East Steps of the US Capitol from the ground with a clear blue sky

Congress votes to end shutdown

The over 40-day government shutdown came to an end without a guarantee that the ACA tax credits will be extended.

The House of Representatives passed a spending bill on Wednesday, which has already cleared the Senate, and once signed into law by President Trump, will end the longest government shutdown in US history.

The bill passed with a 222-209 vote, with six Democrats voting with Republicans. The bill is expected to be signed into law by Trump late Wednesday evening.

The bill funds most federal agencies through January and promises Democrats a separate vote on extending the ACA tax credits in December.

The bill does not include an extension of the Biden-era enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, a central sticking point for Democrats after weeks of stalemate that left thousands federal workers without pay, disrupted air travel, and threatened to cut off families from food benefits.

The ACA tax credits, which subsidize health insurance plans provided by private insurers, were part of a 2021 Covid-19 relief package passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress. The subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31, led to a boom in ACA enrollment. Keeping the subsidies would increase the deficit by $350 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

An analysis by Wakely, a healthcare market research firm, projected that marketplace enrollment would decline by more than half in 2026 if the subsidies aren't extended. The biggest providers of ACA marketplace plans like UnitedHealthcare, Elevance Health, Oscar Health, Molina Healthcare and Centene fell on the news.

Without the ACA tax credits, significantly fewer people will be eligible for help paying for their plan just as premiums are expected to rise amid soaring healthcare costs. Executives from Molina and Oscar have said that the end of the ACA subsidies will likely result in fewer healthy people purchasing plans, leaving a smaller group of sicker members, making coverage more expensive to provide.

Molina said it plans to increase rates on marketplace plans by an average of 30%. Overall, ACA marketplace premium payments are expected to double next year, according to an estimate from KFF.

Centene CEO Sarah London told analysts in an Oct. 29 earnings call that it is expecting a year-end utilization push as its members stare down "potentially the wholesale loss of affordable healthcare coverage next year."

Jon Keegan13h

OpenAI: The New York Times is forcing us to turn over 20 million ChatGPT conversations

A judge in the The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI (and Microsoft) has ordered that the ChatGPT maker hand over the conversations of 20 million users to the Times’ lawyers, in an effort to find examples of copyright violations.

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

If the company’s final appeals to the court do not succeed, OpenAI explains that it will de-identify the chat logs, scrub any personally identifying information from the chats, and that technical experts hired by The New York Times’ legal team will be the only ones who can examine the data, which will be tightly controlled.

Fighting the New York Times’ invasion of user privacy

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

Millie Giles

THE BILL, PLEASE

11/10/25

The Senate just advanced a deal that could end the government shutdown

Prediction markets have done a U-turn as Washington looks to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

USA government shutdown, political crisis concept illustration

Max Knoblauch11/4/25

Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.

Jon Keegan11/3/25

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmaker’s most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Walt Hickey

shutdown watch

10/21/25

Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.