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President Donald Trump met this morning with Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, signing a rare earth minerals deal with the country. Reuters reported that Takaichi is set to announce today new purchases of trucks, gas, and soybeans from the U.S., along with a new shipbuilding deal. This comes ahead of Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday, a discussion he hopes will yield a trade deal. The U.S. and China agreed to a framework for a deal on Sunday that addresses export curbs and tariffs, but the specific terms have yet to be finalized. Meanwhile, Chinese state-sanctioned media reported Monday that Chinese fighter jets conducted “confrontation drills” near Taiwan, but Taiwan’s defense ministry did not report any incidents and dismissed the news as a propaganda tactic. A Taiwanese general told Fox News that China’s military drills could be preparations for a blockade against the island. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson warned on Monday that the government could not reallocate federal funds to temporarily sustain the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the ongoing shutdown, reiterating a Trump administration memo issued on Friday. SNAP benefits are currently set to run dry on November 1. Johnson explained that any plan to pool funding for SNAP would take dollars “away immediately from school meals and infant formula.” Meanwhile, Everett Kelley—national president of the country’s largest federal workers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees—released a statement calling for an immediate end to the shutdown, asking “leaders to put aside partisan politics and embrace responsible government.” In another ripple effect from the shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground delay on Monday for flights departing Texas’s Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, citing insufficient air traffic management staffing levels. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, in a statement on Sunday, accused the country’s neighbor, Trinidad and Tobago, of engaging in a false-flag operation in conjunction with the CIA, stating the joint military drills between Trinidad and Tobago and the U.S. are an operation to “generate a full military confrontation with our country.” Rodriguez claimed that Venezuelan authorities captured mercenaries “with direct information of the American intelligence agency” and their alleged attack plans, though he provided no evidence to back this claim. The statement came one day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth relocated an aircraft carrier to U.S. Southern Command, which oversees areas including Latin America. Trump confirmed earlier this month that he greenlit covert CIA operations within Venezuelan territory. On Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab told the BBC that he has “no doubt” that the U.S. is attempting to overthrow Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime and transform the country into a U.S. “colony.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios on Monday that he spoke with Trump on the phone Sunday and urged him to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles to push Putin toward peace. Ukraine’s military said on Monday that it was sending reinforcements to the eastern city of Pokrovsk, stating that roughly 200 Russian troops had entered the area. Meanwhile, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui visited Putin in Moscow on Monday as Russia’s leader sent a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that everything was “going to plan.” The same day, Putin officially withdrew from a U.S.-Russia joint plutonium disposal agreement meant to incentivize both countries against building up nuclear weapon capacity (Russia had suspended the deal in 2016). Hamas returned a casket on Monday to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), saying it contained the remains of one of the 13 remaining hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. However, Times of Israel reported this morning that Israeli authorities believe these remains belonged to a hostage whose body had already been returned to Israel for burial. If so, it will have been a week since Hamas last returned a hostage’s body. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss how to react to the delay, which the government sees as a violation of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Ultranationalist ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have called on Netanyahu to destroy the terror group over the violations. In recent days, Hamas claimed to have expanded its search for the hostage remains, while Israeli public broadcasting reported that Israeli intelligence has identified the locations for nine of the remaining 13 bodies.
