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Top 5 US news stories

October 30 2025

Greg Loving

30 Oct 2025 • 8 min read

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping exit after their meeting in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

US, China Pause Trade Fight; Tariff Relief Exchanged for Fentanyl, Soybean Pledges

Minutes Ahead of Xi Meeting, Trump Vows to Restart Nuclear Tests

US-China 'Phase One' Trade Deal Fails to Meet Goals Six Years Later

Trump Approves South Korean Nuclear Submarine Construction in Philadelphia

Wellness Author, New Mother Tapped as 'Nonpolitical' Surgeon General

…US GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN ENTERS 30th DAY…

...Blue Jays Claw Back: Toronto Hammers Dodgers 6-1 in Game 5, Seize 3-2 Series Lead...

US, China Pause Trade Fight; Tariff Relief Exchanged for Fentanyl, Soybean Pledges

BUSAN, South Korea—President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping emerged from their first face-to-face meeting in six years with a temporary truce in the bruising trade fight between the two superpowers. Their agreement lowers immediate tensions between the U.S. and China, which have been locked for months in a bitter struggle over trade and technology that has hurt both their economies. The agreement includes a reduction in stiff U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for a pledge by China to crack down on the trade in the chemicals used to produce fentanyl. China also promised to ease the exports of rare earths—minerals that Western manufacturers rely on to make a range of goods. And Beijing promised to buy “tremendous amounts” of American soybeans, said Trump. While the detente provides relief to both sides, it does little to address the fundamental divergence between two superpowers whose economies are decoupling in many sectors and who are racing for supremacy in areas such as artificial intelligence.

WSJ

Minutes Ahead of Xi Meeting, Trump Vows to Restart Nuclear Tests

In the middle of a high-stakes diplomatic tour of Asia, President Trump threatened on social media to resume nuclear testing for the first time in more than 30 years. He made the threat just minutes before he was scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping of China, who is overseeing one of the fastest buildups of a nuclear arsenal on earth. “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media site, saying the process would begin immediately. The words “on an equal basis” may mean he will show off the power of American missiles or undersea nuclear assets, rather than detonate a nuclear weapon. The United States routinely tests unarmed missiles. Mr. Trump did not clarify his remarks to reporters while greeting Mr. Xi. While China is rapidly expanding its nuclear stockpile, and deploying missiles in new silos, it has not tested a nuclear weapon since 1996. Russia has not conducted a confirmed test since 1990. And while the United States has never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans weapon detonations, past presidents have largely observed its provisions. In the past few days, President Vladimir V. Putin said Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile, and separately, a nuclear torpedo called the Poseidon. The torpedo is designed to travel under the Pacific from Russia’s east to hit the American West Coast. For years, American nuclear weapons engineers have said that more nuclear testing was unnecessary, since they could model tests on a computer rather than risk the kind of detonations that were once set off in the Pacific or underground in Nevada. But in recent years, as the United States has begun to modernize its aging arsenal, there have been calls to resume testing.

NYT

US-China 'Phase One' Trade Deal Fails to Meet Goals Six Years Later

When the Trump administration announced its “Phase One” trade deal with China in early 2020, it was billed as a breakthrough to reset the trade relationship after two years of escalating tariffs. The agreement promised sweeping Chinese purchases of American goods and services—an additional $200 billion over 2017 levels across manufacturing, energy, agriculture, and services—along with stronger protections for intellectual property and reduced barriers for U.S. firms. In return, the U.S. paused new tariff hikes and trimmed duties on $120 billion of imports. The deal was meant to mark a turning point, signaling that diplomacy could replace confrontation in managing the world’s two largest economies. Six years later, most of those expectations have gone unfulfilled. Analysts estimate China fell about 19 percent short of the $200 billion purchase target, while key structural reforms remain largely aspirational. Meanwhile, instead of easing, tariffs have hardened into a new normal: average duties on Chinese goods today hover near 45 percent—roughly fifteen times higher than before the trade war began. The U.S. goods deficit with China remains wide, and companies on both sides have restructured supply chains to limit exposure rather than expand trade. What began as a “Phase One” détente has effectively become a semi-permanent decoupling.

Trump Approves South Korean Nuclear Submarine Construction in Philadelphia

US President Donald Trump said he had approved plans for South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine in Philadelphia – praising Seoul as a “serious partner” in efforts to revive US shipbuilding – in a social post released just ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “South Korea will be building its nuclear-powered submarine in the Philadelphia shipyards,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Thursday morning. “I have given them approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, rather than the old-fashioned and far less nimble diesel-powered submarines that they have now.” The comments came after South Korean President Lee Jae-myung asked for America’s help in obtaining nuclear fuel for the country’s submarine programme during a meeting with Trump on Wednesday in Seoul, where global leaders have gathered for this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum. Trump said the decision was based on the fact that America’s military alliance with South Korea was “stronger than ever before”. The timeline for the submarine project remains unclear.

SCMP

Wellness Author, New Mother Tapped as 'Nonpolitical' Surgeon General

WASHINGTON—Dr. Casey Means wants to give the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda a less polarizing touch when she becomes U.S. surgeon general, a role where her experience as a new mother will be front and center. The wellness author, picked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be surgeon general, was due to give birth to her first child Tuesday, just days before her expected virtual Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. If confirmed, she will be the first in the job who is also a new mother. She has taken an unusual path to the office, abandoning traditional clinical practice after four years of residency to focus on alternative medicine and health tech projects. “She is the pre-eminent MAHA mom,” Kennedy said in an interview, adding that he expects that as surgeon general she will focus on nutrition and similar topics, such as his department’s efforts to improve baby formula. “She’s going to have a bully pulpit, and she can talk to moms about how to care for their kids, what kind of food to give them.” Means has spent her pregnancy walking at least 8,000 steps a day, cooking with organic ingredients, lifting weights three times a week and using an Oura ring to track her sleep, people familiar with her thinking said. She plans to breast-feed as long as she can, aiming for a year. Her intention to focus on fighting chronic disease with nutrition and exercise risks being overshadowed by other aspects of the MAHA movement, including vaccine skepticism. The primary power of any surgeon general is in being the voice of authority as America’s top doctor. Past surgeon generals’ warnings have shifted public opinion on smoking, drunken driving and more. The officeholder also leads the more than 6,000 members of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Means, 38, describes herself to friends as the nonpolitical sibling. Her brother, Calley Means, is a close adviser to Kennedy and until recently was a special government employee at the White House. Casey Means wants to focus on food and nutrition in part because she sees that as a unifying message, according to the people familiar with Means’s thinking.

Dr. Casey Means, a wellness entrepreneur and nominee for surgeon general BEN CURTIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

WSJ

October 30 1938: Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre broadcast a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, presenting a fictional Martian invasion as if it were a series of live news bulletins. Only 23 at the time, Welles crafted the program with striking realism—complete with weather reports, dance music interruptions, and urgent on-scene “updates” from Grovers Mills, New Jersey, where announcers described alien machines and lethal “heat rays.” Many listeners tuning in late missed the show’s introduction and mistook the performance for real news, leading to reports of widespread panic.

The Federal Communications Commission investigated but found no wrongdoing, though networks agreed to be more cautious. The publicity transformed Welles into a national sensation, earning him a Hollywood contract that led to Citizen Kane (1941), often hailed as the greatest American film ever made. What began as an innovative radio drama became one of the most famous broadcasts in U.S. history, demonstrating the power—and peril—of mass media realism.

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