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      A Trump ally in California is fighting redistricting. Is that what his constituents want?

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      Inside a packed banquet hall in northern California in early August, tensions were flaring. As the representative Doug LaMalfa spoke to constituents in his district, he faced immediate pushback from frustrated audience members who shouted the Republican down.It was the first public town hall LaMalfa had held in Chico, the largest city in his district, in eight years. The booing and shouts grew louder still as the Republican representative, a loyal supporter of Donald Trump, talked about “waste and fraud” in government programs, and the uproar continued for more than an hour as people expressed fear and anger over immigration raids, tariffs, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and the impacts on rural hospitals. Some called for his resignation, while one attendee yelled: “No fascism in America.” The rowdy scene made headlines across the US.It came before a crucial moment for the representative – just days later, California’s governor announced plans to move forward with a proposal to redraw the state’s voting map in an effort to create five new Democratic seats in the US House of Representatives. The redistricting plan is a direct response to gerrymandered maps in Texas. Now voters will decide on the proposal in a special election in November. If the proposition is approved, LaMalfa, a seven-term representative, could lose his seat in the war over control of the House.With less than six weeks before the election, the fight is on in the first congressional district, which covers a vast swath of northern California from the almond orchards and rice fields of the Sacramento valley to the forested and fire-prone foothills of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. Audrey Denney, a previous Democratic challenger who came closer than any prior candidate to unseating LaMalfa, has said she will run again if Proposition 50 passes. LaMalfa, meanwhile, “is committed to running in his current district and ensuring that Proposition 50 fails”, his office said in a statement.Democratic and Republican groups alike are preparing for a contest that could dramatically reshape the area’s political representation and ultimately determine the US president’s ability to advance legislation after the midterm elections.“Overwhelmingly, the reason people care is the belief that the Democrats [winning] control of the House of Representatives next year is the only possible meaningful impediment to Donald Trump’s implementation of his authoritarian agenda,” said David Welch with the Democratic central committee of Butte county, where Chico is located.Conservatives in this area argue that Prop 50 represents an existential threat that will erode the already limited Republican representation in the state.“We already only have nine seats throughout the entire state of California on the Republican side and we could go down to four seats if 50 passes. It’s not a fair representation for the parties – it’s not fair for both sides,” said Teri DuBose, the chair of the Butte county Republican party, who also works for LaMalfa’s office. “The voters should be picking their representatives, not the representatives picking their constituents.”Residents of this part of northern California, with its remote mountain communities, frequent wildfires and vast agricultural industry, often say it’s different from the more densely populated areas of the state.“We’re very rural here,” DuBose said. “As I drive from Chico to Orland right now, all I see are almond trees and open fields and walnuts and tractors. We don’t have the big-city high-rises and freeways with traffic.”The first congressional district is among the most conservative, and whitest, in the state.Water, wildfires, housing and homelessness have been key issues for voters in recent years. The area was already struggling with a severe housing shortage when several years of large wildfires destroyed thousands of homes, worsening the crisis and pushing more people onto the streets.Over the last decade, wildfires have scorched nearly 40% of land in the county, including the 2018 Camp fire, which destroyed the community of Paradise and killed 85 people, 2020’s North Complex fire, which wiped out Berry Creek and left 16 people dead and last year’s Park fire, one of the largest blazes in state history.While there was a strong base of Democratic supporters in the region in the mid-20th century, much of what is now California’s first congressional district has largely voted Republican since the 1980s. Trump has consistently carried the area since 2016 and in 2024 received 61% of the vote.Butte county, where LaMalfa is from, is more evenly politically split due to the more liberal community of Chico, a university town, and the more conservative agricultural areas – in 2008, it supported Barack Obama, in 2020 backed Joe Biden, but in 2016 and 2024 went for Trump.LaMalfa, a rice farmer who previously served as a state lawmaker, has represented the district since 2013. In an interview this year with the Chico Enterprise-Record, he cited the work his staffers have done assisting people having issues with social security, Medicaid and Veterans Affairs as his proudest accomplishments in office.“It’s defending these folks and giving them a level of hope that somebody is actually listening to them,” he said.He’s garnered attention – and criticism – in recent years as an ally of the president who challenged the 2020 election outcome and voted against certifying the result and has expressed skepticism about the climate crisis and its cause. Efforts to unseat LaMalfa have been unsuccessful, but the 2018 and 2020 elections revealed some level of discontent.“He does not at all differ from Trump’s line-by-line mandate of what he says Republicans should say,” Denney said, adding that LaMalfa has introduced “anti-LGBTQ, anti-public health” legislation that “harms our communities”.In the 2018 race, Denney, an educator and consultant with a background in agriculture, pledged to represent working families in the district. She closed the representative’s more than 30-point lead in the primary down to 9.5%, and raised $1m, but LaMalfa ultimately prevailed, and did so again in 2020.“At the end of that election, I was feeling pretty defeated. And then when they redrew the maps in 2022, it was just clear to me that it was not a winnable district,” she said.But this year, frustrations in some corners of the district have continued to mount over the Trump budget, which is expected to have a significant impact on rural areas and hospitals with its cuts to Medicaid and new work requirements for food stamps. That anger was on full display at LaMalfa’s town hall.LaMalfa did not agree to be interviewed, but in a statement, Paige Boogaard, his communication director, said the representative had anticipated as much but stated that most constituents back Trump’s agenda.“Congressman LaMalfa purposefully chose highly contentious areas of his district so that they feel heard. Their reactions were completely expected,” she said. “Raucous townhalls in Chico do not change the fact that District 1 and Northern California remain overwhelmingly conservative and overwhelmingly supportive of both Congressman LaMalfa’s and the President’s policies.”Meanwhile, the area is already grappling with the loss of one rural hospital. Glenn medical center will close its emergency room in just a few days, leaving Glenn county without a hospital, after the federal government moved to eliminate its “critical access” designation. The representative “continues to work on issues related to Glenn Medical Center and rural healthcare”, Boogaard said.‘Not a fair representation for the parties’Ten days after the town hall, Gavin Newsom announced California would move ahead with a plan to put a redistricting proposal before voters. The governor described it as “neutralizing” Texas’s new maps that could flip up to five seats. The referendum would temporarily suspend the use of maps from California’s independent redistricting commission and instead use legislatively drawn maps until after the 2030 census. The special election could cost as much as $282m.LaMalfa has sharply criticized the effort.“No state should be doing mid-decade redistricting unless directed by a court or forced to. Voters in California have voted overwhelmingly twice to prevent partisan redistricting,” he said in a statement at the time. “I will fight to make sure Northern California is represented by someone they elect, not someone Sacramento Democrats selected in a back room.”Under the new map, Butte county and much of district 1 would be joined with counties further to the west and south, including Sonoma county. Democrats have praised the proposal, not just for what it will mean locally, but to the country.“I think Governor Newsom doing Prop 50 has got Democrats all across America saying to themselves: ‘Hey, we got a chance to retake the House to defeat Trump,” said Bob Mulholland, a veteran Democratic strategist and Butte county resident.Denney argued it was a necessary course of action for the current political era in which the Trump administration is “tearing down institutions and norms”.“In this moment of time that we’re living in, with the scope and the scale of the threat that we’re up against, I think it’s absolutely the right move,” she said.“I love the new district. I love how it combines the two college towns on each end, Santa Rosa and Chico. Both have been historically devastated by wildfires, both surrounded by agriculture,” she said, adding that it will bring together areas where natural resources and land management are of deep concern.Republican and Democratic chapters across the district are working to rally voters before the November election, spreading signs far and wide and door-knocking. In Denney’s Chico home earlier this month, she had boxes with thousands of pieces of pro Prop 50 literature.Further south, in Yuba county, the local Republican party has purchased 10,000 yard signs to spread across the state, said Johanna Lassaga, the county party chair.“I think [Prop 50] would be devastating to our area. Putting the urban areas with the rural areas, we don’t get that fair representation,” she said.West of Chico, in the farmlands of Glenn county, Lee McCorkle, the local Republican party chair, has also been posting signs far and wide. He argued LaMalfa has been a valuable representative, citing his role in securing federal money to build a reservoir and nearby levee.“Doug, he’s a conservative guy, he’s a rice farmer, he spends a lot of time to be a congressman,” McCorkle said. “It’s a heck of a job. I wouldn’t want it.”Texas shouldn’t have moved ahead with their new congressional maps, DuBose said, but she argued what’s happening in California is also wrong. People are frustrated the state is moving forward with a costly special election, she said, when the governor did not fully fund Prop 36, a measure approved by voters last year that implements harsher penalties for theft and drug offenses. (Newsom’s budget did not initially include funding for that proposition, which he said was a result of shortfalls, but he later approved $100m to support the legislation.)And the speed at which the proposition has moved ahead has forced the party to quickly jump into gear, she said.“We really kind of got blindsided. It didn’t give us much time, so we just went all out [with the campaign],” she said. “Every moment that I’m not working, I am doing this.”In a historically conservative district, the local Democratic party has relatively few resources, said Welch with the Butte county Democrats, but they too are doing “everything we can to mobilize and motivate people”.“It’s almost certain the spending [to] defeat this will be enormous,” he said. “Really our best hope of overcoming that is with motivating individuals to volunteer to work at a grassroots level.”For her part, Denney, who also chairs the Democratic Action Club of Chico, has been traveling to the far reaches of the district in north-eastern California to talk to voters about Prop 50.“Even up to a month ago, I had zero belief that anything would ever change,” she said. “It’s gonna have a different ending this time.” More

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      Democrats race to embrace swearing and angry comebacks – but will it work?

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      Democrats want your attention, and they’re done asking politely.Several months into Donald Trump’s second term, presidential aspirants, members of Congress and party officials are abandoning carefully calibrated messaging in favor of gut-level rhetoric that is angrier, rawer and unapologetically more profane.“Things are really fucked up right now,” Democratic congressman Robert Garcia said in a TikTok video with the influencer known as the Regina George liberal, who has built a following demanding Democrats get meaner.With party approval ratings at decade-lows and their base increasingly alarmed by what they fear is America’s authoritarian slide, Democrats are racing to revamp how they talk – and how they resist.Democrats’ wider embrace of swearing, trolling and scorched-earth comebacks is part of a broader mission to sound more like “normal people” and less like a party of poll-tested talking points and white papers. From campaign rallies to TikTok vent seshes, the characteristically buttoned-up Democrats are taking more risks – and punching back harder at Trump and his administration.“This is not the Democratic party of your grandfather,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), declared earlier this year. “This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight.”There is widespread agreement among soul-searching Democrats that they have an authenticity problem.View image in fullscreen“We are tired of being seen as weak and out of touch, and are really trying to make the point that it’s some bullshit that the Republican party and all the big corporations that support them continue to try to frame us as [such],” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic party and head of the DNC’s association of state Democratic parties.The party has hemorrhaged rural and working-class voters for years. But in 2024, Democrats also saw worrying drops in support among Black and Latino voters as well as young people – becoming a party increasingly confined to the coasts, major metros and college towns.After losing to Trump, again, fundraising has slumped and Democrats now lag far behind Republicans in voter registration. Since November, several leading Democrats, including California governor Gavin Newsom, have described the party’s brand as “toxic”.Democrats have many theories as to how it got so bad – but they keep circling back to the most basic political skill: communication.Critics say risk-averse party elders – valued more for their fundraising prowess than their digital fluency – failed to adapt to the tectonic shifts in media consumption. Democrats anodyne messaging, they argue, might have made the evening news, but it was too easily drowned out by the right’s online surround sound, turbocharged to amplify Trump and his Magaworld allies.“A message that nobody hears cannot persuade them,” Anat Shenker-Osorio, veteran Democratic strategist and communications researcher who has convened hundreds of focus groups with American voters. “If you keep producing blandly unobjectionable 100-word statements … then it truly does not matter what you are saying because literally no one’s gonna hear it.”The bigger challenge, Shenker-Osorio notes, is that Democrats aren’t just competing for eyeballs with Republicans — they’re up against an algorithm that prizes outrage and emotion, whether it’s Maga memes or Taylor and Travis engagement headlines.Months into Trump’s second term, buoyed by a string of off-cycle election wins and a revved up base, Democrats are experimenting more. More members of Congress are on TikTok and heeding advice to adopt platforms like Twitch and Snapchat. They’ve jumped on viral trends and livestreamed hot takes stepping off the chamber floor. They’re also venturing into less friendly terrain, yakking it up on “manosphere” podcasts or launching their own.Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and a possible 2028 presidential contender, was an early evangelist of the go-everywhere style. He appeared on Fox News when many Democrats refused to sit down with Trump’s favorite network hosts. In April, he sat for a nearly three-hour interview on the podcast Flagrant, covering everything from White Lotus to “Trump Tariffs, Taxing Billionaires, and Republican Gays”.View image in fullscreenThe push for a more free-wheeling style hasn’t slowed the circulation of polling memos and strategy briefs coaching Democrats on how to be more free-wheeling. There has been reams of guidance on what to say (Trump’s takeover of DC is a “distraction” from his market-rattling tariffs and Medicaid cuts, for example) and also what not to say (words like birthing person, BIPOC).Republicans have sneered at Democrats’ newfound brashness, deriding the effort as “desperate” and “Maga cosplay”. Comparatively, the White House’s social media strategy seems designed to shock. In a July post on X, its official account wrote: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes.”Democrats accept that some attempts will be cringe. In February, an unfortunate turn-of-phrase at a rally alongside federal workers became a cautionary tale.“I don’t swear in public very well,” first-term congresswoman Maxine Dexter of Oregon warned before throwing caution to the wind and declaring: “We have to fuck Trump!”The crowd cheered. “You said it!” an audience member shouted encouragingly. But the remark was dragged online, with Politico observing that it “landed less like a diss and more like a proposition”.View image in fullscreenBut the stakes have grown far more serious.In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination this month, Trump’s White House has led a clampdown on political speech, threatening to punish left-leaning figures and groups it accuses of spreading hateful rhetoric.At a rally in North Carolina this week, vice president JD Vance, who once feared Trump could be “America’s Hitler,” urged Americans to abandon such rhetoric: “If you want stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”Elected Democrats were near-universal in their condemnation of political violence, which has targeted officials in both parties. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and other prominent Republicans from casting blame on the left. “I hate my opponent,” Trump said, speaking at Kirk’s memorial.In a widely circulated exchange, a reporter asked progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for her response to calls on Democrats to “lower the temperature”.“Oh, please,” Warren replied. “Why don’t you start with the president of the United States?”For years, Democrats took Michelle Obama’s “go high” mantra as gospel.In 2018, when Barack Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder reinterpreted the refrain, suggesting that “when they go low, we kick them,” he was rebuked by Michelle Obama herself and also by Trump – despite his own long record of disparaging and even threatening language. Earlier that year, Trump asked lawmakers why the US should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa rather than from places like Norway.Seven years later, Trump is still heaving expletives and insults from the bully pulpit. But this time, Democrats are far less reticent to respond.“If we’re serious that Trump is a threat to the fundamental values of our country and a threat to democracy, then we have to use these tactics and be real fighters,” Kleeb said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet, as Democrats fight to break through Trump’s unfiltered media dominance, there is deep frustration among their base that the party’s leadership is not doing enough to stop him – no matter how tough they talk. In Washington, out-of-power Democrats are under pressure to use the little leverage they have in a looming government shutdown showdown with Republicans.Meanwhile, some of the fiercest resistance is coming from the states. In August, Texas Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum needed to vote on a brazen, Trump-sought plan to redraw its political maps in the middle of the decade. Though Republicans ultimately approved a new map carved up in their favor, the Democrats’ quorum-breaking gambit helped trigger a response from governors like Newsom in California, whose Trump 2.0-era mantra now is: “fight fire with fire.”In recent months, Newsom has matched his combative posture with a pugnacious social media persona, a mimicry of Trump’s all-caps bombast. The governor’s team now regularly trolls the president, posting with a cadence that mirrors the right-wing outrage machine they mock, blasting out lengthy rants, AI-generated taunts, even the occasional Spanish-language vulgarity.“I’m sick of being weak,” Newsom said on a podcast in August, adding: “We’re going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”View image in fullscreenIn a full-circle moment, Holder, a longtime champion of clean maps, threw his support behind California’sretaliatory gerrymander.Lorena Gonzalez, the salty-tongued leader of the influential California Labor Federation, said the appetite for a no-holds-barred approach is strong.“People are frustrated. We’re frustrated,” she said. “So we’re fighting back – and the language, I think, mirrors the frustration and the urgency.”At a rally launching California’s redistricting campaign, Gonzalez rendered a blunt verdict on Trump’s presidency: “We tell our members who believed him, it’s okay. He fucking lied.” The crowd roared, and she repeated the bit. Handing the mic to the next speaker, Gonzalez grinned: “I’ve exceeded my number of fucks today.”More and more Democrats argue that the real divide in their party isn’t between the ideological left and center, but between the fighters and the so-called “folders”. And the so-called fighters tend to be the angriest.Among the most prolific Democratic swearers were Representatives Eric Swalwell of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Jasmine Crockett or Texas, all younger progressives, according to a Washington Post analysis of social media posts, podcasts and other public statements by politicians. Among party officials, Kleeb topped the list. Overall, it found that Democrats cursed far more frequently than Republicans in the months following Trump’s return to the White House.“I do cuss but I’m just passionate,” Crockett said in an interview last month. “I don’t imagine myself saying, ‘Trump is trying to be a dictator,’ and then sitting quietly. No. If I say it, I mean it.”A former trial attorney, Crockett said language can help build trust. “I never had the benefit of putting on a facade,” she said. “You’ve got to build a rapport quickly, and the best way to do that is to be authentically who you are.”View image in fullscreenResearch suggests that swearing can make a speaker seem more honest and sincere –though voters are quick to detect a false note.“Swearing as a tactic is dumb,” said Lis Smith, a veteran Democratic strategist known for her bluntness. Her advice: “Just be normal. Don’t use weird lefty academic jargon. Don’t dismiss people’s real concerns about things like crime by citing stats and data. And don’t think that the key to coming across as authentic is dropping four letter words that you don’t use normally.”As younger Democrats rise through the ranks, an “extremely online” vernacular has crept into the party’s messaging – snarky, irreverent and tailor-made to go viral.Earlier this year, Garcia brought a poster of Elon Musk to a Congressional hearing in a stunt he called a “dick pic”. In June, House Democrats elected Garcia to serve as ranking member on the influential House oversight committee – the first time in 100 years a second-term congressman was elevated to the role.The DNC has also sharpened its trolling game, with edgy posts, including one suggesting the Secretary of Defense was “tweeting while drunk” and another taunting White House aide Stephen Miller with a crude “cuck-chair” meme. They’ve also seized on right-wing anger over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case, breathlessly boosting calls for Republicans to “release the files”.View image in fullscreenAt the party’s summer meeting, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the former vice-presidential nominee with a “Midwest nice” reputation, took a juvenile jab at Trump’s chronic venous insufficiency, mocking his “fat ankles”.“Petty as hell,” Walz admitted, as the room erupted in cheers.Yet for those who fear authoritarian drift, trolls and clap backs can seem woefully insufficient in the face of Trump’s mass deportation campaign or his deployment of federal troops to American cities.Ridicule, Shenker-Osorio argues, can be a powerful tactic, but only as part of a broader resistance. “Taking the piss out of the strongman is a really critical part of fighting authoritarianism,” she said.Still, she cautioned: “Rhetoric without action is nothing. If anything, it just makes voters more frustrated.”David Smith contributed to this story from Washington More

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      Elon Musk and Peter Thiel mentioned in Epstein documents released by Democrats

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      Democratic lawmakers on Friday released documents from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein that may show interactions between the disgraced financier and prominent conservatives, including Elon Musk, Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel.The six pages of documents made public with redactions come from a batch provided by the justice department to the House oversight committee, which is investigating how the sex-trafficking charges against Epstein, who died in 2019 in federal custody, were handled.Copies of Epstein’s calendar released by the committee’s Democratic minority show a breakfast planned with Bannon, an influential Donald Trump ally, in February 2019. Other schedules mention a lunch with Thiel in November 2017 and a potential trip by Musk to Epstein’s private island in December 2014.A manifest from 2000 for Epstein’s plane includes Prince Andrew, whose relationship with Epstein is well documented, while a financial disclosure the Democrats released shows Epstein paying someone listed as “Andrew” for “Massage, Exercise, Yoga” that same year.Earlier this year, Musk accused Trump of being in the so-called “Epstein files” on social media after the tech mogul criticized Trump’s tax and spending legislation.Then in July, Musk publicly said: “How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?”Pointing to the significance of the latest records’ release, Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for the oversight committee, said: “It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world. Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims.”Meanwhile, Eric Swalwell, a Democratic representative of California, wrote on X following the records’ release, saying: “Trump OUTS @elonmusk as being in Epstein Files. Revenge for Elon outing Trump? Elon, what do you know about Trump’s involvement?”In response to the latest release, the Republican-led committee took to X and accused Democrats of selectively deciding which records to publicize.“This is old news. It’s sad how Democrats are conveniently withholding documents that contain the names of Democratic officials. Once again they are putting politics over victims. That’s all Robert Garcia and Oversight Dems know how to do. We are releasing them all soon,” the statement said, referring to Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member.Garcia, a Democrat of California, pushed back on X, writing in a separate statement: “We don’t care how wealthy or powerful you are – or if you are a Democrat or Republican. If you are in the Epstein documents and files we are going to expose it, and bring justice for the survivors. Release ALL THE FILES NOW!”The documents are the latest in the saga over the government’s handling of the Epstein case.In the House, Democrats have joined with a small group of Republicans on a petition that will force a vote on legislation to compel the release of the Epstein files. The push needs 218 signatures to succeed, which it is expected to soon get after Democrat Adelita Grijalva this week won a special election to an Arizona seat that became vacant when her father died.However, any legislation that passes the House will also need approval by the Senate, whose Republican leaders have shown little interest in the issue. Trump, who has called the furor over Epstein a “Democrat hoax” would also need to sign the bill.The Guardian has requested comment from Musk and Thiel.

      This article was amended on 26 September 2025. The seat won by Adelita Grijalva is in Arizona, not New Mexico, as we originally said. More

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      ‘Dangerous abuse of power’: lawmakers sound alarm over Comey indictment

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      For Donald Trump, the indictment of former FBI director and longtime foe James Comey was,“justice in America”. Legal observers and lawmakers see something far more troubling.A former Republican appointed to lead the bureau by Barack Obama and kept on by Trump until he fired him in 2017, Comey was indicted Thursday on charges related to allegedly lying to Congress five years ago during a hearing on the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.The charges were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was forced out as US attorney for reportedly finding no grounds to indict Comey. The justice department replaced him with a Trump loyalist with little prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan, and shortly after, a grand jury indicted Comey on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.The indictment is the latest sign that the president is making good on his promise “to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics”, said Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores,” Warner said.Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor who played a lead role in Trump’s first impeachment, said on X he had “never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the” justice department, calling it “little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign”.In a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee described Siebert’s firing and Comey’s indictment as “the latest steps in President Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s leading law enforcement agency into a weapon focused on punishing his enemies”.Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said it was “crazy to me” that Trump was pursuing a “malicious prosecution” against Comey, given that the FBI chief’s public revival of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use days before the 2016 election is seen as playing a role in Trump’s victory.“These charges are going to be dismissed. James Comey will win in court. But what it reflects is a broader attack on the rule of law that should frighten every single American, whether you’re a Democrat, an independent or a Republican,” he said at the Capitol.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump “has yet again proven his disdain for the principles that have actually made America great”.“By undermining the rule of law at each and every turn, threatening individuals who speak out against him, and arresting, investigating, and prosecuting elected officials of the opposition party and others who displease him, the president and his administration have corrupted our system of justice to turn his campaign of retribution into reality,” he said, adding that Trump’s public push to indict Comey amounts to “a grotesque abuse of presidential power”.Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman and member of the House judiciary committee, told CNN: “I promise you, when Democrats are in the majority, we are going to look at all of this, and there will be accountability, and bar licenses will be at stake in your local jurisdiction if you are corruptly indicting people where you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt on.”Norm Eisen, executive chair of pro-democracy group Democracy Defenders Fund, warned the indictment puts “the safety of every American and our national security itself in danger. This indictment has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution, worthy only of the totalitarian states the United States used to oppose”.“This matters far beyond James Comey. It’s about every citizen’s right to live free from persecution by their own leaders. Criticizing our leaders is a fundamental right, regardless of how much our leaders don’t like it,” he said.Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” on Thursday night and “A DIRTY COP” on Friday morning.His allies have taken up his argument, if not his tone.“Comey demonstrated complete arrogance and unwillingness to comply with the law,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican senator whose exchange with the former FBI director at a 2020 hearing is the subject of the allegations.Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said: “If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable.”“Say it with me, Democrats: nobody is above the law,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Trump legal defender, echoing a phrase often used by Democrats when Trump and his allies were facing prosecutions before his election victory last year.“We are just getting started today with this indictment,” Davis said. “It’s going to get much worse for the Democrats.” More

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      White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

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      The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once the US Congress approved a new financial plan.A mass firing would eliminate employees positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year, leading with the dramatic intervention by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) early in the second Trump administration.When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon about the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump said: “Could be, yeah, because the Democrats are crazed. They don’t know what they’re doing.”Asked whether he would agree to a request from Democrats for an extension of subsidies for the costs of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on which millions of Americans depend for health insurance – which has become the sticking point in negotiations over the government funding bill – Trump simply repeated his false claim that Democrats are insisting on funding “to give the money to illegal aliens”.Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction in force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions”, according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.This move from the OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on the US Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats.The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by the US president and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to health care in exchange for their votes to approve the short term plan, known as a continuing resolution (CR).“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X shortly after the OMB memo was released. “Get lost.”Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, a “malignant political hack”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”“It has never been more important for the administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and anti-immigration spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.” OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by 1 August.Meanwhile, hundreds of federal employees who were fired in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.The General Services Administration ( GSA) has given the employees – who managed government workspaces – until the end of the week to decide, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. Those who accept must report to work on 6 October after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation.“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” More

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      Zohran Mamdani’s Fifa fight is a blueprint for the left to re-engage with sports | Leander Schaerlaeckens

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      If Zohran Mamdani had not intended it as a campaigning opportunity, he probably wouldn’t have worn a full suit – the universal candidate’s uniform. But there he was, the 33-year-old Democratic nominee for November’s New York City mayoral election; the upstart democratic socialist who has stormed on to the national stage with a wildfire campaign on an unabashedly progressive platform of affordability in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Last Sunday, he mingled in an Arsenal bar in Brooklyn, flanked by fellow Gooner Spike Lee, peering at the big screen with a solemnity befitting the showdown with Manchester City.Mamdani is the overwhelming favorite in the race to run the United States’ largest city, sitting 15 points clear of his nearest rival, Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani is potentially New York’s first Muslim mayor. And also its first soccer mayor.He has waded into those waters repeatedly in the last few weeks. He launched a petition pushing back against Fifa’s dynamic pricing model for tickets at the 2026 World Cup, and demanding a price cap on resale tickets and an affordable allotment reserved for local residents. He announced the news through another of his instantly viral videos, flashing the social media savvy and political acuity that excites his supporters so much, along with a surprisingly soft touch on the ball. Then he appeared on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast.There’s some political theater to this, of course. Mamdani’s petition is a very, very long shot to change Fifa’s policy, even if he wins the election, as is expected. The petition’s signup page on his website includes a handy box you can check to pledge to his campaign. But Mamdani was shrewd enough to understand that Fifa was there to be dunked on, and that the expected hyperinflation on World Cup tickets – America’s disposable income is why the sport has moved so many signature events stateside, after all – dovetailed nicely with his affordability agenda.Besides, Mamdani made a good point by highlighting that tickets for the World Cup matches staged in Mexico do have a cap on resale pricing, thanks to exactly the type of government policy he espouses. It isn’t such a long ideological leap for the candidate promising free bus fares and childcare, city-owned grocery stores, rent freezes, and a $30-per-hour minimum wage, to plead for New Yorkers to be able to attend World Cup games in their own backyard.Mamdani treading into a kind of soccer populism, however, is less interesting for the impact it may have on the sport than the distinct possibility that he’s happened upon an untapped and useful force in American politics.For a great many years, major figures on the right have cloaked themselves in America’s favorite sports as a means of connecting with voters. George W Bush was an unrepentant sports nut, and a onetime owner of MLB’s Texas Rangers. John McCain was forever calling into sports talk radio shows. Mitt Romney was quick to remind the nation of his role in rescuing the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics from failure in 2002. Sarah Palin styled herself as the nation’s “hockey mom.”And then there’s Donald Trump, who has embraced sports fully and leverages them constantly to score political points. He lambasted the NFL when much of the league kneeled during the national anthem in a reckoning with racism. Trump’s first vice-president, Mike Pence, went to an NFL game only to summarily walk out when the players kneeled, as expected.Trump criticized the Cleveland Guardians for changing their name, blaming “cancel culture.” He turned up at an Atlanta Braves game just to do the racist tomahawk chop. He became the first sitting US president to attend a Super Bowl, between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in February – even though Trump has historically been foggy on which the state the Chiefs are from (Arrowhead Stadium is in Missouri, for the record). Trump retains close ties to the New York Yankees ownership. He has boasted of great baseball talent in his youth – although this was a brazen lie. He showed up to tennis’ US Open and was greeted with a chorus of boos, and will pop into this week’s Ryder Cup as well.There’s even a plausible theory out there that Trump only ever ran for president because he’d been spurned by the NFL’s club of owners, a group he was desperate to belong to, when he attempted to buy the Buffalo Bills. True or not, it’s clear that sports are essential to Trump’s political aims.By contrast, Democratic party leaders have largely kept sports at arm’s length for the last decade. Barack Obama was a notable exception – he made sure to be seen playing enough basketball to litter the internet with compilation reels and even And1-style mixtapes, the better to distract from how much he liked to golf, or how bad he was at bowling. (Albeit not nearly as bad as George HW Bush.) Obama was the first president to publicize his own March Madness bracket. But the long-running custom of presidential nominees of the major parties cozying up to sports, in whatever way they could, ended on one side of the aisle. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris mostly left sports alone.Wittingly or not, Mamdani has spotted an opening to tether the left to sports. And with American football, baseball and basketball feeling all tapped out for political clout, soccer – whose American fans seem to skew progressive anyway – is an ideal foil for his platform. What sport, after all, better embodies unfettered, latter-day capitalism and its parasitical relationship with its own customer base than soccer? What sport works harder at making itself unaffordable to its traditional fanbase? Where else will Mamdani find better similes for his kitchen-table issues?Tax the rich? Let us now speak of the world’s richest sport, wherein everybody likes to dodge their taxes.There are limitations, of course, to how much a young, future mayor – maybe, probably – can budge his party in an ossified landscape dominated by a stubborn class of elders. But if nothing else, Mamdani might write a new playbook, or at least a new play or two, to get the left back into the conversation around sports.

      Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out in the spring of 2026. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University. More

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      Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

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      A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.The department previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying the shooting killed one detainee. It said two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.Official statements have lacked focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”The FBI said authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials said the investigation was continuing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, called the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said.Later, after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees, Cruz acknowledged that the motive of the shooter was not known.The attack comes amid fears the Trump administration plans a crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting people from visa holders to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told the Notus website that political “gamesmanship” was spiraling out of control, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”.“We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads the gun violence prevention group Giffords, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas Ice shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not Ice agents.” More

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      The Democratic superlawyer Trump can’t silence: ‘We are in the break-glass moment of American history’

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      Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney, has not shied away from standing up to the Trump administration, and has been targeted for retribution this year multiple times as a result.He’s one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Donald Trump considers his opponents.There’s no shortage of reasons why the president would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic national committee (DNC). He hired the research group that investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, eventually becoming the Steele dossier. He specializes in election law and won 64 of the 65 cases he worked on in response to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.In one presidential memo, the Trump administration listed “examples of grossly unethical misconduct” by lawyers, singling out Elias for his involvement in the Steele dossier. The law firm Elias used to work for, Perkins Coie, got its own presidential action that cited the dossier. Trump mentioned Elias by name in March at a Department of Justice press conference, calling him a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country”.While a long list of big-name law firms have capitulated to Trump’s demands, Elias says his firm was built to withstand the pressure and its important to him to use his platform to fight back, though his outspokenness often comes with pushback.The presidential memo, which names Elias as an example of an attorney to target, directed the attorney general to “take all appropriate action to refer for disciplinary action” any attorney that violated ethical guidelines and to “review conduct by attorneys or their law firms in litigation against the Federal Government over the last 8 years”.Elias isn’t aware he’s under investigation, but said he thinks people not taking Trump literally is “one of the great failings” of his time in power.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”He didn’t escape scrutiny during Trump’s first term. He first came up on Trump’s radar, to his knowledge, when the president called him the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.Trump’s second term, though, is like “day and night” from his first, Elias said. The president is now “single-mindedly focused on going after his political opponents” and any walls between Trump and the Department of Justice have crumbled.“It’s a very different thing when he is not just unleashing the hordes of hate on social media, not just activating the rightwing echo chamber, but is talking to people who are in positions of power to actually do something about his obsessions,” Elias said.Despite not posting on X anymore – his decision to stop using the platform prompted conspiracy theories from the right – he is far from quiet about his work and his opinions on the Trump administration. He posts often on other platforms, runs a democracy-focused outlet and files lawsuits against the Trump administration on the regular.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”In response to questions about why the administration has targeted Elias, Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”Elias, Democratic superlawyerA lifelong Democrat, Elias helped build up election law to what it is today. When he was a young lawyer, it was a rare specialty – election disputes were typically seen as political issues, not legal ones. Now, post-election disputes are almost entirely legal issues.A 2008 Senate race in Minnesota in which Democrat Al Franken eventually won over Republican Norm Coleman turned the tide. Elias served as Franken’s counsel in what became the longest recount in US history. At the time, some in his party said Franken should concede since Democrats had a strong majority in the Senate and Barack Obama had just won the White House. Elias is always on “team fight”, he said, because “as long as there is a legal fight to be had, we are going to have it”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome have opined that his fighting posture can be counterproductive to voting rights, especially with the courts growing more conservative, because the cases can create bad precedent. He has argued for increased coordination between outside political action committees and political parties, a move that Trump capitalized on for his ground game in 2024. In 2023, Joe Biden parted ways with Elias, with sources saying at the time that Biden’s team had frustrations and discomfort with Elias’s hard charging and big legal bills. That year, he also stopped representing the DNC.“There was a time where there were people who would say: ‘Marc is too quick to litigate, and you can make bad law.’ And I would say then, and I would certainly say now, what are you saving these laws for, if it is not for this moment? … We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections.”He worked at Perkins Coie until 2021, heading up its political law work and counting a host of big-name Democratic groups and elected officials as his clients. He started his own firm, Elias Law Group, after that, and Democracy Docket, which documents attacks on democracy.The firm is built to “withstand the pressures of Donald Trump” and only takes on clients from Democratic campaigns, the party itself, clients associated with Democratic politics or groups advancing voting rights on a nonpartisan basis. It does not take on corporate clients or clients with government contracts. That stance is part of why Elias thinks his firm itself hasn’t been targeted in a Trump executive action. There are fewer ways to pressure him.Elias was initially surprised at the executive orders targeting law firms because he thought the firms would fight back and win, and Trump would look foolish in the process. He didn’t count on the “cowardice” of firms that instead struck up settlements with Trump, capitulating to the president’s demands by dropping cases and giving massive amounts of pro bono work to conservative causes. The firms that did fight back, including Perkins Coie, have won, but it’s hard to argue Trump didn’t achieve his goals by going after lawyers, he said.“I think he thought, if I can prevent big law from being that role, that’ll make it easier for me to run roughshod over people’s rights. And he’s not wrong about that,” Elias said. “He has actually intimidated a lot of law firms, I think, from taking on causes that they otherwise would have taken on.”When CBS’s 60 Minutes covered the crackdown on lawyers in May, host Scott Pelley noted that “it was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice”. Elias sat for an interview.Elias has grappled with whether and how to speak up. Over the years, he’s had threats against him and has at times needed to take extra security precautions. He receives a host of antisemitic commentary, including a writeup years ago in a neo-Nazi publication. He’s often listed as part of the “deep state” despite never working in the government, and called a “globalist”, a frequent antisemitic dog whistle, which he typically dismisses as trolling.He worries about his family. He worries about the people who work at his law firm every day, and about his clients, who have at times received blowback for their association with him.“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course you’re afraid. Literally the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.” More