Good morning! If you’ve ever tripped over your words during a presentation, you can rest easy knowing the whole world wasn’t watching. Unfortunately for him, the same isn’t true for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. When calling for the return of Israeli hostages — not exactly known for their love of pork — he accidentally referred to them as “sausages.”

CONGRESS

📆 Reset the shutdown clock to 84 days

Imagine if you hadn’t done your job properly since before you were born. The last time Congress passed a full federal budget on time, Taylor Swift still lived on a Christmas tree farm and only four current members of the Senate were in office. The year? 1996.

Congress kept that streak going this week when it passed, and President Biden signed, a temporary three-month budget to avoid a government shutdown next week. In a real “sounds like a problem for future me” moment, the new funding runs out on December 20.

• The federal fiscal year starts on October 1. The budget process should involve passing 12 distinct budget bills for 12 distinct chunks of the government.

• In practice, however, the government runs on a constant stream of “continuing resolutions,” or C.R.s. These temporary budgets ensure federal agencies can continue operating for a bit longer. And then a bit more.

This being an election year, both houses of Congress are now out of town. They'll return for the lame-duck session on November 12. That's the period between Election Day and when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3. Members who lose reelection still have work to do, so they'll have to take the walk of shame back into the Capitol and spend their time passing a budget with everyone else.

• Outgoing presidents often look to lame-duck sessions to make their final mark. In 2020, the Senate confirmed 14 Trump-appointed judges after he'd lost reelection (much to the chagrin of Democrats).

President Biden is looking to run that back. He's got 29 appointed judges waiting for Senate approval. And another budget to pass.

In another corner of Congress, the House Ethics Committee investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz’s possible history of, err, interactions with teenage girls is getting dicey. The Florida Man congressman says he’ll no longer voluntarily take part in the probe.

GOVERNMENT

🥸 Sen. Ben Cardin — the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — was targeted by a deepfake operation. Cardin took a Zoom meeting with someone pretending to be Ukraine's ex-foreign minister. During the meeting, he became suspicious of the questioning and reported it to the State Department, which confirmed it was a fraud. Cardin, who’s retiring this year, isn’t the first target of a scheme like this. In 2018, someone impersonating a Latvian diplomat contacted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's office. With AI tech advancing, expect this stuff to get more common (and more convincing).

😮 Nothing brings a little unity to Congress like a presidential candidate nearly getting murdered. The Senate dropped a report casually explaining how close things were to going very differently on July 13. That now-infamous rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was the first time that snipers, who took out the gunman, had ever been assigned to a candidate in Trump's position. Thankfully, Congress unanimously passed a bill this week giving presidential nominees the same protection as the actual president — including plenty of snipers.

🌀 Florida is getting battered by the “unusually large” Hurricane Helene right now. As soon as the storm clears, however, the good people of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be on the ground to help clean up. And they’ve got a good idea about how bad things will be thanks to their informal Waffle House Index. If the restaurant that never closes is closed during a storm, well… that’s bad news. Unfortunately for our friends in Helene’s path, Tallahassee-area Waffle Houses have completely shut their doors.

SCANDAL

🗑️ Inventor of the dumpster indicted in New York

Life comes at you fast. One moment you're handing out with President Biden at the Met and the next moment you're getting indicted for public corruption. New York City Mayor Eric Adams vowed to stay in office yesterday after being charged with five counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, and bribery.

• The charges were filed by the federal prosecutor for this area. That's the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This isn't a new investigation, either. The FBI first seized his phone in November 2023.

• Shockingly, Eric Adams is the first-ever New York City mayor to be indicted while in office. We expected more from the man who thinks he invented dumpsters.

Adams allegedly received more than $100,000 in free or discounted flights, free hotel rooms, nice meals, and fake campaign donations. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called this a decade-long scheme "to buy favor" from a politician "on the rise."

• In exchange, the mayor took actions that benefitted the government of Turkey and its hefty diplomatic presence in NYC.

• If he's found guilty, the former cop of 22 years could spend decades behind bars.

In a true "life imitates art" situation, Eric Adams appeared as himself in a 2017 Turkish movie wherein other characters tried to bribe him.

He's facing calls to resign from every corner but has thus far refused and maintained his innocence. The mayor even took a page from Donald Trump's playbook and said, "I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be targeted. And a target I became."

This might go deeper than Eric Adams. Reports indicate he won't be the only person charged, and two top city officials have already resigned this month amid FBI probes. Best of luck to the New York City leaders sweating it out right now.

Future: It's a complicated process, but Gov. Kathy Hochul has the power to boot Adams from office whether he likes it or not. She released a statement last night but didn't directly address kicking him to the curb.

POLITICS

🍪 Pennsylvania’s cookie poll

The good people of Pennsylvania are dealing with an onslaught of political ads like the world has never seen. But at least one Philly-area bakery is cashing in on the deal. Lochel's Bakery sells sugar cookies decorated with Harris and Trump logos, with each purchase counting as a vote in the "cookie poll." Right now, Lochel’s leads with more than 90% of the cookie vote.

• Since launching in 2008, the cookie poll has nailed the nationwide winner three out of four times (it narrowly whiffed in 2020). People are into it, too. The cookies are back ordered by a month due to nationwide online sales.

A much longer-running cookie poll in Cincinnati — also with just one miss — has been going since 1984. Trump leads there with 54%. We’re not experts, but it’s possible that this is not scientific and Republicans simply eat more cookies.

Meanwhile, Americans have some thoughts on gender. According to a new poll, about 40% of people think being a woman will hurt Kamala Harris's chance of winning. Only about 30% of people said the same thing about Hillary Clinton in 2016. The change is largely driven by dispirited Democrats. In the same vein, slightly more voters believe being a man will help Donald Trump at the polls.

• On the positive side for Harris, a slight majority of voters — 51% — say they plan to vote early. And they prefer the Democrat by a 26-point margin. On the flip side, Donald Trump leads by a smaller 20% among the smaller 45% of voters who plan to vote on Election Day.

Donald Trump's campaign had to move an outdoor rally in Wisconsin this weekend to a smaller, indoor venue. The Secret Service is short-staffed due to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

• New York state appeals court judges were receptive yesterday to pleas from Trump's lawyers to toss the $489 million fraud lawsuit judgment against him.

• If you're in the market for a $100,000 watch and a Patek Philippe isn't your style, Donald Trump has you covered. His new Trump Watches retail for $499. But one option, dubbed the Tourbillion, will run you a cool $100 Gs. Better hurry, though. They're only making 147 of the big boys.

TRIVIA

To make the news as confusing as possible, the Republican Party is often referred to as the “GOP.” If you think that’s giving 18th century, that’s because it is. The nickname dates to around 1874 when Joe Biden was in grade school. What does “GOP” stand for?

Hint: Think lame.

WORLD

💣️ Ukrainian president causes congressional kerfuffle

Ukraine’s president stepped into the hornet’s nest of American politics this week. Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited a munitions plant in the battleground state of Pennsylvania with top Democrats. His office said the trip was only to “pay a visit of gratitude” to the factory making weapons for Ukraine’s military.

But Republicans are livid. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called the visit “election interference” and said no Republicans were invited. He demanded Ukraine fire its ambassador to the U.S.

• Separately, Zelenskyy broke diplomatic norms and attacked JD Vance by name as "too radical." He also mildly hit Trump, though not by name.

Zelenskyy’s had a busy week. He addressed the United Nations on Wednesday (in English) and slammed peace proposals as “colonial." He emphasized that Ukraine “will never accept” Russian rule.

• Zelenskyy also met with bipartisan congressional leaders yesterday before meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House, where the administration announced $8 billion in military aid.

• Discussions involved his “victory plan” for the war. Part of that? Getting U.S. permission to launch American weapons into Russian territory.

The comedian-turned-wartime president will wrap things up this morning in a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower.

Elsewhere… Spain and Mexico are beefing. Mexico asked Spain’s King Felipe VI to apologize for colonialism and — in a shocking twist — didn’t hear back. So Felipe was uninvited from the October 1 inauguration of Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. In response, Spain is boycotting the event entirely.

BRIEFS

• OpenAI to ditch non-profit status and restructure as for-profit, handing CEO Altman up to $150 billion in equity

• Thailand becomes third Asian country, first in Southeast Asia, to legalize same-sex marriage

• Guy who slams tech products in reviews releases app, gets slammed by reviewers

• California sues oil giant ExxonMobil for claiming recycling prevents plastic pollution

• Israel rejects U.S.-backed Lebanon ceasefire plan, vows to keep fighting “full force”

• Israel secures $8.7 billion military aid from U.S. in “strong and enduring strategic partnership”

• Japan irks China, sends military ship through Taiwan Strait for first time

QUOTE

ANSWER

Republican officials in Minnesota back in 1874 (what a year), referred to their party as "the grand old party that saved the country" in the Civil War. Never mind that it was only 20 years old at that point. The nickname stuck. Now, 150 years later, journalists still whip out “GOP” when they just said “Republican Party” in the previous sentence and need to switch it up.