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Nov. 7, 2025, in Washington. | Evan Vucci/AP | 1. TRUMP WELCOMES ORBÁN: Trump sat down to lunch with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán at the White House today where the president said the White House is open to exempting Hungary from sanctions for their purchases of Russian oil, POLITICO’s Diana Nerozzi and Ben Johansen report. “Sure, we’re looking at it, because it’s very difficult for [Hungary] to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said. Ahead of the sitdown, Trump praised the Hungarian leader as a “very special person” adding he’s “run a really great country. And he's got no crime, he’s got no problems like some countries do. But uh, probably has a couple of things that I don’t know about, maybe that I don’t want to know about.” “Orbán has been one the most outspoken European leaders against the sanctions, arguing that sanctions would cripple his country’s energy capacities. Hungary relies on Russian oil for 86 percent of its supply, a number that has grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022,” Diana and Ben write. The PM is also “coming with sweeteners — for example, an offer of buying U.S. nuclear fuel and technology.” 2. UP IN THE AIR: The FAA officially cancelled hundreds of flights across the U.S. today to relieve air traffic controllers overtaxed by the government shutdown with more disruptions expected in the coming days. So far, more than 800 flights canceled nationwide today across 40 airports, per the AP. For now, the nation’s travel hubs are still operating relatively normally, with “the vast majority” of routes still having at least some service and cancellations “concentrated on short-distance flights,” per NYT. More to come? Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Breitbart News this morning that many 15 percent of flights could be cut in the coming days if the shutdown continues. Duffy also told CBS this morning that safety is his “number one job” when it comes to the cuts, though he told reporters that he’d share the data fueling the decisions at a later date: “Right now it's about making the right decisions at the right time to keep people safe.” 3. ON DEFENSE: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to announce a slew of changes to the way the Pentagon purchases and transfers weaponry today during a speech at the National War College, Reuters’ Mike Stone reports. According to a draft memo, the restructuring is aimed at addressing what officials describe as “unacceptably slow” procurement by cutting through DOD red tape. The plan will create “Portfolio Acquisition Executives who will have direct authority over major weapons programs to eliminate bureaucracy” while “commercial products will become the default acquisition approach, streamlining the solicitation process.” Watch the comments via C-SPAN Up in arms: Despite pushback from diplomats and the U.S. ambassador, the Pentagon authorized the transfer of sniper rifles to a Brazilian police unit earlier this year which “played a central role in a raid last week that left 121 people dead,” Reuters’ Gram Slattery and Fabio Teixeira scoop. | | | | Washington is fixated on the shutdown fallout — and POLITICO is tracking every move.
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➡️ Sign up for West Wing Playbook | | | | | 4. ROCKING THE BOAT: As the White House ramps up its pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and continues a series strikes on alleged drug boats, the Venezuelan opposition party — led by María Corina Machado — has cautiously embraced Trump’s approach, WaPo’s Susannah George writes. The opposition “has largely avoided criticizing” Trump’s ongoing boat strikes. Instead, “Machado says targeting Latin American drug networks is necessary to ‘cut the inflow of criminal money’ to the Maduro regime.”On the ground in the region: In a moving account from Güiria, Venezuela, AP’s Regina Garcia Cano reports in intricate detail on the lives of four of the men said to have been killed in the strikes: “One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver. … It has been difficult for relatives to learn much about their dead loved ones because criminal gangs and the Venezuelan government have long repressed the flow of information in the region.” 5. SCHOOL DAZE: “Cornell Strikes Deal With White House to Restore Frozen Funding,” by Bloomberg’s Liam Knox and Greg Ryan: “The New York school said it had agreed to invest $30 million over three years in agricultural research, as well as pay an additional $30 million directly to the United States related to ending pending claims of wrongdoing.” 6. FOR YOUR RADAR: “DOJ Miami Office Readies Conspiracy Probe Into Trump Enemies,” by Bloomberg’s Ben Penn: “The South Florida US attorney’s office is recruiting prosecutors and restructuring its chain of command in preparation for a grand jury investigation expected to target former Justice Department officials and others involved in cases against President Donald Trump. … The exact scope of the grand jury effort — which one of the individuals described as ‘special counsel oversight’ — remains unclear.”
| | | | Sponsored Survey WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: Please take a 1-minute survey about one of our advertising partners. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at the Rubell Museum yesterday for the third installment of “YouTube in Session,” which was dedicated to recognizing the service of American veterans: Shawn Ryan, Sean Parnell, Sam Feist, Anne Summerhays, Zack Baddorf, Sarah Drory, Sonja Thrasher, Brigid Mary McDonnell, Rachel Dumke, Alec Emmert, David Bedard, Cole Clark, Joel Valdez, John Wilson, Roxana Thompson, Monika Konrad, Eric Evans, William Thomas, Caleb Strother, Rylan Crosby, Joseph Arbie, Phil Bartel, Hunter Koski, Nathan Brand, Jeff Naft, Andrew Meyer, Carly Eason, Josh Blumenfeld, Kate Bernard and Alexandra Veitch. — SPOTTED at an event last night at Cafe Milano for Equal Citizens, Larry Lessig’s nonprofit, to discuss its legal case seeking to transform campaign finance laws: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Jim Acosta, Russell Ball, Michelle Cottle, Andrew Egger, Thomas Friedman, Will Gordon, Anne Kim, Liz Landers, Dana Milbank, Matt Miller, Norman Ornstein, Steve Ricchetti, Rebecca Rosen, Neera Tanden, Ishaan Tharoor, Michael Tomasky, Richard Vague, Juan Williams and Maya Wiley. — Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan and former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo headlined a fireside chat last night at the residence of Juleanna Glover, moderated by Education Reform Now CEO Jorge Elorza. The event was co-hosted by Education Reform Now, The Leadership Now Project, and The Hunt Institute. SPOTTED: Omani Ambassador Talal Alrahbi, Matthew Kaminski, Diana Negroponte, Cathy Merrill, Robert Allbritton, Katherine Bradley, Nina Rees, David Chavern, Conrad Kiechel, Jonathan Chait, Lois Romano and Kinney Zalesne. — SPOTTED last night at the White House Historical Association’s annual gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Al Roker, Ken Burns, Renée Fleming, Michael Feinstein, Patti LaBelle and Stewart McLaurin. TRANSITION — Asa St. Lawrence is now political director at ACC Action. He previously worked for Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ (R-Iowa) reelect. BONUS BIRTHDAY: ACC’s Patrick Burland Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
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