Evelyn Reynolds

They marched in their millions. Some waved the Stars and Stripes. Some clutched signs with slogans such as: “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting.” And some donned inflatable costumes that included aliens, chickens, clowns, frogs, lobsters, mushrooms, penguins, seahorses, sharks, squirrels, starfish and unicorns.The energy of last weekend’s No Kings protests against Donald Trump’s authoritarianism was palpable and peaceful, drawing an estimated 7 million people to 2,700 rallies across the country. Among them were the Democratic senators Cory Booker, Ed Markey, Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Raphael Warnock and Elizabeth Warren as well as the independent Bernie Sanders.But many Democratic lawmakers did not attend. Their absence was conspicuous at a time when the party stands accused of lacking fight and failing to meet the moment. As Trump runs riot through US democracy, Democrats face the challenge of harnessing the spirit of No Kings and turning anti-Trump sentiment into votes at the ballot box.“We’re in the process of a fight to save our democracy,” said Murphy, a senator for Connecticut who spoke at the event in Washington. “As I said at the rally, we’re not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover; we’re in the middle of it. And what I know from history is that the only thing that saves democracies from ruin when a demagogue is trying to destroy it is mass mobilisation.”For all his grandstanding, Trump is deeply unpopular. About 62% of Americans say the country is going in the wrong direction, according to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution, and 56% describe Trump as a “dangerous dictator whose power should be limited”.The popular revolt against him appeared slow at first but is now gathering steam. There have been three major street protests organised by a broad coalition of dozens of groups including civil rights organisations, labour unions and pro-democracy movements such as Indivisible.The first, known as Hands Off!, was held in April and drew 3 million people. The second, No Kings, was staged in June to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday and a rare military parade in Washington, attracted 5 million people. Then came last weekend’s reprise of No Kings, whose turnout of 7 million people was said to be the biggest civic action in the US for more than half a century.View image in fullscreenNo Kings – which draws its name from America’s founding principles and resistance to the tyranny of Britain’s King George III – and the Democratic party are both essentially leaderless but the former’s momentum has thrown the latter’s inertia into sharp relief.Trump’s victory in last year’s election came like a kick to the solar plexus. His shock and awe approach on taking office left Democrats divided and despondent. The party’s approval rating was at the lowest level for a generation. In March Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, was berated for allowing a government funding bill to sail through the chamber without using it to challenge Trump.Six months on, however, Schumer’s Democrats have refused to vote on legislation that would avoid a government shutdown as they demand funding for healthcare. Polls suggest they are winning the argument in the court of public opinion.Democrats are fighting back in other ways. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is pushing a new electoral map in his state that aims to bolster his party’s chances of regaining a congressional majority in 2026 and counter Republican efforts to add more seats in Texas and other states. The effort has been endorsed by former president Barack Obama.View image in fullscreenNewsom has also been at the forefront of some savage online humour mocking Trump. Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois has been similarly pugnacious. This week Senator Jeff Merkley delivered a 22-hour 37-minute speech on the Senate floor describing Trump’s authoritarianism as “the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war”.Murphy has been one of the most prominent senators sounding an alarm for the future of US democracy. He told the Guardian: “We should pay attention to the fact that we were a pretty unpopular party before we took a stand on government funding and we’re a more popular party after having taken this stance.“People do want to see us fighting. They do want to see us engaging in risk-tolerant behavior. They want us to use leverage when we have it and I hope my colleagues recognise that we won’t be able to beat Trump if people don’t see the Democratic party as an effective opposition party.”Indivisible has been urging Democrats to show some spine. Ezra Levin, its co-founder, believes the party has gone through three phases of defiance since Trump returned to power. First there was condescending dismissal.He said: “It was there will be no defiance, there will be no resistance, the grassroots is done and discredited and the smart move is to demonstrate how well we can work with Trump because that’s the future of the party. That was the dominant strategic vision of the Democratic party circa November, December, even January of this year.”According to Levin, however, once activists began showing up at town halls and took part in the Hands Off demonstration, Democrats were forced to recalibrate to a second phase, which he describes as performative resistance – the aesthetics of opposition.“It was strongly worded letters. I think a memo went around Democratic circles to tell people to cuss more so there was more cursing. You saw fiery speeches but still a refusal to use leverage. It’s in this period that Schumer surrenders on the Republican bill and you see Cory Booker vote for the crypto bill after giving an inspiring speech.”Now, Levin perceives a shaky third phase of unified defiance, exemplified by Democrats’ willingness to hold the line during the government shutdown. He hopes this resolve will feed into primary elections for next year’s midterms with candidates who are “fightback Democrats” rather than “do nothing Democrats”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOthers dispute this binary characterisation. Matt Bennett, executive vice-president for public affairs at the thinktank Third Way, said he has not met a single Democrat who does not believe Trump poses an existential threat.“It’s total bullshit,” he insisted. “Every single professional Democrat in America is in an absolute panic about what Trump means for everything we care about. There’s zero complacency. There is a huge set of disagreements on tactics and strategy but there is no disagreement about the level of the threat.”Norman Solomon, national director of the progressive group RootsAction, however, said: “The Democratic party leadership doesn’t have the credibility, vitality or capacity to inspire millions of people. How many are inspired by Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries? The question answers itself. In effect, the most vibrant opposition party is civil society, which is gaining momentum with grassroots organising and national networking.”Some commentators have drawn parallels with the Tea Party, a grassroots movement driven by a mix of libertarian, populist and conservative activists that emerged in 2009. It reshaped the Republican party with a focus on anti-establishment rhetoric, distrust of elites and racial hostility to Barack Obama that paved the way for Trump’s ascent.The Tea Party also acted as an “anti-inspiration” for Levin and his wife and Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg when, in 2016, they put together a Google doc proposing that progressives emulate the Tea Party’s tactic of constituents pressuring their members of Congress to derail the president’s agenda.Levin said: “I didn’t like their violence or bigotry or some of their strategies but I thought they were smart the way they organised as an outside movement to push the party to embrace their ideals. As heinous as those ideals were, they were effective.”He added: “Effective movements cannot simply be tools of the formal party system. They need to push the party. A smart party will see historic levels of grassroots energy and say, oh goody, I want that, what do I have to do to get there? That’s going to require some substantive changes, both in who the messengers are that lead the party and also in what policies and strategies they support going forward.”View image in fullscreenWhereas the Tea Party came from the right, No Kings is bigger, more ideologically diverse and able to avoid the factional disputes that inevitably dog a political party.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “I hope this isn’t like the Tea Party because the Tea Party led to the Republican party becoming an extremist party and helped lead to Trump. The central focus of this movement should be to mitigate the damage that Trump is doing and to help pro-democracy forces win back power in the United States. To do that, we need a big tent.”All is not lost for the Democrats. So far this year the party has won or overperformed the top of the 2024 ticket in 39 out of 40 special elections, flipping two state senate seats in Iowa alone. Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger are expected to prevail in next month’s races for governor of New Jersey and Virginia respectively. The party is feeling confident about the midterms, especially since the president’s party almost always loses ground.Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The energy is already out there. Some people who decided not to participate in ’24 are now anxious to get back involved in their community and to prepare for the next election.”Brazile also cautioned against trying to hijack the No Kings movement for party political ends. “I don’t see why we should make this partisan,” she said. “I don’t look at it as a Democratic party event. It was people coming out from all parts of life.“I had a friend in a red district saying that for the first time they thought Donald Trump has gone too far. They wanted to do something that was meaningful, that was not partisan. To the extent that lawmakers and others find themselves marching with ordinary citizens, that’s important. But they’re following the people and not leading. The people lead at this moment.” More

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will raise US tariffs on Canada by 10% in retaliation for an anti-tariff advertisement sponsored by the Ontario government, which has further strained one of the world’s largest trade partnerships.The statement, posted on Trump’s Truth Social account, came after several days of public disputes over the ad, which referenced Ronald Reagan’s support for free trade and provoked the US president’s anger.Trump and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney will both attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Malaysia on Sunday, but Trump told reporters traveling with him that he had no intention of meeting Carney there.Trump raises tariffs on Canada by 10% in retaliation for anti-tariff TV adOntario premier Doug Ford on Friday said the province would suspend its US ad campaign on Monday, after discussions with prime minister Mark Carney, in an effort to reopen trade negotiations.The ad, which was paid for by the government of the Canadian province of Ontario, uses excerpts of a 1987 speech where Reagan says “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Read the full storyTrump says he is open to meeting Kim Jong-un as he embarks on whirlwind Asia tourDonald Trump has set off for a tour of Asia where he is expected to take part in high-stakes trade talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping – telling reporters he was also open to a meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.Trump, who left Washington on Friday night, is set for a five-day trip to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, his first visit to the region since taking office in January. He is due to arrive in Malaysia on Sunday morning local time.Read the full storyRFK Jr to urge Americans to eat more saturated fats, alarming health expertsRobert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human services (HHS) secretary, is planning to issue guidance encouraging Americans to eat more saturated fats, contradicting decades of dietary recommendations and alarming experts.Kennedy has indicated that new dietary guidelines will “stress the need to eat saturated fats of dairy, of good meat, of fresh meat and vegetables … When we release those, it will give everybody the rationale for driving it into our schools,” according to recent reporting in the Hill.Ronald Krauss, a professor of paediatrics and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has researched saturated fats extensively, found that saturated fats may be less harmful than previously thought, but said if “[Kennedy] is actually going to go out and say we should be eating more saturated fat, I think that’s really the wrong message”.Read the full storyTrump backer identified as donor of $130m for US troop pay during shutdownA reclusive billionaire, anti-tax crusader and major financial backer of Donald Trump has been named as the anonymous private donor who gave $130m to the government to help pay US troops during the federal shutdown that is now in its fourth week, according to the New York Times.Timothy Mellon, heir to the gilded age industrialist and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, is the secret donor whom Trump has described as a “friend”, “great American” and “patriot” but has refused to name, the Times reported on Saturday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the arrangement.Read the full storyHispanics’ support of Trump plunges since he started second termDonald Trump’s standing with Hispanic adults has dropped notably since he took office at the start of the year, according to a new poll.Polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 25% of Hispanic adults now hold a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down sharply from 44% in an AP-NORC poll conducted just before he began his second term.Hispanic adults also expressed less confidence in Trump’s management of the economy and immigration, two key issues that once bolstered his support during last year’s campaign. Overall approval of his job performance has also fallen, with 41% approving of Trump’s handling of the presidency in March, compared with just 27% this month.Hispanic voters played a crucial role in helping Trump win the presidency for the second time; nearly half of Hispanic voters backed him in 2024.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

Donald Trump’s intense military buildup targeting the regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela is stretching the president’s America First commitment to breaking point, as the White House strikes a bellicose posture that seems to mock Trump’s self-proclaimed “president of peace” image.

Australia must “step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life” after US funding cuts to national and global health programs and institutions, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.
Catching up? Here’s what happened Friday 24 October. More

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will raise US tariffs on Canada by 10% in retaliation for an anti-tariff advertisement sponsored by the Ontario government, which has further strained one of the world’s largest trade partnerships.The statement, posted on Trump’s Truth Social account, came after several days of public disputes over the ad, which referenced Ronald Reagan’s support for free trade and provoked the US president’s anger.“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” Trump said Saturday on social media.He further accused the ad of being a “fraud” and said the “sole purpose” of it was “Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States”, he added.“Now the United States is able to defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those from the rest of the World as well!),” the president wrote.Ontario premier Doug Ford said Friday that the province will suspend its US ad campaign on Monday, after discussions with prime minister Mark Carney, in an effort to reopen trade negotiations.The ad, which was paid for by the government of the Canadian province of Ontario, uses excerpts of a 1987 speech where Reagan says “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.View image in fullscreenThe ad aired Friday during the broadcast for Game 1 of Major League Baseball’s World Series, in which the Toronto Blue Jays faced off against the Los Angeles Dodgers.“Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted.Trump had previously terminated trade talks with Canada due to the ad.It was not immediately clear what goods would be affected by Trump’s announcement. The majority of Canadian exports to the US are exempt from tariffs because of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that was signed during Trump’s first term.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration in August imposed a 35% tariff on Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA. Canada’s economy has suffered from sector tariffs of 50% imposed this year by Trump on steel and aluminium from all countries.Candace Laing, president of the Canadian chamber of commerce, said: “tariffs at any level remain a tax on America first, then North American competitiveness as a whole. We hope this threat of escalation can be resolved through diplomatic channels and further negotiation. CUSMA [the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement] means a North America where businesses do better. A successful free trade zone is fundamental for both our economies.”The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, a non-profit organization that works to advance his legacy and principles, wrote in a post on X that Ontario did not seek or receive permission to use the clips.The foundation said in a statement that the advert used “selective audio and video” and “misrepresents” Reagan’s comments. It said it was “reviewing its legal options”, which Trump cited in his Truth Social post.Carney on Friday said Canada stood ready to resume trade talks with the US. Trump and Carney will both be at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Malaysia, but the president told reporters on Air Force One he has no plans to meet with the Canadian leader.The Canadian prime minister had previously removed most of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on US imports imposed by his predecessor, but White House adviser Kevin Hassett said on Friday that Trump was frustrated with Canada and trade talks have not been going well. More

Donald Trump’s standing with Hispanic adults has dropped notably since he took office at the start of the year, according to a new poll.Polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research suggests growing unease among a voting bloc that was crucial to his 2024 re-election victory. The October survey shows that 25% of Hispanic adults now hold a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down sharply from 44% in an AP-NORC poll conducted just before he began his second term.At the same time, the share of Hispanic respondents who believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction has risen from 63% in March to 73% in October.Hispanic adults also expressed less confidence in Trump’s management of the economy and immigration, two key issues that once bolstered his support during last year’s campaign. Overall approval of his job performance has also fallen, with 41% approving of Trump’s handling of the presidency in March, compared with just 27% this month.Hispanic voters played an crucial role in helping Trump win the presidency for the second time; nearly half of Hispanic voters backed him in 2024. His support among Hispanic voters was 12 points higher than in 2020 (48% in 2024, 36% in 2020). On the other hand, voting for the Democratic candidate fell from 61% to 51%.Now the president’s decline in popularity comes as the Trump administration continues its hardline immigration enforcement, which has directly affected Latino communities across income levels.Only about one-quarter of Hispanic adults are in favor of deporting all immigrants living in the US illegally, while roughly half of them are opposed to the policy and the rest say they don’t have an opinion, according to the poll.Economists see immigration and economic concerns as intertwined, with both low-wage and high-skilled Latino workers feeling the impact of trade uncertainty and strict immigration measures. Studies have shown immigrants actually help improve local economies by boosting consumer spending and filling labor shortages.The poll also highlights rising financial strain within Hispanic households. Respondents reported higher levels of stress about groceries, housing, healthcare and wages than the general US population.Among younger Hispanics and men in the community, negative perceptions of Trump have grown. Roughly two-thirds of Hispanic adults under 45 and Hispanic men now view the president unfavorably, up from about half in September 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s plunge in popularity is even evident among Hispanic Republicans, a key coalition in his voter base. The poll shows that about 65% of Hispanic Republicans said they have a “very” or “somewhat” favorable view of the president, a notable drop from a September 2024 poll by AP-NORC that showed 83% viewed him at least “somewhat” favorably.The research found that, in general, immigration remains a top personal concern for Hispanic adults. About two-thirds said the issue is important to them, compared with around six in 10 white adults and half of Black adults.The AP-NORC poll of 1,289 adults was conducted on 9-13 October. The margin of error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, and for Hispanic adults overall is plus or minus 6.9 percentage points. More

A 24-year-old Honduran man died while trying to flee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Virginia, bringing the death toll among those trying to escape detention in the Trump administration’s mass deportation crackdown to at least three people.Jose Castro Rivera was killed on Thursday morning after running onto a busy highway and being struck and fatally injured while trying to evade ICE agents, local authorities said.A Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that ICE agents stopped a vehicle as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based immigration enforcement operation” but did not provide further details about Castro Rivera, or any of the other passengers who were detained but survived the operation. An ICE agent administered CPR to Castro Rivera, but he died at the scene, according to the official.The fatal incident took place on the busy Interstate 264 eastbound at the Military Highway interchange in Norfolk in south-east Virginia. The Virginia state police said they were not involved in the pursuit and the fatal crash remains under investigation.This is the third known deadly incident involving immigrants trying to flee immigration raids by masked, armed federal agents that are spreading across the country, as part of the Trump administration’s relentless crackdown on immigrants and unprecedented expansion of ICE.In August, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdés, 52, of Guatemala was killed on the freeway after fleeing an ICE raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia, California, about 20 miles (32km) north-east of downtown Los Angeles. The home improvement retailer, which has long been a meeting spot for employers to recruit documented and undocumented day laborers as roofers, painters and construction workers, has been targeted by the Trump administration for ICE operations.The Guatemalan man’s death came just a month after another deadly ICE raid in southern California.Mexican farm worker Jaime Alanís García, 56, died after falling 30ft (9 meters) from a greenhouse while fleeing federal agents at the state-licensed Glass House Farms cannabis facility in Camarillo, Ventura county. Alanís García, who had been living and working in the US for about three decades to support his family in Michoacán, Mexico, climbed onto the roof in a desperate effort to get away from the masked ICE agents and national guard soldiers during the July raid, in which more than 300 people were detained. He suffered catastrophic injuries and was taken off life support after two days.Trump and his anti-immigrant advisers have repeatedly claimed that the unprecedented resources and power being gifted to ICE is about removing “illegal criminals” off American streets.Yet official government data shows that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in US immigration detention. The number of people with no criminal history arrested by ICE and detained by the Trump administration has surpassed the number of those charged with crimes.At least 20 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, according to a recent NPR investigation, making it the deadliest year since 2004. More

A reclusive billionaire, anti-tax crusader and major financial backer of Donald Trump has been named as the anonymous private donor who gave $130m to the government to help pay US troops during the federal shutdown that is now in its fourth week, according to the New York Times.Timothy Mellon, heir to the gilded age industrialist and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, is the secret donor whom Trump has described as a “friend”, “great American” and “patriot”, but has refused to name, the Times reported on Saturday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the arrangement.Trump first announced the secret, legally controversial donation on Thursday amid growing clamor about the potential financial hardship being caused by the ongoing federal shutdown on the 1.3 million active duty military troops.​​“He doesn’t want publicity,” Trump said on Friday as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefers that his name not be mentioned, which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”​​The Pentagon told the Times that the donation was accepted under the “general gift acceptance authority”.“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of service members’ salaries and benefits,” said Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, in a statement.Still, the donation, which equates to about $100 per service member, appears to be a potential violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending funds in advance or in excess of congressional appropriations – and from accepting voluntary services “except in the case of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property”.Potential penalties for violations include both administrative and criminal sanctions such as suspension or removal from duty, fines and imprisonment.A White House spokesperson referred the Guardian to the treasury department, which has been contacted for comment.Mellon, 80, pumped over $165m to back Trump, Robert F Kennedy and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle, making him the top donor fueling outside spending groups last year, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. This included $125m to the Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc, which supported Trump, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Mellon has also given money to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense.Mellon, a retired railroad magnet who lives mostly in Wyoming, is a relatively new player in campaign financing, donating just $32,000 in the 2016 election cycle when Trump first ran for office. This jumped to $10m in 2016 and $60m in 2020, when in a rare interview with Bloomberg the recluse said he believed Trump had delivered on what he’d said on the stump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2021, the Texas Tribune reported that Mellon had donated $53m to Texas governor Greg Abbott’s fund to build a wall on the state’s border with Mexico.Mellon’s wealth and anti-tax leanings can be traced back to his industrialist grandfather, who made his money in banking and investments in startups before serving as treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932.The Mellon family remains one of the country’s richest with a combined net worth of $14bn in 2024, according to Forbes. Timothy Mellon’s individual wealth is unclear, with reported estimates ranging from $700m to $4bn. More

There are many ways to characterize Proposition 50, the single ballot initiative that Californians will be voting on this election season.You could say it’s about redrawing congressional district lines outside the regular once-a-decade schedule. You could say, more precisely, that it’s about counterbalancing Republican efforts to engineer congressional seats in their favor in Texas and elsewhere with a gerrymander that favors the Democrats. You could, like the measure’s detractors, call it a partisan power grab that risks undermining 15 years of careful work to make California’s congressional elections as fair and competitive as possible.The way California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Democrats are selling it to voters, though, boils down to something much simpler and more visceral: it’s an invitation to raise a middle finger to Donald Trump, a president fewer than 40% of Californians voted for and many loathe – for reasons that extend far beyond his attempts at election manipulation. For that reason alone, the yes campaign believes it is cruising to an easy victory.“There’s actually a double tease here,” said Garry South, one of California’s most experienced and most outspoken Democratic political consultants who has been cheer-leading the measure. “Trump and Texas, the state Californians love to hate. How can you lose an initiative that’s going to stick it to both?”Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, proposes amending the California constitution and suspending the work of the state’s independent redistricting commission until 2031 so the Democrats can carve out five additional safe seats. That wouldn’t significantly change the power balance in California, since Democrats already occupy 43 of the state’s 52 House seats.But it would compensate for the five seats that Texas Republicans, acting on Trump’s direct urging, wrested for themselves earlier this year. “Fight fire with fire,” has been Newsom’s mantra, and several influential national figures in the Democratic party – everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent New York congresswoman, to former president Barack Obama – have signed on.Democrats are optimistic they will see a significant vote shift in their favor next year, because Trump’s approval ratings are already underwater in the swing states that he narrowly won last November, and in California he is polling as low as 29%.But that won’t translate into more congressional seats if district boundaries are redrawn in a way that protects vulnerable Republican incumbents and eliminates meaningful competition. According to one estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans already have a net 16-seat advantage for themselves in House races, thanks to gerrymandering efforts across the country in the wake of the 2020 census. The Texas move increases that advantage to 21 seats. And similar, smaller-scale moves in Missouri and North Carolina bring it to 23.“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama charges in a widely aired campaign ad that began circulating last week. “With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks.”Polls and focus groups suggest many Californians have mixed feelings about abandoning their state’s non-partisan district maps, but a slim majority say they see the need to do so anyway and plan to vote yes on 4 November.Support for the measure has been rising steadily. Earlier this month, the yes vote was barely cracking 50% in most of the polling, and about 15% of poll respondents said they were undecided. Another 30% indicated that their support for or against was soft.Two surveys published this week, however, showed Proposition 50 passing by at least a 20-point margin and the yes vote is now up in the high 50s or low 60s. Fully three-quarters of those intending to vote yes told a CBS News poll conducted by YouGov that they were doing so to oppose Trump, just as the yes campaign has been urging.Ballot initiatives are not quite like other elections, though, especially in an off-year election likely to result in lower turnout than usual.“The history of [these] campaigns in this state shows that late-deciding voters tend to vote against initiatives,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican campaign consultant who teaches political communications at Berkeley and the University of Southern California. “They’re expressing an inherent skepticism that arises if voters don’t know a lot about a measure. They want to guard against it making their lives worse.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest polling data suggests that such last-minute skepticism may not apply in this case, most likely because Trump is such a polarizing, and motivating factor. Polls consistently show higher support for Proposition 50 among so-called “high propensity” voters – those who show up at the polls time after time – and early mail-in voting returns indicate stronger than usual numbers, with registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by almost a two-to-one margin.The “yes” side has outraised the “no” side and been far more visible in campaign ads and appearances. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker who represented a southern California district for 16 years, promised over the summer to raise $100m to defeat Proposition 50 but has managed only a tiny fraction of that – less than $6m, according to the secretary of state’s office. And the big Republican guns who might ordinarily have hit the campaign trail have been conspicuous by their absence – something that suggests to many political observers they think the fight is unwinnable.Overall, the yes campaign has outraised the no campaign by about $138m to $82m.Even the pleas of the no campaign’s most visible advocate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, have proven ineffective. According to an Emerson poll, two-thirds of voters say it makes no difference to them what Schwarzenegger thinks. As a Republican, he lacks credibility with many Democrats, and as a moderate who loathes Trump, he has little traction with the Republican base. More than 20% of voters say his advocacy actually makes them more likely to do the opposite of what he wants.The problem for the no campaign, according to South and others, is that there is no message persuasive enough to counter the visceral appeal of “screw Trump”, particularly at a time when California voters are angry about ICE raids, military deployments in US cities including Los Angeles, federal funding cuts, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and more.Some groups, including one led by the billionaire Charles Munger Jr that has ploughed more than $30m into the no campaign, have pushed the argument that Proposition 50 is undemocratic. But national polling has consistently shown that appeals to democracy do little to sway voters because both sides think it is at stake. Calling Proposition 50 a “power grab” merely reminds voters that Republicans in Texas grabbed power first.Other opponents, including Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate in next year’s governor’s race, have sought to stir voter discontent with Newsom and cast the initiative as one more distraction cooked up by a governor with national ambitions when he should be focusing on the state’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. Hilton calls Proposition 50 an “illegal and corrupt contribution to [Newsom’s as yet unannounced] presidential campaign”.That works as red meat for the Republican base. But the last time Republicans tried to turn the California electorate against Newsom in a stand-alone ballot initiative – a recall vote in 2021 – Newsom prevailed by a 62-38 margin. And Newsom’s approval numbers have only increased as a result of Proposition 50.“The no side has two problems with its core argument,” South said. “It’s too complicated, and it’s too abstract. The average voter doesn’t have a clue what their congressional lines are. And, in addition to that, they don’t care.“So the choice comes down to: you can screw Trump, or you can pay homage to a redistricting commission that voters approved in 2010 and probably don’t remember. There’s no way this thing loses.” More

Polling places opened on Saturday for the start of in-person voting for two of the year’s most closely watched elections: the New York City mayor’s race and the contest to pick New Jersey’s next governor.New Yorkers are choosing between Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat on the ballot as an independent. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, is also on the ballot but dropped out of the race last month and recently threw his support behind Cuomo.The New Jersey governor’s race features Republican state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli and Democratic US representative Mikie Sherrill.New York has allowed early voting since 2019, and it has become relatively popular. In June’s mayoral primary, about 35% of the ballots were cast early and in person, according to the city’s campaign finance board.New Jersey adopted early voting in 2021.The off-year elections in neighboring states could be bellwethers for Democratic party leaders as they try to decide what kinds of candidates might be best to lead their resistance to Donald Trump ’s agenda.The races have spotlighted affordability and cost of living issues as well as ongoing divisions within the Democratic party, said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University in New Jersey.“New York City pits the progressive wing against the establishment old guard in Mamdani versus Cuomo, while New Jersey is banking on moderate candidate Mikie Sherrill to appeal to its broad middle,” she said.Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has electrified liberal voters, drawn to his proposals for universal free childcare, free buses and a rent freeze for New Yorkers living in about 1m rent-regulated apartments.Cuomo has portrayed Mamdani’s policies as naive and financially irresponsible. He has appealed to voters to pick him because of his experience as the state’s governor, a position he gave up in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.Cuomo has also assailed Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, over his criticism of Israel.Mamdani, who has weathered anti-Muslim rhetoric during the contest, says Israel’s military actions in Gaza have amounted to genocide. Cuomo and Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels public safety patrol group, equate Mamdani’s position with antisemitism.The New Jersey gubernatorial candidates, in their final debate earlier this month, sparred over the federal government shutdown, Sherrill’s military records, Trump’s policies and the high cost of living in the state. The winner would succeed the Democratic incumbent, Phil Murphy, who is term-limited.Early voting is already under way in other states.In Virginia, voters began casting early ballots on 19 September. In that closely watched governor’s race, they’re choosing between former US representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, and the Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears.One of those candidates will become Virginia’s first female governor. They clashed over cultural issues such as the rights of transgender children in sports and school bathrooms during their lone debate earlier this month.Early voting runs through 1 November in Virginia and 2 November in New York City and New Jersey. Polling sites in all three states will then open widely for election day on 4 November. More