Trump says Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks will begin 'immediately'

The Senate advanced a major cryptocurrency regulation bill today on a bipartisan vote two weeks after every Senate Democrat united to block it. 

The procedural vote on the GENIUS Act — which would establish the first regulatory framework for issuers of stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar — was 66-32. Sixteen Democrats voted with the majority of Senate Republicans to advance the bill. Two Republicans, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jerry Moran of Kansas, voted against it.

The bill needed to cross the 60-vote threshold to advance to final passage in the Senate, where Republicans hold a three-seat majority.

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The Senate voted 51-45 tonight to confirm real estate developer Charles Kushner to be U.S. ambassador to France.

Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was a White House adviser during Trump’s first term. Trump pardoned Charles Kushner in 2020. He had pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2005 in connection with federal charges of filing false tax returns, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey joined most Republicans in voting for Kushner's nomination. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against him.

The Justice Department today filed a copy of the audio from special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with then-President Joe Biden.

NBC News and other news organizations had sued the Justice Department for the audio.

The Justice Department released audio from the two days of interviews in 2023 — Oct. 8 and Oct. 9.

justice.gov/storage/Biden-interview-with-Hur-part-2-October-9th.mp3Audio clips released last week confirmed memory lapses that White House officials denied at the time. At one point in the interviews, Biden struggled to remember the year his oldest son died.

The Justice Department said it filed charges today against Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., alleging she assaulted law enforcement this month at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark.

The acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, made the announcement on X, where she accused McIver of “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

McIver called the charges “purely political” in a statement and said she looks forward “to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”

“Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district. We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka,” she said.

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The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a letter on social media today that it was opening up an investigation into the city of Chicago after Mayor Brandon Johnson made comments yesterday highlighting prominent Black officials in his administration.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote in the letter to Johnson that she had “authorized an investigation” into whether Chicago is “engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination” following Johnson’s comments at the Apostolic Church of God.

“If these kind of hiring decisions are being made for top-level positions in your administration, then it begs the question of whether such decisions are also being made for lower-level positions,” Dhillon wrote.

An initial wave of bipartisan sympathy for Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis has started to ebb, giving way to suggestions from Trump’s allies that the former president’s inner circle masked his condition while he was in office to create an illusion that he was still up to the job.

In a social media post yesterday showing a picture of Biden with the caption “Politics aside, we wish him a speedy recovery,” the president’s eldest son, Don Trump Jr., wrote, “Agreed 100%.”

By today, he had posted a darker message: “Everyone was in on the coverup! Who was running the country? We need accountability!”

President Trump and his MAGA movement have long charged that Biden was too enfeebled to serve and that a coterie of loyalists propped him up to hide the harsh reality from voters, an accusation his team has denied.

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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office this afternoon, Trump was asked whether he had asked Putin to meet with him.

"Of course I did. I talked to him about it," Trump said, adding that he asked Putin, "When are we going to end this, Vladimir?"

Trump did not say whether Putin agreed to meet with him.

Putin, who recently called for peace negotiations with Ukraine, did not take part in talks last week in Turkey.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., announced today she would not join the race to replace outgoing Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

In a statement on X, Underwood said she believed the most “powerful way” to combat the Trump administration's policies, including any plans to cut Medicaid, was to remain in the House and work to help Democrats take control of it in next year's midterm elections. Underwood said she would continue with recruiting efforts for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The race for Durbin's seat in deep-blue Illinois has already drawn a crowded Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker has backed his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, raising questions over whether it was a warning sign to keep other Democrats from competing.

Two members of Congress, Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi, have also launched campaigns.

Trump is expected to appear in person at tomorrow morning’s House Republican Conference meeting, two sources with knowledge of the meeting’s agenda told NBC News. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., aims to pass a massive bill for Trump's agenda this week. There are still major disagreements within the GOP conference over a host of issues, including cuts to Medicaid, reforms to the state and local tax deduction and the future of green energy tax credits passed under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.