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      US struck another boat illegally carrying drugs off Venezuela coast, Trump says

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      US forces on Saturday evening struck another vessel illegally carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump said on Sunday to thousands of sailors at a ceremony celebrating the US navy’s 250th anniversary. He added that the US would also start looking at drug trafficking happening on land.Trump made the comment during a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, next to the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. It was not immediately clear if he was referencing a strike announced on Friday by defense secretary Pete Hegseth.During his speech, Trump said the navy had supported the mission “to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water. There are no boats in the water anymore. You can’t find them.”The navy has also been utilized to join an armed conflict with drug cartels, leading to four strikes in the Caribbean on what the administration says are fast-boats engaged in drug trafficking.Trump added that if drug smugglers were not coming in by sea, “we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land. And let me tell you that’s not going to work out out well for them either.”The United Nations has condemned the US strikes – which the US defends as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, designated a foreign terrorist organization, in international waters – as extrajudicial executions.“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the UN said last month. “Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”The navy celebrations come amid a shutdown of the federal government that has left some military personnel working without pay. Trump has accused Democrats of enabling the shutdown and attempting “to destroy this wonderful celebration of the US Navy’s Birthday”.“I believe, ‘THE SHOW MUST GO ON!’” Trump posted on Friday night on his social media site. “This will be the largest Celebration in the History of the Navy. Thousands of our brave Active Duty Servicemembers and Military Families will be in attendance, and I look forward to this special day with all of them.”Trump has pledged to rebuild the navy’s shipbuilding capacity after warnings that the service is in danger of losing its status as the world’s dominant naval power.The US fleet is at its smallest size since before the second world war, while state-subsidized Chinese shipyards have surpassed the productivity of US shipyards.Navy secretary John Phelan, who was confirmed in March, has identified “urgency” as a missing element in naval shipbuilding and ordered an accelerated production schedule for the Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine programs.The navy celebrations come after months of turmoil at the Pentagon as Hegseth rearranges the military’s top leadership of the army, navy, air force and coast guard.In a controversial speech to military leaders last week, Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.Hegseth said: “The only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace.”At the meeting, Trump proposed using US cities as training grounds for the armed forces and he spoke of needing military might to combat what he called the “invasion from within”. More

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      Newsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon

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      California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Sunday that he is suing Donald Trump over the alleged deployment of 300 California national guard personnel to Oregon.“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said in a press statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”Newsom’s proposed lawsuit follows a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon national guard to Portland. US district judge Karin Immergut agreed with arguments it would inflame rather than calm tensions in the city.Immergut said in her ruling, which delays sending the guard until at least 18 October, that there was a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.Caroline Turco, Portland’s senior deputy attorney, said that there had been no violence against Ice officers for months and that recent Ice protests were “sedate” in the week before the president declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring fewer than a dozen protesters.“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”In a statement on X, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said the state is “quickly assessing our options and preparing to take legal action.“The President is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” he wrote. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”The California national guard referred questions to the defense department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country,” read a response from the White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson.The news from Oregon came just a day after Trump authorized the deployment of national guard troops to Chicago, the latest in a string of similar interventions across several US states.Trump had first announced the plan on 27 September, saying he was “authorizing full force, if necessary” despite pleas from Oregon officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who said there had been a single, uneventful protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.For years, Trump has amplified the narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chaos and unlawful behavior.During his first term in 2020, he deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests spread across the US but were especially heightened in Portland. Despite protests against Ice being relatively small in the state this year, Trump has used them as a justification to deploy troops.Speaking on X about the latest move from Trump, Newsom said: “It’s appalling. It’s un-American, and it must be stopped.” More

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      House speaker says Democrats aren’t serious about shutdown negotiation as Democratic leader blames Republicans

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      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused Democrats of being “not serious” in negotiations to end the federal government shutdown, while the Democratic leader accused Republicans of driving the shutdown, now on its fifth day and expected to last at least through next week.Talks between the opposing political parties stalled over the weekend, with no votes anticipated to end the standoff. A CBS poll found just 28% of Democratic voters and 23% of Republicans consider their party’s positions worth shutting down the government.In his comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Johnson said his body had done its work in passing a measure to keep the government financed but now it was up to the Senate “to turn the lights back on so that everyone can do their work”. He accused Democrats of failing to engage “in a serious negotiation”.“They’re doing this to get political cover because Chuck Schumer is afraid that he won’t win his next re-election bid in the Senate because he’s going to be challenged by a Marxist in New York, because that’s the new popular thing out there,” he said, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx representative who may be looking to challenge Schumer for his Senate seat next year.But Johnson’s counterpart, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, told the same show JD Vance lied last week when he claimed Democrats were themselves being dishonest claiming they are not trying to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants.“Republicans are lying because they’re losing in the court of public opinion,” Jeffries said, and added his party was “standing up for the healthcare of hard-working American taxpayers, of working-class Americans, of middle-class Americans”.Jeffries also hit back at comments by Donald Trump in a social media post on Thursday in which he called Democrats the party of “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” alongside pictures of party figures, including Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, and former president and first lady Joe and Jill Biden.Asked if he could still negotiate with Trump, Jeffries said the president’s behavior “is outrageous, it’s unhinged, it’s unreasonable, and it speaks for itself. The American people deserve better than lies, than attacks, than deepfake videos and the president spending all of his time on the golf course.”Leaders of the political leadership have not had formal talks for almost a week as both seek to gain a political edge ahead of renewed discussions.Jeffries said that since that meeting last Monday, “Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent” and the Democratic party leadership “will continue to make clear, leader Schumer and myself, that we will sit down any time, any place, with anyone to address this issue with the seriousness that it deserves”.The battle for high political ground continued on Sunday with Johnson claiming that the potential for temporary government job suspensions, known as furloughs, hardening into permanent job layoffs “is a regrettable situation that the president does not want”.White House national economic council director Kevin Hassett increased pressure on Democrats, saying the Trump administration will start mass layoffs of federal workers if Trump decides negotiations with Democrats are “absolutely going nowhere”.Hassett told CNN’s State of the Union that Trump and Vought “are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t”. But he predicted it is possible that Democrats could back down.“I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that,” Hassett said.But some fear Democrats have walked into a trap. Johnson said on Sunday that Trump had asked the Democratic leadership to keep the government open.“In a situation like this, where the Senate Democrats have decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the White House, they have to make tough decisions,” he said, pointing to Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget.Vought, Johnson said, “has to now look at all of the federal government, recognizing that the funding streams have been turned off and determine what are essential programs, policies, and personnel. That’s not a job that he relishes. But he’s being required to do it by Chuck Schumer.”The spirit of mutual recrimination continued with Schumer telling CBS Johnson “doesn’t want to discuss the real issue, the healthcare crisis facing the American people. So he puts up all these fake lies to try and divert attention.”But in an interview set to broadcast on Monday, Johnson told MSNBC he considers the issue of expiring healthcare subsidies – that Democrats place central to their negotiating position – as one that can be addressed later.“We have effectively three months to negotiate in the White House and in the hall of Congress, that’s like an eternity,” Johnson said. “We need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down,” he added.Adam Schiff, a California senator also speaking to Meet the Press, was asked if his party delegates in the Senate would stay united after three Democratic senators broke away to vote with Republicans. Schiff said he was confident that “all Democrats understand that millions and millions of their constituents are about to be priced out of their healthcare”.“We need a president who can act like an adult, who can come to the table and negotiate an end to their self-imposed healthcare crisis,” Schiff said. “Right now we don’t see that. We see Trump out on the golf course, we see the speaker telling his House colleagues not to even come to session, that there’s no work for the federal government to do, apparently.” More

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      Bad Bunny pushes back on Kristi Noem threat that immigrants stay away from Super Bowl

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      Bad Bunny responded to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s threats to send federal immigration enforcement agents to the Super Bowl next year, joking during Saturday Night Live that everyone was happy about his planned half-time performance, “even Fox News”.The 31-year-old Puerto Rican singer who has criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies hosted the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, using his opening monologue to address controversy around his 2026 Super Bowl performance.“It’s good to be back. This is my second time hosting and my fourth time being here,” he said as he took the stage. “I’m doing the Super Bowl half-time show. I’m very happy and I think everyone is happy about it.”The line was followed by a quick montage of Fox news contributors, each saying one word that was clipped together to say, “He should be the next President.”During the opening, the artist included some words in Spanish that he devoted to “all the Latinos and Latinas in the entire world and here in the United States”.“More than being an accomplishment of mine, it’s an accomplishment for everybody, demonstrating that our mark and our contribution to this country will never be able to be removed or erased by anybody,” he said in Spanish. Afterwards, he said in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”The announcement that Bad Bunny would headline the Super Bowl half-time show sparked a wave of conservative outrage including from Noem.Trump’s homeland security secretary said on a rightwing podcast on Friday that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event. She also said the NFL will “not be able to sleep at night” over its decision to choose Bad Bunny as the half-time performer.Bad Bunny was born and raised in Puerto Rico, a US territory, and is an American citizen.Bad Bunny has said that fears that his fans would be subjected to immigration raids prompted him to exclude the US from his forthcoming world tour. The musician just wrapped a three-month concert series in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which drew in an estimated 600,000 attendees.“My residence was beautiful, everyone loved it,” he said during his monologue, acknowledging the success of the recent tour.In other sketches during the 51st season opener, Colin Jost stepped in as Pete Hegseth. “You will now be yelled at by a former Fox News host,” a colleague announced as Jost entered, before the sketch turned to an angry tirade on the US military.“Our military will now have the same rules as any good frat party: No fat chicks. And if you’re a fat dude, goddam it, you better be funny as hell,” Jost said, a clear reference to Hegeth’s recent call out against diversity and fat shaming of troops as he directed generals to fall in line or quit.Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, also made a brief appearance, not as the sketch’s target but as its self-appointed monitor. “I’m just here keeping my eye on SNL, making sure they don’t say anything too mean about me.” More

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      Democrats are embracing the risky politics of a government shutdown to rein in president, activists say

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      For months, as Donald Trump has used the levers of the US federal government to consolidate power, silence dissent and punish his political enemies, Democrats have been bombarded with a single demand: do something. Last week, they did.In a rare display of unity, out-of-power Democrats embraced the risky politics of a government shutdown – their boldest effort yet to rein in a president whom many Americans and constitutional scholars now view as a threat to US democracy.“It’s not a fight for fighting’s sake,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the outside groups closely coordinating with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. “This is a battle about Donald Trump’s attacks on the constitution and him seizing the power over all spending from Congress – and whether Congress is going to let him get away with that.”Washington is bracing for what could be an extended government shutdown, which officially began at 12.01am on Wednesday. Last week, Senate Democrats repeatedly blocked a Republican funding measure to reopen the government, as the parties traded blame and each side insisted they would not bend to the other’s demands.Democrats are pressing for an array of healthcare-centered priorities, including the extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act plans set to expire at the end of the year. The White House and Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, have refused to include any healthcare concessions as part of a deal to reopen the government, though some GOP lawmakers are open to extending the ACA subsidies.Democrats, with little leverage and deep skepticism that Republicans will honor any future deal, view the shutdown as their only option to force the issue.But the Trump administration is working to make the closures as painful as possible for Democrats, who Republicans accuse of trying to “sabotage” the president’s agenda.Trump has called the shutdown an “unprecedented opportunity” to dismantle federal programs and what he called “Democrat agencies”. In a sharp break from precedent, the Trump administration is readying plans to permanently layoffs of federal workers while it takes punitive action against Democratic-led states. Several government departments have posted partisan and potentially illegal messages saying their operations are curtailed due to “the Radical Left Democrat shutdown”. In the Senate, the majority leader John Thune has said he plans to hold more votes on a plan to reopen the government this week.But Democrats say the stakes are too high – and the greater risk is capitulating to the president.“Remember, right now, our healthcare system is broken. Right now, we’re the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people,” the senator Bernie Sanders said in a video with progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, explaining the Democrats’ opposition to the Republican funding bill. “And these guys want to make it even worse. We’re not going to let that happen.”Progressive activists who have been sharply critical of the party’s congressional leaders, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, are now praising them for continuing to “hold the line on healthcare”.“What our members see is Democrats willing to stand up and fight,” said Joel Payne, a spokesperson for MoveOn, which is part of a coalition of progressive groups flooding Democrats with calls to hold fast in shutdown negotiations.Payne said healthcare was Democrats’ “north star” – the party’s strongest issue with voters and one that has helped propel them to victory in the past. If Democrats are successful, he added, the showdown over healthcare could serve as a blueprint for safeguarding other rights under attack by the administration.House Republicans did not need Democrats to pass their short-term spending bill last month, which would fund the government mostly at current levels through 21 November. But in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, they need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation.So far, only three members of the Senate Democratic caucus have broken ranks: John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King, an independent of Maine.In the House, Maine congressman Jared Golden, was only House Democrat to back the Republican funding bill when it passed the House last month. In a statement last week, Golden said the shutdown was the “result of hardball politics” driven by the demands of “far-left groups” eager to show their opposition to Trump.Early polling suggests voters are more inclined to blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats for the federal shutdown. A Washington Post poll released on Thursday found that, by a 17-percentage-point margin, Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown. Independents overwhelmingly sided with Democrats, the survey found.Yet there were signs public opinion could shift as more Americans face the ripple effects of government-wide closures. In several polls, a significant share of voters said they held both parties equally responsible or were unsure of whom to blame.The call for Democrats to take a harder line against Trump has been building for months. Across the country, progressive activists, disaffected Republicans and voters outraged by the administration’s actions have packed town halls, marched in protests and launched campaigns of their own – sending a clear message to Democrats: step up, or step aside.“Everybody wants a fighter,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president at the centrist thinktank Third Way that is often at odds with the party’s left flank.Erickson said the focus on healthcare – an issue that unifies the party’s diverse coalition and falls squarely in the “Venn diagram of things voters care about” – was both good politics and good policy.“The ACA subsidies are a real ask,” she said. “If Democrats got that, it would be a way to declare victory in this moment.”Democrats feel confident going to battle over healthcare. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll showed that 78% of Americans support extending the credits, which disproportionately benefit Republican-held congressional districts.Without action, insurance premiums for millions of Americans could double next year, according to an analysis by KFF. Democrats have also sought to reverse Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s marquee tax-and-immigration package, which the nonpartisan congressional budget office projects will leave 10 million more Americans uninsured over the next decade.Republicans have countered by falsely claiming Democrats forced a shutdown to provide free health benefits to undocumented immigrants. The White House has taunted Democrats with a deepfake video of Schumer and Jeffries, wearing a sombrero and fake mustache that has been widely denounced as racist. Vance laughed off the criticism, calling the video “funny”.Democrats like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, fired back with memes and taunts of their own. In one tweet, Newsom’s press team posted an AI generated image of Trump in a towering wig and an 18th-century gown: TRUMP “MARIE ANTOINETTE” SAYS, “NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!”Democrats are betting that the shutdown strategy can help shift momentum heading into next year’s midterm elections. By wielding their most powerful legislative tool, party leaders aim to rebuild trust with their disillusioned base – a group whose frustration has dragged Democratic approval ratings to decade lows and hurt fundraising.Many Democrats argue that their best hope of restraining Trump is to regain the House in 2026, and that the most straightforward path to doing so is to focus on kitchen-table issues like healthcare.Some Democratic strategists warn that by focusing primarily on healthcare, the party risks downplaying what many view as Trump’s authoritarian lurch – reducing it to just another policy showdown in Washington’s partisan budget battles.Anat Shenker-Osorio, a Democratic strategist and communications researcher, believes a sharper message – such as “we will not fund fascism” or “no dollars for dictatorship” – would help cut through the noise and clarify the stakes.“In order for people to fight this regime, they have to understand it as a regime hellbent on taking our freedoms,” she said.As part of their demands, Democrats are also pushing for ways to curtail Trump’s ability to rescind funding already approved by Congress, as he has done with foreign aid programs and public broadcasting. An alternative short-term funding bill offered by Democrats included provisions that would make it harder for the president to undermine Congress’s funding power.Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible and a leading voice on the left pushing Democrats to fight harder against what he calls the Trump “regime”, said he was encouraged to see the party’s leadership sharpen its tactics. Though Levin shares the view that the stakes are far bigger than a healthcare policy dispute, he believes Democrats’ demands, if met, could “constrain the regime in some meaningful ways”.Indivisible is helping to coordinate a second wave of No Kings rallies across the country to protest what organizers described as Trump’s “authoritarian power grab”. The day of action, planned for 18 October, will be another opportunity to mobilize Americans and, Levin hopes, to celebrate Democrats for their resolve.“I hope what we will not be doing is criticizing them for having surrendered again,” he said. “So the play is to win.” More

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      Kristi Noem calls Chicago a ‘war zone’ after federal agents shoot woman

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      Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, called Chicago “a war zone” on Sunday after federal agents shot a woman and the governor of Illinois accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it.Speaking on Fox News Sunday morning, Noem took aim at the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s Ice raids and deployment of the national guard in Illinois, a measure he called “unhinged and unhealthy”.“It’s wrong, there should be consequences for that and for leaders that stand up and knowingly lie about the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “His city is a war zone and he’s lying so that criminals can go in there and destroy people’s lives.”Noem’s remarks followed Trump’s authorization to deploy 300 members of the Illinois national guard to Chicago, with orders to protect federal officers and property. The move came just weeks after national guard troops were sent to Washington, where the president federalized the city’s police force in what he described as a “crackdown” on crime, a pattern now extending to a string of other US cities. “We’re going to be doing Chicago probably next,” Trump had said at the time.Noem defended the administration’s course of action, insisting on Fox that residents supported the government intervention. “They understand that where we have gone we have made it much more free,” she said. “People are much safer, we have got a thousand criminals that are off the streets of Chicago, just because we’ve been there.”Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday, the Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it. “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” he said.“They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they are going to do, they need to get the heck out.”Border patrol agents on Saturday shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over. The woman who was shot was a US citizen and was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, noting that the woman was accused in a US Customs and Border Protection intelligence bulletin last week of doxing agents.Pritzker also condemned the deployment in a post on X on Saturday, writing: “The Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will.” Pritzker called the decision “absolutely outrageous and un-American,” and added that it had been made “against our will”. More

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      Trump sets sights on liberal mega-donor George Soros: ‘A chilling message to other donors’

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      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said “everything is on the table” and left it there. But Donald Trump threw discretion to the wind and was far more specific about his choice of enemy to go after.“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything,” the US president said.The gathering with reporters took place in the Oval Office last month as Trump ordered a crackdown on “leftwing terrorism” and threatened to investigate and prosecute those who financially support it.There is no evidence linking George Soros, a 95-year-old billionaire who has supported democratic causes around the world, or Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal and the networking site LinkedIn, to terrorism. But both are top donors to the Democratic party. And both were named by Trump as potential participants in a vast conspiracy to finance violent protesters against the government.It is no coincidence, critics say, that the president is intensifying his attacks on Soros little more than a year before the midterm elections for Congress. The billionaire has reportedly contributed more than $170m to help Democrats during the 2022 midterm cycle. A justice department investigation could deter both Soros and other would-be donors in 2026.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Anyone who contributes to the Democrats can expect Soros treatment if they’re giving a large amount of money. We’ve seen Trump quite skillfully using intimidation and threats to bring prominent law firms, major universities and others to their knees. This is another effort to cower opposition. The point here is to make it harder for Democrats to raise money.”Soros has long been a go-to bogeyman for the right. He was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930 and emigrated to London after surviving the Nazi occupation of his home country. He moved to New York and, in 1970, founded Soros Fund Management, which grew into one of the most successful hedge funds in history. In 1992, he was dubbed the “man who broke the Bank of England” after short-selling $10bn worth of British pounds during the UK’s currency crisis.View image in fullscreenSoros began philanthropic work in the late 1970s, funding scholarships for Black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he provided support to dissidents and pro-democracy groups in communist eastern Europe. This work evolved into the Open Society Foundations (OSF), now one of the biggest funders of groups that support human rights, government transparency, public health and education in more than a hundred countries.Soros has donated more than $32bn to the OSF but in 2023 handed over its stewardship to his son Alex, who this summer married Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton and herself the target of rightwing conspiracy theories. Within the US, the OSF has supported groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Equal Justice Initiative, Indivisible, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, the National Immigration Law Center and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.Patrick Gaspard, who was president of the OSF from 2017 to 2020, coinciding with Trump’s first term, said: “It’s hard to believe but at one point George’s work had bipartisan support. Republican senators and Congress members would meet with George Soros regularly, openly. They would tout his work in helping to bring down the iron curtain and help instill democracy in western Europe. They were proud to have the association.”That changed in 2004, when, disenchanted by the Iraq war, Soros emerged as a major backer of Democratic candidate John Kerry during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against George W Bush. He has since been a major donor to Democrats, giving $125m to one liberal Super Pac in 2021, according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.Republicans have megadonors of their own, including Miriam Adelson, Charles Koch, Timothy Mellon and Elon Musk, whose donation of more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign dwarfed Soros’s input. Even so, Soros’s influence has made him a frequent target of criticism and conspiracy theories, especially from rightwing groups and authoritarian governments.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia, posted on the X social media platform in 2023: “No other person has undermined our democracy more than George Soros. Why is [he] still allowed to maintain his citizenship?”The critiques often play on antisemitic tropes. Emily Tamkin, author of The Influence of Soros, said: “You couldn’t imagine a more perfect cartoon villain than Soros because he’s a foreigner, he works in finance, he lives in New York and, I would say most saliently, he’s Jewish, which means that you can have all sorts of stereotypes and conspiracies take hold without ever saying the word ‘Jewish’.”When Trump ally Viktor Orbán of Hungary was running for re-election in 2018, he targeted Soros with antisemitic dog whistles, saying: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”View image in fullscreenTamkin added: “This idea of the rootless cosmopolitan or the greedy New Yorker obsessed with money. ‘Globalist’ is one you’re hearing a lot. I don’t ever need to say the word ‘Jew’ for antisemitic synapses to light up, which helps these conspiracies travel extremely effectively. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now in the United States and we should be clear about that.”Soros has long been considered a villain by Trump and his conservative base. In August, the president said without evidence that Soros and his son should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico, because of their alleged support for violent protests.Last month, the New York Times reported that the justice department has directed prosecutors to consider possible charges against the Open Society Foundations. Soros’s office sent a letter to “friends and colleagues” stating: “Allegations that George or OSF are in any way engaged in unlawful activity or in fomenting or promoting violence are 100% false.”Then, in the wake of charges against former FBI director James Comey, came Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office, suggesting that Soros and Hoffman could be prosecuted for sponsoring “professional anarchists and agitators”. There is no evidence to support these claims.Gaspard is not surprised that Trump is once again seeking to demonise George and Alex Soros. “Everyone knows – you can set your clock to it – that when the midterm elections come, when the presidential elections come, that family is going to be involved in some fashion in politics with capital ‘D’ Democrats,” he said.“Trump and those around him are interested in making the name toxic, the investments toxic, and to then find ways to destabilise what should be a source of strength for progressives and the centre left. Then this thing happens where the work of the philanthropy gets conflated with the rights of the individual to participate in American politics and to invest in national politics. That conflation is dangerous.”The move against Soros comes as Republicans face an uphill battle in next year’s midterms, when the party that holds the White House traditionally suffers losses. The jobs market is showing significant signs of weakening, consumer prices remain stubbornly high and this week the federal government shut down.But Trump has already intervened to protect his allies in Congress by pushing for the redrawing of congressional district maps, seeking to purge voter rolls, taking aim at mail-in voting and ordering the justice department to investigate ActBlue, the Democrats’ prime fundraising tool. The assault on Soros could be aimed at choking off money from bigger donors.Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Right now Trump’s in a lot of trouble across the board politically: the job situation is terrible, the economy is crashing out, the Epstein files are still dividing the party. All these things have led to a moment where they need some bait and they need some distraction out there.“Soros is a great target for that and I’m sure it’s also trying to send a chilling message to any other Democratic donor that they should watch out or he’ll go after them. If they don’t avoid transgressing against Trump, they’ll be in the same spot that Soros finds himself in.”Wilson, a former Republican strategist, added: “It’s absolutely about scaring people and freaking people out and causing fear and suppressing free speech. They do not want people to fund campaigns or Super Pacs or organisations that oppose Trump or Trumpism or their movement and so they’re going to seek to punish people and scare them off.” More

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      Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here’s how | Thomas Geoghegan

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      Trump is all about political theatre, or circus, and it often seems that even in resisting him, as decent citizens must do, we become part of the circus too. We are like the extras who splutter while he thrills the base by violating some heretofore inviolate human norm. So the show goes on. But why not put on our own show, our own form of political theatre, that leaves Trump out – or at least has a different focus?We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead of employing their creaky legislative bodies, they opted for new forms of resistance, non-importation committees, even a first continental congress with no apparent legitimacy or precedent.However weak, those acts of political theater led to formal independence. After the war, American leaders held a convention – nominally to amend the Articles of Confederation with a unanimous vote by every state. Instead, the framers worked in secret, replaced the articles altogether, and changed the process for amending the new constitution to a three quarters vote.The Trump presidency is a colossal setback to that constitution and its norms, but it is also an opportunity to change those norms for the better. Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control.The constitution already provides some authority for doing so.These selected states are meeting to propose an interstate compact by and between themselves, in the spirit if not the letter of the compacts that the constitution’s article I, section 10, clause 3 describes, and for them to submit formally to Congress to adopt as federal law. Of course this will never happen in this case, as Congress, in its current broken form, is incapable of anything like a new constitution, embryonic or not.But the point is to put forward a prototype for a new type of American government, for a post-Trump country, that carries forward part of the existing institutional framework that is worth preserving, alongside radical change in response to Trump.So for example, let us say that New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois declare a national emergency. The governors invite a select number of similar-minded anti-Trump states to send delegates selected either by the people or the legislature. The delegates’ job would be to draw up an inter-state compact, a declaration of rights of citizens and obligations of the participating governments. The compact would divide the funding of those obligations between the states and the federal government, if it were somehow adopted by Congress. It would create mandates that the federal government would fund – just for those states and any other that thereafter decide to join the compact.That compact might begin with a preamble in which We the People of these several states recognize not just our rights but our obligations to treat each other with dignity. The preamble would recognize our obligations to ensure all have adequate food, social security, access to healthcare, and meaningful work for protection in a time of technological change. It should be explicit about the dangers of AI and a warming planet. It should insist on the federal role in medical research and scientifically based public health to ensure that we live better and longer lives.And then there should follow a specific list of abuses by the Trump administration, acts of cruelty, that should be punished and redressed, and abuses by the supreme court, such as Citizens United, that should be voided by states adopting the compact.At the outset, the states should also invite DC and Puerto Rico to participate as states on the same footing and sign on to the compact.Then comes the hardest part – money. The compact would set out the specific programs that the state should fund and those that the federal government should fund – at least for the states that enter the compact. The document would not only be a constitution for the ages, but a budget document for the next fiscal year. It should include a restoration of funding for Medicaid, and reduction of premiums for other forms of healthcare.Finally, the compact should include a call to Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, and every other non-signatory state to join as well, even if they were not originally invited.Whatever may be said against such a compact, it would push Trump off stage and show a certain norm-breaking nerve from a status-quo left. It would give the blue states credit for their own little smashing of the pottery. All the better if the other states do not show. In the early American acts of resistance, only some colonies showed up, and the constitution took effect despite some states staying out altogether. In creating a new constitutional prototype, we may think more clearly, or at least draw it up more freely, if other states were not around.The colonists in the period from 1768 to 1776, and the Framers in 1787, acted outside the law, with no clear process as to how the documents should be adopted or amended. It is time for We the People to declare abuses as serious as those set out by Thomas Jefferson and others in the Declaration of Independence. The idea of a compact may be dismissed as political theatre, but acts of political theater can turn into the real thing.What’s giving me hope nowMy hope is all the talent coming off the bench right now – all those who were once political bystanders and are now tracking Ice agents. Long ago, one of my teachers, the late Sam Beer, urged us to be brave. He said: “You have more friends than you know.”

      Thomas Geoghegan is a lawyer and author of Which Side Are You On? (1991) and The History of Democracy Has Yet to be Written (2022) More