Washington, DC

1. Xi departs
2. Youngkin makes moves
3. Senate “toss up” debate
4. Consumer sentiment drops
5. US-China stalemate continues

Crude oil fell to below $100 on reports that Iran and the US are working on a phased deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Xi’s visit to Washington wraps

Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed Washington this afternoon after a three-day trip that led to no significant breakthroughs on the two country’s disagreements, including on AI, Taiwan and Iran. Xi broached Taiwan to Trump, per a readout from Beijing, and Trump asked Xi to stop supporting Iran, US Ambassador to Beijing David Perdue said. Officials also discussed extending their trade truce until January and staying in touch about AI, Treasury Department Scott Bessent said earlier this week. But there were no major announcements with the countries still at odds on most fronts, including its growing nuclear arsenal. That could change later this year, when Xi said he would see Trump at the APEC summit in China and the G20 summit in the US. Xi also invited Trump back to China in the spring. Future meetings will likely cause similar heartburn for GOP lawmakers, many of whom said this week they supported the visit but were wary of appearing overly deferential to the communist.

—- Eleanor Mueller

Youngkin sends $100K to top conservative nonprofit

Former Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin sent $100,000 from his nonprofit group to One Nation, a conservative nonprofit aligned with the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, according to a person familiar with the transfer. The move from Youngkin, who was term-limited out of his gubernatorial job in January, comes as he steps up his midterm campaign-trail presence at the peak of the fight for control of Congress and governorships across the country. Youngkin is campaigning with House Republicans across Virginia and also stumped for Iowa Senate nominee Rep. Ashley Hinson, as well as Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee Rep. Tom Tiffany. Youngkin’s Empowering American’s Parents education policy outfit is also spending in battleground states to encourage governors to opt in to the Education Freedom Tax Credit, a tax credit for people who donate to Scholarship Granting Organizations.

— Burgess Everett

Are race raters playing it safe?

Democrats are leading Republicans by double digits in generic ballot polling, but leading race raters, like the Cook Political Report, continue to label the battle for the Senate a “toss-up.” Some liberal analysts and pollsters are accusing platforms like Cook and Sabato’s Crystal Ball of “low-balling” Democrats, as G. Elliott Morris put it. They fear a less-optimistic outlook will become a self-fulfilling prophecy — dampening media coverage and, by extension, voter enthusiasm. Nate Silver also disagrees with the toss-up assessment, but he’s slightly more sympathetic to the cautious position. And he warns that though he believes Democrats are more likely to take the Senate than not, elections are uncertain: “Democrats are kicking the equivalent of a 50+ yard field goal. Kickers make most of those kicks these days, but there are still plenty of ways to shank it.”

Inflation worries mount

Americans are bearish on the economy, the University of Michigan’s monthly survey of consumer sentiment showed. The index dropped to 48.1 in September from 51.7 in August. And the public is increasingly worried about inflation: The one-year outlook jumped to 4.6% from 4.0%. Long-term inflation expectations also edged up, a signal that consumers believe rising prices will persist into the future. Consumer views on inflation are in line with other signals, like rising 5- and 10-year Treasury yields, which suggest investors believe the Federal Reserve will need to raise interest rates again soon to tamp down on rising costs. The central bank’s next meeting is in late October, the week before the midterm elections.

Trump’s lavish welcome of Xi shows tectonic shift

In rolling out the red carpet for Xi this week, Trump underscored how rapidly the balance of power in the US-China relationship has shifted, Semafor’s Andy Browne writes. The turning point came last year, when China made the ultimate power move, threatening to choke off rare earths — and turn US factories dark — after Trump ramped up tariffs on Chinese goods to more than 140%. Trump backed down, and at the time, Rush Doshi, a Georgetown University professor and former Biden administration official, wrote that China had proved itself to be a “true peer” of the US, unafraid to push back. Dolshi’s take on this week’s arrival ceremony, which also included a 21-gun salute and a flyover by B-1B bombers — far exceeding courtesies extended to Trump in Beijing in May — has been that China believes “they’ve basically tamed the United States.”

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White House

• President Trump posted on social media that he does not plan to make Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent his AI czar.
• The White House will launch an AI-powered website next week designed to be a “one-stop shop” for Americans navigating the federal government —Fox

Congress

• Intelligence shared with Congress showed Saudi Arabia has not ruled out developing nuclear weapons, raising alarm among Democrats wary of a deal that creates a pathway for the kingdom to enrich Uranium. —WaPo

Courts

• A Supreme Court ruling today will allow the Trump administration to deploy an online tool to allow states to hunt for ineligible voters on their rolls.
• An appeals court has allowed the Pentagon to label Anthropic a risk.

Foreign Policy

• Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a trilateral US-Russia-Ukraine meeting is in the works and that Trump, at a meeting this week, “stressed that he had made his final decision: Ukraine will receive licenses to produce Patriot missiles.”
• The US military is laying groundwork for potential intervention in Cuba. —CBS
• Chinese state media’s first readout on the summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping was about Taiwan. —WSJ

Immigration

• An ICE surge unfolded widely and quietly this summer. —NYT
• The Trump administration squandered millions of dollars as it expanded immigration detention facilities, a report by the Government Accountability Office found.

Media

• A Trump family sought trademark rights to “Trump TV” soon after the president banned three media outlets from the White House pool. —Bloomberg

— Democratic New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale G. Caldwell on why he’s stepping down.

Laura McGann, editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor, and Morgan Chalfant, Washington briefing editor

Graph Massara and Lauren Morganbesser, copy editors

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Ashley Gold, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, Nicholas Wu, David Weigel, David Lim