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    Protests as rightwing Charlie Kirk activist group makes final campus tour stop

    Turning Point USA, the influential rightwing college group founded by Charlie Kirk, has brought Kirk’s message to a campus with a long history of leftwing activism two months after his death.An event at the University of California, Berkeley, on Monday evening marked the chaotic last stop of the American Comeback tour, which Kirk had just begun at the time of his death at Utah Valley University. In the aftermath of Kirk’s fatal shooting, the events have come to serve as memorials, with prominent conservative speakers, including JD Vance, highlighting the staggering impact the controversial rightwing influencer’s death has had on American politics.Since Kirk’s killing in September, allegedly by a 22-year-old gunman, Donald Trump has sought to use the incident to attack Democrats, liberal groups and donors. The president has warned of an “enemy within” while he and allies have launched attacks on political opponents, actions that scholars have described as authoritarian and anti-Democratic.Meanwhile, people have been fired or disciplined from their jobs over comments, or perceived commentary, about Kirk’s killing or the beliefs he publicly espoused.The Berkeley event, hosted by the campus’s TPUSA chapter, featured Rob Schneider, the comedian and actor who has become a champion of conservative causes, and Christian author Frank Turek. It was met with a large protest as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Zellerbach Hall on Monday evening.People shouted “Fascists out of Berkeley” and carried signs with slogans such as “We won the war, why are there still Nazis” and “No safe space for fascist scum”, and Palestinian flags. Meanwhile, dozens of police officers gathered around an entrance, clearing a path for people to enter, and helicopters circled overhead.View image in fullscreenThere were at least three arrests during the protests, including two people detained after a violent altercation, the Daily Californian reported.There was anxiety on campus ahead of the event, said Sophie Mason, a freshman who stopped by the protest after class and said it was the “talk of the town”.“There was a lot of tension. People were worried,” she said.Two hours after the event started, the crowd outside showed no signs of tiring. They briefly broke into chants of “fuck Charlie Kirk.”Protesters at times focused on the large showing of law enforcement, yelling “CHP go home” in reference to the California Highway Patrol team assembled at the frontline of the demonstration.Dozens of officers stood blocking a throughway to the building where the TPUSA event was under way, some with body mounted cameras.Earlier Monday morning, police arrested four students for alleged vandalism after they attempted to hang a large cardboard bug on a gate ahead of the event, Berkeley’s campus newspaper the Daily Californian reported.UC Berkeley, known as the birthplace of the campus free speech movement of the 1960s, has hosted controversial events before. In 2017, thousands of students protested the scheduled appearances of the rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos and the conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Both events were ultimately cancelled, but the city saw violent clashes between opposing groups of protesters.Monday night’s event, which the Berkeley chapter of TPUSA described as an opportunity to “be a part of the movement built on Charlie’s legacy”, was sold out. The chapter has more than doubled since Kirk’s death, organization leadership have said.Given the campus history of protest, Monday night’s demonstrations felt normal, said Tyara Gomez, a third-year student. Although this one had far more police officers, she said.The protest was largely peaceful but was marked by tense moments. A crowd appeared to accost a man who shouted a racial slur, and circled protesters. There were clashes between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators and attendees, and fears of gun violence. Early on, as the crowds reached their peak, a car drove by, seemingly broadcasting the sound of gunshots, sending dozens of people fleeing while others crowded behind concrete pillars, unsure whether a shooting was taking place.Among them was Mayte, who did not feel comfortable sharing her last name and was visiting with her boyfriend. Mayte crammed behind a the concrete structure with her dog and several other people as the vehicle passed. “You can’t tell if its fireworks or gunshots. It’s scary,” she said.She had felt compelled to watch the demonstration, which was as much a protest against TPUSA as it was against Trump and his agenda. “It’s sad what’s happening. I’m the daughter of immigrants.”Mason, the freshman, said she was perplexed why Turning Point USA had chosen to host the event at the famously liberal campus, but that she was pleased to see the turnout. “I’m glad a lot of people came together and showed up.” More

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    Trump news at a glance: Senate passes funding package to end shutdown after Democrats break ranks

    After weeks of false starts and failed votes, a procedural vote passed in the US Senate with a 60-40 tally, as seven Democrats and one independent joining all Republicans to advance a compromise deal that would fund most federal agencies through January.The bill now passes to the House, which is expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday.The Democratic caucus has aimed anger at the defectors, and with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, who now faces calls to resign as minority leader.“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” said congressman Ro Khanna, who represents the Silicon Valley region of California. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”When asked Monday if he supported the Senate agreement to end the government shutdown, Trump said he would “abide by the deal”, calling it “very good.”Senate advances funding package expected to end longest US government shutdownThe Senate on Monday advanced a funding package that is expected to bring to a close the longest government shutdown in US history, after a coalition of Democrats broke from their party and voted with Republicans, in a move that has enraged many in their caucus.Read the full storyTrump threatens BBC with $1bn legal action over edit of speech in documentaryThe president threatened legal action against the BBC and welcomed the resignations of two of its most senior figures after a campaign against the broadcaster that reached fever pitch over criticism that its flagship documentary programme in 2024 used a misleading edit of a Trump speech.Lawyers for the US president said that the BBC must retract the Panorama documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1bn (£760m), according to US media outlets who cited the letter. The BBC has confirmed it had received a letter and said it will respond in due course.Read the full storyUS supreme court rejects call to overturn decision legalizing same-sex marriageThe justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v Hodges.Davis’ lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling.Read the full storyHegseth says six people killed in two new attacks on alleged drug boatsThe Trump administration’s defense secretary said: “These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific.”However, Washington has yet to make public any concrete evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the US.Read the full storyUS supreme court to decide if states can accept late-arriving mail ballotsThe case, Watson v Republican National Committee, involves a challenge to a Mississippi law that allows ballots to count if they are received within five business days of election day.Election officials in Mississippi, citing longstanding precedent, argue that a voter has cast their ballot on or before election day the moment a ballot is postmarked in the mail, and that how it gets to an election office after that is an administrative issue.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Donald Trump chastised overwhelmed air traffic controllers, cast blame and doubt in response to poor economic indicators and claimed that increased access to food stamps had put “the country in jeopardy”, in an exclusive interview on Fox News Monday evening.

    The BBC’s editing of Trump’s January 6 speech caused controversy – but what did he really say?

    Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats.

    The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.

    Thailand has suspended the implementation of a peace agreement with neighbouring Cambodia after a landmine blast injured two Thai soldiers near the border, escalating tensions between the neighbours who clashed in July. Trump helped broker a peace deal between the two southeast Asian nations, after a five-day border conflict.

    The US has announced a partial suspension of sanctions on Syria after a historic meeting in Washington DC between its new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and Donald Trump.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened 9 November. More

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    Senate approves package that would end the longest government shutdown in US history – as it happened

    Our live coverage is ending for the day. Thanks for reading along with us. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:

    The US Senate approved a package on Monday that would end the longest government shutdown in US history. The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. The bill now passes to the House, which is expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington “right now,” given shutdown-related travel delays.

    The House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, said that Chuck Schumer should stay in place as leader of the party – despite calls from progressive members of the caucus for him to step down. When asked by a reporter at a press conference today if the Jeffries viewed Schumer “as effective and should he keep his job”, the congressman from New York responded with “yes and yes”. More here.

    Donald Trump said he returned to the supreme court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) frozen during the government shutdown, bringing uncertainty to the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on the food aid. The move comes after a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration needs to fully fund Snap food aid payments.

    Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, both close former political allies of Donald Trump, are among scores of people pardoned by the president over the weekend for their roles in a plot to steal the 2020 election. The maneuver is in effect symbolic, given it only applies in the federal justice system and not in state courts, where Giuliani, Meadows and the others continue facing legal peril. More here.

    Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats. Democrats on the House judiciary committee announced on Monday that they had received information from a whistleblower that indicates that the British former socialite, 63, is working on filing a commutation application. More here.

    Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC and welcomed the resignations of two of its most senior figures after a campaign against the broadcaster that reached fever pitch over criticism that its flagship documentary programme in 2024 used a misleading edit of a Trump speech. Lawyers for the US president said that the BBC must retract the Panorama documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1bn (£760m), according to US media outlets who cited the letter. The BBC has confirmed it had received a letter and said it will respond in due course. More here.

    Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. Trump’s lawyers argued in a lengthy filing with the high court that allegations leading to the $5 million verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him.
    The US Senate approved a compromise on Monday that would end the longest government shutdown in US history.The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.The bill now passes to the House, which is expected to vote on the measure on Wednesday.House Speaker Mike Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington “right now,” given shutdown-related travel delays.“We have to do this as quickly as possible,” said Johnson, who has kept the House out of session since mid-September, when the House passed a bill to continue government funding.The Senate is advancing a plan to reopen the government through January, which would bring the longest shutdown in history to a close after a small group of Democrats struck a deal with Republicans.Should the plan pass, the shutdown could last a few more days as members of the House, which has been in recess since mid-September, return to Washington to vote on the legislation.Democratic senators Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Jackie Rosen and Jeanne Shaheen again voted in favor. Senator Angus King, an independent who votes with Democrats, also voted yes.The Senate will soon finalize its vote on a bill to end the government shutdown after a series of procedural votes and votes related to amendments.If the bill is approved, the measure will then head to the House for a vote before it is sent to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed.Democratic senators Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Angus King (an independent), Jackie Rosen and Jeanne Shaheen voted with Republicans to advance the bill.MoveOn, a liberal group that has encouraged Democrats to hold firm in their demands, is calling on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from his role after some Democrats joined with Republicans to work to end the government shutdown, according to a statement sent to The Guardian.“With Donald Trump and the Republican Party doubling health care premiums, weaponizing our military against us, and ripping food away from children, MoveOn members cannot accept weak leadership at the helm of the Democratic Party,” said MoveOn political action executive director Katie Bethell.“Americans showed a growing surge of support for Democrats who fought back—both at the ballot box last week and peacefully in the streets last month,” Bethell added. “Inexplicably, some Senate Democrats, under Leader Schumer’s watch, decided to surrender. It is time for Senator Schumer to step aside as minority leader to make room for those who are willing to fight fire with fire when the basic needs of working people are on the line.”The Senate has blocked a Democratic effort to extend the expiring tax credits that make health insurance coverage more affordable for millions of Americans.Senator Tammy Baldwin led an effort to try and extend current law for one year. It was blocked as part of a party-line vote.“My Republican colleagues are refusing to act to stop health care premiums from doubling for over 20 million Americans,” the senator from Wisconsin said. “I just can’t stand by without a fight.”No Republican spoke against her failed effort, though Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, has promised a Senate vote later this year on a tax credit extension.Donald Trump criticized Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer during an interview with Fox News, saying he “went too far” in trying to challenge Republicans.“He thought he could break the Republicans, and the Republicans broke him,” Trump said.Schumer led the Democrats’ weeks-long stand against reopening the government without an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.“We have good policy, they [Democrats] have bad policy,” Trump said.The Senate is currently taking a series of procedural votes to finalize the deal between Republicans and some Democrats that would end the government shutdown.After Donald Trump criticized air traffic controllers for refusing to work without pay during the 41-day government shutdown and promised $10,000 bonuses to those who did not take time off, he was asked where the funds would come from.“I don’t know,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News. “I’ll get it from someplace.”“I always get the money from someplace,” he added. “Regardless, it doesn’t matter.”During an interview on Fox News that aired Monday, Donald Trump criticized Obamacare, calling it “horrible health insurance at a very high price.”The president said he wants to replace it with a system where government funds go directly into individual accounts for people to buy their own plans. He said this system could be called “Trumpcare.”“I want, instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people, where the people buy their own health insurance,” Trump told Fox’s Laura Ingraham.He added: “It’s so good, the insurance will be better. It’ll cost less. Everybody’s going to be happy. They’re going to feel like entrepreneurs, they’re actually able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance, and they can use it only for that reason.”President Donald Trump asked the US supreme court to review the $5m verdict that found he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.In a filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that allegations leading to verdict were “propped up” by a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings” that allowed Carroll’s lawyers to present “highly inflammatory propensity evidence” against him.Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room. Trump first denied her claim in June 2019, telling a reporter that Carroll was “not my type” and had concocted the story to sell her memoir What Do We Need Men For?He repeated his comments in an October 2022 Truth Social post, leading to the $5m verdict, though the jury did not find that Trump had raped Carroll.Trump’s supreme court petition describes Carroll’s sexual assault allegations as “facially implausible” and “politically motivated,” and calls on the justices to intervene and overturn several evidentiary rulings that he claims tainted the trial.The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.The money sent to Equatorial Guinea is the first taken from a fund apportioned by Congress to address international refugee crises – and sometimes to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the US – that has instead been repurposed under the Trump administration to hasten their deportation.According to government data, the sum from the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) emergency fund was sent directly to the government of Equatorial Guinea, whose president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in power for the last 46 years, and who is accused along with his son, Nguema Obiang, the vice-president, of embezzling millions of dollars from the impoverished nation to fuel their lavish lifestyles.Read the full story by The Guardian’s Andrew Roth and Joseph Gedeon: Donald Trump said that Republican House member Marjorie Taylor Greene had “lost her way” with her criticism of the administration’s focus on foreign policy.“I don’t know what happened to Marjorie. She’s a nice woman, but I don’t know what happened. She’s lost her way, I think,” Trump told reporters earlier today.“But I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally. I mean, we could have a world that’s on fire, where wars come to our shores very easily, if you had a bad president,” Trump added.“I haven’t lost my way. I’m 100% America first and only!” Greene told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, according to an X post.Earlier today, Greene criticized Trump for hosting Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, instead of focusing on domestic issues like health care.The Senate is expected to vote on the government funding bill Wednesday at around 5pm, CBS reports.Senate majority leader John Thune set up a series of six to eight votes, with the process slated to begin after remarks from top appropriators Patty Murray and Susan Collins.If approved, the House will have to return and adopt the deal before it is sent to President Trump’s desk to be signed.Earlier today, when Donald Trump was asked if he supported the Senate agreement to end the government shutdown, he said he would “abide by the deal.”“If it’s a deal I heard about, that’s certainly, you know, they want to change the deal a little bit, but I would say so,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “I think based on everything I’m hearing, they haven’t changed anything, and we have support from enough Democrats, and we’re going to be opening up our country.”“I’ll abide by the deal,” he added. “The deal is very good.”The Trump administration is working with Switzerland on a deal to lower tariffs, the president told reporters earlier today, but he did not provide any details.“We’re working on a deal to get their tariffs a little bit lower,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I haven’t said any number, but we’re going to be working on something to help Switzerland along. We hit Switzerland very hard. We want Switzerland to remain successful.”On tariffs, Trump added: “We’re working on them, and some others, and we’re working on others to increase them a little bit, too.”Sources told Bloomberg that Switzerland could secure a 15% tariff on its exports to the US. The European country has been scrambling to secure a trade agreement after Swiss imports were hit by a 39% tariff rate in August, among the highest duties levied in his global trade reset.A deal may be concluded within the next two weeks, Bloomberg reports.After the US Senate secured enough votes to pass a compromise bill reopening the federal government – with seven Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in support – Democratic senator Tim Kaine defended his decision in an interview, as the agreement didn’t include guarantees to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.“There was no path to any fix on health care with the government closed,” Kaine told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “So I supported the Democratic position in this from the very beginning until [the] middle of last week.”“We had no path forward on health care because the Republicans said, we will not talk about health care with the government shut down,” he added. “And we had Snap beneficiaries and those relying on other important services who were losing benefits because of the shutdown, so no path to a health care fix, Snap beneficiaries suffering.”Donald Trump said he returned to the supreme court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) frozen during the government shutdown, bringing uncertainty to the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on the food aid.The move comes after a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration needs to fully fund Snap food aid payments.Today’s move marks the second time administration officials have asked the federal appeals court to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid the federal government shutdown.The Trump administration argued that lower court orders requiring the full funding of Snap wrongly affect ongoing negotiations in Congress about ending the shutdown.The high court is expected to rule on Tuesday. 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    UK commentator detained by ICE after Israel criticism to be released, family says

    The family of British political commentator Sami Hamdi, who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late October while on a speaking tour in the US, say he is set to be released and will be able to “return home soon”.“The government has agreed to release Sami,” the family said in a statement on Monday. “He will be able to return home soon insha’Allah.”Hamdi was detained on 26 October at San Francisco international airport. At the time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said his detention appeared to be in retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US, calling it a “blatant affront to free speech”, and called for his release.Later on 26 October, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that Hamdi’s visa had been revoked and that he was in “ICE custody pending removal”.“Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” McLaughlin said.In a separate statement that same day, the state department said that the US “has no obligation to host foreigners who support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity”.The Guardian reported last month that the US officials appeared to be referencing remarks Hamdi made following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, as on 27 October, the DHS shared a video clip by the pro-Israel group Memri, in which Hamdi was recorded saying that Palestinians should “celebrate their victory” and asked if they had felt “euphoria” over what had taken place.Hamdi later sought to clarify his remarks. In another speaking engagement several days after the Hamas attacks he said: “We don’t celebrate blood lust, we don’t celebrate death and we don’t celebrate war” adding that “what Muslims are celebrating is not war, they’re celebrating the revival of a cause – a just cause – that everybody thought was dead, this is an important distinction … I don’t celebrate war, I don’t celebrate death.”In an interview with the Guardian in late October, Hamdi’s wife called the allegations against her husband “outrageous” and said the videos were “edited in a way to frame Sami in a horrible light and produced by an organization that is very well known to be anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, Islamophobic and out there to target people who are speaking up against the genocide against Palestinians”.On Monday, the California chapter of Cair, whose legal team has been representing Hamdi in court along with attorneys from the Muslim Legal Fund of America and The HMA Law Firm, confirmed in a statement that Hamdi had accepted an offer to leave the US voluntarily.They added that the immigration charging document filed “in his case alleged only a visa overstay – after the government revoked his visa without cause and without prior notice – and never identified any criminal conduct or security grounds”.“This agreement establishes that the government does not consider Hamdi a danger to the community or to national security,” Cair said.The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request from comment from the Guardian. More

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    Democratic candidate for Congress criticizes deal to end shutdown – which her mother voted to advance

    A Democratic congressional candidate who posted to social media criticism of the bipartisan deal that looks set to end the government shutdown omitted to mention that her mother was among the party’s rebel senators who voted to approve it.Stefany Shaheen, who is seeking to represent New Hampshire in the US House of Representatives, said in the post to X that she “cannot support this deal when [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson refuses to even allow a vote to extend health care tax credits”.Jeanne Shaheen, her mother and a US senator of New Hampshire, was one of seven Democrats to break ranks with party leadership on Sunday night and vote to advance a funding bill that will end the 40-day shutdown without securing guarantees for healthcare subsidies. Those seven were joined by an independent who caucuses with Democrats.“Clearly we had different approaches here,” Stefany Shaheen said in an interview Monday, reported by the New York Times, after questions arose over her post. “I can’t speak for her. I think she did what she believes is right.”The deal, which extends government funding until 30 January, contains only the promise of a vote on a healthcare bill in the Senate next month, not an extension of tax credits for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that helps keep premiums low, which had been a key Democratic negotiating position.The elder Shaheen, a senator since 2009, said in a statement that she stood by her decision. “This was the only deal on the table. It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA tax credits,” she said.The post by her daughter condemning the deal but leaving out her mother’s involvement drew a swift and predictable backlash on social media, mediaite.com reported.“Your mom just ruined your career,” one user on X posted, while another said: “We don’t vote for the children of traitors”.In her post, Stefany Shaheen, a mother of four children whose campaign biography describes her as a “passionate advocate for groundbreaking medical research and a successful entrepreneur and business leader”, said improving healthcare was “the cause of my life”.In a section of her website about why she is running for Congress during the 2026 midterm elections, Shaheen wrote that she knew “it’s not enough to just get mad” when Donald Trump is “crushing medical research, and Republicans [are] slashing Medicaid, and healthcare for kids, seniors, and veterans – all to give big tax breaks to billionaires and corporations”.According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 15 million people will lose healthcare by 2034 because of Medicaid and ACA marketplace cuts pushed through by Republicans; an additional 4.2 million people will lose marketplace cover if premium tax credits are not extended, one possible consequence of the vote by Shaheen’s mother and the other Democratic rebel senators.Jeanne Shaheen and another Democrat who voted yes, Dick Durbin of Illinois, have already announced they will be retiring instead of fighting for re-election next year. None of the other five, Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Margaret Wood Hassan (New Hampshire), Tim Kaine (Virginia), and Jacky Rosen (Nevada), must face voters until November 2028.Angus King (Maine) also voted yes as an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. More

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    Ghislaine Maxwell eyeing commutation, whistleblower tells House Democrats

    Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats.Democrats on the House judiciary committee announced on Monday that they had received information from a whistleblower that indicates that the British former socialite, 63, is working on filing a commutation application. They also said Maxwell had been receiving special treatment at federal prison camp Bryan in Texas – the minimum-security facility she was transferred to earlier this year.Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member and top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, stated in a news release that the prison’s warden was also “helping” Maxwell “copy, print, and send documents” to support her bid for clemency.The exact content of this “commutation application” was unclear, Raskin added.Raskin states that according to the whistleblower, Maxwell has been receiving “customized” meals that are “personally delivered” to her cell, and that the warden has “personally arranged” private meetings for Maxwell and her visitors. The visits allegedly include providing a “special cordoned-off area” for visitors to arrive, as well as “an assortment of snacks and refreshments for her guests”.Maxwell’s visitors were also reportedly permitted to bring computers, which, Raskin described in the news release as an “unprecedented action by the Warden given the security risk and potential for Ms Maxwell to use a computer to conduct unmonitored communications with the outside world”.In one alleged instance, the whistleblower said that when phone lines went down for other inmates, Maxwell was given specific instructions about who she should tell her contacts to call and how those personnel would then connect to relay the call to Maxwell.The whistleblower further reportedly told the House Democrats that when Maxwell wanted to review and edit documents “quickly”, she “essentially used” the warden as her “personal secretary and administrative assistant”. The news release states that Maxwell’s correspondents would email documents directly to the warden, who would provide them to Maxwell, “who would review and edit them and provide them back to the Warden to scan and provide to the original sender”.Other privileges allegedly granted to Maxwell also include time to “play with” a service dog – a perk that the news release states is not “ordinarily allowed” –   as well as private after-hours access to the prison exercise area.Maxwell’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian regarding the whistleblower’s claims.In a statement to the Guardian, Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said that “the White House does not comment on potential clemency requests”.“As President Trump has stated, pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell is not something he has thought about,” Jackson added.Over the weekend, reports surfaced that Maxwell told friends and family in emails from prison that she was “much happier” at the Texas facility than her previous prison.In August, Maxwell was moved from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to the minimum-security camp in Texas, where most of the inmates are serving time for non-violent offenses and white-collar crimes. The transfer, which experts described as “unprecedented”, occurred just days after she was interviewed about the Epstein case by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche – who also previously served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.That interview came as the Trump administration was facing mounting pressure to release more documents related to the Epstein investigation and amid intense speculation around the president’s own personal ties to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting prosecution on sex-trafficking charges.In the news release on Monday, Raskin also announced that he had sent a letter to Trump demanding answers about the whistleblower’s allegations, and also called on the president to reject Maxwell’s commutation request.“You should not grant any form of clemency to this convicted and unrepentant sex offender,” Raskin wrote in the letter. “Your Administration should not be providing her with room service, with puppies to play with, with federal law enforcement officials waiting on her every need, or with any special treatment or institutional privilege at all.”Raskin requested that Blanche appear for a public congressional hearing to discuss the revelations and also posed three questions to Trump.Raskin asked whether Trump had discussed a potential commutation, or any form of presidential clemency, for Maxwell with Blanche or others; whether he had directed Blanche or anyone else in the administration to provide Maxwell with the transfer to the prison camp, or to give her favorable and preferential treatment in prison; and lastly whether Maxwell, her attorneys, family or representatives have made any promises to Trump or his attorneys.Raskin has asked for a response to the questions by 24 November.In another statement on Monday, Democratic representative Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, called on Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican representative James Comer, who chairs the oversight committee, to “publicly oppose a commutation or pardon by President Trump.“Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted sex offender who helped Jeffrey Epstein commit atrocities and rape against women and girls for decades,” Garcia said. “For months, we have been warning the American people that Trump’s Department of Justice is providing her with unprecedented benefits as a prisoner, including moving her to a less restrictive facility.“Thanks to brave whistleblowers and our partners on the judiciary committee, we have more evidence that Maxwell is seeking a pardon or commutation,” he added.In October, the US supreme court declined to hear an appeal from Maxwell on her sex-trafficking conviction. 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    Zohran Mamdani’s writer on crafting a historic victory speech: ‘In New York, inspiration is everywhere’

    In his victory speech after winning the New York mayoral election last week, Zohran Mamdani came out swinging.The speech included, among other dramatic flourishes, a reference to the socialist titan Eugene Debs, shoutouts to the city’s “Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses”, tributes to Jawaharlal Nehru and Fiorello La Guardia, sprinkles of Arabic – and it was all delivered with the cadence and command of a hip-hop emcee. Many who were listening could not help but wonder: how the hell did he pull that off?A healthy portion of the credit should go to Julian Gerson, the speechwriter on the Mamdani campaign who typifies the young, leftwing lieutenants powering this insurgent operation – a 29-year-old outer-borough dweller (in his case, Brooklyn) with unerring message discipline. He is especially unabashed when it comes to the words he puts in his boss’s mouth that draw inspiration from socialist greats and the multicultural city that the Mamdani campaign holds dear.“When this campaign has sung the most is when it feels like a love letter to New York,” Gerson told the Guardian.To write the victory speech, Gerson began working a week in advance, collaborating with Mamdani and his campaign consultant Morris Katz on overarching themes, before locking himself in his apartment until he had a draft ready for Mamdani to review on the Saturday before the election. (Mandani never saw a draft of the concession speech, which Gerson said was “not fun to write”.) “Push yourself to think of speechwriting as more than just the written word,” he said Mamdani told him – which is to say the 34-year-old Muslim and Indian Ugandan state assemblyman was already thinking about the space his victory would occupy in the annals of history. Gerson threw out a couple names he hoped to quote in the speech – and recalls Mamdani responding: “‘OK, but can you make sure to quote Eugene Debs?’ And I was like, ‘Actually, he’s already on the list.’”Gerson, the son of a Texas-born mediator with strong ties to the local Democratic scene and a Belgian NYU professor, did most of his growing up in the West Village and attended the prestigious Dalton school in Manhattan. One early exposure to professional writing came when his father, Stéphane, published a book about his younger brother Owen dying in a rafting accident at age eight. “It was a very formative, very hard part of my childhood that taught me how to express myself through the written word,” said Gerson, who gave notes on early drafts.View image in fullscreenGerson got his start in politics as a high school summer intern in Mike Bloomberg’s New York mayoral administration. For university, he went to Middlebury College in Vermont, where he served as the communications director for the Middlebury College Democrats. After graduation, he worked for Manhattan congressman Jerry Nadler – whom he commends for his bravery leading the first impeachment of Donald Trump and for voting against the Iraq war – and did a two-year stint ghostwriting for New York governor Kathy Hochul.Gerson joined the Mamdani campaign in March as political director, soliciting endorsements from elected officials across the state while working with Mamdani to deepen his relationship with a panoply of constituents across the city. “A lot of that was figuring out, how do we get him into parts of Black New York? How do you have him speaking with gay and trans New Yorkers?” Those ground-level experiences wound up supplying Gerson with steady fodder for speeches that would pull straight from the communities Mamdani was courting.For the victory speech, Gerson found the opening Debs quote – “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,” also cribbed by Martin Luther King – inside William Safire’s speech compendium titled Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History. The quote comes from a speech made when the labor organizer and perennial Socialist party candidate was sentenced to prison in 1918 for denouncing the US’s involvement in the first world war. “That’s it!” Gerson recalls saying when he came upon it.It was in many ways inevitable that the speech would draw comparisons to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory address in Chicago’s Grant park, widely regarded as one of the greatest orations in modern American history. He called it “a formative memory of what a speech can mean and how it can speak to people”, he said. “It was the only speech I really read in depth before I started writing.”Like Obama’s speechwriters, some of whom Gerson said he spoke to for advice, Gerson enjoys the benefit of writing for a deft multimedia performer. In the days leading up to election night, Gerson subbed in for Mamdani to give his voice a break. “At a certain point I would get into it and try to give a performance, and it’s crazy how different and how much better the speech is when you have somebody who just has this innate talent for knowing when to pause, knowing which syllables to emphasize. The most successful speechwriter-principal relationships are those where it’s close to a partnership, where they engage with the material really intensively and make it theirs.”Obama’s many rhetorical imitators in the Democratic party – US senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro – latch on to his pentecostal intonations in their public speaking. But Mamdani, who once pursued a rap career under the name Mr Cardamom and who still psyches himself up for work by playing Many Men by 50 Cent (a vocal critic of Mamdani’s plan to tax the rich), embraces the language and swagger of hip-hop. The kiss-off he delivered to rival Andrew Cuomo in his victory speech – wishing him “only the best in private life” while quoting his father, Mario, the former New York governor, without attribution (“A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose”) – was a mic-drop moment straight out of a New York rap cypher.“We all know Mr Cardamom exists in the world,” Gerson said. “But when you’re in the midst of a campaign, you have to shave off parts of your life. First goes exercise, then reading, then grocery shopping – until you’re hoping you just make it to election day with laundry. Cultural consumption shrinks too, but music can still fill the liminal space.”View image in fullscreenGerson works in his own musical tastes, too. For a May rally, he drew inspiration from a song by the Chilean American electronic musician Nicolas Jaar’s band Darkside, using a Spanish lyric: si no funciona, no me diga si no funciona (translation: “if it doesn’t work, don’t tell me that it works”) – to set the tone for the rally speech Mamdani gave last month assailing Trump’s agenda. The campaign’s impulse to tie its populist ideas to musical references is a throwback to the community building and social activism that gave rise to hip-hop’s birth in the Bronx.Mamdani’s victory speech was not a universal hit, of course. CNN pundit Van Jones was among the critics who took issue with a speech he described as “sharp” and combative. “I think he missed a chance tonight to open up and bring more people into the tent,” Jones said.Gerson makes no apologies. “In response to Van Jones: this campaign and this mayoralty will absolutely be inclusive to every single New Yorker. Zohran had that final line in his long list of thank yous where he said: ‘Many of you voted for me, others of you did not and many didn’t vote at all – and I want to be the mayor for each of you.’ To New Yorkers, there’s a genuine eagerness to serve and prove that we’re going to follow through and that this is going to be a great four years.’”Mamdani and Gerson wanted New Yorkers to come away from the victory speech feeling as if they would also have an important part to play in the new administration, and that no suggestion was too small. That includes an Arabic line that made it into Gerson’s final draft – ana minkum wa ilaykum, which can translate to “I am of you and for you.” ” One of the “uncles” in Mamdani’s Astoria neighborhood pitched it to Mamdani while he was there shooting a campaign video in Arabic.“When you’re looking for inspiration, you have to look everywhere,” Gerson said. “Fortunately, we live in New York, inspiration is everywhere, and people are loud and eager to share it.” More

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    in US Politics

    ‘Most horrific death you could imagine’: the truth behind Netflix’s Death By Lightning

    The descendants of James Garfield, the 20th US president, were proud of his life but rarely spoke of his death. “We knew what had happened, that he was shot in a train station,” says James Garfield III, his great-great-great grandson. “We read about the story in books but, in one way or another, we just glanced over it.”That changed in 2011 with the publication of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, a book by Candice Millard that revived interest in Garfield’s unfinished life. Her work has now inspired a Netflix drama, Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon as the president and Matthew Macfadyen as the drifter who gunned him down.The series promises to shine a light on Garfield, who rose from poverty to the presidency in the Gilded Age only to fall victim to its toxic political divisions. His tenure was cut short after only 200 days not only by the assassin’s bullet but by medical malpractice – an event now forgotten as surely as the killings of Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy continue to fascinate.That tragedy set the table for one of US history’s great “what ifs” with Garfield’s lost potential felt most acutely in the area of civil rights, where his commitment to equality for African Americans might have altered the nation’s post-Reconstruction trajectory.James Garfield III, 58, an athletic trainer and professor from Cleveland, Ohio, adds: “You can’t help but be proud of what he did. He was like a multi-threat: he was a lawyer, he was a preacher, he was a farmer. He was all of these things which also shaped who he was and how he was and everything that we know about him the family carries down with us.”Garfield was the last president born in a log cabin, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. His father died when he was 18 months old, leaving his mother, Eliza, to raise five children in difficult circumstances. An insatiable reader, Garfield worked on canal boats to earn money for an education.He studied law, was ordained as minister, became president of Hiram College in Ohio and was a state senator. In 1858 he married a former classmate, Lucretia Rudolph, with whom he would have seven children. An ardent Unionist, Garfield viewed the civil war as a holy crusade against slavery and advanced to the rank of major general.Speaking via Zoom, Millard says: “When I started researching him, I couldn’t believe it. He was absolutely brilliant. He was incredibly brave. He was very progressive for the time. He was kind. He was a decent human being and would have been one of our great presidents had he lived.”Garfield was persuaded by Lincoln to resign his military commission when he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he would serve as a Republican for 17 years. He was strong supporter of black suffrage, viewing it as a matter of justice and the fulfillment of a wartime covenant.Millard continues: “The speech he gave on the floor of Congress will tear your heart out. He was an incredibly powerful orator and this issue was very important to him.“He wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem while he was in Congress. He was this incredible classicist; he spoke Latin and Greek and knew huge lengths of the Aeneid by heart in Latin. He was an extraordinary mind.”At the 1880 Republican national convention in Chicago the party was deeply divided between the “Stalwarts”, led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, who supported a third term for Ulysses S Grant, and the “Half-Breeds”, who supported James G Blaine. Garfield attended as a supporter of his friend and fellow Ohioan John Sherman.When the 15,000-person convention was deadlocked between Grant and Blaine, delegates began looking for a compromise. Garfield’s impassioned speech nominating Sherman impressed them. During the speech, he reportedly shouted, “And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want?” to which a voice from the crowd unexpectedly replied: “We want Garfield!”On the 36th ballot, a stampede of delegates made Garfield the surprise nominee. To placate the Stalwart faction, Chester Arthur, a Conkling loyalist from New York, was chosen as his running mate. In the general election Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee to become the only sitting member of the House ever to be elected president.Millard says: “What would have made Garfield great and what is extremely rare and maybe unique to the American presidency is he didn’t want the job. It’s not that he had never thought about it but he was thrust into it.“He used to call it presidential fever because he would watch people he admired change drastically because they wanted the office so much that they were willing to give up their own values, set aside their own morals in order to get this position, and he was never willing to do that.”She adds: “When he found himself president, he was in this uniquely powerful position because he didn’t owe anyone anything, which never happens. To degrees people lose a little bit of themselves along the way and he didn’t because he wasn’t hungering for it. He was like, well, there’s some good I want to do and here I am so I can do it. Then unfortunately he didn’t have the chance to.”View image in fullscreenThe defining conflict of Garfield’s short presidency was his confrontation with Conkling over the “spoils system”. Conkling demanded control over federal patronage in New York, particularly the powerful and lucrative post of collector of the Port of New York. Garfield refused, stating the issue was “whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the executive of the United States”. He nominated a political foe of Conkling to the post.The confrontation escalated into a public battle but Garfield outmaneuvered Conkling in the Senate. Facing a humiliating public defeat, Conkling and his junior senator resigned their seats in protest. The next day, Garfield’s nominee was confirmed. It was a landmark victory for the power of the presidency over the party machine and for the cause of reform over “boss rule”.But even as Garfield battled the titans of his party, he was being stalked by a disturbed and delusional man who embodied the dark side of the patronage system. Charles Guiteau was a drifter with a history of professional failures, mental instability and physical and psychological abuse in his childhood. He had failed as a lawyer, bill collector, preacher and member of the Oneida free-love commune.Millard explains: “He was mentally ill and his particular brand of madness was delusion. He always believed that God had chosen him for greatness. He actually had financially a better start than Garfield but where Garfield achieved and rose, Guiteau failed at everything.“He tried to be a lawyer and failed; he tried to be a journalist and failed; he tried a free love commune and they nicknamed him ‘Charles Get Out’. He was the only one not able to partake in what they had to offer at the free love commune, partly because he refused to do any manual labor. He thought it was beneath him.”But Guiteau believed he had finally found a pathway to success: politics. Swept up in the drama of the 1880 election, he wrote and delivered an insignificant speech, “Garfield against Hancock”, and became convinced in his own mind that he was single-handedly responsible for Garfield’s victory.Under this logic, Guiteau reckoned he had earned a high-level government job. He travelled to Washington and relentlessly pestered Garfield, Blaine and other officials, demanding to be made the US consul in Paris — a post for which he had zero qualifications. He became such a nuisance that he was eventually banned from the White House.As he followed the dramatic Garfield-Conkling feud in the newspapers, Guiteau’s rejection curdled into a fanatical delusion. As he later described it, he woke one night with an “epiphany” he believed was a message from God: if Garfield were removed, the party’s internal conflict would be solved and he would be hailed as a hero.On 2 July 1881, just four months into his presidency, Garfield was leaving Washington for his college reunion. As he walked through the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad station, Guiteau stepped from the shadows, pulled an ivory-handled British Bull Dog revolver from his coat pocket and shot the president twice in the back.View image in fullscreenGarfield cried out: “My God, what is this?” and collapsed on the station floor. When a police officer seized Guiteau, he declared: “I did it and I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president.”One bullet had grazed Garfield’s arm; the other lodged behind his pancreas. Modern medical historians agree that the wound was not mortal. Had Garfield been left alone, he probably would have survived, as many civil war soldiers did with similar injuries. However, what followed was a catastrophic case of medical malpractice.Millard laments: “Can you imagine a more germ-infested environment than the floor of a train station? That’s where he fell and was immediately examined. People were coming off the streets where there was horse manure everywhere, inserting their fingers in his back, putting him in this horse hair and hay mattress.“At that time, the hospitals were so bad, you only went there to die so they took him to the White House, but the White House itself was falling apart at that point. It was rat-infested.”A doctor with a controversial past named Dr Doctor Willard Bliss (confusingly, his first name was Doctor) took charge of Garfield’s care. He repeatedly probed Garfield’s wound with unsterilised fingers and instruments, introducing massive infection. He invited Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, to find the bullet with his self-designed metal detector but without success.Millard says: “Bliss saw in this national and personal tragedy an opportunity for personal fame and achievement. He was very worried about taking what he thought were risks with the the newfangled medicine, including sterilising and cleaning antiseptic.For 79 days Garfield suffered immensely as the infection spread, developing sepsis and blood poisoning. He lost nearly a hundred pounds, becoming a skeletal figure. One of the last things he wrote was “strangulatus pro republica”, or “tortured for the republic”.Despite the president’s obvious decline, Bliss issued rosy reports to the press, driven by what historians describe as immense hubris. On 19 September Garfield finally succumbed to the infection his doctors had caused.Millard adds: “It was the most horrific death you can imagine. He was riddled with infection and, when they did the autopsy, there were huge gouges. The fingers had created these burrowing holes through him and they were filled with pus and infection. He lost so much weight and was horribly dehydrated. He almost certainly would have survived had it not been for his doctors.”As for Guiteau, he pronounced himself the happiest he had ever been because he was now a celebrity. Millard says: “He’s doing every interview he can. He’s having his portrait taken. He’s polishing off his memoirs that he had written before.“He writes a letter for the New York Herald to publish offering himself to any young woman who would like to marry him but she has to be younger than 30 and wealthy. He thinks he’s quite a catch now and he’s waiting for Arthur, whom he assumes is very grateful to him, to free him and then he expects to run for president himself.”Guiteau’s trial was a spectacle. His defence lawyers argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity and, more pointedly, that the president’s doctors, not Guiteau, were responsible for Garfield’s death. Both defences failed. Guiteau was convicted and hanged, his brain and enlarged spleen preserved by a museum.View image in fullscreenThe nation feared that Arthur, the ultimate machine politician, would entrench the spoils system. Instead, rising to the gravity of the office, he became an unexpected champion of reform. In 1883 he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established a merit-based system for federal employment and stands as Garfield’s most direct legacy.Garfield was the second of four US presidents who have been assassinated. The shootings of Lincoln and Kennedy have spawned countless books and conspiracy theories; those of Garfield and, in 1901, William McKinley are little remembered. It was not until 2018 that a marker was erected on the National Mall close to the spot where Garfield was shot.Millard hopes that Death By Lightning will inspire fresh curiosity or renewed interest, especially among young people, and impress on viewers what America lost. She visited the set in Budapest, Hungary, during filming and is thrilled by the finished product. She credits Mike Makowsky, its creator, writer and executive producer, for doing his own research and offering a faithful portrayal of Garfield.“When we were talking early on six years ago, I told him I understand you’re going to take some creative licence and that’s fine. The one thing I really care about is Garfield’s character. It needs to stay intact because not only do people not know much about him; think there’s nothing interesting to know. You can’t understand the weight of this tragedy unless you understand who he was. Mike succeeded spectacularly with that. You understand who Garfield was.”Speaking via Zoom from Los Angeles, Makowsky says: “Garfield was truly a Renaissance man. He was fiercely intelligent and empathetic and was so ahead of his time on the prevailing questions around civil rights and reforms within his own government.“He believed in universal education at a time where that was not at all a popular notion. He exhibited genuine leadership and I hope that the show is able to successfully make the case for Garfield as one of the great tragic what-could-have-beens in our history. I can only speculate the positive effects that a full Garfield presidency would have had on our country.”

    Death By Lightning is now available on Netflix More