US Politics

There was little reason to imagine that the inflatable frogs would become an actual thing. Protests at the ICE detention center in Portland, Oregon, in recent months have reflected the city’s penchant for whimsy and weirdness, and tactics such as naked bike riding, organized public knitting and “ICE fishing” with doughnuts have largely remained a local affair.But when a federal agent in riot gear ran up behind a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume and sprayed a chemical agent directly into his costume’s air vent with all the casual menace of an exterminator, the inflatable frog went viral. “I’ve definitely had spicier tamales,” the 24-year-old protester, Seth Todd, told the Oregonian, cementing the frog’s status as a leftist folk hero.Soon, activists had launched “Operation Inflation” to equip Portland protesters with an entire menagerie of inflatable animal suits, and the costumes began appearing at other protest hotspots, including the ICE detention center near Chicago where police have deployed teargas, pepper balls and batons against protesters in recent weeks. By the time millions of Americans took to the streets in last weekend’s No Kings marches, inflatable costumes were ubiquitous.“I obviously started a movement of people showing up looking ridiculous, which is the exact point,” Todd said. “To show how the narrative that is being pushed [that] we are violent extremists is completely ridiculous.”View image in fullscreenMove over pussy hats. Step aside safety pins. The resistance 2.0 has a new visual language, and this time it’s polyester, battery-powered and full of hot air. The colorful costumes lent a festive air to the No Kings protests and offered an implicit rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his political opponents as violent terrorists.“Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern father archetype to their followers,” wrote author Gary Shteyngart in a New York Times op-ed celebrating the profusion of playful and joyful imagery at Saturday’s marches. “Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”It’s a lovely idea, but nine months into the second Trump administration, it’s hard to argue that Americans have yet to catch sight of the president’s dirty laundry. Kryptonite, like the emperor’s new clothes, is just a fairytale. As Americans seek to harness the energy of No Kings and direct it toward building an effective opposition to Trump’s authoritarian agenda, it’s worth considering what the inflatable costumes are actually saying.Street protest movements have many aims and many outcomes, but one of the most important is the production of imagery that conveys a message and outlasts the event itself. Activists are keenly aware of symbolism and optics – they aren’t called “demonstrations” for nothing – and often work to imbue protest aesthetics with their particular ideological and ethical commitments.Nonviolent resistance movements tend to adopt aesthetics that emphasize the inherent dignity and humble humanity of their members. From the Sunday best donned by marchers in the US civil rights movement to the simple dhoti worn by Gandhi and the modest white dress shirt and black slacks of the Tiananmen Square Tank Man, aesthetic choices by peaceful protesters are an effective way of manufacturing imagery that, by contrast, illustrates the sadism and brutality of an oppressive state.The rejection of respectability politics by subsequent generations of Black liberation activists in the US – from the Black Panther party to Black Lives Matter – reflected not just an aesthetic but also an ideological shift. The Panthers were not seeking equality within a white supremacist system, but a revolution of the system itself; their signature berets, black leather jackets and firearms asserted their militancy and tied them visually to other leftwing revolutionary movements around the world.View image in fullscreenRebel clowning or “tactical frivolity” represents a another aesthetic tradition of protest, one that deploys humor and buffoonery to pierce the aura of invincibility relied on by despots and dictators. From Charlie Chaplin’s lampooning of Adolf Hitler in the 1940 film The Great Dictator to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (Circa) protests against globalization and capitalism in the early 2000s, clowning has a storied history within leftwing and antifascist resistance movements.“The clown puts their absurd body in the way of the harm of others. It is politically more expensive to club a clown!” wrote performance artist LM Bogad in a 2020 essay about his experience with Circa. Confrontations between clowns and riot police create what Bogad calls “irresistible images” – “images that are so compelling that our ideological opponents cannot help but reproduce them even though they undermine their worldview and support ours”.Portland’s inflatable frogs fit squarely into this tradition, co-opting and subverting the aesthetic of intentional cruelty that has been so assiduously cultivated by the second Trump administration. Maga’s exaggeratedly sculpted faces and glorification of human misery convey the underlying ethos of the Trumpist worldview: beauty is pain, and pain beauty. When Donald Trump conjures up a false image of Portland as “war-ravaged” and “under siege” by antifa “terrorists”, he asks his supporters to embrace the cleansing power of state violence. But when federal agents and riot cops are forced to carry out their attacks on inflatable cartoon characters rather than figures clad in the all-black uniform of recent iterations of antifascist activism, government forces are enlisted in the project of debunking their own lies.But there is a difference between facing down a riot cop outside an ICE detention center, and dancing in the streets during a permitted march on a sunny Saturday morning. When a Vietnam war protester placed flowers down the barrels of rifles wielded by military police at the 1967 march on the Pentagon, or when anti-occupation activists clucked like chickens before IDF soldiers in the West Bank, they clowned in the face of real danger. Without the implicit threat of state violence, without the bravery of offering up a comically unprotected body as a target for real violence, tactical frivolity can devolve into little more than entertainment.View image in fullscreenThere are very good reasons to hold family-friendly protests away from the threat of riot cops, but different contexts require different tactics; what is ridiculously effective in front of an ICE detention center can end up looking just a bit ridiculous when there is no danger in the frame.Already, one mainstream media outlet has published an affiliate link-laden article promoting cheap inflatable costumes on Amazon: “You too can join in on the movement today with this steeply discounted inflatable elephant costume that’s less than $20 – a record-low price, according to Amazon.” Similarly, the aesthetics of the flower power movement were adopted and commodified by the fashion industry over and over again, losing political potency along the way. The revolution may well end up being televised, but it is sure as hell not going to arrive in a cardboard box with free shipping from Amazon Prime.It is also worth keeping in mind that Trump is not a straightforward “stern father” autocrat. While some of his rhetoric and actions invoke violence and terror against disfavored groups, he has also played the role of his own court jester, to great effect. His disinhibited remarks and frequent buffoonery are doing their own work to disarm and discredit his opponents, who have often struggled to convince the broader public of the seriousness of the threat he poses. So while tactical frivolity certainly has the power to deflate the menace of the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-immigrant security apparatus, it is not clear that it has much to offer when confronting Trump directly. After the No Kings protests, the president posted an AI-generated video of himself dumping shit on protesters; it’s impossible to make him look like more of a clown than he already is.Finally, remember that clowning is a fundamentally de-escalatory tactic. When activists turn rifles into vases and riot cops into zookeepers, they are interrupting the cycle of escalating tension that can turn protests into dangerous confrontations. We absolutely need to de-escalate the violence that is being aimed at immigrants and other disfavored communities by Trump, ICE, DHS and the national guard – but it’s not clear to me that de-escalation is the right tactic for nationwide, popular protests. The Democratic party leadership has overwhelmingly failed to operate as an actual opposition party since Trump’s re-election; they don’t need to calm down, but to wake up.So please, wear your inflatable frog costume if you plan to use your body to obstruct the workings of Trump’s violent deportation machine: in addition to provoking irresistible images, it might help protect you against teargas and pepper spray. But let us be strategic about deploying tactical frivolity against Trumpism. When millions of people take to the streets to demand that our leaders and institutions stop capitulating, the message should not be mistaken for anything other than deadly serious. More

For all the opinions about free speech and censorship that rage around us, there is remarkably little argument about what the “free” in free speech means. Most defenders of “free speech” only seem to care about the freedom to express themselves. They fight for the right to say anything, not whether the speech itself comes from a position of freedom.Focusing on what makes free speech free is fundamental to our moral and political futures. Because free speech, properly conceived, is not just about the right to say what one wants. It is also about being the kind of person who has been so conscientious in their thinking, learning and discussion that they have become a free subject whose speech is directed toward the pursuit of truth. And there are serious threats today against the freedom of thought on which free speech relies.John Stuart Mill makes the connection between free thought and free speech in his classic defense of speech, On Liberty (1859). The first chapter of Mill’s book is not called “Of free speech”, but rather “Of the liberty of thought and discussion”. That’s because speech for Mill is not an end in itself. It is rather one part of a broader freedom to find the truth that begins with a conscientious, trial-and-error attitude in which we are open to criticism and willing to learn from others and through experience. If we are beholden to prejudice, or hatred, or the pursuit of profit, or a desire to manipulate others, then our speech is constrained by these ulterior ends and not free.Mill in fact criticizes those who “think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion”. For our speech to become free, we have to undertake “due study and preparation”. We have to carefully compare what we believe with experience and reality and consult others with both humility and skepticism. We have to learn the best arguments from different points of view and then come to a considered conclusion.Free speech is both part of this process as we try out ideas and engage with others, and the necessary end of the process when we express our findings. Starting out wrong or misguided is part of how we learn. This imperative to be considerate in how we come to our speech isn’t about putting legal limits on what can be said. Instead, the goal is to change our cultural and political norms to encourage free speech as part of a process of becoming a freer thinker.This process is not easy. There are many factors – both benign and malign – that have incredible power to influence our thinking. Our minds, for example, tend to overemphasize negative and frightful information through what psychologists call “affect heuristics” and “availability heuristics” – shortcuts in our thinking bequeathed by evolution so that we quickly recall information and react immediately to danger.But these same shortcuts can make us susceptible to manipulation – even when we know we’re being manipulated. That’s what makes a false idea like “immigrant crime” so powerful. Even though statistics show that migrants commit far less crime than others, these heuristics trick our minds into recalling recent news stories and becoming afraid. So when someone insists on their right to demonize immigrants, that is not free speech – it is fear speech. Again, we neither can nor should make fear speech illegal, but we can create cultural norms that promote genuine free speech.This includes an open and engaged public sphere, an educational and scientific research system that expands knowledge, active public venues that encourage people to learn about each other’s points of view, and public labors to produce and circulate factual information and counter propaganda and misinformation.As this list implies, any attempts to undercut science, to spread propaganda, to diminish educational opportunities or to consolidate control over information systems run counter to the freedom of thought. And it is thus not particularly surprising that we are seeing scientific and educational institutions attacked, while a simultaneous curtailment of free thought is being mounted by billionaires attempting to own increasing shares of the media ecosystem – from the ongoing legacy of the Murdoch family, to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and to the Ellison family’s moves to consolidate media companies and TikTok.While these assaults on institutions are the most wide-scale and pressing dangers to free thought, there are also interpersonal concerns. The truncation of free thought can happen on an individual level when we don’t hear out dissenting views, however distasteful or even dangerous such views may be. Engaging with people we disagree with is fundamental to any robust system of free thinking and discussion.To consider just one example: NPR reported a story in 2021 about a woman who turned against vaccines after the birth of her child. She had originally had her newborn vaccinated, and it appeared that her child had an abnormally bad reaction. The doctors didn’t take her concerns seriously, but people online did. She went down a rabbit hole and diminished her freedom of thought in exchange for a community of care.Over time, she broke with the antivax movement because she found a doctor who listened to her concerns and explained the science without accusation. Free thought arises not only through experience and research, but also patience and listening. This is what Loretta J Ross speaks of as creating a “call-in” rather than a “call-out” culture.True defenders of free speech are first and foremost defenders of free thought and discussion. They support not only education and scientific research, but also the kinds of caring engagements with their fellow humans that allow for the accurate transmission of ideas and shared pursuit of truth. To protect free speech, we should embody both these political and interpersonal ideals.

Avram Alpert is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. His most recent book is The Good-Enough Life More

The second and final debate before early voting in New York City’s mayoral race was a bitter affair, with sharp exchanges and few courtesies.Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, worked to defend his polling lead while his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, sought to puncture his credibility – dismissing the 34-year-old state lawmaker as a “kid” who, he said, Donald Trump would knock on his “tuchus”.Over the course of the hour and a half forum, the deep seated-rivalry between Mamdani and Cuomo – the 67-year-old former governor now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary – dominated the stage.“Like two kids in a schoolyard,” said the swaggering Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, who has defied pleas by Cuomo, wealthy donors and even his own former employer to drop out of the race.They clashed over education reform, transportation funding, Israel policy and whether to close the notorious prison on Rikers Island. But Wednesday’s showdown offered few breakthroughs that would shift the race’s trajectory.Both Cuomo and Sliwa argued that Mamdani lacked the experience required to lead the nation’s largest city, a familiar charge for the assemblyman, who is roughly half their age.“The issue is your inexperience,” Cuomo said of Mamdani, highlighting his own lengthy service in government at the state and federal level.“The issue,” Mamdani retorted later, “is that we’ve all experienced your experience.”To draw attention to Cuomo’s record as governor, the Mamdani campaign brought several guests to the debate, including Charlotte Bennett, one of the women to publicly accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Cuomo resigned during his third term as governor amid the scandal, which he has described as “political”. He has denied the allegations and on Wednesday noted that a portion of Bennett’s lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.Stepping into the fray, Sliwa – whom moderators described as “more of a New York character than a policy expert” – supplied some of the evening’s sharpest zingers: “Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library.”Mamdani leads Cuomo in nearly every recent poll by at least a dozen points. Unless Sliwa drops out, Cuomo seems unlikely to close the gap before the 4 November election.Mamdani’s rise has excited progressives across the country, offering a fresh model of leadership at a time when the Democratic party’s old guard is under pressure to exit stage left.Throughout the evening, Mamdani sought to cast himself as the candidate of generational and political change. Cuomo and Sliwa, he said, “speak only in the past because that is all they know”.“I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city,” he continued, harshly denouncing Cuomo as “a desperate man, lashing out because he knows that the one thing he cares about, power, is slipping away from him” and “Donald Trump’s puppet”.Trump has not endorsed a candidate for mayor of his home town, but suggested on Tuesday that he’d prefer Cuomo to Mamdani.“You have never had a job, you’ve never accomplished anything,” Cuomo said, during one heated exchange with Mamdani. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives.”Yet the president loomed large over the race, as the candidates each insisted they were best equipped to handle the president.Cuomo, who is courting Republicans and Trump voters, returned repeatedly to his record of confronting the president, invoking the pandemic and their public feuds as proof that he alone has the mettle and experience to stand up to Trump’s threats. A Mamdani win, he warned, would be Trump’s “dream” scenario, arguing that the president would use his opponent’s progressive policies as a pretext for taking over the city.Mamdani pledged to “end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government” and said he would oppose federal interventions in the city, calling ICE a “reckless entity that cares little for the law” in response to a question about an immigration enforcement raid that targeted Canal street vendors in Manhattan this week.But to Cuomo’s claims, Mamdani accused the former governor of fear-mongering.“I know what actually keeps you up,” Mamdani said, speaking directly to New Yorkers. “It’s whether or not you can afford to live a safe and dignified life in this city. I have plans for our future. My opponents only have fear.”Sliwa criticized his opponents’ approach, warning against antagonizing the famously mercurial president, whom he said holds “most of the cards”.“My adversaries have decided to bump chests with President Trump to prove who’s more macho,” Sliwa said. “You can’t beat Trump.”The bickering continued until the end, when the candidates were asked to name one thing that New York got right during the pandemic.Sliwa, who before taking the stage said he would rather be impaled Braveheart-style than work for Cuomo, said the former governor got nothing right.Mamdani recalled that it only took him 15 minutes to get his Covid-19 vaccine shot. “That was an efficient experience,” he said.“Thank you for the compliment,” Cuomo said, with a broad smile.Mamdani deadpanned that it was a “city-run vaccine site”.“No, it wasn’t,” Cuomo insisted. More

A leading US congressman admits the US must substantially boost its defence manufacturing capacity in order to sell Australia nuclear submarines under Aukus, floating the idea of adding Japan, South Korea or Norway to the pact to help build more ships.Anthony Albanese has returned from Washington DC with Donald Trump’s endorsement of Aukus and a fresh show of support from longtime backers of the military pact in the US congress. Both Republican and Democratic politicians reaffirmed their support to help Australia buy second-hand US nuclear submarines, even as concerns still remain about whether US shipyards – currently not working fast enough to meet the US navy’s own requirements – can produce enough boats to sell to Australia.Congressman Adam Smith, Democratic leader of the House armed services committee, said Aukus was important to help the US meet its “massive needs” in national security, but that the country needed to build more submarines.“I think we’ve got some work to do. I’m confident we can get there, but that’s why the partnership is so important. We have to improve our defence industrial base, we can’t do that on our own,” he told Guardian Australia.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“I hope we can explore partnerships with other nations as well; South Korea, Japan, Norway. They’re all capable shipbuilders. I hope we can grow the Aukus partnership on those goals.”Under the Aukus agreement, Australia will contribute billions to increase US defence industry capacity. Albanese told a breakfast meeting of US congressional leaders that Australia had already sent US$1bn (A$1.6b), with more to come.“There’ll be $1bn on its way before Christmas,” the prime minister said.“And then a further $1bn next year because we understand that we want to uplift your industrial capacity so that we make a contribution for when we purchase your Virginia-class submarines.”Albanese has indicated the US could seek minor updates to the Aukus agreement, after Trump’s naval secretary raised plans to “clarify some of the ambiguity” in the deal.Smith welcomed Trump’s endorsement of Aukus, revealing he and others “were worried some people at the Department of Defense had some reservations”.View image in fullscreen“This is a huge positive, I hope this [Trump] administration will see it through,” he said.“Many of us who have been strong advocates for Aukus have been apprehensive about where the Trump administration would end up. Seeing where they ended up, Albanese seems to have done a very effective job. I’m glad the meeting went well.”Australia, the UK and the US have discussed, formally and informally, cooperation with other nations under the Aukus framework. Japan has been continually nominated as a potential partner under pillar II of the pact, which goes to advanced technological capabilities, while South Korea has also been discussed in that stream.But Smith suggested a potentially wider sense of cooperation with nations outside the Aukus partners.“The discussion is very nascent, it’s just getting started. I’d see it more on shipbuilding and repair than submarines specifically, but those nations are allies of ours,” he said.“Japan was the first that we thought of, but I want personally to be as ambitious as possible in this project and look for partners and allies across the world to help us meet our defence needs.”The Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, was contacted for comment. He said last month during a visit to Japan “we continue to look to areas where we can cooperate with Japan under the banner of Aukus, or more generally, in terms of industrial collaboration, but also innovation.”Concerns over the pace and efficiency of current US shipbuilding have raised worries over whether Australia will be able to buy the Virginia-class submarines as scheduled. The US navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of about 2.33 a year to have enough boats to sell any to Australia, but as of July was building about 1.13 a year.The US navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of 2.00 a year just to meet its own defence requirements.At the end of his trip, Albanese said he was pleased by the US support for Aukus.“Ambassador [Kevin] Rudd has done a great job of building support across members of Congress for the Aukus arrangements,” he said.Albanese met members of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee during his trip. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Jim Risch, the Democratic and Republican ranking members respectively, said they hoped “our relationship only continues to grow, most notably with the continuation of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement”.“Together, we will push back against adversaries like China that threaten us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific,” they said.Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas who until recently chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Guardian Australia that Aukus “keeps Chairman Xi [Jinping] up at night.” He met Albanese during his visit, calling for the Pillar II arrangement to be expanded to explore cooperation on more technology. More

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and current frontrunner for New York City mayor, faced off with Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor now running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, at the second and final New York mayoral election debate on Wednesday night.Here are some key takeaways from the evening.1. Tensions continued to rise between Cuomo and Mamdani The debate made clear that the most heated rivalry was between Cuomo and Mamdani. From the beginning, Cuomo accused Mamdani of lacking substance and relying on recycled ideas from Bill de Blasio’s administration, claiming the Democrat “has no new ideas”.Mamdani countered by arguing that Cuomo focused more on pushing other candidates to drop out than actually proposing solutions, while also pointing out what he called Cuomo’s failures as governor, including delays in housing initiatives.The tension escalated midway when Mamdani was questioned on being evasive or unclear on his ideology. He blamed Cuomo for slow housing progress during his governorship. Cuomo snapped back that governors didn’t build housing, prompting both to start speaking over each other. Later, Mamdani reignited the confrontation by directly questioning Cuomo about allegations of sexual harassment, asking:. “What do you say to the 13 women who you sexually harassed?” Cuomo dismissed the question as immature and insisted the cases were dropped, despite ongoing litigation. Their exchanges set the tone for a debate marked by personal attacks rather than policy clarity.2. The recent ICE raids in New York resurrect last week’s conversation on TrumpImmigration and the recent ICE raids in New York were among the first issues raised, bringing Donald Trump back into the conversation in a major way. Cuomo said that ICE should not go after low-level offenses like street vending, and he would have personally called Trump to intervene and rein in federal agents. This provoked Mamdani, who accused Cuomo of being too cozy with Trump and labeling the former governor as “Donald Trump’s puppet”.Sliwa, instead of outright rejecting Trump, said he’d negotiate with him to “get the best deal possible for New York”. The candidates then argued over who Trump supposedly supports. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani to win so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling Mamdani “Trump’s dream”. Mamdani rejected the claim, saying it was part of Cuomo’s fear-based campaigning. Ultimately, the ICE conversation quickly shifted to become a proxy battle over how each candidate would deal with Trump himself: either confront him or cooperate with him.3. Sliwa threw out a handful of zingers, at both Cuomo and MamdaniMuch like last week’s performance, Sliwa offered brief moments of levity throughout – particularly whenever he served as the middle man between Cuomo and Mamdani. At one point, he referred to both men as “fighting like kids in a school yard”.“Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin. And, Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City,” he said.When Cuomo blamed rising homelessness on policies enacted after he left the governorship, Sliwa mocked him, saying: “You didn’t leave. You fled from being impeached.”Regarding a potential endorsement from the current mayor, Eric Adams, Cuomo said yes; Mamdani and Sliwa said no. “Absolutely not, put that crook in jail!” said Sliwa.4. The safety of Jewish New Yorkers becomes a topic of debate for the second timeThe treatment and safety of Jewish New Yorkers became a major point of contention, especially surrounding Mamdani’s candidacy. Cuomo referenced a public letter signed by 650 rabbis accusing Mamdani of threatening “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city”. He accused Mamdani of enabling rising antisemitism and “stoking the flames of hatred against Jewish people”.Sliwa went further, claiming Mamdani supports “global jihad”, a charge Mamdani firmly denied, saying: “I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad.” Mamdani argued the attacks were politically motivated and based on his identity as a Muslim candidate positioned to possibly lead the city. He defended his record and laid out plans to ensure Jewish safety, including expanding public school lessons on Jewish history and protecting Jewish children at schools and synagogues. 5. Mamdani was attacked by both Cuomo and Sliwa for evading questionsA recurring criticism aimed at Mamdani throughout the debate was his perceived tendency to dodge hard questions and give vague answers. This became most apparent when he was asked about education reform. He spoke about the importance of quality public education and improving literacy but did not outline a detailed plan. When pressed on zoning amendments under the “City of Yes” reforms, Mamdani said he “has not yet taken a position” on them, which Cuomo and Sliwa used to suggest he avoided commitment on contentious issues.Cuomo repeatedly accused Mamdani of lacking the knowledge or experience to govern, saying: “You don’t know how to run a government and you don’t know how to handle an emergency.” Sliwa joined in, saying Mamdani lives in “fantasies, not reality”, and dismissed his ideas like a $30 minimum wage and universal free buses as unrealistic. 6. The status quo ultimately did not shiftThe 90-minute debate seemed unlikely to have changed the minds of voters as election day, which is in less than two weeks, comes closer.Cuomo kept hammering home the point that his experience should make him the right choice, given his long career in government at the state and federal level, as opposed to Mamdani, the state assemblyman who is almost exactly half his age.Mamdani, for his part, cast himself as the candidate of change, focused on affordability and trying to reverse a situation in which New York is becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live”.Sliwa is an engaging presence on television, but did little to change the perception that he remains more of a quirky cultural figure than a likely government administrator.Robert Mackey contributed reporting More

New York City’s three mayoral contenders had a fiery debate on Wednesday night in their final televised face-off less than two weeks before voters decide the city’s next leader on 4 November.Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa participated in a tense and often chaotic discussion. The current mayor, Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race weeks earlier, once again did not attend.“It’s us versus them,” Sliwa declared in his opening remarks, grouping Cuomo and Mamdani together despite their mutual disapproval of one another.Mamdani opened by accusing both rivals of focusing more on urging each other to drop out than on offering new ideas. The former governor’s allies have urged Sliwa to withdraw to consolidate anti-Mamdani votes, though it is unclear how many conservatives would back Cuomo.Cuomo claimed Mamdani “has no new ideas” and merely rehashed ideas from former mayor Bill de Blasio, prompting Mamdani to fire back: “I have plans for our future, my opponents only have fear.”Beginning with the topic of ICE raids in New York, Cuomo said federal immigration agents should not focus on quality-of-life offenses like street vending, calling those a police matter. He added he would have personally called Donald Trump to rein in ICE.Sliwa countered that, unlike Cuomo and Mamdani, he would “negotiate with Donald Trump and try to get the best deal possible”. Mamdani hit back, calling Cuomo “Donald Trump’s puppet”.The two then sparred over which candidate Trump preferred. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani elected so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling the progressive “Trump’s dream”.The debate later turned to the city’s record 150,000 homeless students. Mamdani spoke about plans to double a program pairing shelter families with city workers for regular check-ins. Cuomo said the “homeless rate has more than doubled” since he left office, without clarifying his figures.Sliwa quipped, “You didn’t leave. You fled from being impeached,” earning one of the night’s loudest rounds of applause.On housing, Mamdani said he would “freeze the rent” but also help landlords. Cuomo defended past rent hikes as needed and insisted Mamdani could not freeze rents because he doesn’t control the city’s rent guidelines board.“If you want a candidate for mayor who tells you everything he can’t do, then Andrew Cuomo is your choice,” Mamdani replied, clarifying that the mayor appoints board members.When the “City of Yes” zoning reforms came up, Sliwa opposed them while Cuomo and Mamdani voiced conditional support. Pressed further, Mamdani said: “I have not yet taken a position on those ballot amendments.”Questions about Mamdani’s support for Jewish New Yorkers dominated the middle portion of the debate. Cuomo cited a letter from 650 rabbis claiming Mamdani threatened “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city”. He accused the Muslim candidate of helping “stoke the flames of hatred against Jewish people”.Sliwa went further, alleging Mamdani supports “global jihad”. Mamdani replied, “I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad,” and suggested this attack was being fabricated because he was the first Muslim on the verge of leading the city.He added that he would ensure the safety of Jewish children and expand a new public-school curriculum on Jewish history “so that children in this city learn about the beauty and the breadth of the Jewish experience”.All three candidates said they would retain Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner.Things heated up even more between Cuomo and Mamdani nearly halfway through the debate after the latter was questioned on being evasive or unclear on his ideology.Mamdani initially said: “When it comes to our schools, I believe that every single child should have an excellent public education.” He then mentioned public school funding and a need for greater literacy levels, but did not further explain his plan for overhauling schooling in New York City. He switched gears and called out Cuomo specifically for taking so long during his tenure as governor to establish more housing.Cuomo immediately fired back to note that the governor doesn’t build housing, prompting Mamdani to interject: “Not if it’s you!”Things quickly escalated as the men talked over each other with increasingly louder comebacks. Cuomo, again, mentioned Mamdani’s inexperience while Mamdani took aim at Cuomo for his shortcomings as governor.“You don’t know how to run a government and you don’t know how to handle an emergency,” Cuomo said to Mamdani at one point.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter being told by moderators to keep order, Sliwa weighed in and said his fellow candidates were “fighting like kids in the school yard”. Of Mamdani, Sliwa said, “Your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” while of Cuomo he said, “Your failures could fill a public school library.”One moderator, Errol Louis, had to remind the candidates that “they know how this works”, warning them against talking over one another.Sliwa described his son’s experience with gang violence and said the perpetrators got only “a pat on the wrist” under juvenile law. Later, amid a discussion of psychiatric hospital capacity, Cuomo jibed that he’d “save one for Sliwa”.When asked whether they would accept a potential Eric Adams endorsement, Cuomo said yes while Mamdani and Sliwa said no.“Absolutely not – put that crook in jail!” said Sliwa.During candidate questioning, Mamdani confronted Cuomo about harassment allegations against the former governor, noting accuser Charlotte Bennett was in the audience: “What do you say to the 13 women who you sexually harassed?”Cuomo dismissed this, saying Mamdani was not “mature” and that the cases were dropped, though litigation is still ongoing.During the debate, one of Cuomo’s accusers – Lindsey Boylan – called out Cuomo on X and celebrated Mamdani for mentioning the allegations.“I am one of these women. I have been legally abused by Andrew Cuomo for years after being harassed as his staffer. Now he wants to be mayor. Shame on you Cuomo and thank you ⁦[Mamdani]⁩ for speaking out on this injustice,” she wrote.Speaking about Rikers Island, Sliwa and Cuomo opposed the mandated 2027 closure while Mamdani supported it, calling the jail a “stain on the history” of New York. Cuomo warned its closure would “release 7,000 criminals into New York City”. Mamdani said Adams has made it “nearly impossible” to meet the deadline but pledged to try.The exchange devolved again into bickering. Cuomo touted infrastructure projects such as the Second Avenue Subway and the Mario Cuomo Bridge to highlight his experience. Mamdani retorted: “You will hear from Andrew Cuomo about his experience as if we don’t know about it. We experienced your experience! The issue is your experience!”Discussing wages, Mamdani said New York was becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live”, proposing to phase in a $30 minimum wage.“Zohran Mamdani deals with fantasies, not reality,” Sliwa replied.The candidates also clashed over Mamdani’s plan for universal free buses. Cuomo said it would “subsidize the rich”.In a contentious debate full of quarrels and zingers, the night ended rather predictably, with all three mayoral candidates declining to name a candidate that they would like to see run for president in 2028.Election day for the New York City mayoral race is Tuesday, 4 November. Early voting begins on 25 October and runs through 2 November. More

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just one day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”The form offers spaces to submit images and video footage of the raid, as well as a place to indicate location information. Before submitting, users must check a box that indicates that “the Attorney General may use any documents, photographs, or videos I provided in a public document, including in a legal proceeding or public report or statement.”The Guardian has contacted James’s office for more information.The Chinatown raid, which onlookers say involved more than 50 federal agents, took place in a well-known area of Manhattan where counterfeit handbags, accessories, jewelry and other goods are sold daily en masse – often to tourists.Videos of Tuesday’s raid show multiple masked and armed federal agents zip-tying and detaining a man, and shoving away onlookers. Throngs of New Yorkers followed the agents through the streets and down the sidewalks. An armored military vehicle was also seen rolling through the city streets.Outrage over the ICE raid quickly spread – all three mayoral candidates condemned the raid, as did Governor Kathy Hochul.“Once again, the Trump administration chooses authoritarian theatrics that create fear, not safety. It must stop,” mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wrote on X.New York City immigrant rights groups spoke out as well.“ICE descended on Manhattan’s Chinatown with military-style vehicles, masked agents and riot gear to target street vendors trying to make a living. This operation had nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with terrorizing immigrant families and communities,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigrant Coalition.ICE raids have been cropping up increasingly in New York and around the country this year.A 16 October raid in midtown Manhattan was the first known raid on a migrant shelter of the current Trump administration. Protests against ICE are ubiquitous as are allegations of violence and inhumane treatment.Most recently, a letter submitted by the ACLU and other civil rights groups alleged medical neglect of pregnant women in ICE facilities. More

The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.After imposing new sanctions on Russian oil firms he called “tremendous” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had canceled a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president in Budapest.“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just, it didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future,” Trump said, while sitting with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, in the Oval Office.Asked by a reporter to comment on his treasury secretary’s statement that Putin had not been honest in his talks with Trump, the president said: “Well I think that, in terms of honesty, the only thing that I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere, they just don’t go anywhere.”Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, told Fox Business News, “President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped. There were talks in Alaska, President Trump walked away when he realized that things were not moving forward.”“These are tremendous sanctions,” Trump also said. These are very big against their two big oil companies — and we hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, just yielded the Senate floor after speaking for 22 hour and 37 minutes.Merkley said at the start of his speech that he was “holding the floor to protest Trump dragging us further into authoritarianism.”In particular, the Oregon senator said, he objected to the idea of letting Donald Trump claim, against all evidence, that he had the right to send military forces to Portland because the city a small protest constituted “an insurrection”.“Our founders did not want the president to be a king,” Merkley said. “A king can decide on a whim to deploy troops against his own people, presidents cannot.”The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.A federal district court judge in Portland, Oregon, rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift a temporary restraining order that blocks the deployment of national guard troops in the city.The judge, Karin Immergut, previously issued two orders blocking the deployment of national guard troops, after finding that Donald Trump’s claim that the city she lives in is “War ravaged” was “simply untethered to the facts”.Immergut’s first order, blocking the deployment of Oregon national guard troops, was reversed by a three-judge appeals court panel on Monday, but her second order, which bars the deployment of national guard troops from any state or the District of Columbia, remains in effect because the government appealed only her first order and not the second one.Immergut, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in his first term, issued the second order in response to Trump’s clear attempt to evade her first order by flying troops from California’s national guard to Oregon.Justice department lawyers asked Immergut to dissolve the second order based on the reasoning of the two appeals court judges who accepted Trump’s claim that a small protest against immigration raids in Portland, by dozens of protesters, required the deployment of the military.Instead, she scheduled a hearing for Friday morning in Portland. The judge’s orders to the lawyers for Trump and Oregon asks them to address the possible rehearing of the three-judge panel’s decision by a larger panel of the appeals court, which that court will consider on Thursday.A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday agreed to extend her order blocking Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to the Chicago area, possibly by 30 days.The district court judge, April Perry, said at a hearing that her order will extend until she decides the case, unless the US supreme court steps in to lift it, as the Trump administration has requested.In a filing on Tuesday, the solicitor general, John Sauer, one of Trump’s former personal defense attorneys, urged the supreme court to issue an emergency order lifting the temporary restraining order (TRO) that would let federalized guard troops be deployed.“Every day this improper TRO remains in effect imposes grievous and irreparable harm on the Executive,” Sauer wrote.The surprise demolition of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for Donald Trump’s vast ballroom, is not going down well with former staffers of the office of the first lady, which had been located in the East Wing for decades.“My heart is breaking for the evident loss of prestige for the first ladies and their staffs,” Penny Adams, who worked in the East Wing for former first lady Pat Nixon, told East Wing Magazine, a newsletter that covers first ladies present and past.“The photos were jarring when I first saw them,” Michael LaRosa, a press secretary for Jill Biden wrote in an email to the same newsletter. “Initially, they felt like a gut punch. It was also a bit eerie and sad to see some of the interior reduced to rubble.”Adams also said that some former Nixon staffers had tried, and failed, “to push back on this devastation”.One of Trump’s most cherished possessions is a 1987 letter from Richard Nixon, the disgraced former president, who passed on praise of the future president’s appearance on a daytime talkshow that year from the former first lady.“Dear Donald,” Nixon wrote. “I did not see the program, but Mrs Nixon told me you were great on the Donahue show.”“As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office, you will be a winner!”As we prepare for the meeting between Nato secretary Mark Rutte and Donald Trump, a reminder of the context of these talks.This is a snap meeting, put together as progress between Ukraine and Russia has stalled. Recently, the White House said there were no immediate plans for the president to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, despite Trump touting a second bilateral meeting in Budapest.The last time Rutte was in Washington was for a meeting with Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders in August.According to Nato officials, cited by multiple outlets, Rutte is hoping to discuss a 12-point peace plan with Trump. Drawn up by Europe and Ukraine, the plan calls for a ceasefire based on current battle lines, return of the deported children and a prisoner exchange.The White House did not respond to a question from the Guardian today about when demolition of the East Wing would be completed, as construction continues. An administration official did say that “the scope and size of the project has always been subject to vary and the process developed”. They added that the National Capital Planning Commission “does not require permits for demolition, only for vertical construction” and that “permits will be submitted to the NPC at the appropriate time”.The New York Times reported that the teardown should be completed by this weekend, according to an official speaking anonymously.Earlier, my colleague Lauren Aratani reported that the White House had yet to submit plans for Donald Trump’s new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings, though demolition is already under way.The treasury secretary Scott Bessent just gaggled with reporters outside the White House.He said that a “substantial pickup” in sanctions on Russia are coming soon. “We are going to announce either after the close this afternoon, or first thing tomorrow,” he said.As Jeff Merkley hits the 20th hour of his Senate floor speech, his Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber have praised his efforts, and joined him on the floor to ask questions and give him small breaks as he continues his marathon monologue.The senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, called it “incredible”, characterizing the speech as part of the “fight to protect American families from Trump’s reckless and corrupt administration”.Earlier, senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, said that it “says a lot” about the Trump administration that Merkley can spend hours “talking all the different ways Trump is hurting hardworking Americans and not run out of things to say”.Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey who currently holds the record for longest floor speech (coming in at over 25 hours), said Merkley was “demonstrating how Trump is moving us towards tyranny, instead of standing up for American ideals”.Donald Trump has urged US cattle farmers to “get their prices down” in order to encourage Americans to buy their beef.On Truth Social, the president said that ranchers throughout the country “don’t understand” that the only reason they are “doing so well” is because of Trump’s tariffs on several countries, “including a 50% Tariff on Brazil”.He added:
If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!
Over the weekend, Trump told reporters he was considering importing beef from Argentina in order to lower prices for consumers.The revelation that a top federal prosecutor used an encrypted messaging application and had messages set to auto-delete after eight hours is “deeply troubling” and may be illegal, a watchdog group said.Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, used Signal to communicate with Anna Bower, a journalist for Lawfare, about the criminal case she is pursuing against New York attorney general Letitia James. Bower published the full conversation Monday evening and said Halligan had set messages to auto-delete after eight hours.“The story about US attorney Lindsey Halligan’s use of Signal is deeply troubling. That she used the app apparently to discuss government business with a reporter and configured her messages to disappear after eight hours, raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the Federal Records Act and the justice department’s own records-retention rules,” said Chioma Chukwu, the executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit that frequently files lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain federal records.“Even if portions of the conversation might contain information not typically subject to immediate public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, federal law still requires that such records be preserved for specified periods. Setting such communications to automatically delete is not only inconsistent with those obligations but patently unlawful,” she said. “If Halligan failed to ensure these Signal messages were preserved, her actions may have violated federal law and warrant investigation or corrective action by attorney general Pam Bondi and acting archivist Marco Rubio.”The justice department did not return a request for comment.Federal law generally requires government employees to preserve official government records and sets penalties for destroying them.Per my last post, it’s worth underscoring that Platner has achieved significant momentum since he entered the race to challenge incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins.Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, launched her bid for Senate recently – making the schism between the old and new guard of the party abundantly clear.Meanwhile, Jordan Wood, another Maine Democratic candidate for Senate, said today that Platner’s Reddit comments are “disqualifying and not who we are as Mainers or as Democrats”.He added:
With Donald Trump and his sycophants demonizing Americans, spewing hate, and running roughshod over the constitution, Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity. Graham Platner no longer can. More