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    Trump administration freezes $11bn for infrastructure in Democratic states

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    The White House budget director, Russell Vought, said on Friday that the Trump administration will freeze another $11bn worth of infrastructure projects in Democratic states due to the ongoing government shutdown.Vought said on social media the US army corps of engineers would pause work on “low priority” projects in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. He said the projects could eventually be canceled.The White House office of management and budget (OMB) said Donald Trump “wants to reorient how the federal government prioritizes Army Corps projects”.The Trump administration has already frozen at least $28bn meant for transportation and energy projects in Democratic-controlled cities and states, as the president pressures his opponents in Congress to end the shutdown, which began on 1 October.Trump has also vowed to cut “Democrat agencies” and has sought to eliminate 4,100 federal jobs as he looks to inflict pain on his political opposition.The army corps of engineers projects include a waterfront park in San Francisco, bridge expansions in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and water and wastewater systems in New York City, the OMB said. New York projects account for $7bn of the total.Other affected projects are in Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, the OMB said.All of these states voted against Trump in the 2024 presidential election.The OMB said many of the projects sit in “sanctuary jurisdictions” that have resisted the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.The army corps of engineers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      John Bolton says he hopes to expose Trump’s ‘abuse of power’ after being indicted – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with the news that the justice department has filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who turned into one of his biggest critics, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.The indictment marked the third time in recent weeks the justice department has secured criminal charges against one of Trump’s critics. In response to a question about the charges, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of them but that Bolton was a “bad guy”.While Bolton parted on sour terms from the White House, the criminal investigation gained momentum during the Biden administration over disclosures that troubled the US intelligence community.The justice department pursues Espionage Act cases in the event of so-called “aggregating factors”: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction.“BOLTON took detailed notes documenting his day-to-day meetings, activities, and briefings. Frequently, BOLTON handwrote these notes on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex or in other secure locations, and then later re-wrote his notes in a word processing document,” the indictment said.“The notes that BOLTON sent to Individuals 1 and 2 using his non-governmental personal email accounts and messaging account described in detail BOLTON’s daily activities as the National Security Advisor. Often, BOLTON’s notes described the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defense and classified information that he was memorializing in his notes.”In a statement, Bolton said, “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.” Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said his client had not engaged in wrongdoing.Read our full story here:In other developments:

      Volodymyr Zelenskyy will head to the White House on Friday for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump, hours after the US president said he had agreed to another summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest after a “very productive” call. The possible supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the Ukrainian president’s visit.

      New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls. On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.

      After a federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday. US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September.

      Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media. Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

      The US Senate failed on Thursday to reopen the government and to vote to fund the military during the federal government shutdown, ensuring that the standoff will stretch into next week. The Senate vote on a short-term Republican funding bill failed for the 10th time with just 51 votes.

      More than two centuries have passed since France celebrated the emperor Napoleon’s birthday by laying the foundation stone of the Arc de Triomphe. Now Donald Trump has imperial ambitions of his own. On Wednesday, the US president unveiled plans for a grand arch in Washington that has already been dubbed the “Arc de Trump”. More

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      Experience, integrity and Trump: key takeaways from New York’s mayoral debate

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      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 first New York mayoral election debate on Thursday night.Here are some key takeaways from the evening.1. Trump’s threats to New York City loomed largeThe Republican president’s threats to New York City dominated plenty of conversation during the debate.In response to the first question, which asked candidates to provide a headline on their legacy as mayor, Mamdani answered: “Mamdani continues to take on Trump, delivers on affordability.”All three candidates agreed they would not support Trump sending the national guard to the city. Mamdani repeated his assertions that he is the best candidate to “stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver”, while Cuomo argued that Trump would try to take over the city and become “Mayor Trump” if Mamdani wins. Sliwa suggested it was better not to be “tough” with the president or risk goading him.Mamdani forcefully criticized Trump’s deportation efforts, but echoed his opponents by saying he would work with the president if elected. All three candidates were asked about the last time they spoke with Trump. Sliwa said that the last time spoke with Trump was “many years ago” when he was “praising him for saving the annual Veterans Day parade”. Mamdani said that he had never spoken with Trump, while Cuomo said that he believed he had spoken to him after the assassination attempt on the then presidential candidate last year. However, in August, the New York Times reported that Trump had recently spoken directly with Cuomo about the mayor’s race. On the debate stage on Thursday, Cuomo denied the report. 2. Two main weaknesses were under fire: Cuomo’s character and Mamdani’s inexperienceCuomo started the night by attacking Mamdani, calling him too unqualified and inexperienced to lead New York City.“This is no job for on-the-job training,” Cuomo said. “If you look at the failed mayors, they’re ones that have no management experience.”Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens who is a self-described democratic socialist, pushed back on Cuomo and cited his years in the New York state assembly as well as his lived experience in New York City. Mamdani touted himself as “someone who has actually paid rent in the city” and “who has had to wait for a bus that never came, someone who actually buys his groceries in this city”.Cuomo shot back: “What the assemblyman said is he has no experience.”Mamdani fired back: “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity, and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”3. Tensions rose around Israel and the ceasefire in Gaza The candidates sparred over Israel and Gaza, with Mamdani once again facing questions about his past remarks on Israel. Cuomo tried to demand Mamdani denounce Hamas, prompting Mamdani to say: “Of course I believe that [Hamas] should lay down their arms … All parties have to cease fire and put down their weapons.”Mamdani also said that since the primary, he’s learned through conversations with Jewish New Yorkers more about antisemitism and how the phrase “globalize the intifada” could be hurtful.Cuomo repeated his usual attack lines on Mamdani, suggesting he was a danger to Jewish New Yorkers while Mamdani called out Cuomo for failing to visit mosques.After Cuomo was previously lambasted for being unable to name a mosque he visited as governor, Mamdani noted that the former governor had visited a single one and said on Thursday: “It took Andrew Cuomo being beaten by a Muslim candidate [in the primary] to set foot in a mosque.”4. Sliwa attempted to stand out, sans red beretSliwa, the Republican nominee and founder of the Guardian Angels, spent much of the night taking shots at both Mamdani and Cuomo. He dismissed Mamdani’s plans and ideas as “fantasies”, mocked Cuomo for losing the Democratic primary and went after the former governor over allegations of sexual harassment.Positioning himself as an outsider, Sliwa tried to distance himself from the political establishment.“Thank God I’m not a professional politician, because they have helped create this crime crisis in the city that we face,” he said at one point. When Cuomo argued that he was the only candidate on stage who could handle Trump, Sliwa responded: “You think you’re the toughest guy alive. You lost your own primary.”In another fiery moment from Sliwa during a discussion on policing, Sliwa said to Cuomo of his father: “I knew Mario Cuomo. You are no Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo.”5. Mamdani evades having to endorse Kathy Hochul When the three candidates were asked if they supported the re-election campaign of New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, none of them raised their hands.Mamdani’s response was notable, as the governor has publicly endorsed him for mayor. “I’m focusing on November, and I appreciate her support, and I appreciate her work,” the Democratic nominee said.  More

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      Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa spar in New York mayoral debate

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      New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls.On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.During the two-hour-long debate, the candidates clashed over a variety of local and national issues, including crime, policing, affordability, housing and transportation, as well as how they would handle the Trump administration and the recent Gaza ceasefire deal.Mamdani and Cuomo, the race frontrunners, wasted no time and began sparring – with Sliwa between them – almost immediately.Cuomo is notably attempting a political comeback after resigning as governor of New York in 2021 in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual harassment. He started the night echoing his performance in the primary debates, painting Mamdani as too unqualified and inexperienced to lead the city.“This is no job for on-the-job training,” Cuomo said. “If you look at the failed mayors, they’re ones that have no management experience.”Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman from Queens and self-described democratic socialist, pushed back on Cuomo by citing his five years in the New York state assembly and his lived experience in New York City. He touted himself as “someone who has actually paid rent in the city” and “who has had to wait for a bus that never came, someone who actually buys his groceries in this city”.Cuomo shot back: “What the assemblyman said is he has no experience.”Mamdani fired back: “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity, and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”View image in fullscreenAt one point, Cuomo was pressed on the allegations that preceded his resignation and his handling of nursing home deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic. He was asked why voters should trust that he has the “character to be mayor”.Cuomo defended his record and denied the allegations, saying “none of that came to anything”.Throughout the night, Sliwa, the Republican nominee and founder of the Guardian Angels, took shots at both candidates, describing Mamdani’s plans as “fantasies” and mocking Cuomo for losing the Democratic primary. He also went after the former governor on the allegations of sexual harassment.Donald Trump was a major specter during the debate’s first hour, with each candidate addressing some of his policies and how they would engage with his administration if elected.Mamdani said he’d be willing to work with Trump “if it means delivering on lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers”, but warned that “if he ever wants to come for New Yorkers in the way that he has been, he’s going to have to get through me as the next mayor of this city”.Cuomo said he’d work with Trump but that he would fight the president if he tries to “hurt New York”, while Sliwa said he would “sit and negotiate” with him.“You can be tough, but you can’t be tough if it’s going to cost people desperately needed federal funds,” Sliwa said.All three candidates agreed that Trump should not send national guard troops to New York City.Sliwa pushed back when Cuomo suggested that he was the only candidate who could handle Trump: “You think you’re the toughest guy alive. You lost your own primary.”The recent ceasefire deal in Gaza was also addressed on the debate stage. Mamdani, who has been critical of the Israeli government and vocal about Palestinian rights, was asked about his views on Hamas.“Of course I believe that they should lay down their arms” he said. “A ceasefire means ceasing fire. That means all parties have to cease fire and put down their weapons, and the reason that we call for that is not only for the end of the genocide, but also an unimpeded access of humanitarian aid.”Cuomo went after Mamdani and claimed the latter was refusing to “denounce Hamas” and that he was speaking in “code” with his answer. Mamdani pushed back, calling Cuomo the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “legal defense team during the course of this genocide”.Mamdani also said that in talking to Jewish New Yorkers, he was discouraged from using the phrase “globalize the intifada”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What I’m looking to do as the first Muslim mayor of this city is to ensure that we bring every New Yorker together – Jewish New Yorkers, Muslim New Yorkers, every single person that calls the city home. They understand they won’t just be protected, but they will belong,” he said, prompting Cuomo to call Mamdani “a divisive personality across the board”.Both Sliwa and Cuomo praised the Trump administration for its role in for brokering of the ceasefire deal, which many have said directly mirrored the deal Biden brokered during his administration.View image in fullscreenMamdani was also asked about past comments he made on social media, including comments he made in 2020 about the New York police department during the nationwide protests against police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Mamdani called the department “racist” and demanded the defunding of the the police in social media posts.Earlier this week, Mamdani appeared on Fox News and apologized to the police department for those remarks. He added that he has also apologized to officers in private meetings.On Thursday, Mamdani said that despite his previous calls for defunding the police, he no longer believed that should happen, and that he is “looking to work with police officers not to defund the NYPD, looking to ensure that officers can actually do one job when they’re signing up to join that department”.Mamdani touted his plan to create a department of community safety that would send dedicated mental health teams to handle relevant 911 calls.Cuomo pledged to hire 5,000 more officers and assign 1,500 of them to the subways, raise starting salaries, and “work on the relationship between the community and the police”.Sliwa called for hiring 7,000 officers and reinstating qualified immunity to officers.On mass transit, Mamdani described his plans for “fast and free” buses while Cuomo claimed such a program would be subsidized by wealthy bus riders and the buses would effectively become mobile homeless shelters.When the issue of affordability came up, and candidates were asked how much they spend per week on groceries. Cuomo said about $150, Sliwa said about $175 and Mamdani said about $125.Mamdani, who has made affordability the focus of his campaign, reiterated some of his longstanding pledges to increase taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, freeze rent increases on rent-stabilized apartments and build more housing.He also called out Cuomo for not addressing a pressing issue for most of the debate. “I just have to say it’s been an hour and 20 minutes of this debate, and we haven’t heard Governor Cuomo say the word ‘affordability’. That’s why he lost the primary,” Mamdani said.A poll released last week showed Mamdani leading, with 46% of likely voters supporting him, followed by Cuomo, at 33%, and Sliwa, at 15%.The final mayoral debate is scheduled for Wednesday 22 October.Election day is Tuesday 4 November. Early voting begins on 25 October and runs through 2 November. More

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      Johnson says ‘I don’t have anything to negotiate’ as US shutdown drags on

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      The top House Republican said he won’t negotiate with Senate Democrats as the government shutdown dragged into its 14th day on Tuesday, while defending the Trump administration’s decision to shuffle Pentagon funds to make sure military personnel get their paychecks.Speaking to reporters, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed: “I don’t have anything to negotiate” and accused Democrats of playing games ahead of the Senate’s scheduled eighth vote Tuesday evening on a House-passed measure to fund the government.He also dismissed Democratic concerns about the legality of the Pentagon’s decision to use unspent research and development funds to pay service members during the shutdown, starting with a paycheck on Wednesday.“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said. “I’m grateful for a commander in chief who understands the priorities of the country.”The payment arrangement came after Donald Trump ordered his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to find money for military salaries over the weekend. Trump said in a post on TruthSocial that he wouldn’t let Democrats “hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE” during the shutdown.The Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget announced that troops will receive their scheduled 15 October paycheck using reallocated funds, eliminating the immediate need for a separate US military pay bill.Johnson has said the Trump administration has “every right” to redirect the appropriated defense department funds, though Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether the action is legal.The speaker continued to blame the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, for the impasse, accusing him of blocking the House-passed “clean” continuing resolution to appease his party’s progressive wing.“We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” Johnson said, adding that he had “no strategy” beyond “doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing”.Johnson claimed the Republican stopgap funding bill contains no partisan priorities, telling reporters on Tuesday: “I don’t have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them.”The Republican speaker has kept the House in extended recess and scrapped scheduled votes as he attempts to pressure Senate Democrats into accepting the Republican proposal without modifications. Playing hardball has drawn praise from the rightwing House Freedom Caucus but criticism from some Republicans who argue the House should negotiate.According to a court filing by the country’s largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, more than 4,000 government employees have been laid off during the shutdown. Senate Democrats representing Maryland and Virginia, states with high concentrations of federal workers, condemned the dismissals on Tuesday.“This is all part of the Trump 2025 playbook,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator. “Stop attacking employees, stop attacking the American people, and start negotiating to reopen the federal government.” More

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      I chaired the US Federal Election Commission. Now there’s no cop on the beat | Ellen L Weintraub

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      Threats to the US electoral process keep accelerating. Donald Trump is issuing increasingly unhinged demands that his political adversaries and those who fund speech that he views as contrary to his political agenda or supports his political opponents be prosecuted. When a prosecutor balked at this political intervention, Trump simply found one who is more compliant.In what appears to be yet another attempt to concoct support for unproven claims of voter fraud, the Department of Justice has issued exhaustive voting records requests to multiple states. Voting rights lawsuits have been dismissed. A division targeting foreign interference in our elections has been dismembered. Attempts are under way to make voter registration more onerous. Alarmingly, at least one commentator has warned that the extraordinary call-out of the military against US civilians on US soil may be a “dress rehearsal” for taking over the 2026 election from the lawful administrators in the states. Even short of a takeover, one could well imagine this administration developing pretexts for troop deployments in Democratic strongholds during voting. Indeed, Trump has already called for the military to use American cities, at least those run by Democrats, as “training grounds” and ominously talks of a “war from within”.American democracy may be under attack, but billionaire mega-donors are fully engaged in protecting their own interests. And as we head into what will undoubtedly be another multibillion-dollar election year, the agency charged with regulating money in politics is missing in action. With the recent announcement of another commissioner leaving the already moribund agency, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will be down to two commissioners. By law, there should be six, but it takes four to make a quorum. Without a quorum, the FEC cannot enforce the law.Fifty years ago, in the wake of Watergate, a scandal featuring a president who used burglars and bags of cash to go after his political enemies, the Federal Election Commission opened its doors to enforce campaign finance restrictions and enable the American people to “follow the money”. In this anniversary year, the commission finds itself, for the fourth time, without even a bare quorum of commissioners to conduct its most important business. Three out of four of these periods have occurred during a Trump administration. The last time, in 2020, as previous fundraising records were being shattered, Trump waited until after the election to restore the quorum.The Trump administration’s gutting of the FEC is another indication of a pervasive contempt for the electoral process and the post-Watergate anti-corruption reforms that would have made Richard Nixon blush. The FEC is just one of the checks on the president’s conduct that Trump has disabled, along with removing Inspectors general, Democratic appointees to boards and commissions throughout the federal government, and others who dare to voice a dissenting view.Watergate was a scandal involving about a million dollars, an amount that shocked the nation back then, but would be considered chump change today, after a 2024 campaign cycle when six separate donors contributed 100 times that amount, moguls lined up to make million-dollar donations to a largely unregulated inaugural committee, 2,500 Super Pacs together raised more than $5bin, and overall, almost $15bn was spent, almost $2bn in undisclosed “dark money”.No one is more aware than I am of the FEC’s shortcomings in enforcing the law and the increasing challenges it will face in a world where the president feels empowered to fire any official who defies him.Having no cop on the beat to address any potential campaign finance wrongdoing, however, will only embolden political actors who would disregard the law, and it leaves those seeking to comply with no way to get definitive guidance. And the resulting backlog of enforcement cases will provide an opening for those commissioners seeking an excuse to avoid investigating alleged illegality. The commission needs a quorum, and specifically, a quorum of commissioners willing to enforce the law and stop engineering loopholes.We are sadly learning how many ways there are for a determined president to undermine government agencies whose missions he finds inconvenient. The president needn’t zero out the budget or fire all the staff to literally decommission the commission. In the case of the FEC, it’s been death by decapitation. Billionaires seeking new ways to wield influence from the shadows will face no deterrence while the American people’s desire for a fair and transparent political system goes unfulfilled.

      Ellen L Weintraub is currently a senior fellow at End Citizens United. She served as a commissioner on the FEC from 2002-2025, until her removal by Donald Trump, and served as chair four times More

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      A candidate for local office in New York disappeared months ago. He could still win

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      A political candidate in the New York City suburbs went for a night swim in the Atlantic Ocean this past spring and never returned.Petros Krommidas’s phone, keys and clothes were found on the sands at Long Beach on Long Island. The 29-year-old former Ivy League rower, who was training for a triathlon, had parked his car just off the picturesque wooden boardwalk.As the months passed, local Democrats attempted to field a replacement to run for the seat in the Nassau County legislature.But two Republican voters took them to court and won: a state judge recently ordered Krommidas’s name to remain on the November ballot, ruling that he’s still considered missing and not officially deceased.Now, as election day approaches, voters in Long Beach and other communities on the south shore of Long Island have a curious choice: re-elect the Republican incumbent or the Democrat who seemingly vanished at sea.James Hodge is among those calling on residents to cast their ballots for Krommidas regardless – hoping to trigger a special election in which Democrats can put forward another candidate to run against Republican lawmaker Patrick Mullaney.The Long Beach resident worked with Krommidas at the Nassau county board of elections and had been tapped by Democrats to run in his place.“We need to stand by and honor his name and memory,” Hodge told the Associated Press. “Let’s give him that victory. It’s the right thing to do.”The Republican voters argued in their lawsuit that Democrats couldn’t claim Krommidas was dead because authorities still considered him a missing person. They pointed to a New York state law that someone is presumed dead after being “absent for a continuous period of three years”.A county judge, Gary Knobel, agreed, writing in his ruling last month that “‘missing person’ status does not qualify as a vacancy that can be filled”.The judge noted a similar situation decades earlier in Alaska.Nicholas Begich Sr, a congressman, disappeared in a plane crash weeks before the 1972 election but still won. The Alaska Democrat was eventually declared dead, and his Republican opponent claimed the seat in a special election.In 2000, the Democratic governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, died in a plane crash while campaigning for a seat in the US Senate. Although Carnahan was trailing in the polls when he died, he made a political comeback after his death and narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, John Ashcroft. Carnahan’s widow, Jean, was appointed to serve in the Senate until a special election in 2022, which she lost.More recently, Dennis Hof, owner of the Nevada brothel featured on HBO’s Cathouse documentary series, died weeks before a 2018 election but still captured a seat in the state legislature.In 2020, North Dakota legislative candidate David Andahl died from Covid-19 the month before the election and still won. And in 2022, Pennsylvania state lawmaker Anthony DeLuca won reelection despite dying from lymphoma the month prior.Hodge and other Long Island Democrats argue that Republicans only sued to assure themselves victory as they seek to bolster their majority in the county legislature. They say the lawsuit has only prolonged the anguish for Krommidas’s family.“I understand politics, but there’s a time to stop and be a human being,” said Ellen Lederer-DeFrancesco, who met Krommidas through the local Democratic Pparty. “Petros is someone’s son, brother, friend.”The Nassau county Republican committee chairperson, Joseph Cairo Jr, in a statement, vowed the party and its candidates will “show the highest level of sensitivity during these challenging times for the Krommidas family”.Krommidas’s family declined to comment when reached by phone, but his mother and sister both called for residents to “honor and vote” for him in recent Facebook posts.“My Peter cared deeply about people and his community and continues to inspire kindness and unity in our community,” his mother, Maria, wrote.Eleni-Lemonia Krommidas, his sister, described him in her own post as a first-generation American who loved his country and “believed in equality, education, and the power of unity”.In the days after his disappearance, family and friends joined first responders in scouring Long Beach’s broad swath of sand, which is located just east of the New York City borough of Queens.View image in fullscreenSome of the missing person fliers they put up with images of Krommidas’s youthful, smiling face are tattered and faded but still visible on telephone poles around Long Beach.Meanwhile campaign signs for Mullaney, his opponent, are prominently displayed on fences along the main thoroughfares and on tidy residential lawns. The Republican didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.Along the Long Beach boardwalk last week, longtime resident Maude Carione was dumbstruck at the choice facing voters in November.“It’s insane to leave his name on the ballot. You’ll confuse people,” said the 72-year-old Trump supporter, who didn’t have plans to vote in the upcoming local election. “In fairness, you have to give another candidate a chance for the Democrats. You have to.”For resident Regina Pecorella, the decision, while grim, was clear. “If it’s between those two, I’m voting for the person that’s alive,” said the 54-year old independent, who voted for a straight Republican ticket in the previous election. “I don’t know how else to answer that.”Guardian staff contributed reporting More

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      Republican and Democratic senators dig in heels over government shutdown

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      Republican and Democratic senators Lindsey Graham and Mark Kelly have dug their heels in over the government shutdown – which is now approaching two weeks, with the former saying that the closure won’t push him to meet Democrats’ demands for a restoration of Obama-era healthcare subsidies.Graham said on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he was in favor of the Senate voting to reopen the government and prepared to “have a rational discussion” with Democrats – but not with the government shut down.“I’m willing to vote to open the government up tomorrow,” Graham said. “To my Democratic friends: I am not going to vote to extend these subsidies.”Graham, speaking to Democrats, added: “It’s up to you. If you want to keep it shut down, fine. It’s not going to change how I approach healthcare.”The senator’s comments came as Vice-President JD Vance warned that permanent cuts to the federal workforce will only get “deeper” as the shutdown continues.Vance told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures that “the longer it goes on, Maria, the more significant they’re going to be. If you remember, we went nine days before announcing any significant layoffs.“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance continued.More than 4,000 federal workers have so far been identified for job terminations. The Senate has voted multiple times over the last two weeks on a stopgap funding measure but not enough Democrats have joined the proposal to reach a 60-vote threshold.Graham’s comments may indicate a hardening approach to negotiations over healthcare subsidies with or without a functioning government.“The subsidies we’re talking about here,” Graham told NBC. “If the (Obama’s) Affordable Care Act is so affordable, why, every time I turn around, are we spending $350 billion to keep it afloat?”The dispute on the network continued with Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, criticizing Republicans for refusing to negotiate with Democrats.“We need a real negotiation, and we need a fix. We need this corrected for the American people. This is for so many people – their healthcare is running towards a cliff, and if we don’t fix this, it’s going to go right over it,” Kelly told host Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.Against increasing pressure to reach a deal, with both sides weighing the political cost of a lack of a resolution, House speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that Republicans had “probably a hundred different ideas about how to fix it but we can’t do that overnight”.He said Democrats’ demands for a resolution to the healthcare subsidies issue without lengthy discussions were “impossible and inappropriate”.“It’s not a deliverable and they know it,” Johnson said. “They chose that issue because they thought it would sell well to the public and it would show they were fighting Trump. It’s all a big facade and I’m so frustrated by it.” More