Shutdown Ends as Trump Signs Spending Bill; Trump-Epstein Ties Back in Spotlight

On today's podcast: 1) President Trump signed legislation to end the longest government shutdown in US history, marking the official conclusion to a 43-day impasse that halted food aid to millions of households, canceled thousands of flights and forced federal workers to go unpaid for more than a month. Trump’s signature means the government can begin to resume normal operations, with federal workers expected back on the job starting Thursday. However it could still take days, or even weeks, for the federal bureaucracy to fully restart and dig out of the backlog after being closed since October 1st. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters Wednesday he anticipated it could take as long as a week to start lifting flight restrictions at major airports. 2) Democrats have returned to pressing President Trump on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, highlighting a selection of emails in which the late financier and convicted sex trafficker suggested the president knew of his activities. A congressional committee on Wednesday released some 20,000 pages of documents, pivoting attention away from the ongoing government shutdown and forcing the White House to respond to an issue that has frustrated the president and drawn scrutiny from parts of his base. The new information came the same day that a new House lawmaker was officially sworn into office. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, immediately signed a petition forcing a vote on legislation to compel the Justice Department to release files on Epstein. 3) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy implored European Union allies to overcome their divisions on the use of frozen Russian assets, saying fresh funding is critical for his war-battered economy to stay in the fight against Moscow. The EU has postponed until December a decision on tapping the Russian state assets to provide €140 billion ($162 billion) in loans to Ukraine, which needs new funding by early next year. Russia’s invasion has dragged well into its fourth year as Zelenskiy’s government deals with a battered economy and exhausted fighting forces in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. With US funding halted, European governments have vowed to step up assistance to fend off a new threat from the Kremlin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.