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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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      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

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      Virginia Republican who shared violent texts from prominent Democrat loses re-election

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      The Virginia Republican politician who shook up multiple statewide elections by disclosing text messages in which a prominent Democratic candidate fantasized about a rival receiving “two bullets to the head” has conceded defeat in her own bid to retain office.Carrie Coyner was seeking a third two-year term in Virginia’s house of delegates when she publicly shared the text messages that she had previously received from Jay Jones, a former Democratic colleague who ran in the state’s attorney general election on Tuesday.Some projected that the controversy that erupted surrounding the texts would derail Jones’s campaign while also complicating his fellow Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s run for Virginia governor.But Spanberger and Jones won the Republican-held offices that they targeted while Coyner lost to Democratic challenger Lindsey Dougherty by a margin of 52.5% to 47.3%, according to voting returns.The district from which Coyner was ousted was considered competitive. It broke in favor of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election that the then Democratic vice-president lost to her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump.Coyner’s loss also unfolded as the president registered low public approval ratings, and his party endured a number of decisive defeats on Tuesday in elections across the US.She issued a concession statement on social media after her defeat saying she would spend “much-needed time” with her family and refocus on her law practice. Calling it “the greatest honor” to have served in Virginia’s legislature and previously on a local school board, the statement added: “I know God’s got new plans for me – and I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.”The text messages that rocked Jones’s campaign were sent by him to Coyner in 2022 while they coincided in the Virginia state house of delegates. In them, Jones speculated on what he would do if he had a pair of bullets and was faced with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Cambodian authoritarian Pol Pot and the then Republican house of delegates speaker Todd Gilbert.“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote, as first reported by the National Review. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”In a subsequent text to Coyner, Jones said Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, were “evil” and “breeding little fascists”.The texts show Coyner responding: “Jay. Please stop.” After disclosing the texts in October, she issued a statement arguing that “what [Jones] said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office.“It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.”Jones published a statement in which he said his texts left him “embarrassed, ashamed and sorry”.“I cannot take back what I said,” Jones’s statement said. “I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology.”Nonetheless, Republicans – including Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance – seized on them. Trump dismissed Jones as “a radical left lunatic”, and Spanberger’s opponent – the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears – sought to associate her with the texts while demanding that she drop out.Spanberger condemned Jones’s texts but said voters should determine his candidacy’s fate.Republicans were particularly irked by Jones’s victory on Tuesday, including Congress member Brandon Gill of Texas, who argued that the outcome of the Virginia attorney general’s race amid the US’s ongoing dialogue of political violence was “truly demonic”.Others, though, experienced schadenfreude over Coyner’s loss and the hand she had in throttling Jones’s campaign. For instance, one social media user posted an image of former Democratic president Joe Biden raising his arms theatrically along with the words: “Carrie Coyner is dead and Jay Jones is alive!”Political violence has become a recurring topic in the US’s public discourse in part after Trump survived two assassination attempts while running for a second presidency in 2024.Other such cases were the firebombing in April of the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro; the murders in June of the former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark; and the shooting death in September of staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA.Jones late on Thursday invited another round of national media attention by announcing that he had named Ralph Northam – Virginia’s Democratic governor from 2018 to 2022 – to lead his transition team. In 2019, Northam resisted widespread calls to resign when a racist picture in his 1984 medical school yearbook page resurfaced depicting someone in blackface next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.Northam apologized but denied being in the photo, though he acknowledged wearing blackface decades earlier to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest. More

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      Leftist and centrist Democrats won on Tuesday. So what’s the party’s lesson? | Dustin Guastella

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      On Tuesday, Democrats won right, left and center.In purple Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the staunchly anti-socialist former CIA official won handily over her Republican counterpart. Meanwhile, Mikie Sherrill, a poster child for centrist Democrats, won big in light-blue New Jersey. And in ultra-progressive New York, the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, predictably, took the mayoralty. With such varied success, what could be the common lesson?First, all of these candidates took the economy seriously. Mamdani has long been praised, even by moderates, for making his campaign all about affordability. But this was no less true for Sherrill and Spanberger, who moved in a decidedly populist direction with their campaigns. At times, centrist Sherrill even sounded like Bernie Sanders. That’s good.Second, all of these candidates successfully distanced themselves from unwise (and unpopular) progressive positions on crime and the fringier elements of the social justice brigade. As a result, they broadened their appeal. Also good. And suggestive that a commonsense populism can serve as the path back to power for Democrats.To be sure, enduring structural problems remain; for one thing, all of these candidates are rich. That’s not good. Sherrill was hammered on the campaign trail about the millions she made while in Congress. But Mamdani, too, is the son of elites; his mother is a world-famous millionaire moviemaker with homes on three continents. These aren’t great credentials for Democrats trying to demonstrate their everyman qualities to working-class voters who have turned their backs on the party.Still, Mamdani was the big star of the night. And for good reason. Not only was Mamdani the only outsider candidate, facing down long odds and big money; he alone offered the inspirational vision that Democrats so desperately need. He has a compelling theory of society, one that helps voters make sense of the madness that is our new Gilded Age, and a political program that flows naturally from that theory. As a result he offers a more persuasive political vision than the establishment’s poll-tested “popularism” – which amounts to asking voters what they already like and then insisting that Democrats conform to the survey results. Voters want to elect leaders, and leaders have to have a vision of the way society ought to look. Mamdani does. The Democrats, by and large, do not.The cruel political irony is, of course, that candidates such as Mamdani, who have the far-reaching vision to propose a new economic model, who have the bravery to challenge the political establishment and who have the charisma to inject some life into the political scene, tend to win in the kinds of places where they have the least leverage – uber-progressive, rich, global cities. This, in turn, threatens to limit their appeal, and their power, to the level of government least capable of winning the world they want.Municipal government – even in a city that is home to Wall Street – is simply not fit to fuel real economic change. It’s not that Mamdani has promised policies far beyond the scope of feasibility. His program was limited. And given that New York City is very rich, from a budget perspective, his policies are affordable. But class politics aren’t like accounting: it’s not whether the government can afford it, it’s whether the rich will allow it.Billionaires have long been threatening that a Mamdani election would send the rich packing. An exodus of well-to-do New Yorkers, who feel they are already overtaxed, would starve the budget and force a conservative turn at city hall. The flight of the rich isn’t particularly likely, but it is a danger. This is why so much of social policy must be decided at the national, and not the local, level. Just look at the exodus of California residents to low-tax red states such as Texas and Florida, which has been a boon for those states and headache for California. With the continued allure of remote work, it’s not something Mamdani can afford to ignore. Which is why he went out of his way to assure the elite that he won’t be soaking the rich so much as splashing them.This structural challenge is compounded by the nature of liberal urban politics and the perceptions of voters in a nationalized political environment. Of course, Mamdani made great efforts to broaden the left’s base. He steered his campaign away from wrongheaded activist slogans about defunding the police or abolishing prisons. He very intentionally projected a sense of respectability and responsibility – he was almost exclusively pictured in a suit and tie. And as a result he was able to win voters well beyond the narrow confines of New York’s “commie corridor” and reach deep into working-class outer-borough neighborhoods.Yet, as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall: “The rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re leftwing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.” And despite his clear moderation on a whole host of liberal cultural crusades, Mamdani does advocate a soft touch on drugs, crime and sex work. Again, this is fine … for New York. But for their political program to succeed, populists like him need federal power and for that they need national appeal. Mamdani’s supporters need to confront a real danger. As the mayor-elect is catapulted to the unofficial position of leader of the American left, progressive populism risks being even more tightly associated with the views and values of Park Slope’s young professionals.National Democrats have a lot to learn from Mamdani. If they want to retake Congress, they need to learn what it is to have conviction and a vision that goes beyond tinkering with the tax code. At the same time, if populists are to have a hope of implementing their program, they must break out of the political confines of deep-blue cities.

      Dustin Guastella is the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics More

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      Seth Meyers: ‘Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care’

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      Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s out-of-touch comments on grocery prices, the longest-ever government shutdown and a dramatic White House press conference on Ozempic.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers continued to analyze the results of Tuesday’s elections on Thursday evening, examining what fueled major victories for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. “If you do look inside the numbers, you’ll see that it wasn’t just anti-Trump backlash that fueled Democrats’ wins,” the Late Night host said. “Voters are also furious about the economy,” especially record-high grocery prices.“So the same thing that we were told was an issue in the last election was still an issue in this election because nothing has been fixed,” Meyers continued. “And voters are right – grocery prices are going up, everything from coffee to bananas to beef.” In fact, beef prices have never been higher. “Soon it’s going to get so bad that Trump’s going to start pushing Americans toward vegan options,” Meyers joked.But “don’t worry, Republicans, Trump is in touch with the common man,” he added. “That’s his gift. He knows what it’s like to go to the grocery store and feel the pain when you open your wallet and hand the cashier your ID and – wait, what?”Speaking from the White House, Trump claimed that “all we want is voter ID” at the grocery store. “You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID.”“Yeah, everyone knows you get carded at the grocery store,” Meyers deadpanned. “Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care.”In fact, Trump insisted that grocery prices were going down in his recent interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes. “You can lie about immigration, you can lie about the stock market, you can even lie about what wars you ended because most Americans will say ‘I didn’t even know that Thailand and Finland were at war,’” said Meyers. “But you can’t lie about the prices people see with their own eyes at the grocery store.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert checked in on the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 38 days. “The shutdown has already wreaked havoc on air travel, and that havoc is about to get even reekier,” he said, as air traffic controllers aren’t being paid and many aren’t showing up to work.So many, in fact, that the Federal Aviation Administration has directed airlines to cut 10% of their flights at the busiest airports. “So unfortunately it may be time to try your new favorite airline: the bus,” Colbert joked. “If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving, you might want to leave now.”Colbert also touched on the major victories for Democrats on election day, which Trump referred to in a press conference as “an interesting evening and we learned a lot”.“That sounds like what you’d say after a Tinder date where someone had to go to the hospital,” Colbert laughed.In other news, Fifa – “whose job, you’ll recall, is to take bribes and regulate soccer”, Colbert joked – announced a new peace prize to be awarded at the World Cup draw in Washington. “Yes, the Fifa peace prize: it’s given exclusively to world leaders who stop wars using only their feet,” Colbert said.“So it really looks like a made-up award just to give Trump something,” he noted, though when asked to confirm that Trump would be given the award, Fifa president Gianni Infantino demurred, saying: “On the 5th of December, you will see.”“Man, it is going to be hilarious when they give it to Obama,” Colbert laughed.The Daily ShowAnd on the Daily Show, Jordan Klepper recapped a dramatic White House press conference in which Trump announced a plan to cut the price of Ozempic and other pharmaceutical weight-loss drugs. “It’s all part of his campaign promise and his one consistent principle of ‘no fatties’,” Klepper joked.The press conference was “an event that turned into a major Hipaa violation”, as Trump announced the price cuts by singling out members of his administration who did or did not take weight-loss drugs.“Joking aside, obesity is a serious issue,” Klepper said. “So, this could be a benefit. Dr Oz, you’re a doctor, theoretically. Give us a reasonable expectation of success here.”Oz, the TV doctor turned Trump’s administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, boasted that Americans would “lose 135bn pounds by the midterms”.“Why the midterms?” Klepper wondered. “Did they add a swimsuit competition to those?“Look, I’m no mathematician,” he continued. “But 135bn pounds divided by 340 million Americans means we each have to lose … 400lb by the midterms. And I know that sounds like a lot, but remember: that’s just the average! Some people will lose 300lb, while other people will lose 500lb. Some of us will lose no pounds at all, which will be offset by everyone losing 800lb.“The point is, regardless of how much you lose, Donald Trump will be tracking it and announcing your personal results at a press conference.” More

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      Who are the contenders for Nancy Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat?

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      Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.In statements released on Thursday, both candidates praised Pelosi with Wiener describing her as the “greatest speaker in United States history”.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is more than a legislator – she is an icon of American politics. She led the fight for healthcare and obliterated Trump when he tried to repeal it,” Wiener said, adding that her “finest moments” were fighting for marginalized people, including during the Aids crisis.Chakrabarti said Pelosi “set the standard for Democratic leadership with determination, discipline and tactical brilliance” and that her retirement marked the start of a “long-overdue generational shift”.“Thank you, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, for your decades of service that defined a generation of politics and for doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one,” he said.Still, Chakrabarti is trying to put some daylight between himself the Democratic party grandees.The 39-year-old progressive, who worked for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, announced his candidacy in February by arguing that it was time for change and that Democratic leaders were unprepared to handle Trump’s second presidency.Chakrabarti, a software engineer who graduated from Harvard, formally launched his campaign at a rally in San Francisco’s Mission District last month. He recently said in a statement Democrats needed a “new kind of leader who is not a part of the establishment, because the establishment has failed us”. Chakrabarti pledged to back universal healthcare and childcare, ban stock trading for members of Congress and “to stop funding the genocide in Gaza”.Since launching, Chakrabarti’s campaign had built “one of the largest grassroots operations in San Francisco history” with more than 2,000 volunteers, he said.Wiener, 55, is a Harvard-educated attorney and prominent San Francisco Democrat who has served in the state legislature since 2016. He authored a recently passed bill banning federal and state law enforcement from wearing masks and has promoted legislation to address California’s housing crisis and expand climate action.He has long been interested in Pelosi’s seat, but said he would run only if Pelosi decided to step down. In 2023, Wiener formed an exploratory committee that has already raised $1m for a future congressional run.Announcing his candidacy last month, Wiener said “we need more than rhetoric and good intentions from Democrats” and that he was seeking office to stand up to Trump as the president wages a “full-on war against immigrants and LGBTQ people” and the cost of living continues to increase.The San Francisco Chronicle reported there has been speculation that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a Democratic strategist, might run, while Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, is also said to be considering running. More

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      How Nancy Pelosi became the Democrat Trump hated most

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      Nancy Pelosi arrived in Congress in 1987 aiming to spur a reluctant Washington into taking action against the Aids epidemic that was then ravaging the gay community in her home town, San Francisco.Nearly four decades later, she will exit the House of Representatives after a historic career in which she has made her influence felt nationwide. A Democrat who was the first woman ever to serve as speaker of the House, her fingerprints are on landmark legislation passed during Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s presidencies that affect millions of Americans and today remain among the most contentious topics in the Capitol.In a country that grew increasingly polarized during her time in Congress, it should be no surprise that reactions to her departure are textbook examples of America’s partisan extremes.“Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will go down in history as the greatest speaker of all time. Her tenure has been iconic, legendary, historic and transformational,” said Hakeem Jeffries, her successor as House Democratic leader.“The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country,” Donald Trump told Fox News.Taking office near what turned out to the tail end of four decades of Democratic control of the House, Pelosi was there to see Congress fulfill her hope of addressing Aids through the passage of the Ryan White Care Act, in 1990. In the years that followed, she climbed the ranks of party leadership until becoming speaker in 2007, following blowout election victories for Democrats the year prior.Under Obama, she oversaw passage of the Affordable Care Act, which transformed the nation’s healthcare system, as well as his efforts to revitalize the economy after the 2008 recession. When Biden’s election brought the Democrats back into power in 2021, Pelosi was by his side, wrangling a slim House majority to pass laws that addressed the climate crisis and revamped the nation’s infrastructure and critical industries.Her collaboration with the two Democratic presidents gained her a reputation as one of the country’s best-known liberals, and a modern trailblazer for female politicians. Perhaps it was inevitable that Trump, who beat two different Democratic candidates to win the presidency and has his own history of sexist comments and troubling conduct, would become her principal antagonist.Pelosi had clashed with George W Bush along with John Boehner and Paul Ryan – the Republicans who succeeded her as speaker after Democrats lost their House majority in the 2010 elections – but her feud with Trump was like few others in Washington.Shortly before she returned as House speaker in 2019, Pelosi and the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, met with Trump in the Oval Office for what turned into a prolonged, televised squabble. When they got together months later to discuss a volatile situation in Syria, the White House released a photo showing a standing Pelosi pointing her finger at the president. “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump tweeted, though the speaker’s supporters saw plenty to like in her defiant stance.She rolled her eyes and did a mocking slow clap at the president’s State of the Union address that year. He refused to shake her hand when they crossed paths in the House chamber for the annual address in 2020, and she tore up his speech at its conclusion. It was no surprise that some of the violent Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 talked about killing her, but, with Pelosi whisked to a military base, could do no more than sack her office. The following year, a man broke into her San Francisco home, looking to take her hostage and interrogate her over the investigation into the first Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The speaker was not home, and he ended up brutally injuring her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPelosi would oversee Trump’s two impeachments, first for his attempt to spur Ukraine into meddling in the 2020 election, then again for the January 6 attack. It was these dishonors that Trump made a point of mentioning when news broke that she would be stepping down.“I’m very honored she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice,” he said, having earlier added that “she was rapidly losing control of her party, and it was never coming back”.It’s worth dwelling on the last point, considering Pelosi’s last great act in Congress was orchestrating a pressure campaign that ousted Biden, another of Trump’s enemies. Regarded by many in her party as a master tactician even after stepping down and taking the rare title of speaker emerita in 2023, she saw Biden as unelectable and a liability to down-ballot Democratic candidates after his terrible performance in a debate against Trump.Pelosi wanted a competitive process for finding another Democratic nominee, but Biden instead endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, who would go on to decisively lose to Trump, paving the way for his return to power. Her relationship with Biden, meanwhile, was left in tatters.The Democratic party went into a tailspin after Harris lost and their candidates failed to hold either chamber of Congress. A year later, the party swept off-year state elections, raising the party’s hopes that its mojo was coming back and Democrats would retake the House in 2026.However it goes, Pelosi will not be there. Two days before announcing her retirement, she held forth to CNN about Trump, calling him “a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth”.But she also had some words for the next generation of lawmakers who will arrive in Washington soon enough: “Treat everyone as your friend, but know who your friends are.” More

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      Seth Meyers on Mamdani’s win: ‘The kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Democrats’ slate of wins across the country and Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City mayoral race.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers celebrated Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York mayoral race, becoming the first south Asian and Muslim mayor of the biggest city in the US, as well as New York’s first mayoral candidate since 1969 to receive more than a million votes.“This is the kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years,” said an enthusiastic Meyers. “I haven’t seen a crowd of New Yorkers this excited since the time the real Timotheé Chalamet stopped at a Timotheé Chalamet lookalike contest in Manhattan.“And if you thought Trump was bummed about the results before Mamdani’s speech, he probably felt even worse” when he heard Mamdani say: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!”“OK, first of all, you do not need to tell him to turn the volume up,” Meyers joked. “He’s a 79-year-old Fox News addict, you know the volume is maxed out.“Mamdani correctly calculated that standing up to Trump was a better political strategy than whatever this is,” he continued, cutting to a clip of the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – a New York establishment Democrat who did not endorse Mamdani – droning on about “Kentucky fried french fries” at a press conference.Asked who he voted for, Schumer declined to specify, instead saying: “Look, I voted, and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”“You’re the Democratic leader, and you won’t even say you voted for the Democratic nominee?” Meyers fumed. “Why are you treating it like a secret?“Things happen here, and they happen fast,” he said in a final ode to New York. “How fast? A dude who was polling at 1% a year ago was just elected mayor, and that’s what makes New York City great. And if you can’t hear the resounding message voters sent last night, then maybe you should” – to quote Mamdani – “turn the volume up.”Stephen Colbert“I don’t know about you guys, but tonight my heart is full of something I have not felt in almost a year, and that is … good?” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, his first since Democrats swept races across the country, offering a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration.“Today Democrats are walking around with a spring in their step like a divorced mom in her 40s whose new haircut just got her carded at two different bars,” he joked.Colbert also celebrated Mamdani’s win in New York. The 34-year-old state assemblyman “didn’t just defeat Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, he nut-punched New York’s fattest cats”, he said. “The billionaires had the knives out for Zohran, pumping massive amounts of cash into anti-Mamdani groups. I’m talking big-roll high-rollers,” including the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, son of Estée, who donated $2.6m to stop him; hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, who spent $1.75m on anti-Mamdani campaigns; and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who spent $2m.“So it’s a bad day for billionaires,” said Colbert. “Or as it’s also known, still a pretty good day! They’re still billionaires.”Speaking to supporters after clinching the victory, Mamdani offered a different political vision than the federal government in Washington. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he said.“And as always, the port authority will be the smell,” Colbert added.Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel cheered on the Democrats’ many wins on Tuesday. “We needed a big night,” he said. “Democrats have had fewer wins this year than the Jets.“This was not a good night for the president,” he continued. “Everything he touched was a loser. Trump hasn’t been this embarrassed since there was a Donald Trump Jr.”“But if you’re tired of all the losing, fear not! He’s got an excuse,” Kimmel said. “In fact, he’s got two of them.” Trump wrote on Truth Social: “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. AND SHUTDOWN. WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”“Now, if Republicans had won and he wasn’t on the ballot, would he take credit for that?” Kimmel responded. “Oh yes, he definitely would.”Trump then posted “… AND SO IT BEGINS!” – “which was either a response to Mamdani winning the mayoral race, or he just sat down on the toilet, I don’t know,” said Kimmel. “I mean, seriously, what is that supposed to mean? What would motivate him to post ‘and so it begins’ at almost midnight?”Kimmel then pivoted to the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 37 days. “Trump has been desperately trying to convince anyone who will listen that Democrats are responsible for the shutdown and that it has nothing to do with him trying to hide the Epstein files,” he said. “The gaslighting has reached a fever pitch, as Trump cuts off the supply of food to children, families, senior citizens, etc.”But, Kimmel said, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “wants you to know: just because they’re cutting off your food and want to cut off your health insurance, that doesn’t mean they don’t care”.As Johnson told reporters: “Every hardworking American in any place that’s missed a paycheck, anyone who has been made to suffer … anyone who is hurting, you have a home in the Republican party.”“Yes, you have a home in the Republican party!” Kimmel scoffed. “You’ll be living under the stairs like Harry Potter and you’re not allowed in the fridge, but you do have a home.” More