Washington, DC

1. Shutdown nears record
2. SCOTUS hears tariff case
3. Mamdani’s NYC lead
4. LatAm strikes rebuff
5. California map vote
6. Iraq War doc revived

Washington View: PE vs. VC in the Pentagon

One day until Election Day … Trump attends tele-rallies for Virginia, NJ … Shutdown sparks travel chaos

Shutdown crunch time dawns on Capitol

The elements are in place for Congress to start negotiating out of a likely record-breaking government shutdown, and people are still at the table talking. President Donald Trump is back in town, the Affordable Care Act premium increases are on the board for next year, the off-year elections are over on Tuesday, and there’s a Senate recess scheduled to start Friday. By Tuesday, Democrats’ blockade of the House’s stopgap funding bill will hit its 35th day, tying the record. “Get in a room, figure this thing out. It’s not rocket science,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., told Semafor. Trump said on 60 Minutes he’s open to a fix for rising ACA premiums after Democrats reopen the government, while reiterating his view that Republicans should kill the legislative filibuster. GOP leaders still oppose that, we’re told.

— Burgess Everett

Trump tariff case reaches SCOTUS

Trump’s economic agenda hangs in the balance as the Supreme Court this week takes up a challenge to his sweeping tariffs. The justices on Wednesday will hear arguments in a pair of cases contesting Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose global levies. At stake in the case is $90 billion (and counting) in tariff revenue that Trump predicted the US would have to “pay back” if the case doesn’t go his way — not to mention that an unfavorable ruling would rob Trump of leverage in negotiations with trading partners; in his 60 Minutes interview, the president predicted the US economy “will go to hell” if SCOTUS rules against him. Meanwhile, inside the court, the outnumbered liberal justices are at odds over how to wield their limited influence as the high-stakes Trump cases pile up, The New York Times reported.

Mamdani in lead as Sliwa hangs on

Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani entered the last day of campaigning with a polling lead in a three-way race, as GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa refused to clear the way for independent ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “There have been moments where even I have been shocked by the language in this race,” Mamdani told reporters in Harlem on Sunday, accusing Cuomo of running to be “Trump’s parrot.” Pro-Cuomo groups outspent Mamdani on the air in the race’s final days, with ads arguing the Democrat would endanger the city if he wins; Mamdani and Sliwa attacked the ads as interference from billionaires. Cuomo closed by talking about his experience, asking parishioners at a Black church in the Bronx if the 34-year-old Mamdani could handle “another 9/11” or a pandemic: “You don’t want to send in an amateur to fight with Donald Trump.”

— David Weigel

Congress rebuffed over boat strikes

The Trump administration is arguing that its lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in Latin America aren’t bound by a war powers law that requires Congress to approve any military action that exceeds 60 days — a window that closes today. A senior administration official argued that US service members aren’t in harm’s way because the strikes are being “conducted largely by unmanned aerial vehicles launched from naval vessels in international waters,” The New York Times reported. The Pentagon announced yet another strike that killed three people over the weekend. Asked whether the US is going to war with Venezuela on 60 Minutes, Trump said simply: “I doubt it.” Meanwhile, Trump threatened military action in Nigeria, a threat that “is now being taken seriously, as Nigerian leaders watch US forces move in on Venezuela,” Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke writes.

House braces for CA redistricting vote

The House is watching this week as Californians decide whether Democrats get to redraw their state’s congressional districts. Tuesday’s election — voters’ first verdict on the parties’ warring efforts to rewrite maps — “will lay a foundation for Democrats to take back control of the House,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN. Gov. Gavin Newsom told NBC he believes “we’re on the precipice of a remarkable moment.” But Republicans are also projecting confidence: House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Republican Jewish Coalition that “even before the redistricting battles … began, we were already in a great position.” The House hasn’t voted in 45 days, though Johnson also told RJC that “we do have a sense that something may change [this] week.” He faces growing pressure from fellow Republicans: Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, told C-SPAN: “I love Mike Johnson … but we need to get Congress back.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Iraq War documentary airs 17 years late

In 2008, the conservative documentarian Michael Pack made The Last 600 Meters, a film about the Iraq War for PBS. The public broadcaster rejected it as “too pro-military,” said Pack, who ran the US Agency for Global Media briefly in Trump’s first term. PBS reversed that decision this year and the film — a gripping and linear narrative of Marines fighting their way through Fallujah — will air Nov. 10. One of the Marines featured is the future Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who muses on the situation of a high-tech modern military forced, at close quarters, to depend on its soldiers “being able to fight a guy to the ground with a knife.” Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who produced the film, said after a Thursday screening that he wants to screen it at the White House, “so maybe we won’t go into Venezuela.”

— Ben Smith

The only bipartisan consensus left in Washington is that America needs to reform how it buys weapons. Out with the clunky old 20th-century contractors making fighter jets, say Democrats and Republicans alike — and in with the venture-backed, slickly marketed, innovative new companies selling the silent drones, surveillance software, and cheap missiles of 21st-century combat. But this consensus has unexpectedly run into the teeth of the only conflict in America as deep as the divide between Republicans and Democrats.

I am referring, of course, to the decades-old feud between Venture Capital dreamers and their elder cousins, by-the-numbers Private Equity tycoons, the rivalrous twin engines of the red-hot private capital markets. And while the most exciting developments in defense are being driven by flashy, high-risk California VC investments, the man making the decisions comes from the grimly analytical East Coast world of PE.

The Secretary of Health for Maryland, Meena Seshamani, M.D., Ph.D., will join the stage at The Future of Health Forum in Washington, DC on Nov. 18, 2025.

As discussions continue around federal programs such as the ACA subsidies extended under the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act, Americans are confronting rising health care costs, shrinking community services, and persistent workforce shortages. Affordability, access, and quality of care remain more urgent concerns than ever. To explore the factors shaping this moment — and potential solutions — Semafor will convene leading experts for a forum on the future of US health care.

Nov. 18 | Washington, DC | RSVP

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Antisemitism within the GOP was a hot topic at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition summit, following Tucker Carlson’s interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes — but many speakers downplayed the issue as a far bigger problem on the left.

Playbook: A majority of Americans are afraid of rising political violence and believe it’s likely that a political candidate will be assassinated in the next five years, a new poll found.

WaPo: “We are prepared, when necessary, to fight fire with fire,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said at a Los Angeles rally in support of California’s Prop 50 redistricting push.

Axios: A researcher at AI firm Anthropic says its most sophisticated systems are starting to become introspective: “We’re starting to see increasing signatures or instances of models exhibiting sort of cognitive functions that, historically, we think of as things that are very human.”

White House

• The trade détente agreed to by President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week will see China suspend some rare earth curbs and halt probes targeting US chip firms, according to the Trump administration, which also said the US and China have agreed to set up a direct military communication channel.

Congress

• Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced a resolution expressing support for legislation banning the president, vice president, members of Congress and their families from issuing or trading cryptocurrency, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reports. He told Semafor he hopes to somehow wrap it into bipartisan stock ban legislation: “The crypto trading is like 100x what’s going on in terms of stock trading.”

• House Republicans are “exploring ways to prevent Zohran Mamdani from ever being sworn in” as New York City mayor, such as by casting him as an insurrectionist. — NY Post
• Rep. Nancy Mace berated South Carolina police at an airport last week. — Wired