By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans are moving to try to end the government shutdown by preparing a new bipartisan package of spending bills and daring Democrats to vote for it, but it was unclear if their plan would work.

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Many Democrats said they would continue to hold out for an extension of expiring health care subsidies, which was not expected to be part of the legislation.

Senate Democrats, who have now voted 14 times not to reopen the government, left their second caucus meeting of the week Thursday with few answers about whether they eventually could find a compromise with Republicans — or even with each other — on how to end the shutdown.

A test vote on the new package, which had not yet been publicly revealed, could come as soon as Friday. Democrats will then have a crucial choice to make: Do they keep fighting for a meaningful deal on extending health care subsidies that expire in January, while extending the pain of the shutdown? Or do they vote to reopen the government and hope for the best as Republicans promise an eventual health care vote, but not a guaranteed outcome?

Emboldened by overwhelmingly favorable elections earlier this week, many Democrats say the fight isn’t over until Republicans and President Donald Trump negotiate with them on an extension.

“That’s what leaders do,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. “You have the gavel, you have the majority, you have to bring people together.”

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said Democrats are “obviously not unanimous” but they are unified that “without something on health care, the vote is very unlikely to succeed.”

Other Democrats have been working on a deal that would reopen the government with only an agreement for a future vote on the health care subsidies. Lawmakers in both parties were feeling increased urgency to alleviate the growing crisis at airports, pay government workers and restore delayed food aid to millions of people now that the shutdown has become the longest in U.S. history.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to keep the Senate in session Friday, and perhaps over the weekend, came after Trump urged Senate Republicans at a White House breakfast Wednesday to end the shutdown. Trump said he thought the six-week impasse was a “big factor, negative” for Republicans in Tuesday’s elections.

A new effort to reopen the government

The bipartisan package Thune is proposing would fund parts of government — food aid, veterans programs and the legislative branch, among other things — and extend funding for everything else until December or January.

The new package would replace the House-passed bill that the Democrats have repeatedly rejected. That legislation would only extend government funding until Nov. 21, a date that is rapidly approaching after six weeks of inaction.

The details were still to be worked out, but the new legislation mirrors a tentative plan that moderate Democrats have been sketching out in hopes of finding agreement. The proposal led by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen would also take up Republicans on their offer to hold a vote on extending the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies at a later date.

It was still unclear what Thune, who has refused to negotiate while the government is closed, would promise on health care and if enough Democrats would agree to move ahead. Republicans have for weeks been five votes short of the 60 they need.

Johnson delivers setback to bipartisan talks

Democrats are facing pressure from unions eager for the shutdown to end and from allied groups that want them to hold firm. Many Democrats have argued that the results for Democrats in Tuesday’s election show voters want them to continue the fight until Republicans yield and agree to extend the health tax credits.

A vote on the health care subsidies “has got to mean something,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said this week. “That means a commitment by the speaker of the House, that he will support the legislation, that the president will sign.”

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made clear Thursday morning he won’t make any commitment to Democrats. “I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson said when asked if he could promise a vote on a health care bill.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., left, leaves with Rep. Gabe Evans, R-Colo., right, after speaking with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Johnson’s clear refusal was a setback for negotiators. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, one of the moderate Democrats involved in negotiations, said the speaker’s comments were “a significant problem.”

“We have to make sure we have a deal that we can get broad support for,” Peters said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not yet weighed in on the latest push. He has repeatedly called for Trump to sit down with Democrats — a meeting that seems unlikely to happen.

“Donald Trump clearly is feeling pressure to bring this shutdown to an end,” Schumer said Thursday.

Closed-door negotiations become public

A group of Democrats and Republicans that has been quietly negotiating for weeks insisted they were making steady progress on a deal.

In a new development Thursday, Republicans suggested they might be open to including language in a final agreement that would reverse some mass firings of government workers by the White House, according to two people familiar with the private talks granted anonymity to discuss them. But it was unclear if that proposal would be included in the new package of bills.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who has been talking to Democrats, says she wants furloughed workers to be given back pay and workers who have been fired during the shutdown to be “recalled.”

“We’re still negotiating that language,” she said.

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is adjusting his messaging strategy to win over voters who are worried about the cost of living with plans to emphasize new tax breaks and show progress on fighting inflation.

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The messaging is centered around affordability, and the push comes after inflation emerged as a major vulnerability for Trump and Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, in which voters overwhelmingly said the economy was their biggest concern.

Democrats took advantage of concerns about affordability to run up huge margins in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races, flipping what had been a strength for Trump in the 2024 presidential election into a vulnerability going into next year’s midterm elections.

White House officials and others familiar with their thinking requested anonymity to speak for this article in order to not get ahead of the president’s actions. They stressed that affordability has always been a priority for Trump, but the president plans to talk about it more, as he did Thursday when he announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would reduce the price of their anti-obesity drugs.

“We are the ones that have done a great job on affordability, not the Democrats,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office to announce the deal. “We just lost an election, they said, based on affordability. It’s a con job by the Democrats.”

The White House is keeping up a steady drumbeat of posts on social media about prices and deals for Thanksgiving dinner staples at retailers such as Walmart, Lidl, Aldi and Target.

“I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less,” Trump told reporters Thursday, arguing that things are much better for Americans with his party in charge.

“The only problem is the Republicans don’t talk about it,” he said.

The outlook for inflation is unclear

As of now, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff hikes that suddenly burdened the economy with uncertainty. The AP Voter Poll showed the economy was the leading issue in Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and California.

Grocery prices continue to climb, and recently, electricity bills have emerged as a new worry. At the same time, the pace of job gains has slowed, plunging 23% from the pace a year ago.

The White House maintains a list of talking points about the economy, noting that the stock market has hit record highs multiple times and that the president is attracting foreign investment. Trump has emphasized that gasoline prices are coming down, and maintained that gasoline is averaging $2 a gallon, but AAA reported Thursday that the national average was $3.08, about two cents lower than a year ago.

“Americans are paying less for essentials like gas and eggs, and today the Administration inked yet another drug pricing deal to deliver unprecedented health care savings for everyday Americans,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

Trump gets briefed about the economy by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials at least once a week and there are often daily discussions on tariffs, a senior White House official said, noting Trump is expected to do more domestic travel next year to make his case that he’s fixing affordability.

But critics say it will be hard for Trump to turn around public perceptions on affordability.

“He’s in real trouble and I think it’s bigger than just cost of living,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal economic advocacy group.

Owens noted that Trump has “lost his strength” as voters are increasingly doubtful about Trump’s economic leadership compared to Democrats, adding that the president doesn’t have the time to turn around public perceptions of him as he continues to pursue broad tariffs.

New hype about income tax cuts ahead of April

There will be new policies rolled out on affordability, a person familiar with the White House thinking said, declining to comment on what those would be. Trump on Thursday indicated there will be more deals coming on drug prices. Two other White House officials said messaging would change — but not policy.

A big part of the administration’s response on affordability will be educating people ahead of tax season about the role of Trump’s income tax cuts in any refunds they receive in April, the person familiar with planning said. Those cuts were part of the sprawling bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July.

This individual stressed that the key challenge is bringing prices down while simultaneously having wages increase, so that people can feel and see any progress.

There’s also a bet that the economy will be in a healthier place in six months. With Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s term ending in May, the White House anticipates the start of consistent cuts to the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. They expect inflation rates to cool and declines in the federal budget deficit to boost sentiment in the financial markets.

But the U.S. economy seldom cooperates with a president’s intentions, a lesson learned most recently by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, who saw his popularity slump after inflation spiked to a four-decade high in June 2022.

The Trump administration maintains it’s simply working through an inflation challenge inherited from Biden, but new economic research indicates Trump has created his own inflation challenge through tariffs.

Since April, Harvard University economist Alberto Cavallo and his colleagues, Northwestern University’s Paola Llama and Universidad de San Andres’ Franco Vazquez, have been tracking the impact of the import taxes on consumer prices.

In an October paper, the economists found that the inflation rate would have been drastically lower at 2.2%, had it not been for Trump’s tariffs.

The administration maintains that tariffs have not contributed to inflation. They plan to make the case that the import taxes are helping the economy and dismiss criticisms of the import taxes as contributing to inflation as Democratic talking points.

The fate of Trump’s country-by-country tariffs is currently being decided by the Supreme Court, where justices at a Wednesday hearing seemed dubious over the administration’s claims that tariffs were essentially regulations and could be levied by a president without congressional approval. Trump has maintained at times that foreign countries pay the tariffs and not U.S. citizens, a claim he backed away from slightly Thursday.

“They might be paying something,” he said. “But when you take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously.”

Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — China has commissioned its latest aircraft carrier after extensive sea trials, state media reported Friday, adding a ship that experts say will help what is already the world’s largest navy expand its power farther beyond its own waters.

The official Xinhua news agency said the Fujian had been commissioned Wednesday at a naval base on southern China’s Hainan island in a ceremony attended by top leader Xi Jinping.

The Fujian is China’s third carrier and the first that it both designed and built itself. It is perhaps the most visible example so far of Xi’s massive military overhaul and expansion that aims to have a modernized force by 2035 and one that is “world class” by mid century — which most take to mean capable of going toe-to-toe with the United States.

With it, Beijing takes another step toward closing the gap with the U.S. Navy and its carrier fleet and network of bases that allow it to maintain a presence around the world.

“Carriers are key to Chinese leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy,” or one that can project power far from its coastal waters, said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China wants to contest waters as far as Guam

For China’s navy, one goal is to dominate the near waters of the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea around the so-called First Island Chain, which runs south through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. But deeper into the Pacific, it also wants to be able to contest control of the Second Island Chain, where the U.S. has important military facilities on Guam and elsewhere, Poling said.

“A carrier doesn’t really help you in the First Island Chain, but it’s key to that contest, if you want one, with the Americans in the wider Indo-Pacific,” Poling said.

China’s “increasingly capable military” and ability to “project power globally” is one of the reasons the Pentagon in its latest report to Congress continued to call it “the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order.”

At the same time, it is Beijing’s right to “transform its navy into a blue-water strategic navy commensurate with China’s national strength,” said Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military affairs expert.

“China’s carriers cannot just operate near home, they must operate in the distant oceans and far seas to carry out various training and support missions,” Song said. “China is a great power and our overseas interests span the globe; we need to be globally present.”

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News that the Fujian had been commissioned was met with wariness in nearby Japan. Minoru Kihara, a former defense minister and now chief cabinet secretary in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s new government, said it underscores that China is “extensively and rapidly strengthening its military power without transparency.”

“We believe that China’s military intends to advance its operational capability at distant sea and air by strengthening sea power,” he told reporters, emphasizing that Japan was watching China’s military activity and would “calmly but decisively respond” if necessary.

One possibility that raises concerns in foreign capitals is a possible Chinese blockade or invasion of the democratically self-governed island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and which leader Xi Jinping has not ruled out taking by force.

Though the island sits right off of China’s coast, if China had the ability to position an aircraft carrier group or groups around the Second Island Chain — between Taiwan and the U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters in Hawaii — that could delay possible American military assistance in the event of a Chinese attack.

“They want those aircraft carriers to play a part in kind of extending the strategic perimeter farther out from China, and one of the important things that an aircraft carrier can do is extend the range of China’s domain awareness to keep an eye on activities in the air, on the sea, and below the sea,” said Brian Hart, deputy director of CSIS’s China Power Project

With the Fujian, China’s warplanes can deploy far from its shores

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was Soviet made and its second, the Shandong, was built in China but based on the Soviet model. Both use older-style ski-jump type systems to help planes take flight.

The Fujian skips past the steam catapult technology used on most American carriers to employ an electromagnetic launch system found only on the latest U.S. Navy Ford-class carriers.

The system causes less stress to the aircraft and the ship, allows for more precise control over speed and can launch a wider range of aircraft than the steam system. Compared to the ski-jump system, it gives China the ability to launch heavier aircraft, with full fuel loads, like the KJ-600 early warning and control plane, which it successfully tested during its sea trials.

Its latest J-35 stealth fighter and J-15T heavy fighter were also launched from the Fujian, giving the new carrier “full-deck operation capability” according to the Chinese navy.

The ability to carry its own reconnaissance aircraft means unlike its first two carriers, it won’t be operating blind when out of the range of land-based support, giving it the ability to operate its most advanced aircraft far afield including the Second Island Chain.

“The Fujian carrier is a big leapfrog for China in terms of the capabilities of its aircraft carriers compared to the first two,” Hart said .

China’s carriers aren’t nuclear powered, limiting their range

Still, Hart noted, China’s navy lags behind the U.S. in several significant ways.

Numerically it only has three carriers compared to the U.S. Navy’s 11, and while China’s carriers are all conventionally powered, the U.S.’s are all nuclear powered which means they can operate almost indefinitely without being refueled — dramatically increasing their range. The Ford-class carrier, of which only one is currently in service but more are being built, is also larger, can carry more aircraft on its flight deck, and has a third elevator that means it can move more aircraft from lower deck hangars in less time.

China also lags behind the U.S. in guided missile cruisers and destroyers, which are critical in providing air and submarine defense and support for larger naval groups, as well as nuclear-powered submarines.

The U.S. is also ahead in vertical launching system cells — basically the systems for holding and launching missiles from ships — which is a measure of how much firepower vessels can carry, though China is increasing that capacity, Hart said.

Beyond just equipment, China lacks the network of overseas bases that the U.S. has, which are critical for resupplying carriers and also providing alternative runways should aircraft not be able to return safely to the carrier.

China is working on expanding its foreign bases, however, and has a nuclear propulsion system for a carrier in development.

There’s also evidence that China is already building another carrier. Chinese shipyards have the capabilities to build more than one at once and have also been churning out other new vessels at a pace the U.S. can’t currently come close to matching.

“Really across the board, China’s closing the gap,” Hart said.

“They’re fielding and building more aircraft carriers, they’re fielding more nuclear-powered subs, they are fielding more, larger destroyers and other vessels that carry a larger number of missiles. So they’re really catching up.”

The Fujian is just one of China’s latest military assets

China has happily shown off its new military assets, releasing video of the KJ-600, J-35 and J-15T test flights from the Fujian.

A World War II Victory Day parade at the start of September showcased all three aircraft along with hypersonic glide vehicles — whose high-speed, maneuverability and other attributes make them more difficult to intercept than traditional ballistic missiles — aerial and underwater drones and electronic warfare systems.

Sophisticated new equipment does not necessarily translate to military readiness, however, said Singapore-based analyst Tang Meng Kit, who noted that China hasn’t fought a war since 1979 and that the carefully choreographed parade was good at “amplifying perceptions of strength.”

“It is possible that China’s capabilities are overstated, as real-world operational readiness lags behind its showcased arsenal,” he told the AP.

He also cautioned in a recent analysis for the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore that it would be a mistake to see China’s military modernization as simply geared toward a possible Taiwan invasion, which he said is only one part of a “larger mosaic.”

The parade “signaled China’s broader strategic intent, which is to deter major powers, pressure regional actors, expand its global influence, and reinforce its domestic legitimacy,” he said.

Albee Zhang in Washington and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A call to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide is on the agenda Friday for the justices’ closed-door conference.

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Among the new cases the justices are expected to consider is a longshot appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Davis had been trying to get the court to overturn a lower court order for her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple whom she denied a marriage license.

The justices could say as early as Monday what they’ll do.

In urging the court to take up her case, Davis’ lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling.

Thomas was one of four dissenting justices in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters who also remain on the court.

Roberts has been silent on the subject since he wrote a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but said recently he was not advocating that it be overturned.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court in 2015, has said there are times when the court should correct mistakes and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended a constitutional right to abortion.

But Barrett has suggested recently that same-sex marriage might be in a different category than abortion because people have relied on the decision when they married and had children.

Davis drew national attention to eastern Kentucky’s Rowan County when she turned away same-sex couples, saying her faith prevented her from complying with the high court ruling. She defied court orders to issue the licenses until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015.

She was released after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form. The Kentucky Legislature later enacted a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.

Davis lost a reelection bid in 2018.