By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats believe health care is an issue that resonates with a majority of Americans as they demand an extension of subsidies in exchange for their votes to reopen the shuttered U.S. government. But it is also one of the most intractable issues in Congress — and a real compromise amid the government shutdown will not likely be easy, or quick.

There are some Republicans in Congress who want to extend the higher subsidies, which were first put in place in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as millions of people who receive their insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces are set to receive notices that their premiums will increase at the beginning of the year. But many GOP lawmakers are strongly opposed to any extension — and see the debate as a new opportunity to cut back on the program altogether.

Related Articles

Trump approves Alaska mining road to boost copper, zinc production

Transportation Secretary says government shutdown adds stress on air traffic controllers

Maine is investigating a claim that bundles of ballots ended up in a resident’s Amazon order

Democrats could have a slight shot at flipping a US House seat in Utah under a new congressional map

Wisconsin DOJ asks judge to pause voter citizenship verification order

“If Republicans govern by poll and fail to grab this moment, they will own it,” wrote Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican, in a letter published in the The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. He encouraged senators not to go “wobbly” on the issue.

“The jig is up, the pandemic is over and my colleagues shouldn’t blink in any other direction,” Roy wrote.

Republicans have been railing against the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, since it was enacted 15 years ago. But while they have been able to chip away at it, they have not been able to substantially alter it as a record 24 million people are now signed up for insurance coverage through the ACA, in large part because billions of dollars in subsidies have made the plans more affordable for many people.

Now, some of them see the Democrats’ fight as their chance to revisit the issue — putting Republican congressional leaders and President Donald Trump in a complicated position as the government shutdown enters its seventh day and hundreds of thousands of federal workers are going unpaid.

“I am happy to work with Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to reopen,” Trump wrote on social media Monday night, walking back earlier comments saying there were ongoing negotiations with Democrats.

Waiting for the other side to blink

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has repeatedly indicated that Republicans are open to extending the subsidies, with reforms, if Democrats would reopen the government. But he has refused to negotiate until that happens — and has suggested Trump will be key to the eventual outcome.

Thune told reporters Monday “there may be a path forward” on ACA subsidies, but stressed, “I think a lot of it would come down to where the White House lands on that.”

Many GOP senators argue the only path forward is to overhaul the law. “The whole problem with all of this is Obamacare,” said Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

Most House Republicans agree, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has been noncommittal on discussions.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves after holding a news conference on the 6th day of the government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. Johnson is keeping the House out of session for the second week in a row during the shutdown. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“Obamacare is not working,” Johnson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’re trying to fix it.”

Democrats believe that public sentiment is on their side and argue that Trump and Republicans will have to come to the negotiating table as people who are enrolled in the program, many of whom live in Republican districts and states, are notified that their rates will increase.

“All I can tell you is the American people feel very deeply about solving this health care crisis,” Schumer said after the Senate rejected a House-passed bill to reopen the government for the fifth time Monday evening. “Every poll we have seen shows they want us to do it, and they feel that the Republicans are far more responsible for the shutdown than we are.”

Bipartisan talks face difficulties

With leaders at odds, some rank-and-file senators in both parties have been in private talks to try to find a way out of the shutdown. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota has suggested extending the subsidies for a year and then phasing them out. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, has suggested pushing ahead with a group of bipartisan spending bills that are pending and a commitment to discuss the health care issue.

But many Democrats say a commitment isn’t good enough, and Republicans say they need deeper reforms — leaving the talks, and the U.S. government, at a standstill.

Maine Sen. Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted with Republicans to keep the government open. But he said Monday that he might switch his vote to “no” if Republicans do not “offer some real solid evidence that they are going to help us with this crisis” on health care.

Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said his party is “not budging,” however. “First and foremost, before we can talk about anything, they need to reopen the government.”

Some Republicans urge action on health care

Still, some Republicans say they are open to extending the subsidies — even if they don’t like them — as it becomes clear that their constituents will face rising costs.

“I’m willing to consider various reforms, but I think we have to do something,” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. He said Congress should address the issue “sooner rather than later” before open enrollment begins Nov. 1.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she is “not a fan” of Obamacare but indicated she might vote to extend it.

“I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district,” she posted on social media Monday evening.

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday at a time when one of the world’s most durable and amicable alliances has been fractured by Trump’s trade war and annexation threats.

Carney’s second visit to the White House comes ahead of a review next year of the free trade agreement, which is critical to Canada’s economy. More than 77% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S.

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney walks to a government plane in Ottawa, Ontario, Monday Oct. 6, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)

Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state and his tariffs have Canadians feeling an undeniable sense of betrayal. Relations with Canada’s southern neighbor and longtime ally haven’t been worse.

“We’ve had ups and downs, but this is the lowest point in relations that I can recall,” said Frank McKenna, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States and current deputy chairman of TD Bank.

“Canadians aren’t being instructed what to do. They are simply voting with their feet,” he said. “I talk every day to ordinary citizens who are changing their vacation plans, and I talk to large business owners who are moving reward trips away or executive business trips. There is an outright rebellion.”

There is fear in Canada over what will happen to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Carney is looking to get some relief on some sector-specific tariffs, but expectations are low.

“Improving relations with the White House ahead of the USMCA review is certainly an objective of the trip, but opposition parties and part of the Canadian public will criticize Prime Minister Carney if he doesn’t achieve some progress on the tariff front at this stage,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.

Related Articles

Trump approves Alaska mining road to boost copper, zinc production

Transportation Secretary says government shutdown adds stress on air traffic controllers

Maine is investigating a claim that bundles of ballots ended up in a resident’s Amazon order

Democrats could have a slight shot at flipping a US House seat in Utah under a new congressional map

Wisconsin DOJ asks judge to pause voter citizenship verification order

Trump said Monday that he anticipated Carney wanted to use the meeting to discuss trade.

“I guess he’s going to ask about tariffs, because a lot of companies from Canada are moving into the United States,” Trump, a Republican, told reporters after signing an executive order related to Alaska. “He’s losing a lot of companies in Canada.”

Carney has said the USMCA, which is up for review in 2026, is an advantage for Canada at a time when it is clear that the U.S. is charging for access to its market. Carney has said the commitment of the U.S. to the core of USMCA means that more than 85% of Canada-U.S. trade continues to be free of tariffs. He said the U.S. average tariff rate on Canadian goods is 5.6% and remains the lowest among all its trading partners.

But Trump has some sector-specific tariffs on Canada, known as Section 232 tariffs, that are having an impact. There are 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, for example.

McKenna said he is hearing Canada might get some relief in steel and aluminum. “It could be 50% to 25% or agreeing on tariff-free quotas to allow the steel and aluminum to go through at last year’s levels,” he said.

The ties between the two countries are without parallel. About $2.5 billion (nearly $3.6 billion Canadian) worth of goods and services cross the border each day. Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. There is close cooperation on defense, border security and law enforcement, and a vast overlap in culture, traditions and pastimes.

About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of U.S. electricity imports are from Canada.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.

“The bigger prize would be getting a mutual agreement to negotiate as quickly as possible the free trade relationship,” McKenna said. “If the United States were to threaten us with the six months’ notice of termination, I think it would represent a deep chill all across North America.”

By KOSTYA MANENKOV and MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research on seemingly obscure quantum tunneling that is advancing digital technology.

Clarke, 83, conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley; Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Devoret at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Photos of John Clarke, Michel H Devoret and John M. Martinis are pictured on a screen after they were announced as winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (Christine Olsson/TT News Agency via AP)

“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke told reporters at the announcement by phone after being told of his win.

He paid tribute to the other two laureates, saying that “their contributions are just overwhelming.”

“Our discovery in some ways is the basis of quantum computing. Exactly at this moment where this fits in is not entirely clear to me.”

However, speaking from his cellphone, Clarke added: “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.’’

The Nobel committee said that the laureates’ work in the 1980s continues to provide opportunities to develop “the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors.”

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” said Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

The 100-year-old field of quantum mechanics deals with the seemingly impossible subatomic world where switches can be on and off at the same time and parts of atoms tunnel through what seems like impenetrable barriers. The prize winning trio’s work helped take that into the larger world, where it has the potential to supercharge computing and communications.

What the three physicists did “is taking the scale of something that we can’t see, we can’t touch, we can’t feel and bringing it up to the scale of something recognizable and make it something you can build upon,” said Physics Today editor-in-chief Richard Fitzgerald, who in the 1990s worked in the field on a competitors’ group.

Related Articles

Today in History: October 7, Matthew Shepard beaten and left tied to a Wyoming fencepost

Southern right whales awe admirers in Patagonia after coming back from brink of extinction

Solar and wind power has grown faster than electricity demand this year, report says

ICC makes the first conviction over past atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur

Rescuers in India search for missing after landslides kill 24 in Darjeeling region

“Quantum computers is one very sort of obvious use, but they’re also can be used for quantum sensors, so to be able to make very sensitive measurements of, for example, magnetic fields, and perhaps also for cryptography, so to encode information so it cannot be easily listened to by a third party,” Mark Pearce, a professor of astrophysics and Nobel Physics Committee member, told The Associated Press.

It is the 119th time the prize has been awarded. Last year, artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.

On Monday, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies.

Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics on Oct. 13.

The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.

The prizes carry priceless prestige and a cash award of nearly $1.2 million.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

Rudy Gobert recalls tape in the corners of the practice court during his first few years in Utah, marking the spots guys must sprint to every time down the floor to ensure proper spacing, particularly in transition.

“And then it became a habit,” Gobert said. “It became something that whether you’re fresh or you’re tired, you’re going to do it. Because you built that habit.”

Those are things Minnesota is attempting to instill this year in training camp. From getting out in transition on offense to pressuring the ball defensively, the Timberwolves have clear objectives they’re attempting to engrain during the time of year when it’s easiest to do so.

You often are who you are once the regular season begins. Attempting to reinvent yourself on the fly is a fool’s errand. Minnesota tried to do things like take care of the ball and play with more pace in the Western Conference Finals. But those weren’t traits the Wolves had developed, so they couldn’t deploy them when the lights were brightest.

Championship habits are built in October. How do you develop those? Minnesota is using repetition. Wolves guard Mike Conley said the first thing Minnesota does to open practice is a drill that throws the ball down court while players get to certain spots on the floor.

“There’s nothing by accident,” Conley said. “All these things are important.”

What Conley likes most is the consistency with which they’ve been enforced thus far. If players aren’t imposing enough ball pressure on the perimeter, it’s called out.

“As soon as you’re not winning that battle on the ball,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said, “you blow the whistle and get them up and get them where they need to be.”

The same thing is done when guys don’t sprint up the court. Or when they don’t swing the ball in the halfcourt offense.

Much of last year’s camp was spent adjusting to a massive trade that reshuffled the roster. But with everyone except Nickeil Alexander-Walker back from a year ago, Minnesota has the opportunity to hammer down on the finer points — things that usually require effort and attention to detail — that can be the difference between good and great.

All reports indicate the players have bought into the points of emphasis and are executing them at a high level over the first week of camp. Wolves forward Julius Randle noted there shouldn’t be any need for reminders this early in the game.

“But just even throughout practice, I’m sure some things (usually) get lax like in the middle hour of practice. (That) hasn’t been the case,” Randle said last week. “Guys have been pretty locked in, pretty focused from the very beginning. We had a great day yesterday, a great day today. So, I mean, there hasn’t been any slippage. … We know what we’ve got to do and it’s up to us to do it every day.”

That’s the key. Once a team achieve that, it becomes who you are. Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori joked that guys may start camp by running to the corner every time down the floor.

“And then all of a sudden, two weeks from now, everybody’s at the break. And then four weeks from now, they’re all stopping in the high quad,” he said. “That was Finchy’s biggest message to all these guys, and I thought he made a great analogy: ‘If you’re a golfer and you’re trying to go from a 20 to a 10 handicap, it’s much easier than trying to go from a five to a three.”

Minnesota is already a good team. But to become one of the NBA’s best, it has to win on the margins via the game’s finer points.

“For us, it’s building those habits, continuing to talk about that every day, not just the first week of camp,” Nori said.

“It’s just like anything,” Conley said. “You wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth. You do things like that to (establish) a routine.”

That’s how championship-level foundations are composed.

“There’s always moments when you might not do it as much, and that’s when your teammates have got to be there to talk to you and remind you who we are, and what we’re trying to accomplish,” Gobert said.

Related Articles

Frederick: Anthony Edwards wants a title and an MVP. Defense is his ticket

Bones Hyland believes he was meant to be in Minnesota

From Edwards’ motivation to DiVincenzo’s health, notes and quotes from Timberwolves Media Day

Alan Horton to split Timberwolves TV play by play duties with Michael Grady for 2025-26 season

Return of the trees: Timberwolves bring back classic jersey, court