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      Democrats just won back Latinos who voted for Trump. Will they be convinced to stick around?

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      Latino voters delivered sweeping support to Democratic candidates across multiple states in Tuesday’s off-year elections, reversing what many Republicans had come to believe was a lasting political realignment after Donald Trump’s historic gains with the community in the 2024 election .The rapid reversal represents one of the most volatile electoral swings in recent memory and threatens to upend Republican redistricting strategies that banked on sustained support from Latinos, the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country. It also suggests that Trump’s appeal to Latino voters was highly personal rather than an embrace of the Republican party itself – a miscalculation that could reshape the landscape heading into the 2026 midterms.“What we saw on Tuesday wasn’t just a vote for specific candidates: it was a vote against the current situation that the Trump administration has sparked,” said María Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, a non-partisan voter registration organization. “People are feeling that it’s becoming increasingly dangerous to be Latino in this country.”While exact data can take time to be collected after an election, exit polling from the 2025 gubernatorial races revealed the extent of the Democratic resurgence. In New Jersey, Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill captured 68% of Latino voters compared with Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s 31%, according to NBC News, a reversal of the national 2024 presidential result, where Trump won 46% of Latino voters to Kamala Harris’s 51%, according to Pew Research. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a fluent Spanish speaker, secured 67% of Latino voters.MSNBC chief data analyst Steve Kornacki noted that the shift in municipalities in New Jersey with Latino populations exceeded 60%, where Trump had been more competitive or even victorious in 2024. Those same precincts swung dramatically toward Democrats in 2025, with shifts ranging from 15 to more than 40 percentage points. In Passaic county, which is approximately 45% Latino, Sherrill won by 15 points after Trump had carried it by three points the previous year.While the majority still voted for the Democrats, Trump’s 2024 performance among Latino voters represented a historic achievement for a Republican presidential candidate. Among Latino men specifically, 54% said they voted for Trump, driven largely by economic concerns and frustration with inflation, according to an Edison research exit poll. That breakthrough fueled Republican confidence that demographic trends were shifting in their favor, with House Republicans drawing congressional districts in states like Texas and Florida under the assumption these gains would persist with generic Republican candidates.But the 2025 results suggest those assumptions were premature. According to exit polling conducted by SSRS, 63% of California voters – and 70% of Latino voters specifically – said the Trump administration’s immigration actions had “gone too far”. In Virginia, those figures reached 56% overall and 77% among Latino voters.“You can’t come into my neighborhood and talk to me about rent or bread-and-butter issues if you can’t speak to the fear and dehumanization people are living with,” Kumar said. She noted that “almost a third of Latino voters who voted in 2020 didn’t vote in 2024 – and 70% of them were Democrats.”The timing of the electoral shift coincided with heightened immigration enforcement activity. Just days before the New Jersey election, Ruperto Vicens Marquez, a restaurant owner in Atlantic Highlands with work authorization and three young children, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), prompting community outcry.A Democratic congressional aide familiar with Latino voter engagement said the explanation was simpler than many analysts assumed. “Latinos didn’t swing back to Democrats because they suddenly became liberal. They swung back because the economy improved and Republicans crossed a line on immigration enforcement. People were scared – not politically activated, but genuinely scared.”The aide, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job, added that many Latino voters who supported Trump in 2024 “thought they were voting for tough talk on border security, not militarized enforcement in their communities. No one voted for urban-warfare-style raids.”Despite the new electoral evidence, some Republican leaders remained confident the 2024 gains would endure. Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, told reporters: “I do believe that the demographic shift that we were able to see and experience in the 2024 election will hold.”Kumar, on the other hand, believes Latino voting behavior shifts based heavily on turnout, but also on economic conditions, candidate quality and the emotional salience of particular issues.“Republicans misread Latino voters this year,” she said. “Instead of doing oversight and accountability, they abdicated their responsibility to the whims of the president.”The Latino voter swing creates potential vulnerabilities in Republican-drawn congressional maps. In Texas, GOP mapmakers drew several south Texas districts with narrow margins, calculating that Trump’s gains represented a stable coalition. Those districts now appear more competitive than intended. Meanwhile, Democrats are seizing opportunities to redraw maps in states where they hold power, with California voters approving a ballot measure allowing the state’s independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional boundaries.Despite the backlash to immigration enforcement, economic concerns remained the top issue for Latino voters across all states where exit polling was conducted. The Democratic aide said that while “immigration is rarely the top issue on its own”, “ICE raids are activating, and when people feel targeted in their daily lives, that changes votes.”Still, the results underscore a fundamental reality about Latino voters that both parties have struggled to accept: the community is not a monolith, and does not represent a permanent coalition for either side.“It’s a swing vote … and so it’s for the Democrats to lose, and they have to start speaking to the real duress that the community is in, because it’s not small,” Kumar said. “When I have conversations with my Latino colleagues, it is a wholly different conversation than every other American that I interact with every day. There are two different lived experiences happening right now.” More

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      A year after devastating Trump loss, have the Democrats begun to find their way back?

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      It has been a year of soul-searching, hand-wringing, and self-flagellation for Democrats after a ballot-box rejection so thorough that some had come to believe that the party had lost not only the White House and Congress but the culture itself.Shell-shocked, Democrats entered Donald Trump’s second term in a political stupor – unsure of who they were or what they stood for. Their base had lost faith in its aging leadership class, and their brand, in Democrats’ own words, had become “toxic”: a party increasingly confined to coastal states, big cities and college towns. And even there, warning signs were flashing.Then came Tuesday night – a coast-to-coast romp in the first major elections of Trump’s turbulent return to the White House that exceeded even the party’s most optimistic projections.“What a night for the Democratic party,” California governor Gavin Newsom marveled, after news networks projected the redistricting ballot measure he spearheaded had passed so decisively that some voters were still in line to cast ballots. “A party that is in its ascendancy,” he continued, “a party that’s on its toes, no longer on its heels.”Abigail Spanberger, a congresswoman and former CIA agent, stormed to victory in Virginia, becoming the first woman elected governor of the state, an office currently held by a Republican. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, another congresswoman and former Navy pilot, turned what was expected to be a close race into a rout. And in New York, Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, made history by vanquishing the former three-term Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, in a race that drew the highest turnout in decades.“Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger proclaimed in her victory speech, while in New York, Mamdani celebrated “a new era of leadership” and declared that “no longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great”.Their wins did little to resolve the big, existential questions of whether Democrats’ future lay in a full-throated adoption of leftwing populism or a tactical turn to pragmatic centrism. The night offered ammunition for either path, or perhaps both.Yet a year after Kamala Harris’s concession to Trump, Democrats have repeatedly found success not by picking a single ideological lane, but by embracing the forces of disruption that have dominated Trump-era politics. Their victories, while strikingly different in style and approach, point to a party less bound by orthodoxy and old notions of decorum – a recognition that the times have changed, and so must they.“This is not your grandfather’s Democratic party,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the next morning. “We are not going to play with one hand behind our back. We’re not going to roll over. We’re going to meet you, fire with fire.”For much of the past decade, Democrats cast themselves as guardians of the system – defenders of the democratic institutions under siege by a “wrecking ball” former builder who bulldozed his way into the White House and then clawed his way back.After the tumult of Trump’s first term, Democrats turned to Joe Biden, a consensus-builder and institutionalist who once predicted that history would view his adversary “as an aberrant moment in time”. In office, Biden dedicated his presidency to restoring domestic political norms while preserving the liberal international order abroad. But with his legacy now framed by Trump’s re-election, many Democrats have abandoned Biden’s return-to-normalcy appeal, seeing it as ill-suited to the politcal moment.Instead, as Trump moves aggressively to consolidate power and tilt the electoral map in his favor, the party’s instincts have shifted sharply away from caution, yet many progressives felt they had been too slow to adapt. Shortly before the 2024 election, a survey found that the overwhelming majority of voters valued a candidate who could deliver “change that improves people’s lives” rather than one who was committed to preserving institutions.Tensions built earlier this year, when angry Democrats began calling on their leaders in Washington and in state capitols around the country to do something – anything – to stop Trump’s attacks on the federal government, the rule of law and his political opponents. Those fears grew into the No Kings protest movement, which saw an estimated 7 million people in all 50 states take to the streets last month.Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, argued that Tuesday’s wins, following mass days of protest, were proof that a more combative and less deferential politics was the way to defeat Trumpism. “The No Kings era is here to stay,” he wrote.That assertive posture extended to Capitol Hill, where Senate Democrats are refusing to lend the votes needed to reopen the government – now the longest federal shutdown in US history – unless Republicans extend healthcare subsidies: a bare-knuckle approach they had resisted as recently as few months ago.Meanwhile, in the redistricting battles unfolding across the states, party leaders and longtime champions of fair maps including Barack Obama campaigned for California’s retaliatory gerrymander, as Newsom called on other Democratic governors to follow suit.View image in fullscreen“Politics has changed. The world has changed,” Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, told NBC earlier this month. “The rules of the game have changed.”In nearly every election held this year, Democrats improved on their 2024 showing. Exit polls in Virginia and New Jersey show that both governors-elect not only held their base but peeled off Trump voters, while re-engaging young men and Latino voters who defected in 2024. In New York, Mamdani saw enormous youth turnout for his candidacy.“On Tuesday night, we saw a lot of different kinds of Democrats win – and that’s kind of the point,” said Rebecca Katz, a veteran political strategist whose political firm, Fight, worked for Mamdani’s campaign. “To win big, we need a big tent.”Voters, she said, sent a clear message that a back-to-basics formula – a relentless focus on improving affordability and a campaign built around authentic and visible candidates – resonates.Katz, who also advised the successful swing-state Senate campaigns of John Fetterman in 2022 and Ruben Gallego in 2024, argued that the central divide in the party was no longer where a candidate falls on the moderate to liberal spectrum but a choice between boldness and caution: “Playing it safe is the riskiest thing Democrats could do right now.”Winning has given the wounded party a much-needed morale boost. In a fundraising appeal this week, Democrats told supporters to “remember this feeling”. Yet beneath the celebration, the old fault lines – over age, ideology, tactics, and style – still run deep.Several seasoned House Democrats are facing contentious primary challenges, fueled by generational impatience and a desire for the party to take a more combative approach to Trump. Democrats’ prospects in 2026 may hinge on whether progressives and moderates can unite behind a message that addresses both economic anxiety and the fears of Trump’s presidency.In 2028, Democrats say they need a nominee who can articulate a vision beyond their opposition to Trump, the glue that has held together a Bernie Sanders-to-Liz Cheney coalition.Appearing at a live taping of the podcast Pod Save America this week, Obama said it was exhilarating to see progressives “get off the mat”. But, he added, “we’ve got a lot of work to do” and cautioned progressives in the audience against pushing ideological “litmus tests”.“We had Abigail Spanberger win and we had Zohran Mamdani win,” the former president said, “and they are all part of a vision for the future.”Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who campaigned for Mamdani, told reporters this week that ideological divisions in the party were “no great secret”.But he sensed a party-wide shift: “I think there is a growing understanding that leadership and defending the status quo and the inequalities that exist in America is not where the American people are.”Republicans have sought to downplay Democrats’ string of victories this year. Since 2016, Democrats have tended to perform better when Trump was not on the ballot, their coalition proving more reliable in off-year and special elections.“They say that I wasn’t on the ballot and was the biggest factor,” Trump said this week. “I don’t know about that. But I was honored that they said that.”Historically, the party out of power typically fares well in the midterm elections. But redistricting efforts are expected to tilt the 2026 House map toward Republicans. In the Senate, the task is even more daunting for Democrats, who will have to win in states Trump carried by double digits. While Trump’s plunging popularity has Republicans worried, Americans hold markedly negative views of the Democratic party as well.Still, Democrats see momentum building in parts of the country where they haven’t been competitive for years.This summer, Catelin Drey, a Democrat and first-time candidate, won a special election for a state senate seat in Iowa, breaking the Republican supermajority by flipping a district that backed Trump in the 2024 election. It was a consequential victory and one that gave Democrats a jolt of hope.For weeks after her election, she kept getting the same question: how did she pull it off?“I knocked on thousands of doors,” said Drey, 38, a mother whose campaign centered on affordability, especially the rising cost of childcare. “I had people tell me, ‘I’ve never had a candidate come to my door before,’” she said. “Seeing that kind of work ethic – having someone show up and say, ‘Yeah, life is really tough right now. What’s the hardest thing for you? How can I help? What would make things better?’ That type of attention is not what we’re seeing across the board right now.”Since Harris’s defeat last November, Democrats have produced a glut of election postmortems, polling memos and policy white papers offering theories about why they lost — and how to win again. Drey thinks the answer might be surprisingly simple.“Show up and work for the people you serve,” she said. “It’s not rocket science.” More

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      Zohran Mamdani’s win shows the power of mobilizing non-voters | Ben Davis

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      One of the main media takeaways from the 2024 election was the much-discussed “vibe shift”. That is, a resurgence of cultural conservatism and a backlash to the shifting cultural attitudes on race, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and the “wokeness” of the Obama and first Trump eras. The conservatives were in control not only of the White House, but, more importantly to them, the culture. Corporations, media outlets, and even Democratic politicians who had sought to portray a tolerant, inclusive image rushed to match this new vibe.Of course, the evidence for this shift was scant. Trump had won the election without a popular vote majority, and a closer look at the results showed a more conventional explanation: voters, rather than yearning for the days before there were interracial couples in television commercials or demanding a military crackdown on their cities, thought that they were working too hard for too little and maybe Trump would change it. They wanted lower prices, higher wages and a feeling of security. A year into Republican government and its top-down imposition of a new vibe, perhaps the reaction shows there finally is a vibe shift. Just not the one they planned on.The first electoral message of the second Trump era was an extremely strong one. Democrats beat Republicans up and down the ballot by shocking margins. In blue cities, progressives and democratic socialists beat moderates. Turnout was unprecedented for an off-year election. Democrats won the races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia by significantly more than both the 2024 results and the polls projected. Democrats won 64 out of 100 seats in the Virginia house of delegates. They also won over 60% of the vote in statewide races in Georgia and Pennsylvania, states that went for Trump in 2024.Democrats broke a Republican supermajority in Mississippi. Colorado voted by massive margins to increase taxes for free school meals. Maine voted for new gun control measures and against restrictions on absentee voting and new voter ID requirements by over 25%. Even scandal-tarred Democrats like Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who joked about murdering Republicans, won easily, by more than Harris carried the state a year ago.In California, voters passed a proposal essentially nuking most of the state’s Republican house delegation. Counties that voted for Trump last year voted by double digits to eliminate their own Republican representatives in response to Trump’s demands that Republican states eliminate their own Democratic seats. And in New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani followed up his shocking primary win by winning a majority of voters in the general election, winning over a million votes, nearly as many as voted at all in the last mayoral election.Will this send a message to the White House and the right? Will it send a message to the Democratic establishment? While the Trump administration is clearly taken aback by the scale of the rejection, it is unlikely they will change their behavior. Indeed, they may even increase their aggression toward most of the country. For the Trump administration, backlash was anticipated. They knew everything they did would be unpopular, and they made the calculation that what they could do in two years with control is more valuable than whatever they lose.Their assault on the government and constitution cannot easily be rolled back. The entire political project is based on winning with minority support and using that power to further entrench minority rule. All of their actions have been aimed toward cementing minoritarian rule, and if anything, the scale of electoral backlash will cause them to accelerate their project. There’s a reason it’s called Project 2025, not Project 2027.What they’ve brought to the country is chaos and authoritarianism. Masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight, sending them to prison camps for life without charges or trial. Armed troops occupying major cities. Massive cuts to science and academia, even cancer research. Open graft and corruption. Gleeful cruelty, videos of immigrants and protesters being brutalized shared with pride. Under Republicans, even the air and the water are less clean. It’s no wonder people are upset, from base Democratic voters to working-class Latino voters who pulled the lever for a Republican for the first time in 2024.How do people resist a regime that is overtly anti-democratic as a principle? And why didn’t polls catch the scale of the Democratic wins? The answers to these questions are connected and can be seen in the historic Mamdani campaign. The Democrats won, in large part, from voters who do not like the Democratic party. The party’s favorable ratings are at historic lows. Huge majorities disapprove of the party’s leadership, and in particular, their lack of resistance to Trump.This is a wholesale change from 2017, when angry and upset Democrats rallied behind their party and its leaders. The second wave of resistance is far more anti-establishment, strident and left-wing. Rank-and-file Democratic voters now have far more positive views of democratic socialism than party leadership. These feelings opened the door for the Mamdani campaign, but the campaign showed how to harness them and provide real resistance.Trumpism is built on the disintegration of working-class institutions and civil society. Only a society with fraying bonds can produce a movement built on fear and resentment like this. The key to stopping it is rebuilding these institutions and this community. While many have known this for years, actually showing a path was easier said than done. Many campaigns have sought to bring the disaffected back into the political process in huge numbers. Mamdani’s was the first to succeed.In both the primary and the general, Mamdani reshaped the electorate, bringing hundreds of thousands of non-voters out to the polls, from young people to left-behind immigrant communities. For the first time, the electorate who came out to vote actually reflected the city’s demographics, rather than being predominantly older homeowners. Mamdani also built a coalition based on class, winning the city across races, powered by the lower-income renters and public transit users who make the city run, while losing among wealthy liberals and conservatives alike.But the most important number from Mamdani’s campaign is 100,000. That’s the number of people who actively volunteered for the campaign, knocking on doors, talking to their neighbors and co-workers. That’s one in every 10 people who even voted for Mamdani. They recognized politics as a living, breathing act of being in community, beyond just showing up to tick a box every few years. This has been foreign in this country for decades, but the Mamdani campaign and the Democratic Socialists of America are trying, and succeeding, in rebuilding this community and solidarity – in rebuilding working class political agency. To defeat Trump and the far right, this is what is necessary, across the country and on a massive scale. That’s the vibe shift we are just starting.

      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America More

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      US supreme court issues emergency order blocking full Snap food aid payments

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      The supreme court has issued an emergency order temporarily blocking full Snap food aid payments.The high court’s order came after the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown.After that request to block was denied, the Trump administration turned to the supreme court in a further attempt to block the order to fully fund Snap food aid payments.The application to stay reads: “If forced to transfer funds to Snap to make full November allotments, there is no means for the government to recoup those expenditures – which is quintessential irreparable harm. Once those payments are made, there is every indication that the States will promptly disburse them. And once disbursed, the government will be un-able to recover any funds. Worse, these harms will only compound if the decision below stands.“There is every reason to expect that if the shutdown lingers, the court below will not command the government to tap these funds again in December to support Snap – blowing a bigger hole in the budget for the child nutrition programs.”The application – which was filed at about 7pm ET – also requested that the supreme court grant the “immediate administrative stay of the district court’s orders by 9.30pm” on Friday.Shortly after 9.30pm, attorney general Pam Bondi shared a note on X saying that the supreme court “just granted our administrative stay in this case. Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”US district judge John J McConnell Jr had given the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after the administration said last month that it would not pay benefits for November because of the shutdown.On Friday, Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, wrote in a memo to states that the government “will complete the processes necessary” to fully fund Snap for now and the funds will be available on Friday.But also on Friday, the Trump administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund.The court filing came even as Britt Cudaback, the spokesperson for Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, said on Friday that some Snap recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.“We’ve received confirmation that payments went through, including members reporting they can now see their balances,” she said.The court wrangling prolonged weeks of uncertainty for the food program that serves about one in eight Americans, mostly with lower incomes.Last week, in separate rulings, two judges ordered the government to pay at least part of the benefits using an emergency fund. It initially said it would cover half, but later said it would cover 65%. More

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      ‘Huge victory’ in Portland as judge’s final order bars Trump from sending national guard

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      A federal judge in Oregon on Friday blocked Donald Trump from deploying national guard troops to Portland, ruling there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention.The US district court judge, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, delivered her final order in the case on Friday. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.Earlier this week, Immergut barred Trump’s administration from deploying the national guard to Portland until at least Friday, saying she “found no credible evidence” that protests in the city had grown out of control before the president federalized the troops earlier this fall.In Friday’s ruling, she concluded that most altercations occurred between protesters and counter-protesters, not between protesters and federal agents. Immergut also acknowledged that while she “may lack jurisdiction to enjoin President Trump in the performance of his official duties”, her injunction only bars the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from deploying members of the national guard to Oregon.This is the latest development in weeks of legal back and forth in Portland, Chicago and other US cities as the Trump administration has moved to federalize and deploy the national guard in city streets to quell protests.The ICE facility in south-west Portland has been the site of ongoing protests since June, when Portland police declared one a riot. The city of Portland and the state of Oregon sued the Trump administration in September after the president announced he had directed the defense department to federalize and deploy the Oregon national guard.Immergut previously issued a temporary restraining order barring the deployment of the national guard in Oregon, a decision the Trump administration appealed.The judge heard three days of witness testimony from law enforcement officers and officials describing conditions around the ICE facility. Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield called Friday’s ruling “a huge victory”.“The courts are holding this administration accountable to the truth and the rule of law,” Rayfield said. “From the beginning, this case has been about making sure that facts, not political whims, guide how the law is applied. Today’s decision protects that principle.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling. More

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      Trump news at a glance: supreme court blocks full Snap food aid payments following White House request

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      On Friday, moments after a federal appeals court ruled the Trump administration needs to fully fund Snap food aid payments, the White House turned to the supreme court in a further attempt to block the order.Within hours, the top US court issued an emergency order temporarily blocking full Snap food aid payments, which nearly 42 million people rely on to put food on the table.“Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda,” attorney general, Pam Bondi, posted on social media just after 9:30pm in Washington.Administration officials had asked the federal appeals court to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown, and was denied later the same day.US supreme court issues emergency order blocking full Snap food aid paymentsThe high court’s order came after the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown.After that request to block was denied, the Trump administration turned to the supreme court in a further attempt to block the order to fully fund Snap food aid payments.Read the full storyJudge’s final order bars Trump from sending national guard to PortlandUS district court judge Karin Immergut issued her order minutes before a temporary restraining order was set to expire.Immergut, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in his first term, ruled last month that the president’s wildly false claims about conditions in Portland resembling those in a war zone, due to a small protest against immigration raids, were “simply untethered to the facts”.Read the full storyPeople at over 100 US universities protest against TrumpStudents, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.Read the full storyUS grants Hungary one-year exemption from sanctions over Russian oil and gasThe decision came after Viktor Orbán pressed his case for a reprieve during a friendly meeting with Donald Trump in Washington.Last month, Trump imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russian oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft that carried the threat of further sanctions on entities in countries that buy oil from those firms.Read the full storySupreme court may take up case challenging legality of same-sex marriageThe US supreme court is considering taking up a case that could challenge the legality of same-sex marriage across the country. Hours after ruling that Donald Trump’s administration can block transgender and non-binary people from selecting passport sex markers that align with their gender identity, the justices are holding their first conference on the Davis v Ermold case. While their deliberations are typically kept private, the court may announce whether it will take the case as early as Monday.Read the full storyTrump says US will boycott G20 summit in South Africa, citing treatment of white farmersThe Trump administration has long accused the South African government of allowing minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked. As it restricted the number of refugees admitted annually to the US to 7,500, the administration indicated that most will be white South Africans who it claimed faced discrimination and violence at home.But the government of South Africa has said it is surprised by the accusations of discrimination, because white people in the country generally have a much higher standard of living than its Black residents, more than three decades after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule.Read the full storyWashington National Opera may leave Kennedy Center due to Trump ‘takeover’Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s “takeover”, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello.The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The federal government shutdown dragged consumer sentiment in the US to a near record low in November, according to a monthly survey conducted by the University of Michigan.

      Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests.

      Cornell University announced a settlement with the Trump administration, becoming the fifth university under investigation by the US government to do so.

      Elise Stefanik, a Republican New York representative and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, has officially launched her long-anticipated campaign for governor.

      Donald Trump has pardoned former New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry on past tax evasion and drug charges, citing the 1983 National League rookie of the year’s post-career embrace of his Christian faith and longtime sobriety.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 6 November 2025. More

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      US grants Hungary one-year exception from sanctions over Russian oil and gas

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      The United States has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from US sanctions for using Russian oil and gas, a White House official said on Friday, after Viktor Orbán pressed his case for a reprieve during a friendly meeting with Donald Trump in Washington.Last month, Trump imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russian oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft that carried the threat of further sanctions on entities in countries that buy oil from those firms.The Hungarian prime minister, a longtime Trump ally, met with the US president at the White House on Friday for their first bilateral meeting since the Republican returned to power and explained why his country needed to use Russian oil at a time when Trump has been pressing Europe to stop doing so.Orbán said the issue was vital for Hungary, which is a European country, and pledged to lay out “the consequences for the Hungarian people, and for the Hungarian economy, not to get oil and gas from Russia”.Trump, aiming to put pressure on Moscow to end its war with Ukraine, appeared sympathetic to Orbán’s position.“We’re looking at it, because it’s very different for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said. “As you know, they don’t have … the advantage of having sea. It’s a great country, it’s a big country, but they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports.”“But many European countries are buying oil and gas from Russia, and they have been for years,” Trump added. “And I said: ‘What’s that all about?’”The White House official noted that, in addition to the sanctions exemption, Hungary had committed to buying US liquefied natural gas with contracts valued at some $600m.Hungary has maintained its reliance on Russian energy since the start of the 2022 conflict in Ukraine, prompting criticism from several European Union and Nato allies.International Monetary Fund figures show that Hungary relied on Russia for 74% of its gas and 86% of its oil in 2024, warning that an EU-wide cutoff of Russian natural gas alone could force output losses in Hungary exceeding 4% of GDP.The two men also discussed Russia’s war with Ukraine.Trump said last month that he would meet Vladimir Putin in the Hungarian capital, but the meeting was put on hold after Russia rejected a ceasefire.Trump on Friday said Russia simply did not want to stop fighting. “The basic dispute is they just don’t want to stop yet. And I think they will,” he said.The president asked Orbán whether he thought Ukraine could win the war. A “miracle can happen”, Orban responded.Greater economic cooperation between the US and Hungary was also on the agenda. Orbán predicted a “golden age” between the two nations and made a point of criticizing Joe Biden’s administration, a sure way to garner favor with Trump, who continues to use Biden as a frequent foil.The Hungarian leader, who faces an election in 2026, has cultivated a strong personal rapport with Trump over the years, including on their shared hard-line immigration policies. Trump on Friday gave Orbán his support for the election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He has not made a mistake on immigration. So he’s respected by everybody, he’s liked by some … I like and respect him, I’m a double,” Trump said. “And that’s the way Hungary is being led. They’re being led properly, and that’s why he’s going to be very successful in his upcoming election.”The EU’s top court ruled last year that Hungary must pay a €200m ($216m) fine for not implementing changes to its policy of handling immigrants and asylum seekers at its border. It must also pay a daily fine of €1m until it fully implements the measures.Orbán referenced the fine during his meeting with Trump but said Hungary would handle its intra-EU disputes on its own.A tangible sign of Hungary’s improved ties with the US under the Trump administration came last month when the US fully restored Hungary’s status in its visa waiver program.Hungary has pushed back against plans by the European Commission to phase out the EU’s imports of all Russian gas and LNG by the end of 2027, deepening a rift with Brussels over relations with Moscow.Ratings agency S&P noted that Hungary has one of the most energy-intensive economies in Europe – and that its domestic refineries are built to process Russian Urals crude oil.While S&P said gas supplies from Azerbaijan and Qatar could help replace Russian supply, it warned that Hungary’s fiscal and external accounts remain vulnerable to an energy shock. More

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      Passengers start to feel bite of flight cuts amid US government shutdown

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      A US government order to make drastic cuts in commercial air traffic amid the government shutdown has taken effect, with major airports across the country experiencing a significant reduction in schedules and leaving travellers scrambling to adjust their plans.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the move is necessary to maintain air traffic control safety during a federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution, in which air traffic controllers have gone without pay.While airlines have started to reduce domestic flights, global hubs such as JFK in New York and LAX in Los Angeles will be affected, meaning delays and sudden changes that could have a cascading effect on international air traffic. The FAA said the reductions would start at 4% and ramp up to 10% by 14 November. The reductions are set to be in effect between 6am and 10pm and impact all commercial airlines.“We are seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely,” said Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator.As of Friday morning, more than 800 US-linked flights had been cancelled, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. The data showed about four in five cancelations globally were related to the US.Transportation secretary Sean Duffy warned on Friday that cancellations could rise to 15% or 20%. “If the shutdown doesn’t end relatively soon, the consequence is that more controllers don’t come to work,” he told Fox News, as US airspace became a potent proverbial weapon in the political standoff.Since the beginning of the shutdown, which began last month after a breakdown between Republicans and Democrats over spending plans, air traffic controllers have been working without pay, which has already caused delays.A potential agreement between the parties to reopen the government appeared to crumble again on Friday after Democrats in the Senate, emboldened by Tuesday’s favorable election results for them, rejected an emerging proposal that would have linked a stopgap funding bill known as a continuing resolution to three full-year appropriations bills.The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has announced 40 “high-traffic” airports across the country that would need to reduce flights. A 4% reduction in operations at those airports has taken effect but this will increase to 10% over the next week.Duffy has accused Democrats of being responsible for any “mass chaos” that ensues, even though the shutdown is the result of both Republicans and Democrats refusing to agree to a deal.The director of the National Economic Council​, Kevin Hassett, told Fox Business on Friday that he did not discount a broader impact on US economic activity from the air space restrictions.“Business travel is a really big, important part of air travel – and if business travel isn’t happening then those are deals that aren’t being cut and hotel rooms that aren’t being filled,” he said.“Travel and leisure is a place that’s really being heavily hit right now and if it continues to get hit, if the air travel thing goes south for another week or two, then you could say that they would have at least a near-term downturn,” Hassett added.View image in fullscreenThe cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.With deep antagonism between the two political parties, Donald Trump’s government has beaten the previous record for the longest shutdown, which was set during his first term in 2018-19.United, Southwest and Delta airlines began cancelling flights on Thursday evening.Affected airports cover more than two dozen states including the busiest across the US – such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. Flight schedules will be reduced in some of the US’s biggest cities, including New York, Houston and Chicago.Scott Kirby, the United Airlines CEO, said in a statement that the airline “will continue to make rolling updates to our schedule as the government shutdown continues so we can give our customers several days’ advance notice and to minimise disruption”.Delta Air Lines said it would comply with the directive and “expects to operate the vast majority of our flights as scheduled”.The airspace disruption comes two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday – typically the busiest travel period of the year – and raises the pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal to end the shutdown.Politically inspired flight chaos, with its potential to continue into or beyond the Thanksgiving holiday later this month, has exacerbated pre-existing structural issues in air travel scheduling, airspace constraints and safety considerations, including outdated air traffic control equipment and a long-term shortage of air traffic controllers.“The FAA is a slow-moving bureaucracy,” said Michael Taylor, a travel analyst at JD Power. “It has a daunting task keeping planes from colliding with each other, and they do a really good job with that, but it makes them ultra-conservative in terms of the technologies they could be using. It’s not like your living room where everything is digital. The FAA still relies on technology invented for the second world war.“Under-staffing is long-term problem and that’s not going to change with a political solution to the shutdown,” he adds. Coupled with underlying technological issues, politicians have learned that travel is an unique opportunity to apply pressure. “This is a leverage point that politicians can use to try to drive public opinion towards one party or the other. It’s a shame but that’s where we are today,” Taylor added.In a statement, American Airlines said most customers would be unaffected and long-haul international travel would remain as scheduled. Customers could change their flight or request a refund. “In the meantime, we continue to urge leaders in Washington to reach an immediate resolution to end the shutdown,” the airline said.The government shutdown has left shortages of up to 3,000 air traffic controllers, according to the administration, in addition to at least 11,000 more receiving zero wages despite being categorised as essential workers.“I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,” Bedford has said. “We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns.” More