Morning Brief: Shutdown Fallout Mounts & Congress Probes Political Violence

The consequences of the government shutdown rear their ugly heads, a congressional hearing to examine the origins of political violence, and Trump continues his Asia tour as the Left melts down over his East Wing renovations.

It’s Tuesday, October 28, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire:

Government Shutdown Repercussions

Topline: The government shutdown is dragging on, and pressure is mounting on Democrats to end it.

About 13,000 air traffic controllers are set to miss their first paycheck on Tuesday, which is bound to make a bad situation significantly worse. Some reports say air traffic controllers are taking second jobs as DoorDash drivers to supplement their income.

Roughly 18,700 flights were delayed on Sunday. On Monday, more than 3,000 flights were delayed, and more than 100 were canceled. Airports have become a flash point of the shutdown. Air traffic controllers and TSA agents were some of the first employees to see their pay disrupted, and Americans are generally united in hating flight delays.

Uh-oh, Democrats: A couple of major airline pilot unions last week called for an end to the shutdown, and that turned out to be only a precursor of what was to come. Now, the largest union representing 800,000 federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, has issued a statement calling for the Senate to pass a continuing resolution to end the shutdown.

Union President Everett Kelley said it’s time for leaders to focus on solving problems for the American people rather than on who is going to get the blame for the shutdown. He is calling for back pay for every single employee who has been forced to stay home.

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AFGE is a Democratic stalwart. It pushed to stop the Trump administration from making federal workers return to the office, it endorsed Joe Biden for president, and just last week, it blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for keeping the government closed. But while this statement doesn’t lay the blame on one party in particular, the union calls for a clean CR, which Republicans have put forward over a dozen times and Democrats keep rejecting.

Oh SNAP: In addition to flight delays and organized labor turning against them, Democrats also have to contend with the fact that food stamps benefits will lapse starting on Friday.

The expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits will impact 40 million people. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said on Monday that not only is this affecting airports, but that some states, such as his own, will now have to be forced to cut off SNAP benefits—an example of SNAP becoming one of the big talking points this week.

Food stamps are not an explicitly partisan issue, and lawmakers from both parties will have to explain this disruption in benefits to their constituents. Democrats are working to shift the blame to Republicans. The California Department of Social Services is texting residents, blaming the imminent SNAP disruption on Trump and the GOP.

Republicans dismissed the attack, as California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is using taxpayer money to spread political propaganda. But each new disruption is likely going to hit Democrats harder than Republicans, increasing the likelihood that some members of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s caucus break ranks in the coming days.

Hearing On Politically Violent Attacks

Topline: The assassination of Charlie Kirk has prompted a congressional hearing for Tuesday, organized by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), on “Politically Violent Attacks.” The hearing seeks to examine the origins of political violence and extremism, which have come mainly from the Left in recent years. 

Morning Wire spoke with Sen. Schmitt and Michael Knowles, host of “The Michael Knowles Show” on The Daily Wire, about the nature of political violence in the United States today. (The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Morning Wire: Senator, you’ve organized this hearing, and this issue is obviously a high priority. What are the goals of the proceedings today?

Schmitt: The assassination of Charlie Kirk brought left-wing political violence really front and center, and I think it needs to be exposed. This isn’t a one-off thing. This is sort of an ideology that’s taken hold now. When you have 25% of those who describe themselves as “very liberal” believe political violence is justified, over 55% of those on the left believe it’s at least somewhat justifiable to assassinate President Trump, there’s a problem. And I think if we’re ever going to get on the other side of this and get to healing – where we can say, free speech, yes, political violence, no – we have to expose the truth, which is that this is overwhelmingly coming from one side.

Morning Wire: Senator thanks for joining us. Among those testifying at the hearing today is Daily Wire host Michael Knowles. Michael, good to have you back on. You obviously were invited to this hearing for specific reasons – tell us about that, and what you plan to address.

Knowles: I was invited largely because I was the target of leftist violence on a few occasions, but of organized leftist violence, specifically two years ago. This was at the University of Pittsburgh. I was doing a debate on the topic of transgenderism, and there was a large demonstration. They burnt me in effigy, lit the street on fire, and then two Antifa operatives showed up and threw smoke bombs at the attendees and the police. And then threw a large explosive firework at the police and seriously injured one female police officer, gave her life-altering injuries that took her out of work for at least a year – and also injured other police officers as well. … Happily, there was one intrepid FBI agent in the crowd, and he had noticed the uptick in left-wing violence at these conservative speaker events. … It was only because he really pushed this up through the DOJ that any charges were brought at all. … So these are two people who are members of an anarchist cell, part of the Torch Antifa Network. The guy had set off TSA scanners with explosive material multiple times. It’s an illustrative example of violence because if you look up left-wing ideologically motivated violence in any of the databases that concern it or at the federal government level, you won’t find it. It won’t turn up. That just doesn’t exist, and this is true for a lot of examples of left-wing violence, perhaps most notably the BLM riots, which are just simply not classified as left-wing violence. … So we’re going to call attention to that fact, as well as to the fact that now even the honest liberals can not hold up the lie that the violence is coming from the right.

Morning Wire: What do you think the federal government’s role should be in addressing politically motivated violence — is there a line which they should not cross?

Knowles: I don’t think we’re at fear of over-policing left-wing terrorists, okay? I think we’re barely policing them at all. And so then the question becomes, well, what tools are at the federal government’s disposal? And there are plenty. You know, President Trump has said that he will classify Antifa as a domestic terror organization. Now, the government is more limited in its resources to go after domestic terrorists as opposed to foreign terrorists. However, we’ve done it before. The federal government has successfully dismantled the Ku Klux Klan, has successfully dismantled organized crime using all sorts of statutes; going after them for RICO, for conspiracy, for all manner of things all the way up to tax evasion, I suppose. President Trump putting this renewed focus on it is very important because the Left has dismissed this as a concern by lying and saying that the political violence is a right-wing phenomenon, and it has allowed this problem to fester so much so that we saw its tragic apotheosis in the murder of Charlie Kirk – and we cannot allow that to continue anymore.

Trump Hunts For A Deal

Topline: President Trump continues his swing through Asia as Democrat and media backlash builds following his White House renovation.

Japan: After signing a big peace deal Sunday between Thailand and Cambodia and rolling out new trade deals elsewhere, Trump headed to Japan, where he received royal treatment. Famous landmarks across Tokyo were lit up with red, white, and blue displays.

The Trump administration and Japan reached a deal on rare earth minerals on Tuesday and unveiled a list of projects included in a $550 billion investment proposal stemming from a July trade agreement.

The rare earth deal, which President Donald Trump signed alongside Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, establishes a mutual stockpiling arrangement and stipulates that the United States and Japan will cooperate with international partners to protect the supply chain, Reuters reported. Trump has been pushing to better secure the rare-earth supply chain and cut into China’s stranglehold over rare-earth minerals.

Along with the rare-earth deal, the United States and Japan released a list of proposed projects to boost Japanese investment in the U.S. economy. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at a press conference alongside Trump on Tuesday that the proposals “are driven by the Japanese strategic investment initiative, which was created by [Trump’s] tariff policy and by [Trump’s] historic trade agreement with Japan.”

The White House credited the threat of tariffs with pushing our trading partners to make deals favorable to the United States. Deals were announced with Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam on Sunday, and now Japan has been added to the list on Monday. But the world is still waiting to see what will come of this meeting with China on Thursday. 

China: Officials from both sides have continued to meet to hammer out the framework of a deal. The White House says it’s confident both sides will agree to dramatically lower tariffs and possibly strike a permanent solution to the battle over TikTok ownership.

Trump put it more bluntly: “I think we’re going to come away with a deal.”

While Trump’s optimism has not always preceded deals, investors seem to think this is good news. Gold, cryptocurrency, and oil prices all spiked on Monday as global markets rallied to all-time highs across Asia.

On Wall Street, the DOW, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 all hit record highs on Monday. Leading the way were tech companies like Nvidia, which have been hobbled this year by massive tariffs on semiconductors. Stateside, shares of domestic mining companies fell, a sign that investors believe China is about to reopen the flow of rare earth minerals as part of a looming deal.

White House remodel: The East Wing of the White House has now been demolished to make way for a 90,000 square foot ballroom. The administration says it’s a matter of practicality and safety, noting that in the past, if a president wanted to hold a large event honoring foreign dignitaries, they were often forced to erect makeshift tents on the White House lawn.

Former presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, FDR, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama added items to the White House, made renovations, or removed items. Though that has not stopped criticism from being leveled at Trump over his plans for a ballroom.

There are already some on the Left attempting to mount a legal challenge to block the project. A Virginia couple filed a motion in a D.C. federal court last week seeking a temporary restraining order against the demolition, arguing it violates the National Historic Preservation Act. The administration says it’s well within its authority to make renovations, the same way so many presidents have done before.