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October 21, 2025

	By Matthew Cullen

Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Trump is demanding millions from his own administration

President Trump is asking the Justice Department to pay him about $230 million in compensation for past investigations into him.

The situation, which was revealed today by our Washington reporters Devlin Barrett and Tyler Pager, has no parallel in American history. It is also perhaps the starkest example yet of the president’s potential ethical conflicts: His close allies, including one of his former defense lawyers, could be in charge of approving any such payout.

“The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it,” Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace University, told The Times.

When campaigning for president, Trump submitted one complaint in 2023 and another in 2024, both seeking damages from the Justice Department for what he described as violations of his rights during investigations into his conduct. Compensation is typically covered by taxpayers, and there is no requirement that such a payout ever be announced.

When asked about the potential conflict of interest, the Justice Department said it would follow the guidance of career ethics officials. However, the department’s top ethics adviser was fired three months ago.

In other Trump administration news:

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Putin meeting was put on pause

In a reversal, a White House official said today that Trump had no plans to meet with Vladimir Putin in the immediate future. Just last week, the president had announced plans for a meeting with the Russian president in Budapest to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine.

That leaves a question mark surrounding next steps in the efforts to negotiate a cease-fire. Ukraine’s president visited the White House last week in hopes of working with the U.S. to push Russia to the negotiating table. But the meeting was contentious, and no obvious progress was made.

In Russia, the Kremlin has throttled WhatsApp and Telegram while pushing a new state-controlled “super app,” moving closer to a restricted internet without foreign technology.

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Trump rearranged funds to pay some workers during shutdown

The government shutdown has now stretched on for three weeks. Normally, federal employees would go without a paycheck until Congress passed new legislation. But this time, the Trump administration has reprogrammed billions of dollars to pay troops and law enforcement officials.

The steps stretch the authority of the White House and encroach on the spending power vested solely in Congress. But few have challenged Trump, given the broad, bipartisan desire to pay government employees.

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