• Schumer Shutdown update: The clean continuing resolution to fund the government failed to pass the Senate for the 11th time on Monday. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Independent Angus King voted to pass the CR, while deficit hawk Rand Paul voted with the Democrats against it. Seven senators, including John Fetterman, did not vote, as shown by the final tally of 50-43. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated his position by pinning the blame on Republicans, while Majority Leader John Thune pointed out that when it comes to the expiring ObamaCare credits, “Republicans, in fact, never had anything to do with it.” The government has now been shut down for three weeks, and it appears the shutdown will continue indefinitely until Schumer relents or loses control of his caucus.

• Student loan forgiveness under Trump: The Department of Education has reached an agreement with the American Federation of Teachers to restart a student loan forgiveness plan under the Income-Contingent Repayment and Pay as You Earn program. This decision will impact some 2.5 million enrollees. “The Biden Administration’s illegal attempts at mass student loan forgiveness impacted all of the Department’s income-driven repayment programs, including Income-Based Repayment,” a DOE spokesman explained. “The courts intervened to stop their illegal efforts, but that also impacted Department systems and prevented us from processing lawful loan discharges. Thanks to the Trump Administration’s efforts to separate out the illegal loan cancellation schemes, we are able to process legitimate loan cancellations once again.” This decision marks a shift from the Trump administration’s efforts to end all programs that transfer student loan balances to taxpayers.

• Secret Service investigates hunting stand overlooking Palm Beach airport runway: The Secret Service discovered a hunting stand with a clear view of the runway Air Force One uses when President Trump visits the Palm Beach area. The stand could have provided an assassin with a clear view of the president disembarking from Air Force One. No one was found in or near the hunting stand, and the Secret Service has dismantled the stand and taken it to a lab for investigation. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino spoke on Monday about the investigation, which the FBI has taken the lead on, highlighting the changes the Secret Service has been forced to make after the two unsuccessful attempts on Donald Trump’s life last year and the September 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk.

• Court green-lights National Guard deployment to Portland: On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Donald Trump’s federalizing of Oregon National Guard troops and deploying them to Portland to protect ICE agents and federal facilities was within his authority. The court’s decision lifts U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut’s order blocking the deployment. The court noted, “The statute delegates the authority to make that determination to the President and does not limit the facts and circumstances that the President may consider in doing so.” In short, it is the president, not the courts, who decides whether and when a situation requires the deployment of the National Guard. With the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Trump’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago last week, the U.S. Supreme Court will need to settle this matter.

• Texas investigates 2,700 potential noncitizens on its voter rolls: The Trump administration has opened up the federal citizenship records in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’s SAVE database to individual states, which the Texas secretary of state called a “game changer.” A cross-reference of the SAVE database with Texas’s 18 million registered voters identified 2,724 potential noncitizens across the 254 counties. The information has been shared with those counties, where the registrar will send a notice to the flagged individuals, who then have 30 days to provide proof of citizenship or be removed from the voter rolls. Any noncitizens who are found to have voted will have their cases referred to the Texas attorney general’s office for potential prosecution. This action comes after Texas has already removed more than one million voters over the last three years who were illegal, dead, or had moved to another state.

• Deportations record: Over 500,000 illegal aliens have been deported since Donald Trump took office, putting his administration “on pace to shatter historic records,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin recently observed. McLaughlin noted that combining the deportations with the number of illegal aliens who have voluntarily exited the country raises the total removals to more than two million. Furthermore, some 485,000 illegal aliens have been arrested since Trump took office. The problem of illegal entry has also significantly decreased by 99%. McLaughlin stated, “Illegal aliens are hearing our message to leave now or face the consequence. Migrants are now even turning back before they reach our borders.” Criminal illegal aliens remain ICE’s primary focus, with Trump’s DHS on pace to deport some 600,000 illegals by the end of his first year.

• New cars pass $50K average: Kelley Blue Book reports that in September, the average price of a new car reached a record high of $50,080. Senior economist Charlie Chesbrough at Cox Automotive, the owner of Kelley Blue Book, calls the $50K threshold a “milestone.” Chesbrough added that the post-COVID market has seen “a big run-up in vehicle prices,” which has driven subprime buyers out of a market that was already catering more and more to the affluent. Adding to the problem, 28.1% of trade-ins in the third quarter had negative equity; the remaining debt on the cars exceeded their value. More than 19% of borrowers had a monthly payment of $1,000, and Edmunds reports that loan plans of 84 months or longer represented 22% of financed new-car purchases in the third quarter. Most Americans may need to get used to buying used.

• New CO clinic offers third-trimester abortions for any reason: In a landscape already littered with abortion clinics, a new one has opened in Boulder, Colorado, for all-trimester abortion “care,” offering abortions up to 34 weeks of gestation. That’s 10 weeks after the baby can survive outside the womb. Reproductive Health, Inclusive Care, Support and Empowerment (RISE) has become one of an estimated five U.S. clinics that provide this option. Clearly, the baby’s care is not included, nor is his or her life empowered. In fact, this clinic does not even require a reason, such as severe fetal abnormalities, for terminating the life of a healthy baby. Nine states and the District of Columbia now allow “abortion on demand with no gestational limits,” says Kelsey Pritchard, spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “These states with lax laws encourage abortion tourism and even hand out taxpayer-funded grants benefiting late-term abortion businesses.”

• Bible sales see a turning point: Since the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last month, sales of Bibles across America have jumped. Roughly 2.4 million Bibles were sold in September, marking a 36% increase over September 2024. Furthermore, September’s Bible sales were the highest of the year thus far, and Bible sales have increased 11% over the first nine months of 2025 compared to last year. Brenna Connor, an analyst at Circana BookScan, observed, “September brought a wave of troubling events — violence, geopolitical tensions, and economic uncertainty — underscoring a pattern: In times of crisis, more people turn to faith for comfort and support.” Kirk was front and center about his Christian faith, posting on X just weeks before his assassination, “We must seek Christ first, and our national and cultural resurgence will naturally follow.”

Headlines

• AWS services recover after daylong outage hits major sites (CNBC)

• Comey seeks to have criminal case dismissed for “vindictive” prosecution (National Review)

• Supreme Court picks up marijuana gun rights case (Newsweek)

• Kremlin rejects Trump proposal to freeze Ukraine front lines (NY Post)

• U.S. to expedite nuclear-powered subs to Australia that will sit near China’s doorstep (Fox News)

• U.S. and Australia sign critical minerals agreement (CNBC)

• National average gas prices fall below $3 per gallon, lowest since 2020 (Washington Examiner)

• Japan makes history as Takaichi becomes country’s first woman prime minister (CNBC)

• Humor: Here are all the things accomplished by last weekend’s “No Kings” protests (Babylon Bee)

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