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    Seth Meyers: ‘Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care’

    Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s out-of-touch comments on grocery prices, the longest-ever government shutdown and a dramatic White House press conference on Ozempic.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers continued to analyze the results of Tuesday’s elections on Thursday evening, examining what fueled major victories for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. “If you do look inside the numbers, you’ll see that it wasn’t just anti-Trump backlash that fueled Democrats’ wins,” the Late Night host said. “Voters are also furious about the economy,” especially record-high grocery prices.“So the same thing that we were told was an issue in the last election was still an issue in this election because nothing has been fixed,” Meyers continued. “And voters are right – grocery prices are going up, everything from coffee to bananas to beef.” In fact, beef prices have never been higher. “Soon it’s going to get so bad that Trump’s going to start pushing Americans toward vegan options,” Meyers joked.But “don’t worry, Republicans, Trump is in touch with the common man,” he added. “That’s his gift. He knows what it’s like to go to the grocery store and feel the pain when you open your wallet and hand the cashier your ID and – wait, what?”Speaking from the White House, Trump claimed that “all we want is voter ID” at the grocery store. “You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID.”“Yeah, everyone knows you get carded at the grocery store,” Meyers deadpanned. “Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care.”In fact, Trump insisted that grocery prices were going down in his recent interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes. “You can lie about immigration, you can lie about the stock market, you can even lie about what wars you ended because most Americans will say ‘I didn’t even know that Thailand and Finland were at war,’” said Meyers. “But you can’t lie about the prices people see with their own eyes at the grocery store.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert checked in on the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 38 days. “The shutdown has already wreaked havoc on air travel, and that havoc is about to get even reekier,” he said, as air traffic controllers aren’t being paid and many aren’t showing up to work.So many, in fact, that the Federal Aviation Administration has directed airlines to cut 10% of their flights at the busiest airports. “So unfortunately it may be time to try your new favorite airline: the bus,” Colbert joked. “If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving, you might want to leave now.”Colbert also touched on the major victories for Democrats on election day, which Trump referred to in a press conference as “an interesting evening and we learned a lot”.“That sounds like what you’d say after a Tinder date where someone had to go to the hospital,” Colbert laughed.In other news, Fifa – “whose job, you’ll recall, is to take bribes and regulate soccer”, Colbert joked – announced a new peace prize to be awarded at the World Cup draw in Washington. “Yes, the Fifa peace prize: it’s given exclusively to world leaders who stop wars using only their feet,” Colbert said.“So it really looks like a made-up award just to give Trump something,” he noted, though when asked to confirm that Trump would be given the award, Fifa president Gianni Infantino demurred, saying: “On the 5th of December, you will see.”“Man, it is going to be hilarious when they give it to Obama,” Colbert laughed.The Daily ShowAnd on the Daily Show, Jordan Klepper recapped a dramatic White House press conference in which Trump announced a plan to cut the price of Ozempic and other pharmaceutical weight-loss drugs. “It’s all part of his campaign promise and his one consistent principle of ‘no fatties’,” Klepper joked.The press conference was “an event that turned into a major Hipaa violation”, as Trump announced the price cuts by singling out members of his administration who did or did not take weight-loss drugs.“Joking aside, obesity is a serious issue,” Klepper said. “So, this could be a benefit. Dr Oz, you’re a doctor, theoretically. Give us a reasonable expectation of success here.”Oz, the TV doctor turned Trump’s administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, boasted that Americans would “lose 135bn pounds by the midterms”.“Why the midterms?” Klepper wondered. “Did they add a swimsuit competition to those?“Look, I’m no mathematician,” he continued. “But 135bn pounds divided by 340 million Americans means we each have to lose … 400lb by the midterms. And I know that sounds like a lot, but remember: that’s just the average! Some people will lose 300lb, while other people will lose 500lb. Some of us will lose no pounds at all, which will be offset by everyone losing 800lb.“The point is, regardless of how much you lose, Donald Trump will be tracking it and announcing your personal results at a press conference.” More

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    Democrats should celebrate this week’s victories, but beware: Trump is already plotting his revenge | Jonathan Freedland

    After the joy, the trepidation. Or at least the preparation. Democrats, along with many others around the world, cheered this week’s wins in a clutch of off-year elections that saw Donald Trump’s Republicans defeated from sea to shining sea. But now they need to brace themselves for the reaction. Because Donald Trump does not like losing. And he will do everything he can to ensure it does not happen again – by means fair and, more often, foul. Indeed, that effort is already under way.For now, the Democrats are still clinking glasses, enjoying a success that tastes all the sweeter for coming exactly a year after they lost everything – the House, the Senate and the White House – to a returning and triumphant Trump. The most dramatic win was Zohran Mamdani’s history-making victory in America’s most populous city, New York, but there was success too at the other end of the continent, as voters in California backed Democrats on an apparently technical measure that could prove hugely significant. In between, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia by healthy, double-digit margins.All this has displeased Trump, but it is the election of Mamdani in Trump’s home city that brought the swiftest response. The forces of Maga have wasted no time in making the man Trump calls a “100% communist lunatic” the face of the Democratic party. The New York Post went early, with a front page showing the new mayor clutching a hammer and sickle, next to the headline “The Red Apple”, with the R reversed to looks suspiciously Soviet. Fox Business also broke out the Bolshevik graphics for a segment on the global threat posed by socialism, featuring international testimony on the failures that ensue when profit is not paramount – including reports on Britain’s own “broken” National Health Service.The Republican goal is clear enough: to ensure that next year’s nationwide midterm elections – where control of the House of Representatives is on the line – can be fought against a Democratic party recast as Mamdani Marxists. Right now, Democrats are confident they can see off that danger, uniting behind a common message of “affordability”, even as they tailor it to different audiences in different places – much as they did this week, with the victors in Virginia and New Jersey pressing the same cost of living themes as Mamdani but in moderate, suburban colours. That approach could work next year, when the battle for the House amounts to 435 separate elections. Come the presidential election of 2028, however, when Democrats will have to forge a single, national message behind a single, national candidate who can appeal to both cities and suburbs, it will be harder.View image in fullscreenStill, that is the kind of challenge politicians are used to tackling. A darker menace looms, and not only in Trump’s heavy hints that he could cut off federal funding to New York. Recall that the president has already broken all precedent by sending US troops into Washington DC and Los Angeles and by attempting to do so in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, supposedly to crack down on rampant crime but, in fact, to assert control over politically disobedient centres of power. No wonder many New York observers suspect it is only a matter of time before Trump dispatches the National Guard to Brooklyn and the Bronx, now that Gotham is in the hands of a sworn foe. Trump always wanted to conquer New York City; now he might just do it.Such a move would be of a piece with the series of actions Trump seems set to take – or is already taking – to ensure the elections of November 2026 are not allowed to go the way they did this week. Put simply, next year’s contests matter too much for him to let that happen. As of now, Trump has total control of all three branches of the US government: the White House, obviously, but also the supreme court and both houses of Congress, thanks to pliant judges in the former and Republican majorities in the latter. The Senate is unlikely to shift, but given the currently tiny Republican majority in the lower chamber, and the usual midterm swing against an incumbent party, every conventional sign would point to a Democratic takeover of the House in 12 months. If that happens, the rubber stamp will be replaced by a genuine check on the president’s power, one that – especially worrying for him – would have the authority to investigate and hold to account both Trump and those who serve him.He is determined to avert that outcome. That’s why he leaned on Republicans in Texas, demanding they redraw congressional boundaries to eke out five more safe Republican seats. It was to offset that earlier Texas move that California Democrats asked voters this week for the power to do some redistricting of their own, to give their party up to an extra five Democratic seats in the House. Californians said yes, even those who fear this tit-for-tat gerrymandering represents a race to the bottom that can only weaken US democracy.But Trump is not done. He has pushed Republicans in North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana to follow Texas’s lead, hoping to squeeze out enough extra seats so that his party keeps the House even if voters desert them next November. Others are bracing for a supreme court decision that could weaken a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, one that currently permits state legislatures to consider race when deciding congressional boundaries. That measure has allowed for the crafting of districts that ensure that voters from minorities see their favoured candidates elected. If the court outlaws that practice, Republican-controlled state legislatures could move to eliminate those districts altogether, depriving Democrats of around a dozen seats in the south.Those are only the most visible threats. In an essay in The Atlantic, David A Graham charts the myriad ways in which Trump and his allies are already working to subvert the midterm elections. Some of it is old-fashioned voter suppression – making the casting of a ballot harder by, say, reducing the availability of early and postal voting or demanding specific forms of ID – while some of it is intimidation.In the elections just gone, the Trump-controlled department of justice sent “monitors” to watch over polling places in Democratic-leaning areas. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are snatching even US citizens off the streets, you can see how the presence of Trump-loyal “monitors” might have a chilling effect, persuading some voters that they’d be safer staying home. The presence of troops in battle fatigues on the streets, which a year from now will come to seem normal in several US cities, will have the same effect – only more so.All of this comes as Trump has gutted the agency charged with keeping elections secure, slashed funding for the protection of voting from cyber-attack and looked on as many diligent election officials, including traditional Republicans, have been driven out of office and replaced by Maga activists.Even if the 2026 elections go ahead unhindered, the danger does not end there. Graham warns that Trump could declare a state of emergency, seizing voting machines before a tally is made official. A defeated Republican House speaker could refuse to seat victorious Democrats (as, in fact, Speaker Mike Johnson is already doing). And, through it all, there would be loud voices on Fox News, on social media and perhaps even on some of the mainstream networks that have recently bent the knee to Trump, defending if not applauding his every move.This week’s results suggest that, if it’s a fair fight, Democrats can win a year from now, finally putting a brake on Trump’s march towards autocracy. But that’s a big if – and with each passing day, it’s only getting bigger.

    Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

    Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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    Trump is threatening the basic needs of poor Americans. How low he has sunk | Robert Reich

    The Democrats had a great day on Tuesday. It’s crucial that they hone their economic message for next year’s midterms to focus on affordability and fairness.Trump is doing the opposite. Although a federal court ordered him to continue to provide food stamps to about 42 million low-income Americans who depend on them, Trump threatened to deny them anyway until the end of the government shutdown.In a post on social media on Tuesday, he said benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), commonly referred to as food stamps, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up the government, which they can easily do, and not before!” The White House later confirmed it would comply with a court order to use emergency funds to support Snap – but the administration said users would receive only half of what they typically do. On Thursday, the saga continued, with a court ordering the administration to fully fund Snap benefits in November; the administration moved to appeal.How low Trump has sunk.Eighty-eight years ago, in his second inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told America that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”It was not a test of the nation’s military might or of the size of the national economy. It was a test of our moral authority. We had a duty to comfort the afflicted, even if that required afflicting the comfortable.The Trump regime has adopted the reverse metric. The test of its progress is whether it adds to the abundance of those who have much and provides less for those who have too little. It is passing this test with flying colors.What is the Democrats’ demand amid the shutdown? That lower-income Americans continue to receive subsidized healthcare. Otherwise, healthcare premiums for millions of lower-income Americans will soar next year in large part because the Trump Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act (really, Big Ugly Bill) slashed Obamacare subsidies.Republicans had rammed the Big Ugly Bill through Congress without giving Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster it because Republicans used a process called “reconciliation”, requiring only a majority vote of the Senate.The Big Ugly Bill also requires Medicaid applicants and enrollees – also low-income – to document at least 80 hours of work per monthMany people dependent on Medicaid won’t be able to do this, either because they’re not physically able to work or won’t be able to do the required paperwork to qualify for an exemption from the work requirement.The Congressional Budget Office, as assessed by KFF, estimates the work requirement will be the largest source of Medicaid savings, reducing federal spending on the low-income Americans by $326bn over 10 years and causing millions to become uninsured.All told, the Big Ugly Bill cuts roughly $1tn over the next decade from programs for which the main beneficiaries are the poor and working class, and gives about $1tn in tax benefits to the richest members of our society.It is the most dramatic reversal of FDR’s moral test in American history.By the time of FDR’s second inaugural address in 1937, most of the country was still ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Yet we were all in it together. The fortunes of the robber barons of the Gilded Age had mostly been leveled by the Great Crash of 1929.Perhaps it was easier under those circumstances to accept the idea that the test of our progress wasn’t whether we added more to the abundance of those who had much but provided enough for those who had too little.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, though, the moneyed interests lord it over America – exerting so much economic and political power that the nation is badly failing FDR’s test.Last weekend, just as millions of low-income Americans were losing their food stamps, Trump threw a lush Great Gatsby-themed party at his Mar-a-Lago estate, replete with 1920s flappers and Gatsby-inspired music from the roaring 20s.Some critics have called it “tone deaf”, but it was an accurate rendition of the tone Trump has set for America.Trump is throwing a huge party for America’s wealthy – giving them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks to ensure that their wealth (and support for him) continues to grow.Meanwhile, he is throwing to poor and working-class Americans the red meat of hatefulness – hate of immigrants, people of color, the “deep state”, “socialists”, “communists”, transgender people and Democrats.This is the formula strongmen have used for a century – more wealth for the wealthy, more bigotry for the working-class and poor – until the entire facade crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy.On Tuesday, millions of American voters refused to go along with this unfairness. They repudiated, loudly and clearly, the formula Trump and his regime have used.It is the responsibility of all of us to return the nation to a path that is morally sustainable.

    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now More

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    Who are the contenders for Nancy Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat?

    Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.In statements released on Thursday, both candidates praised Pelosi with Wiener describing her as the “greatest speaker in United States history”.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is more than a legislator – she is an icon of American politics. She led the fight for healthcare and obliterated Trump when he tried to repeal it,” Wiener said, adding that her “finest moments” were fighting for marginalized people, including during the Aids crisis.Chakrabarti said Pelosi “set the standard for Democratic leadership with determination, discipline and tactical brilliance” and that her retirement marked the start of a “long-overdue generational shift”.“Thank you, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, for your decades of service that defined a generation of politics and for doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one,” he said.Still, Chakrabarti is trying to put some daylight between himself the Democratic party grandees.The 39-year-old progressive, who worked for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, announced his candidacy in February by arguing that it was time for change and that Democratic leaders were unprepared to handle Trump’s second presidency.Chakrabarti, a software engineer who graduated from Harvard, formally launched his campaign at a rally in San Francisco’s Mission District last month. He recently said in a statement Democrats needed a “new kind of leader who is not a part of the establishment, because the establishment has failed us”. Chakrabarti pledged to back universal healthcare and childcare, ban stock trading for members of Congress and “to stop funding the genocide in Gaza”.Since launching, Chakrabarti’s campaign had built “one of the largest grassroots operations in San Francisco history” with more than 2,000 volunteers, he said.Wiener, 55, is a Harvard-educated attorney and prominent San Francisco Democrat who has served in the state legislature since 2016. He authored a recently passed bill banning federal and state law enforcement from wearing masks and has promoted legislation to address California’s housing crisis and expand climate action.He has long been interested in Pelosi’s seat, but said he would run only if Pelosi decided to step down. In 2023, Wiener formed an exploratory committee that has already raised $1m for a future congressional run.Announcing his candidacy last month, Wiener said “we need more than rhetoric and good intentions from Democrats” and that he was seeking office to stand up to Trump as the president wages a “full-on war against immigrants and LGBTQ people” and the cost of living continues to increase.The San Francisco Chronicle reported there has been speculation that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a Democratic strategist, might run, while Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, is also said to be considering running. More

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    Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

    It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).“There’s just a massive cognitive dissonance between what real people are going through, and the elite,” said Larry Hannan, communications and policy director of State Voices Florida, a coalition of more than a hundred non-partisan, pro-democracy and civic engagement groups.“Jeff Bezos does not need a $50 food card. But we saw that with the Great Gatsby theme party last week. They just can’t seem to stop doing things that are shockingly out of touch.“We’ve been through shutdowns before, and while obviously the White House bubble is always somewhat insane, presidents are usually smart enough, they usually know not to flaunt this type of stuff. But this administration does not seem to care.”The president’s hour-long address on Thursday had the flavor of a political rally, with familiar insults for old political foes such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and a new one: Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York.View image in fullscreenTrump touched on his economic agenda, and lauded a host of speakers from the worlds of politics, sport and business that filled the two-day agenda, created largely by Francis Suarez, mayor of the city of Miami, to showcase south Florida and its investment opportunities.Lionel Messi, the Argentina soccer star and World Cup winner, provided celebrity glitz from sporting circles, along with tennis champions Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. A conversation between Suarez and María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist who last month won the Nobel peace prize that Trump coveted, was well received on day one.Yet overall it was a curious and unmistakably politically charged event with a field of Trump sycophants on the stage, loudly cheered by a crowd of mostly younger and affluent supporters of the president in the audience, some blending business suits with his trademark red Make America Great Again (Maga) caps.How else to explain the presence of Javier Milei, the rightwing president of Argentina, the country whose shaky economy Trump helped shore up last month with a $20bn currency swap lifeline? Or that of Saudi Arabians Fahad AlSaif, head of its $925bn Public Investment Fund, and Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Riyadh’s ambassador to the US, touting their country as ripe for investment while the Trump family’s financial ties and influence there come under greater scrutiny?Then there was Gianni Infantino, head of Fifa, international soccer’s governing body, dropping hints that Trump is in line for the organization’s first peace prize, an unwanted new award that observers see created specially for the president as consolation for his Nobel snub.Other speakers, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan; Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork and Flow; and Griffin, the hedge-fund manager and Republican donor; have all previously praised, worked with or voted for Trump, offering more than a suggestion of a politically skewed lineup.Suarez, unsurprisingly, saw it differently.“We wanted it to be a sort of a cross-section from different verticals, right?” he told the Guardian.“We got in a room. We said, ‘Hey, what are the leading voices?’ People from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders … sports, business, politics, technology, things that touch everyone’s lives.”He pointed to discussions of upcoming, money-spinning notable events in Miami, including the Formula One grand prix, next year’s G20 economic summit at Trump’s Doral golf resort, and games during the 2026 World Cup, which he called “a generational opportunity”.“Our hope is that Miamians are transformed by the experience,” Suarez said. “We want them to leave thinking, ‘I can be on that stage.’”View image in fullscreenThe advocates of State Voices Florida, however, believe many Miamians are more focused right now on other issues, especially soaring housing and food costs. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis rejected a call from Hannan’s group and others to declare an emergency over Snap benefits and tap state reserves to fund urgent food distribution.“Any civics teacher would tell you it’s his job to look after the people of Florida, and he’s doing the exact opposite,” Hannan said, noting the juxtaposition of a conference of billionaires taking place in the same county in which almost 25% of households rely on Snap benefits to survive.“There just seems to be this detachment at the top. I don’t think the answer is electing a Democrat or electing a Republican, I just think we have to have more empathy for people who are struggling in this state.”Empathy was in short supply in Miami from Trump, a president not known for ever taking responsibility during a crisis.“The radical left Democrats are causing millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to go without benefits,” he said, blaming the out-of-office opposition party for the government shutdown.“I just want to have a country that’s great again. Is that OK?” More

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    As Americans face going hungry, Trump builds a ballroom – podcast

    Archive: CNN, CBS Mornings, CBS News, Fox News, The Obama White House, WAAY 3 News, WUSA9News, ABC News, CNBC
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    US strikes another alleged drug boat bringing death toll from campaign in Latin America to 70

    US forces struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, killing three people, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has said, bringing the death toll from the Trump administration’s controversial campaign to at least 70.The US began carrying out such strikes – which some experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers – in early September, taking aim at vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.The US strikes have destroyed at least 18 vessels so far – 17 boats and a semi-submersible – but Washington has yet to make public any concrete evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the United States.Hegseth released footage on X of the latest strike, which he said took place in international waters like the previous strikes and targeted “a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization.”No US forces were harmed in the operation, he said.“To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs – we will kill you,” he wrote.Like some previous videos released by the US government, a section of the boat is obfuscated for unspecified reasons.President Donald Trump’s administration has built up significant forces in Latin America, in what it says is its campaign to stamp out drug trafficking.So far it has deployed six Navy ships in the Caribbean, sent F-35 stealth warplanes to Puerto Rico, and ordered the USS Gerald R Ford carrier strike group to the region.On Thursday, the US Senate blocked a Democratic war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to seek congressional approval to launch strikes in Venezuela, allowing the president to remain unchecked in his ability to expand his military campaign against the country.The administration has developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela, according to two people familiar with the matter, and Trump’s aides have asked the justice department for additional guidance that could provide a legal basis to strike targets other than boats.The governments and families of those killed in the US strikes on alleged drug boats have said many of the dead were civilians – primarily fishers.Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly accused Trump of seeking to oust him.US bombers have also conducted shows of force near Venezuela, flying over the Caribbean Sea off the country’s coast on at least four occasions since mid-October.Maduro – who has been indicted on drug charges in the United States – insists there is no drug cultivation in his country, which he says is used as a trafficking route for Colombian cocaine against its will.The Trump administration has said in a notice to Congress that the United States is engaged in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, describing them as terrorist groups as part of its justification for the strikes.With Agence France-Presse More

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    Trump news at a glance: administration reduces US flights as shutdown stretches on

    As the record-breaking federal government shutdown stretches toward day 38, US airspace is about to get a little less busy. The same cannot be said for US airports.Donald Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said flights are being reduced to maintain air traffic control safety during the federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution between Republicans and Democrats to end the federal budget standoff.Airline regulators identified “high-volume markets” where the FAA says air traffic must be reduced by 4% by 6am ET on Friday, a move that would force airlines to cancel thousands of flights and create a cascade of scheduling issues and delays at some of the nation’s largest airports.Trump’s transportation chief, Sean Duffy, wrote on X Thursday that the decision was “not about politics” but rather “about assessing the data and alleviating building risk in the system as controllers continue working without pay”.“It’s safe to fly today, tomorrow, and the day after because of the proactive actions we are taking,” Duffy added.US airlines cancel flights after federal directive to cut air trafficExperts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.The affected airports covering more than two dozen states include the busiest ones across the US – including Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. In some of the biggest cities – such as New York, Houston and Chicago – multiple airports will be be affected.All three airports serving the Washington DC area – Washington Dulles international, Baltimore/Washington international and Ronald Reagan Washington national – will be affected, inevitably causing delays and cancellations for lawmakers as well as other travelers.Read the full storyUS supreme court allows Trump to block passport sex markers for trans and non-binary peopleThe supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out.The court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the decision a “pointless but painful perversion”.Read the full storyUS judge orders Trump administration to fully fund Snap benefits in NovemberThe ruling by US district judge John J McConnell Jr on Thursday was in response to a challenge from cities and non-profits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit. The government said it will rely on $4.65bn on emergency funding.“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund Snap,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individual who rely on those benefits would suffer.”Read the full storyWorkers decry Trump officials as ‘out of control’ as longest shutdown drags onAs the US federal shutdown enters its second month, government workers are accusing the Trump administration of being “out of control” and bullying people who are “simply trying to do their best”.About 700,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay, and about 700,000 additional federal workers have been working without pay through the shutdown.Affected workers say the shutdown has been a continuation of attacks they have experienced under the Trump administration, from mass firings – many of which have been overturned or blocked in federal courts – to drastic budget cuts, pushes to take early retirements or resignation buyouts and threats of withholding back pay for workers furloughed during the shutdown.Read the full storyNancy Pelosi, a force on Capitol Hill for decades, to retire from CongressThe California Democratic representative and the first woman to serve as speaker, announced on Thursday she will retire from Congress, two years after stepping down from House leadership.Even when no longer in leadership, the 85-year-old remained enormously influential among Democrats, quietly counseling her party as they navigate Trump’s second term. In 2024, she played a key role in pushing Biden to withdraw from the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Read the full storyTrump announces plan to cut cost of weight loss drugs and expand accessThe agreement will make oral versions of GLP-1s, which aren’t yet to market but are expected to be approved in the coming months, available at $150 per month for starting doses. The average price for these injectables will be about $350, which will “trend down” to $245 a month over the next two years, the Trump administration said.Trump calls the medications the “fat drug”, his term for these semaglutide or tirzepatide shots, known by their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound.Read the full storySenate blocks Democrats’ bid to check Trump power over Venezuela strikesThe 49-51 vote against passing the resolution, mostly along party lines, came a month after a previous effort to stop strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in international waters similarly failed, 48-51.The new resolution narrowed its scope to attract Republicans, but senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski remained the only two Republicans to cross party lines to support the resolution. Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, who had expressed reservations about the strikes, voted against.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Here’s the list of US airports cutting flights on Friday due to federal government shutdown.

    A former Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington DC was found not guilty of assault by a DC jury on Thursday in the latest legal rebuke of the federal intervention.

    Some Democratic legislators saw Tuesday’s big electoral wins as evidence they should hold the line and extract as much as possible from Republicans before agreeing to end the longest government shutdown in history.

    Democrats praised Nancy Pelosi as a “heroic, trailblazing” member of the US House of Representatives, an “icon” and the “greatest speaker in American history”, following her announcement that after 20 terms in Congress she plans to retire.

    Kevin Roberts, the leader of the conservative thinktank behind Project 2025, has apologized for backing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Hitler fan Nick Fuentes, but is resisting calls to resign.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 5 November 2025. More