How the Government Will Reopen, and What’s in the Epstein Emails

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, November 13th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14It's an honor now to sign this incredible bill and get our country working again. Late last night, President Trump signed a measure reopening the federal government and ending a 43-day shutdown that was the longest in U.S. history. The bill made it to Trump's desk after a handful of Democratic lawmakers broke ranks with their party and dropped their demands for the legislation to include an extension of health care subsidies for millions of Americans. So I just want to tell the American people you should not forget this. When we come up to midterms and other things, don't forget what they've done to our country.

0:52Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump worked to frame the shutdown as Democrats' fault, calling their health care demands an attempt at extortion. Public polling, however, shows that most Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown and that voters overwhelmingly want the subsidies, which are set to expire next month, to be extended. As part of the bill Trump signed, the government will now be funded through the end of January, though some specific programs will be funded for most of next year. The bill also includes a provision that reverses the layoffs of federal workers that Trump ordered during the shutdown.

1:27In terms of what this will all mean for two of the most visible consequences of the shutdown, airlines say travel could get back to normal in the next week as air traffic controllers who've been going without pay finally get their checks. And according to the White House, the one in eight Americans who rely on SNAP benefits to help buy groceries should see their accounts fully restored today.

2:02For the past day, a team of Times reporters has been poring over the more than 20 ,000 pages of Jeffrey Epstein's emails that were released by Congress. The House Oversight Committee got the emails from Epstein's estate as part of its investigation into the convicted sex offender. Their release started as a slow drip. Yesterday morning, House Democrats first shared just three email exchanges. In them, Epstein made comments suggesting that Trump, who he was friendly with in the 90s and early 2000s, knew more about his behavior than the president has acknowledged. For example, Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Trump had, quote, spent hours at my house with one of Epstein's victims.

2:46And in 2019, Epstein wrote to a journalist about Trump, saying, quote, Of course he knew about the girls. Republicans, in turn, criticized Democrats for releasing only those three emails, and shortly after released the rest, thousands and thousands of them. In that huge document dump, which the Times is still digging through, the messages hint that Epstein and his advisers believed they had inside and potentially damaging knowledge of Trump's business dealings. It's really clear that for years after Trump severed his ties with Epstein, Epstein was still really focused on Trump. Epstein appeared to think that he had some potential leverage over Trump at a time when the federal government, which was run by Donald Trump, was criminally investigating Epstein.

3:39On today's episode of The Daily, Times investigative reporter David Enrich analyzes the emails he's seen so far. To me, the takeaway of these emails is not so much what they reveal about Epstein's relationship with Trump, as much as they reveal that Epstein, who was always an opportunist and always looking for an edge over people, was doing that here with Trump. He could sense, I think, that the walls were closing in on him and that his life, his freedom were on the line. And he was desperate to find any edge, any advantage he could grab. And one of those edges was Trump. Meanwhile. These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.

4:24The White House responded to the release of the emails by saying that the Trump administration has been more transparent about the Epstein investigation, quote, than any administration ever. And it is not a coincidence that the Democrats leaked these emails to the fake news this morning ahead of Republicans reopening the government. This is another distraction campaign. But the newly released emails are unlikely to quiet the calls, coming from both Democrats and some of Trump's own supporters, for more Epstein-related files to be released. A core part of Trump's base believes that the Justice Department is sitting on a motherload of documents, including video recordings.

5:03Only small, curated batches of those documents have been made public so far. Last night, a bipartisan effort to force a vote in the House to demand the release of those files moved forward. despite an intense effort by the White House to stop it.

5:24Now, one more update on the Trump administration. The Times has gotten access to a confidential plan that outlines how officials are preparing to make drastic cuts to programs that provide housing to homeless Americans. It's set to be the most significant change to federal policy around homelessness in a generation. For years, there was a bipartisan push for a movement known as Housing First, where federally funded programs helped homeless people with disabilities get subsidized apartments with no preconditions. The idea was to get people off the streets and that that stability would help them address other issues in their lives.

6:03Now, the administration is planning to sharply limit spending on housing like that and prioritize programs that impose work rules and require homeless people to accept mental health or addiction treatment, among other things. The government says the new rules will address what it calls the root causes of homelessness, like drug abuse and mental illness. But the change doesn't address another crucial issue, soaring housing costs that have helped push homelessness to record highs in the U.S. Critics say the administration's plan could put as many as 170 ,000 Americans at risk of returning to the streets, starting as soon as January.

6:42The director of one advocacy group that supports homeless people warned, quote, People don't know what's about to hit them.

7:01Three, two, one. In Philadelphia yesterday, after more than 230 years of production, the U.S. Mint printed its very last American penny. Over the last decade, the American taxpayers have been repeatedly shortchanged. Top Treasury officials celebrated the final pressing as a money saver for the government, citing just how expensive making pennies had become in recent years. To print one penny, which is made almost entirely of zinc, costs more than three cents. A little absurd since, let's be real, what can you even buy with a penny? That said, if you have some of the estimated 250 billion pennies still out there somewhere, collecting dust in a jar maybe, fear not, they are still legal tender.

7:51Now, this may not be the last coin we say goodbye to. The nickel could be next. Like the penny, there's almost nothing you can buy with one. And the cost of minting a nickel is now more than a dime.

8:10And finally. I remember that it was a typical West Coast day. It was misty, rainy. We were busy pre-flighting the aircraft at that time in the cockpit. The Times is remembering a man who, in 1971, became an unwitting witness to one of the most riveting unsolved crimes in American history. William Ratajk died recently at 86 years old. But on a November day in 71, he was the co-pilot on a flight headed from Portland, Oregon to Seattle when a man known as D.B. Cooper climbed on board. A flight attendant then came through the cockpit door. Ratacek described it all in an interview with the BBC, including the moment Cooper handed over a note claiming he had a bomb.

8:53And it said, you're being hijacked. No funny stuff. I want$200 ,000 in U.S. currency. I want it in a knapsack. And I want four parachutes. The passengers were all allowed to get off the plane in Seattle. They never knew what was happening. And once the money and parachutes were on board, the flight took off again. At some point, alone in the back of the plane, Cooper lowered the staircase and parachuted into the night. Ratacek, in the cockpit, felt a bump in the pressure, and he radioed air traffic control. He said, quote, I think our friend has just taken leave of us. Ratacek talked about the fateful flight many times over the years.

9:31He kept flying and stayed on at the airline, only retiring in 1999. As for Cooper, he was never found. And almost a decade ago, the FBI announced it was no longer actively pursuing the case. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest news and our Friday quiz.