Philippa Kaur

One year and a day after Donald Trump won a second term as president – and on the 35th day of the US government shutdown, which has tied a record for the longest in history – the Democrats swept to victory in key races across the county.

Democratic candidates won the governorships in the states of Virginia and New Jersey, while Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s next mayor.

The Democrats may have just become the winners of the fight to reopen the government, too.

New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill speaks during an election night party after her victory.
Matt Rourke/AAP

Trump’s ratings dropping sharply

Sixteen years ago, then-President Barack Obama was staggered by Republicans winning the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey in the 2009 elections.

The message was indelible: voters wanted to put a check on Obama and his wide-ranging agenda, from health care to global warming. Many Americans wanted him to cool his jets, including on what would become his signature achievement, Obamacare.

The following year, in the 2010 midterm elections, the Democrats lost more than 60 seats and their majority in the House. For the next six years, Republicans had a veto over whatever bills Obama wanted Congress to enact.

With Democrats now winning the governorships in those two states, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have just been sent the same message: you need to be checked, too.

Going into Tuesday’s elections, Trump’s approval rating in one major poll was just above 40%, and his disapproval rating just under 60% – the highest it’s been since the January 6 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Independent voters, who swung Trump’s way in last year’s election, are now disapproving of his performance by a 69–30% margin.

Trump’s leadership of what he calls the “hottest country in the world” is falling short in voters’ eyes on a number of key issues: inflation, management of the economy, tariffs, crime, immigration, Ukraine and Gaza.

What’s at the heart of the continued stalemate?

The US government has also been shuttered since October 1. Government agencies have been closed to the public, and hundreds of thousands of government employees are going without paychecks, while thousands of others have been laid off.

Millions of Americans have been affected by flight delays or cancellations due to air traffic controller staffing issues. And food stamps to 42 million Americans have been suspended, with the Trump administration only relenting to provide partial payments in response to a court order.

Closing the government was not solely the doing of Trump and the Republicans in Congress. After nearly a year of laying prostrate and appearing pathetically ineffective in responding to Trump and his agenda, the Democrats finally got off the mat to fight back.

Of all the issues with Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” – which contained huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, huge spending cuts for Medicaid, huge increases in spending to control immigration, more funding for fossil fuels and an increase in the debt ceiling – Democrats seized on one glaring omission from the legislation.

At the end of this year, subsidies are due to expire that more than 24 million Americans rely on to purchase health insurance under Obamacare. As a result, millions are projected to lose their health care coverage.

That is the cross Democrats chose to die on. They’ve told the Trump administration: you want to keep the government open? Keep the insurance subsidies flowing. Fix it now.

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gestures to a chart showing potential health insurance premium increases.
Will Oliver/EPA

Republicans in Congress have had no interest in caving to Democratic demands. They’ve argued Democrats must agree to reopen the government before discussing the subsidies. Their calculation: voters will turn on the Democrats for the turmoil caused by the shutdown.

Trump wanted nothing to do with any such negotiations either. Two days before the elections, he said he “won’t be extorted”.

But a recent poll shows 52% of Americans blame Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown, compared to 42% who blame Democrats.

The wins in Virginia and New Jersey drove this message home. Yes, the Democrats triggered the current shutdown. But the president owns the economy. For better or worse, Trump will own the economy going into next year’s midterm elections, too.

What happens next?

How can the Democrats get out of the shutdown box with a win? With the leverage they just gained in the elections. Republican stonewalling after these election defeats will hurt them even more.

There are two routes forward.

First, Democrats could reach an agreement with the Republicans on a fix to the health insurance issue, with a vote in Congress by Christmas to get the subsidies restored. A bipartisan compromise appears now to be in the works.

Second, if such an agreement cannot be reached, the Democrats can introduce a bill to restore the subsidies on their own, with an up-or-down vote in both the House and Senate. If this was voted down, the Democrats would then have a winning issue to take to the midterm elections next November. The voters would know who to blame – and who to reward.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has prevented the House from meeting for more than six weeks, but it has to come back in session to vote to reopen the government at some point.

Trump is also insisting the Senate change its rules to allow a simple majority to be able to reopen the government – without any compromises on health insurance subsidies. But this is not a viable political option after these election results.

Two other Democrats take centre stage

There were two other big Democratic winners on Tuesday. California voters approved a redistricting plan intended to partially offset Republicans’ gerrymandering of congressional electorates across the country for the midterm elections.

It was a high-risk strategy by California Governor Gavin Newsom, and it paid off handsomely: Newsom is now considered the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

And Mamdani, a Muslim socialist, was elected the Democratic mayor of New York City. Trump will no doubt continue to rubbish him as a communist radical extremist and follow through on his threats to cut federal funding for the largest city in the US.

Mamdani’s victory also places him on the national stage, but not centre stage. The Sinatra doctrine from his hit song New York, New York — “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” — does not quite apply in this situation.

To take back Congress next year and the White House in 2028, the Democrats will need all kinds of flowers to bloom — not just Mamdani’s bouquet. In 2028, the party is going to have to shop in a bigger greenhouse. More

Dick Cheney, one of the most important figures in America’s neo-conservative movement, has died at the age of 84. Cheney had a long career in government and was considered by many as one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history.

Cheney started his career in politics in 1968 in the office of William Steiger, a Republican representative from Wisconsin, before joining the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was at the time the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. By 1974, Cheney was brought on to the team of Gerald Ford, who had assumed the US presidency that year following the resignation of Richard Nixon. He followed Rumsfeld as Ford’s White House chief of staff in 1975, at the age of 34.

Cheney then went on to spend over a decade serving as a member of the House of Representatives. He represented a district in Wyoming until 1989 when he was appointed secretary of defense by the then-president, George H.W. Bush.

This experience would prove critical to Cheney’s subsequent selection as running mate by Bush’s son, George W. Bush, for his 2000 presidential campaign as the Republican candidate. Bush Jr. went on to win that election, and his partnership with Cheney would ultimately prove incredibly significant in reshaping US foreign policy in the Middle East.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the neo-conservative movement gained momentum in Washington and found an ally in Cheney. He was a founding signatory of the so-called Project for the New American Century, which became a major forum for neo-conservative thinking. The goal was to promote US interests – namely spreading democracy abroad – through a bold deployment of military power.

This interventionist foreign policy culminated in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Considered by some to be a shadow president, Cheney had a huge influence over Bush Jr. He reportedly played a major role in convincing Bush to go to war in Iraq.

Cheney expressed no regrets about this decision, calling critics of the war “spineless” in 2005. But a majority of Americans considered this decision to be a grave error.

The war is estimated to have cost the US well over US$1 trillion (£800 billion), and as much as US$3 trillion when taking the wider regional conflict it sparked into account. The war also led to the deaths of as many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians, according to an estimate published by the Lancet medical journal.

American soldiers on patrol in Taji, Iraq, in 2008.
Christopher Landis / Shutterstock

There were also questions about whether Cheney had a conflict of interest. He had previously served as the chief executive of Halliburton, a company that won billions of dollars in US military contracts to restore Iraq’s oil sector – this included some of the biggest military logistics contracts in history. Cheney was even accused of coordinating preferential awarding of contracts to the company, though he and Halliburton denied it.

He was also accused of circumventing due process, constitutional checks and congressional oversight during his time as vice-president. A prominent example of this was his involvement in a programme to intercept domestic communications without a judicial warrant.

Cheney was also widely disliked in the intelligence community. Many of these people resented the way he undermined the CIA by, for example, instructing subordinates in the agency to transmit raw intelligence directly to his office.

Change of heart?

Given that Cheney believed executive power needed to be expanded, there was a degree of irony in his decision to endorse the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election. The winner of that election, Donald Trump, also favours an executive unencumbered by institutions.

But Cheney clearly had his limits. While Bush Jr. was reticent to publicly attack Trump, Cheney became one of his harshest critics. This was especially so after Liz Cheney, his daughter and a now former congresswoman, voted to impeach Trump after the insurrection of January 6 2021, which made her enemy number one in Trump’s eyes.

However, some critics claim that it was Cheney’s shadow presidency that paved the way for Trump’s aggressive expansion of the executive power of the presidency. Along the way, he wielded the power of the vice-presidency in a way not been seen before or, arguably, since.

Cheney was not just powerful but prone to operating clandestinely, even creating an independent operation inside the White House. All of this helped fuel mistrust of the government.

As Cheney advanced in age, his stances seemed to be softening from the Darth Vader image he had embraced as vice-president. More than half of the multi-million fortune that Cheney gained from selling his Halliburton stock options, for example, was donated to the Cardiac Institute at George Washington University.

Cheney, who survived five heart attacks and eventually a heart transplant, was seen a political survivor. But the Republican party that he had led in the shadows has been transformed. Once a towering figure in the conservative movement, today his brand of conservatism is a relic of the past. More

The United States government has been shut down for nearly a month, yet another indication that the political system has become deeply dysfunctional.

President Donald Trump has blamed the Democrats and called their negotiating strategy a “kamikaze attack.” Democrats are keen to stand their ground, hoping that the fallout is worse for Republicans. While each side casts blame on the other, it is Americans who suffer.

But the shutdown is just another episode in a series of polarization-fueled events that are leading Americans to lose faith in their government. Every nation has it limits, and one wonders how much America can take before the pressure to divide into separate countries becomes too great.

Consider the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which raised the specter of polarization-fueled conflict in America. Mentions of “civil war” surged online, fears grew over rising political violence, and the Trump administration vowed to crack down on left-leaning groups.

These are merely the latest examples of the mounting pressure on the American political system. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that 64% of Americans think the country is too politically divided to solve the nation’s problems. The same poll showed that only 42% of Americans held that position in 2020.

In other words, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the system is broken, and the number is growing fast.

Calls for a national divorce

It should come as no surprise, then, that some are calling for radical solutions like a national divorce.

On Sept. 15, 2025, five days after Kirk’s killing, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that America needs “a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us.”

National divorce is the term used to describe the splitting of America into two parts: a red America and a blue America. Secessionist movements like Yes California and Red-State Secession have for over a decade been calling for a national divorce along political lines. And a 2023 Axios poll found that as many as 20% of Americans see national divorce as a solution to political polarization.

As a political scientist who studies secessionist conflict, I’ve found that the national divorce argument is commonly used as an analogy with marital divorce. Just as two spouses may be extremely ill-suited for one another, and far better off if they separated, the same can be said of red and blue America. They no longer see eye to eye on a range of issues, from reproductive rights to the environment and gun control.

If they seceded from one another and formed their own countries, the argument goes, then they could establish policies that would ensure the future they wanted.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called for a ‘peaceful national divorce’ in September 2025.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

But as I show in my new book, there is no way to disentangle red and blue America without tremendous violence. Additionally, a large and increasingly ignored percentage of Americans hold moderate views.

There is no doubt that polarization in America is a problem that is getting worse, but a national divorce is simply not the solution.

And yet America’s leaders continue to lead their country toward that outcome. The deployment of National Guard troops to blue cities, the polarization-enhancing consequences of competitive gerrymandering in states like Texas and California, and the spectacle of government shutdown are eroding the public trust. By continuing with policies that amplify polarization and erode the public trust, America’s leaders are fueling the calls for a national divorce.

How much can the country take?

The trend toward heightened polarization in America is not irreversible, but there are limits to how much the country can take before secession becomes a serious project. Some of the limits can be identified in advance.

First, it’s important that the country’s leaders take the pulse of America. If 20% of Americans favored national divorce in early 2023, what is the percentage now? That kind of sentiment can increase surprisingly fast.

Between 2006 and 2014, for example, Catalonian support for independence from Spain increased from 14% to 45%. If something like 50% of Americans concluded that America didn’t work and was better off broken up into smaller parts, then the country could tip rapidly into a secessionist crisis.

People hold up signs during a memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sept. 21, 2025, in Glendale, Ariz. After Kirk’s killing, Trump administration officials vowed to crack down on left-leaning groups.
AP Photo/John Locher

Second, high levels of secessionist support make the country vulnerable to trigger events that convince Americans that secession is the answer. The polarization-inspired assassination of prominent leaders can lead to a cycle of recrimination. Upcoming elections are also a concern. If they are closely contested and the losing side is unwilling to admit defeat, then the bedrock of democracy is broken. Both triggers can accelerate polarization and the turn to secessionism.

A third threshold moment is when a prominent leader decides to champion the cause of a national divorce.

Should someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott or the sore loser of a 2028 election conclude that the system is rigged, and secession is the only solution, then the entire project gains legitimacy.

It was that kind of elite conversion to the secessionist cause that energized the movement in places like Scotland and Catalonia.

The U.S. is a robust country and the longest-running democracy in the world. Americans have more in common than they realize, and the country can be a positive force in the world.

But without decisive action by political leaders to reduce the polarization that threatens to tear the country apart, the United States is at risk of turning from one country into two. More

Donald Trump is clearly concerned about the midterm elections that loom next November, which look to be a referendum on his administration. All seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs as will one-third of the Senate. Losing control of the House would severely crimp the US president’s ability to govern the way he has for the first nine months of his second term.

Trump has already voiced some unease about the election. In a recent interview with the One America News (OAN) network he stated: “The one thing that I worry about is that… I don’t have the numbers, but the person that wins the presidency always seems to lose the midterms”.

There’s a clue to the president’s apprehension about the numbers from the 2024 general election results. Despite winning the popular vote in 2024, the Republican vote in the House fell by 0.2 percentage points, as a result the GOP (the Republicans) lost two seats, leaving them with a majority of only five seats.

Trump knows from bitter experience what could happen if he loses control of the House. The Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats at the 2018 midterms after which the House impeached Trump twice.

So the president and his Maga coalition are well aware of how important it is to retain control of Congress.

The president is already taking steps that could tilt the midterms in his favour. Shortly after being sworn in as president in January 2025, he rescinded Joe Biden’s executive order that aimed to expand voting access and voter registration.

In April Trump ordered the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the Democrats’ top fundraising platform ActBlue, after allegations it had allowed illegal campaign donations. The Democrats denounced the move as “Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition”.

In August, Trump announced he wanted to ban mail-in-voting for the midterms. Three in every ten ballots cast in 2024 were mail-ins and are historically thought to favour the Democrats. But the US constitution mandates that the states control their elections. Congress has the power to pass legislation banning mail-ins for federal elections, but it is thought unlikely that such a measure would pass the Senate.

History has shown that the party occupying the White House usually performs poorly in the subsequent midterm elections. Three recent polls, Economist/YouGov, Morning Consult, and Emerson, show Democrats edging ahead in the generic congressional vote.

But precedent and political polling may count for little over the next year, as America’s democratic system is tested by extraordinary events and challenges.

Redistricting

There are already moves by mainly, though not exclusively, Republican controlled states to carve out additional congressional seats (referred to as redistricting) to bolster the party’s chances of retaining their majority in the House of Representatives. In three states – Texas, Missouri and North Carolina – Republican legislatures have redrawn constituency lines to the party’s electoral benefit, resulting in a notional seven new GOP-leaning congressional seats.

Changing electoral boundaries could affect the election result.
Alan Mazzocco/Shutterstock

After the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature voted through a new congressional map that may provide the party an additional seat in next year’s midterms, Trump posted on Truth Social that this provided the potential for “A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda.”

Democrats have responded to these events by launching their own redistricting plans, with Virginia becoming the latest blue state to announce proposals to redraw electoral boundaries that could give the party two or three additional seats.

It is, however, the largest state in the union – California – which serves as the base for Democrats counterbalancing moves. California Governor Gavin Newsom is asking his state’s voters to decide on proposition 50. If passed this would authorise state lawmakers to create new electoral wards that could favour Democrats. Academic analysis has estimated that the move could provide up to five additional Democratic seats in Congress.

This action has been endorsed by former US president Barack Obama, who stated the Democrats strategy in California gives the national party a “chance… to create a level playing field” in next year’s elections.

Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new in US politics. But what is new, according to Benjamin Schneer, a Harvard-based expert in political representation, is the scale on which this is being done. He believes:

Gerrymandering can be done more effectively now because we have fine-grained data on the population and on how people are likely to vote, and computing techniques to design maps in clever ways. Put all that together with intense polarization and that creates a perfect storm where gerrymandering can flourish.

Voting rights

The 2026 midterms would also be affected in a seismic way by an impending Supreme Court decision relating to a central pillar of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 2 of the act “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, colour, or membership in one of the language minority groups”. The court is now weighing whether Section 2 is constitutional.

People vote in Louisiana: changes to voting rights laws could affect the outcome in 2026.
Allen J.M. Smith/Shutterstock

The case relates to a lawsuit in Louisiana where it was required under the VRA to redraw its congressional map to ensure two majority black districts. This is now being challenged in the Supreme Court. If successful it could weaken the voting power of minorities and result in congressional districts being redrawn throughout the American south.

This would be a major blow for the Democrats. Analysis by the BBC projects that this could “flip more than a dozen seats from Democratic to Republican”. Findings from the Economist go further, suggesting “Republicans could eliminate as many as 19 Democrat-held districts in the House of Representatives, or 9% of the party’s current caucus.”

The 2026 midterms will be hugely consequential. They will decide what party controls the US Congress for Trump’s last two years in office and therefore the extent of his power until January 2029. They will also serve as the unofficial start of the 2028 presidential campaign and determine whether it is the Republicans or Democrats with the political momentum heading into this historic election. More

A series of recent events has sparked alarm about rising levels of political violence in the U.S. These episodes include the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025; the murder of a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and her husband in June 2025; and two attempts to kill Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Some surveys have reported that a large number of Americans are willing to support the use of force for political ends, or they believe that political violence may sometimes be justified.

My research is in political science and data analytics. I have conducted surveys for almost 25 years. For the past three years, I have studied new techniques that leverage artificial intelligence to conduct and analyze interviews.

My own recent surveys, which use AI to ask people about why they give their answers, show that the surprisingly high level of support in response to these questions is likely the result of confusion about what these questions are asking, not actual support for political violence.

Law enforcement officials lead a procession as pallbearers carry caskets after a funeral ceremony for Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, on June 28, 2025, in Minneapolis.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

A failure to communicate

Why would multiple surveys get the answers to this important question wrong? I believe the cause is an issue called response error. It means that respondents don’t interpret a question in the way the researcher thinks they will.

As a result, the answers people provide don’t really reflect what the researcher thinks the answers show.

For example, asking whether someone would support the use of force to achieve a political goal raises the question of what the respondent thinks “use of force” means in this context. It could be interpreted as violence, but it could also be interpreted as using legal means to “force” someone to do something.

Such response errors have been a concern for pollsters ever since survey research began. They can affect even seemingly straightforward questions.

What did you mean by that?

To avoid this problem, I used an AI interviewing system developed by CloudResearch, a well-known survey research company, to ask respondents some of the same questions about political violence from previous surveys. Then I used it to ask what they were thinking when they answered those questions. This process is called cognitive interviewing.

I then used AI to go through these interviews and categorize them. Two short reports that summarize this process as applied to both polls are available online. These analyses have not been peer-reviewed, and the results should be considered very preliminary.

Nonetheless, the results clearly demonstrate that respondents interpret these questions in very different ways.

Nuance matters

For example, in my survey, about 33% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “use of force is justified to remove President Trump from office.” However, when asked why they agreed, more than 57% gave responses like this: “I was not thinking physically but more in the sense that he – the president – might need to be ‘fired’ or forced out of office due to rules or laws.” Still others were envisioning future scenarios where a president illegally seizes power in a coup.

Once you account for these different interpretations of the question, the AI only coded about 8% of Democrats as supporting use of force in violent terms under current conditions.

Even here, there was substantial ambiguity – for example, this type of response was not unusual: “The language ‘use of force’ was a bit too broad for me. I could not justify killing Trump, for example, but less extreme uses of force were valid in my eyes.”

Similarly, 29% of Republicans agreed that “use of the military is justified to stop protests against President Trump’s agenda.” However, almost all of the respondents who agreed with this statement envisioned the National Guard interceding nonviolently to stop violent protests and riots. Only about 2.6% of Republicans gave comments supporting use of the military against nonviolent protests.

Almost all those who agreed that use of the military was justified expressed thoughts like this: “I see the military coming and acting as a police force to stop or prevent the demonstrations that become violent. Peaceful protesters must be allowed to exercise their right to free speech.”

People prepare to march in a ‘No Kings’ protest against Trump administration policies in New York City on June 14, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

When is political violence justified?

Even questions that explicitly ask about political violence are open to wide interpretation. Take, for example, this question: “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?”

The lack of a specific scenario or location in this question invites respondents to engage in all kinds of philosophical and historical speculation.

In my survey, almost 15% of respondents said violence could sometimes be justified. When asked about the examples they were thinking of, respondents cited the American Revolution, the anti-Nazi French Resistance and many other incidents as a reason for their responses. Only about 3% of respondents said they were thinking about actions in the U.S. at the current time.

Moreover, almost all respondents stated that violence should be a last resort when all other peaceful and legal methods fail.

One respondent illustrated both problems with one sentence: “The (American) colonists tried petitions and negotiations first, but, when those efforts failed, they resorted to armed conflict to gain independence.”

A call for understanding

Even these numbers likely overestimate Americans’ support for political violence. I read the interviews, checking the AI system’s labeling, and concluded that, if anything, it was overestimating support for violence.

Other factors may also be distorting reports of public support for political violence. Many surveys are conducted primarily online. One study estimated that anywhere from 4% to 7% of respondents in online surveys are “bogus respondents” who are selecting arbitrary responses. Another study reported that such respondents dramatically increase positive responses on questions about political violence.

Respondents may also be willing to espouse attitudes anonymously online that they would never say or do in real life. Studies have suggested that “online disinhibition effects” or “survey trolling” can impact survey results.

In sum, my preliminary research suggests that response error is a substantial problem in surveys about political violence.

Americans almost universally condemn the recent political violence they have witnessed. The recent poll results showing otherwise more likely stem from confusion about what the questions are asking than actual support for political violence. More

It’s been eight days since a partial US government shutdown began on October 1, owing to a failure by Congress to agree to a new budget by the September 30 deadline.

Democrats are refusing to help to pass a budget unless health insurance subsidies are extended, while Republicans and President Donald Trump want a budget passed without these subsidies. There does not appear to be any progress towards ending the shutdown.

Analyst G. Elliott Morris has reported polls that have Republicans and Trump blamed for the shutdown by six to 17 points more than Democrats. In a YouGov poll for CBS News, by 40–28 respondents said the Democratic positions were not worth the shutdown, and by 45–23 they said the same of the Republican positions.

In analyst Nate Silver’s US national poll aggregate, Trump has a net approval of -9.4, with 52.7% disapproving and 43.3% approving. His net approval dropped two points in late September, but the shutdown hasn’t changed it yet.

Trump’s net approval on the four issues tracked by Silver are -4.7 on immigration, -15.3 on the economy, -15.6 on trade and -27.4 on inflation. His net approval on trade and inflation has risen in the last two weeks.

In November 2026 all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for election at midterm elections. Morris’ generic ballot average has Democrats leading Republicans by 44.9–42.1. Democrats have led narrowly since April.

In polling conducted before the shutdown started, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer averaged a net favourability of -20.5 according to Silver, making him the least popular of the six party leaders (Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders).

Schumer’s poor ratings are due to weak ratings from Democratic-aligned voters. A Pew poll gave him an overall 50–21 unfavourable rating, including 39–35 unfavourable with Democrats. There’s pressure on Schumer from his own party to fight Trump harder. If Democrats are perceived to have caved to Republicans, Schumer is likely to be blamed by other Democrats.

How do shutdowns affect the US economy?

There have been 11 US government shutdowns since 1980, with seven of them lasting five days or less. The longest shutdown (35 days) occurred during Trump’s first term after Democrats gained control of the House in November 2018 elections.

Shutdowns are economically damaging, but past shutdowns haven’t lasted long enough to do great damage, and the economy rebounds once the shutdown is over.

Shutdowns result in far less government economic data. The September jobs report was to be released last Friday, but this won’t happen until after the shutdown finishes.

Despite the shutdown, the benchmark US S&P 500 stock index surged to a new record high in Wednesday’s session, and is up 4% in the last month. The stock market has been supporting Trump since it rebounded from April lows.

Why is there a shutdown when Republicans control both chambers?

Republicans won the House of Representatives by 220–215 over Democrats at the November 2024 elections and currently hold it by 219–213, with two special elections to occur later this year. A Democrat who won a September 23 special election has not yet been formally certified the winner.

Republicans also hold a 53–47 majority in the Senate.

In the Senate, legislation usually needs to clear a 60-vote “filibuster” threshold. The filibuster allows at least 41 senators to indefinitely delay legislation they disagree with. To reach 60 votes, Republicans need at least seven Democratic senators to vote with them.

The filibuster is not part of the US Constitution, and the majority party could eliminate it. But some Republican senators are probably worried about what Democrats would do if they won the presidency and majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The filibuster cannot be applied to all legislation. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed the Senate using “reconciliation” by 51–50 on Vance’s tie-breaking vote. But reconciliation is a cumbersome process that isn’t appropriate for a normal budget bill.

Ipsos poll on Trump’s troop deployments

Trump has deployed national guard troops on home soil in Chicago, Illinois, and attempted to also do this in Portland, Oregon. The national guard has assisted before, during environmental disasters and protests, but Trump’s deployments are against the wishes of the affected states’ governors.

In an Ipsos US national poll for Reuters, respondents thought by 58–25 that the president should only deploy troops to areas with external threats. By 48–37, they did not think the president should be able to send troops into a state if its governor objects. More

The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently released a 238-page album, compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. On Oct. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s appeal of her 2022 conviction for sex trafficking girls with Epstein.

The release of the partially redacted album is part of a larger investigation of the federal government’s handling of Epstein and Maxwell and “possible mismanagement.”

Read more:
Trump’s Epstein problem is real: New poll shows many in his base disapprove of his handling of the files, and some supporters are having second thoughts about electing him

The album is in the spotlight due to an entry allegedly penned by U.S. President Donald Trump, though the White House has denied he wrote it. Entitled The First Fifty Years, the book overflows with handwritten letters, campy sketches and images fixated on women’s bodies.

The book was bound by Weitz & Coleman, an esteemed bookbinder in New York City since 1909, as indicated by a note within the album itself.

Its “vegetable tanned” leather covers, table of contents and sections titled “Family,” “Friends” and “Business” signal an intent to elevate casual notes into a permanent record.

As book historian D.F. McKenzie contends, a book’s physical form shapes its social role. Here, the elaborate binding and careful organization transform private, ephemeral notes into a social gesture, something shared in a legacy format.

In this sense, Epstein’s album sits alongside a tradition of bound tribute books — scrapbooks pressed into leather for golden anniversaries, glossy volumes marking a CEO’s retirement or academic festschrifts that canonize a career. What unites them is the transformation of passing moments into artifacts meant to endure.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., talks to reporters about the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 19, 2025.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Charm, codes, clichés

Maxwell’s prologue describes the book as a retrospective to “jog your memory of places and people and different events.”

In the birthday book, one redacted former “assistant” recalls how working for Epstein transformed her life: she went from being “a 22-year-old divorcée working as a hotel hostess” to rubbing shoulders with royalty, presidents, financiers and celebrities.

One letter from a childhood friend who recently said Maxwell instructed him to write something “raunchy” spins a sexually explicit fantasy about Epstein’s conception before drifting into nostalgic tales of their four-boy Brooklyn clique.

In one vignette, Epstein is praised for flaunting a “beautiful British babe” at his family’s home, his indifference to her feelings reframed as charm. The anecdote turns callousness toward women into a badge of confidence and belonging. The letter concludes: “That shows a lot. It really does … Yes, your charisma and persuasive ways came very early on … you’re my kid’s role model.”

Epstein’s sex life and treatment of women are recurring themes.

A note apparently from private equity investor Leon Black, who was earlier found to have paid millions in fees to Epstein, cast Epstein as Ernest Hemingway’s hero in The Old Man and the Sea, swapping fish for “Blonde, Red or Brunette” women.

Officials speak during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, in New York. Maxwell is now in federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Philosophers and scholars of rhetoric have long noted that ready-made clichés can replace inner reflection, forming a “code of expression” that insulates people from moral reckoning.

Laughter as defence

If language conveys loyalty, humour compounds it. Composed in 2003, as Epstein’s notoriety grew, today — amid the knowledge of Epstein’s sex crimes — the birthday book’s laughter seems knowingly defensive.

There are bawdy jokes and mocking nicknames: Epstein is dubbed “Degenerate One” and teased or taunted with “so many girls, so little time.”

As French philosopher Henri Bergson argued, laughter functions as a social corrective: a “kind of social ragging” that polices behaviour by ridiculing deviation under the guise of amusement.

One birthday book contributor quips that Epstein had “avoided the penitentiary.” The comment implies knowledge of punishable behaviour, yet also suggests Epstein is an affable rogue.

Figures of authority

The book’s inclusion of entries from public office and science figures could suggest Maxwell and Epstein sought to keep or commemorate connections with figures of authority as a form of perceived legitimacy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that former U.S. president Bill Clinton, whose name appears in the album’s “Friends” section, gave Epstein a handwritten note praising his “childlike curiosity” and drive to “make a difference.” In 2019, a spokesperson for Clinton said he severed ties with Epstein prior to his 2019 arrest and he was not aware of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

Peter Mandelson, recently forced out as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S. after the Epstein birthday book’s release, penned a note saying Epstein was an “intelligent, sharp-witted man.” Mandelson has said he felt tremendous regret over his Epstein friendship and sympathy for Epstein’s victims.

The birthday book’s “Science” section, with letters from leading scientists, shows that Epstein’s reach extended beyond business and politics into elite academic networks.

Read more:
How higher ed can deal with ethical questions over its disgraced donors

Eroticized power and dominance

While some entries strike a mundane or playful tone, others veer into vulgarity.

The former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, Leslie Wexner, contributed a sketch resembling a woman’s breasts with the words “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is” — framing it as a present. Wexner has said before he severed ties with Epstein in 2007 and declined to comment about the book.

The note allegedly written by Trump features a drawing of a naked woman alongside typewritten text imagining a conversation between them. It calls Epstein “a pal” and ends with the wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.”

Former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold contributed a series of African wildlife photographs, claiming they spoke more vividly than words. The images — of copulating lions and a zebra with an erect penis — foreground predatory and sexualized behaviour, and may be interpreted as reflecting a fascination with dominance and raw biological impulse.

The Seattle Times reports that a spokesperson for Myhrvold said Myhrvold knew Epstein “from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research” and “regrets that he ever met him.” The representative did not address the letter.

This image posted Sept. 8, 2025, on the X account of the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, shows a sexually suggestive birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein alluding to a ‘wonderful secret’ and purportedly signed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has denied sending the note.
(@OversightDems/X via AP)

The legacy of small gestures

While journalists have long documented that Epstein’s networks stretched from political leaders and Wall Street financiers to influential figures in science and culture, it remains to be seen how the carefully curated and gifted birthday book fits into the larger investigation.

The book’s most insidious achievement is its ordinariness. It suggests the ways that power is fortified and legitimized not only with contracts and institutions but through gestures of social life, including commemorative books. More

Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer – the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June – President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.

Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes.

But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trump’s proposals are those with the most valuable real estate.

As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off.

Most families already sell their homes tax-free

Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,000 in gain from a home sale, while married people can exclude $500,000. All told, about 90% of home sales generate less than $500,000 in gains, so the overwhelming majority of sellers already owe no tax.

The minority who would see new benefits from the proposed tax change are those with more than $500,000 in appreciation – typically owners of high-priced homes in hot real estate markets. Yale’s Budget Lab estimated the average benefit for these tax-free sales was $100,000 per qualifying seller.

Homeownership itself isn’t equally distributed across the U.S. population. About 44% of Black Americans are homeowners, compared with 74% of white Americans. That racial gap has only widened over the past 10 years. Similarly, single women – particularly but not exclusively women of color – face additional barriers.

A broader trend of upward wealth transference

Though still just a proposal, the tax-free home sales bill is part of a broader set of Republican tax plans that would have regressive effects – that is, where the vast majority of benefits go to high-income people and very few to low-income people – under a pro-worker banner.

Trump floated the tax-free home sales idea less than three weeks after he signed a large package of tax and spending measures in July 2025. That bill generated strong public criticism because of its emphasis on tax savings for the rich at the expense of almost a trillion dollars in cuts for federally funded health care for the poor and disabled.

The home sales idea follows the same script – and echoes the distributional pattern established by his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That tax reform increased racial wealth and income disparities and provided 80% of its benefits to corporations and high-income individuals. In fact, my research shows that white households received more than twice as many tax cuts as Black households from that law.

The same dynamic plays out in this new tax-fueled housing policy. Eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales would primarily benefit the 29 million homeowners who already have substantial equity – a group that skews heavily white, male and upper middle class. Meanwhile, America’s millions of renters, disproportionately people of color and women, would receive no benefit while potentially losing access to social programs Congress must cut to fund these tax breaks. More