President Donald Trump opened a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Thursday by speaking about the ceasefire deal and his plans to travel to the Middle East.

Trump also said he has been invited to speak before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, during the trip. He said he would be the first U.S. president to address the Knesset, but that’s not accurate. Former president George W. Bush spoke before the parliamentary body in May 2008.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff as well as Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, landed in Israel Thursday night, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Latest:

Another day in the Senate, another failed vote.

Senators declined for the seventh time to advance to a final vote on a stopgap funding bill. The 54-45 vote tally fell along the same lines it has since the start of the shutdown, with three members of the Democratic Caucus voting in favor and one Republican voting against.

Frustration is running high at the Capitol without signs of significant progress towards ending their impasse. Democrats are demanding that Congress take up an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies before they vote to end the shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested on Thursday that the promise of a vote on expiring health care subsidies “might be an off ramp” as Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen government until the tax credits are extended.

“If there are eight or 10 Democrats that would vote to open up, that might be an off-ramp,” Thune told Semafor.

It is unclear if Democrats would accept an offer for a vote without more robust negotiations or a predetermined outcome. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that “we need to solve the problem” as the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year.

In a moment of levity at a Thursday hearing for a lawsuit over National Guard deployment in Chicago, Judge April Perry expressed surprise over prosecutors’ claims that a federal agent had his beard “ripped off” during protests.

“Ok so you have some facial hair,” she said quizzically, gesturing emphatically at the attorney’s beard as audience members laughed. “How does that happen? Was, was it a real beard?”

A judge’s questioning of an attorney representing the federal government at a Thursday hearing offered clues and added to confusion over the potential breadth of the National Guard’s presence in the Chicago area.

Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton repeatedly dodged a judge’s questions about what National Guard members were being trained to do in Illinois and where they would be sent.

“This is a dynamic situation that could change,” Hamilton said.

When Judge April Perry pressed prosecutors on if National Guard troops would only be stationed around federal buildings or also in neighborhoods, schools and hospitals, Hamilton responded that they are “not limited to just protecting federal buildings” and can be used to “protect ICE agents” on the field during immigration enforcements.”

He said this is “consistent to how the National Guard was used in California.”

Attorneys representing the federal government and the state of Illinois sparred over their characterizations of protests outside a Chicago-area ICE facility during a hearing for a lawsuit alleging Trump exceeded his authority in deploying the National Guard.

Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton described officers being injured after being kicked or punched and referred to protesters as “rioters.”

Christopher Wells, an attorney representing the state of Illinois, said the federal government is wrongfully using largely peaceful protests to justify a National Guard presence. Wells also cited an Oct. 5 email from federal agents at the Broadview ICE facility that he says claimed “the situation was under control.”

A lawyer with the Illinois attorney general’s office called on a judge Thursday to block National Guard deployment in the Chicago area, calling it a constitutional crisis.

Christopher Wells, an attorney representing the state of Illinois, also chastised the federal government for ignoring the legal challenge when it sent troops overnight to a Chicago-area immigration enforcement building, despite the judge urging them to “hold off until Thursday.”

The city and state are suing Trump, arguing he exceeded his authority in deploying the National Guard.

“The defendants plowed ahead anyway,” Wells said at a Thursday hearing. “Now, troops are here. Tomorrow, they’re being sent to this courthouse.”

The days ahead could be politically tricky for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has been shadowed by an ongoing corruption trial as he navigated the Gaza war. His grip on power has been largely contingent on the support of hardline, far-right coalition partners who had been urging him to continue to prosecute operations on Hamas until the group was eliminated.

But Trump suggested Netanyahu’s political standing has been bolstered by the ceasefire and hostage deal.

“I think he’s very popular right now. He’s much more popular today than he was five days ago,” Trump said of Netanyahu. “I can tell you right now people shouldn’t run against him. Five days ago, might not have been a bad idea.”

Trump said he had “just heard” that China had put new export controls on rare earths ahead of his scheduled meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, adding that he had yet to be briefed on the matter.

Trump said that the U.S. might have to stop importing so much from China, adding that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would address any restrictions on the difficult-to-mine metals that are needed from China for an array of industrial products.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to handle it,” Trump said.

The president has also said that he expects “more and more opening up” of American soybeans being sold to China as part of his talks with Xi. Sales of U.S. soybeans to China have dropped as both countries are jockeying for an advantage in trade talks that Trump’s import taxes caused.

The U.S. president says he has been invited to speak before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, when he travels to the Middle East in the coming days.

“If they would like me to, I will do it,” Trump said, noting that he had been invited to speak.

He said he would be the first U.S. president to address the Knesset, but that’s not accurate. Former president George W. Bush spoke before the parliamentary body in May 2008.

The vice president was praising Trump for the U.S.-brokered deal and then, in an apparent attempt to pivot to discussing domestic matters and the federal government shutdown, joked that Trump benefitted in the negotiations in Gaza because “he also, of course, knew one of the most famous Palestinians in the world, Chuck Schumer.”

Trump has for more than year used the term “Palestinian” as a slur against his U.S. political opponents, deploying it during the 2024 election against then-President Joe Biden and more recently against Schumer, the U.S. Senate minority leader who is Jewish.

Trump last month gathered with the leaders of eight Arab or predominantly Muslim countries on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to discuss strategy on ending the Israel-Hamas conflict and a plan for post-war Gaza.

Days after that meeting, Trump met at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the plan and the two leaders agreed to Trump’s 20-point proposal to end the war.

Rubio noted that Trump’s negotiators then stepped up their efforts through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt to get Hamas on board. Trump, meanwhile, held “extraordinary” phone calls and meetings with world leaders “that required a high degree of intensity and commitment” to get the deal to the finish line.

“I think what’s important to understand is that yesterday what happened was really a human story,” Rubio said. He added, “Perhaps the entire story will be told about the events of yesterday. But, suffice it to say, it’s not an exaggeration, none of it would have been possible without the president of the United States being involved.”

As New York fights in court to restore $34 million in counterterrorism grants recently cut by the Department of Homeland Security, Gov. Kathy Hochul warned Thursday that “our safety has already been compromised.

”The federal money, Hochul said, had long been used to pay for surveillance cameras on the subways, added police patrols and cyber security measures.“

They are defunding the police, full stop,” added Hochul, a Democrat, describing the move as a “punitive gesture to punish blue states like New York.”

The Trump administration previously announced $187 million in funding cuts for New York’s law enforcement and counterterrorism — but reversed course and restored the funding following bipartisan outcry.

A spokesperson for DHS didn’t return a request for comment.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker says the Trump administration’s deployment of troops in the state is a “huge mistake.”

The two-term Democrat spoke to reporters Thursday as a court hearing challenging the National Guard’s recent arrival in Illinois was underway. Illinois and Chicago have sued saying the military is unnecessary.

President Donald Trump has portrayed Chicago as lawless and crime-ridden, even as crime has steadily dropped in line with national trends.

“He wants everybody to think that he is bringing down crime,” Pritzker said. “(He’s) doing nothing of the sort.”

It’s not enough to award President Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for his administration’s effort to bring about an end to the war in Gaza, according to the nation’s leading Jewish Republican advocacy group.

“President Trump shouldn’t just win the Nobel Prize. It should be renamed after him,” the Republican Jewish Coalition says in a statement.

“After 734 days, this comprehensive agreement ushers in a new dawn for the Middle East, reaffirms the unbreakable alliance between the United States and Israel, and advances trailblazing opportunities for expanding the circle of peace throughout the region.”

The Homeland Security secretary said her department is looking to purchase buildings in the Chicago to operate out of despite resistance form local officials.

“We’re gonna not back off. In fact, we’re doubling down,” Noem said.

The mayor of Chicago has signed an order banning federal immigration agents from using city owned property.

Noem said department was also looking at purchasing buildings in Portland.

“If we have to do it the hard way in Portland and Chicago, we will,” she said.

The president opened a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Thursday by speaking about the ceasefire deal and his plans to travel to the Middle East.

Trump said he will be going to Egypt for a signing ceremony. It was not clear if he would be traveling elsewhere on the trip.

He said it is a complicated process for the hostages to be released from Gaza, but it will be happening Monday or Tuesday. He said there will also be the remains of about 28 hostages to be brought back, but he didn’t offer details or timing on that.

One person who was not present at the president’s Cabinet meeting on Thursday was Mike Waltz, the newly-confirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

That’s because the White House has decided that the position will not be Cabinet-rank, according to two congressional officials familiar with the matter.

Whether the ambassador role is in the Cabinet is something that fluctuates between administrations. For former President Joe Biden, he included the position in his Cabinet. Trump, in his first term, downgraded the position to non-Cabinet level in 2018.

When Trump announced his slate of Cabinet picks in January, he had included Elise Stefanik, who eventually withdrew from consideration, on the list.

Republican Winsome Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger will likely blame the other’s party for the chaos in Washington at their gubernatorial debate Thursday night. Virginia is one of two states choosing governors this November, a bellwether for the party in power across the Potomac River ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Washington politics are especially relevant this year in Virginia, as Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and Congress’ shutdown impasse have an outsize impact in a state filled with federal employees and military personnel.

▶ Read more about what Virginia politics may foretell

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is facing a second lawsuit over whether abortion pills should remain available via telehealth.

Louisiana filed a challenge Monday to regulations of the mifepristone, one of the drugs usually used together for abortion. The state contends that allowing telehealth prescriptions violates the state’s right to enforce its abortion ban — and that it opens the door to women being coerced into abortion.

The suit echoes one from another group of GOP-led states that was recently moved from a judge in Texas to federal court in St. Louis.

Anti-abortion groups have expressed anger over the approval of another generic version of mifepristone. The availability of the pills is a reason abortion numbers haven’t declined despite bans in most GOP-controlled states.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo Thursday.

Witkoff and Kushner arrived from Sharm el Sheikh, where the ceasefire deal was brokered between Israel and Hamas.

In a statement after the meeting, the president’s office welcomed the ceasefire agreement and called for “to be signed as soon as possible.”

All countries want to end the war, the statement said, and Egypt will continue to work with the United States to implement the plan.

El-Sissi also reiterated his invitation for Trump to visit Egypt to “witness the signing of this historic agreement in a ceremony befitting the occasion.”

Pope Leo XIV has confirmed he’s in perfect lockstep with his predecessor Pope Francis on matters of social and economic injustice.

His 100-page teaching document released Thursday traces Christianity’s constant concern for poor people, from Biblical citations and the teaching of church fathers to the preaching of recent popes about caring for migrants, prisoners and victims of human trafficking.

“God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest,” Leo writes.

Francis’ criticism of capitalism angered many conservative and wealthy Catholics, especially in the United States.

“The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on,’” Leo recently told Crux, a Catholic site.

▶ Read more of Leo’s conclusions about what it means to be Christian

All 24 other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor have signed on to a court filing supporting California and Oregon’s legal challenge to the Portland deployment.

“By calling forth troops when there is no invasion to repel, no rebellion to suppress, and when state and local law enforcement are fully able to execute the law,” the filing with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says, “the President flouts the vision of our Founders, undermines the rule of law, and sets a chilling precedent that puts the constitutional rights of all Americans at risk.”

Johnson responded to the military wife by saying he’s sorry to hear about her predicament.

“I am angry because of situations just like yours,” he added, and went on to say that the House voted to pay the troops as part of a stop-gap spending bill that passed three weeks ago but has been held up in the Senate.

The top House Republican also claimed that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer would hold up a separate bill in the Senate to pay the troops, so “it’s not a lawmaking exercise” to hold a vote on that issue in the House.

Republican leader Mike Johnson is taking some tough questions from Americans on C-SPAN, none tougher than from a Virginia woman who pleaded for the House to pass legislation enabling military pay during the shutdown.

The woman, identified as Samantha, said her husband is serving and that if the military doesn’t get paid on Oct. 15th, “my children do not get the medication that’s needed for them to live their life because we live paycheck to paycheck.”

“My kids could die,” she said. “You could stop this.”

She accused Johnson of refusing to call back the House, “just for a show.”

Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Illinois faces legal scrutiny at a pivotal court hearing with a small number of troops already protecting federal property in the Chicago area.

U.S. District Judge April Perry will hear arguments Thursday over the state’s request to block the deployment. An “element” of the 200 Texas Guard troops sent to Illinois started working in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Northern Command, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details not made public.

The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.

▶ Read more about the federal court challenge of deployments in Illinois

— By Sudhin Thanawala and Konstantin Toropin

A president looking to seize power beyond the executive branch. A Congress controlled by Republicans unwilling to directly defy him. A minority party looking for any way to fight back.

The dynamic has left Washington in a stalemate on Thursday's the ninth day of the government shutdown, and some lawmakers are venting their frustration as they seek traction without the trust that's typically the foundation of any bipartisan deal.

Groups of lawmakers — huddled over dinners, on phone calls, and in private meetings — have tried to brainstorm ways out of the standoff that has shuttered government offices and threatened to leave hundreds of thousands of federal employees without a scheduled payday. But relations between the parties are badly broken.

“We’re in an environment where we need more than a handshake,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat

▶ Read more about lawmakers’ frustrations over the shutdown

Trump’s bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize has drawn added attention to the annual guessing game over who its next laureate will be.

Longtime Nobel watchers say Trump’s prospects remain remote despite a flurry of high-profile nominations and some notable foreign policy interventions for which he has taken personal credit.

Experts say the Norwegian Nobel Committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals. Trump’s own record might even work against him, they said, citing his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions and his disregard for global climate change concerns.

Still, the U.S. leader has repeatedly sought the Nobel spotlight since his first term, most recently telling United Nations delegates late last month, “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

A person cannot nominate themselves.

▶ Read more about this year’s prize

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that alleged drug-smuggling boats targeted by the U.S. military in a series of fatal strikes were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

As bipartisan frustration with the strikes mounts, the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday voted down a war powers resolution that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly about the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

The administration has not explained why it has blown up vessels in some cases, while carrying out the typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs at other times, one of the officials said.

▶ Read more about the lack of evidence supporting deadly strikes on Caribbean boaters

Trump on Wednesday said the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration and crime crackdown in the nation’s third-largest city. The officials said they would not be deterred.

He made the comment in a social media post, the latest example of his brazen calls for his Democratic opponents to be prosecuted or locked up.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, when asked what crimes the president believed Pritzker and Johnson had committed, failed to identify any, but she said they “have blood on their hands” and pointed to Chicago Police Department reports that at least five people were killed and 25 shot over the weekend.

National Guard troops from Texas are positioned outside Chicago, despite a lawsuit by the state and city to block the deployment.

The troops’ mission is not clear, but the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.

▶ Read more about Trump’s comments