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      Senate Republicans embrace Trump’s call – from his Florida golf course – to replace Obamacare

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      US senators are working through the weekend for the first time since the government shutdown began more than a month ago, but hopes for a bipartisan agreement on how to end the standoff, and keep healthcare affordable for millions of Americans, appeared to recede as Republican senators floated a proposal toxic to Democrats: scrapping the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare.The impact on Americans from the longest shutdown of the federal government in history deepened on Saturday, as federal workers went unpaid, airlines were forced to cancel flights and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits have been delayed for 42 million Americans.As Saturday’s session got under way, Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana welcomed a proposal made on social media early Saturday by Donald Trump, from his golf course in West Palm Beach, for subsidies to be replaced by health savings accounts.In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that instead of meeting the demand from Democrats to extend subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through the ACA marketplace, to pay for sharply increased premiums, Republicans should return to the project of replacing the Obama-era law, which failed during his first administration.“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE,” Trump wrote.Graham welcomed the proposal, which is similar to a replacement for Obamacare he put forward in 2017, writing on social media that Trump’s “recommendation that we stop sending tens of billions of dollars under Obamacare to money-sucking insurance companies and instead send that money directly to the people so they can buy better healthcare is simply brilliant”.“We’re going to replace this broken system with something that is actually better for the consumer,” Graham said later.Cassidy, who was a co-author of Graham’s similar plan in 2017, also praised Trump’s proposal on social media, and stood next to a giant blow-up of Trump’s post as he spoke on the Senate floor.“I’m writing the bill right now,” Scott posted in a response to Trump’s suggestion. “We must stop taxpayer money from going to insurance companies and instead give it directly to Americans in HSA-style accounts and let them buy the health care they want. This will increase competition & drive down costs.”None of the Republican senators seemed to grapple with the fact that consumers would still need to buy plans from the same insurance companies, or that Republican lawmakers need the support of eight Democrats to reopen the government, and the idea of repealing and replacing Obamacare with savings accounts is unlikely to earn a single Democratic vote.Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, shared an alarmed response to Trump’s proposal from Larry Levitt, the executive vice-president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, who wrote on social media: “You have to read between the lines here to imagine what President Trump is proposing. But, it sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do.”“In other words, Donald Trump’s ‘concept of a plan’ for health care is another cynical attempt to repeal Obamacare,” Warren commented. “It’s the same failed Republican plan that’s been rejected by voters and Congress. We can lower costs and open the government TODAY by extending ACA tax credits.”Senate Republican leaders have signaled an openness to an emerging proposal from a small group of moderate Democrats to end the shutdown in exchange for a later vote on the “Obamacare” subsidies.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is leading the talks among moderates, said Friday evening that Democrats “need another path forward” after Republicans rejected an offer from Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York to reopen the government and extend the subsidies for a year.Shaheen and others, negotiating among themselves and with some Republicans, have been discussing bills that would pay for parts of government – food aid, veterans’ programs and the legislative branch, among other things – and extend funding for everything else until December or January. The agreement would only come with the promise of a future healthcare vote, rather than a guarantee of extended subsidies.It was unclear whether enough Democrats would support such a plan. Even with a deal, Trump appears unlikely to support an extension of the health benefits. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, also said this week that he would not commit to a health vote.Schumer on Saturday persisted in arguing that Republicans should accept a one-year extension of the subsidies before negotiating the future of the tax credits.“Doing nothing is derelict because people will go bankrupt, people will lose insurance, people will get sicker,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “That’s what will happen if this Congress fails to act.”Earlier, Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, said they need to stand strong after overwhelming Democratic victories on election day.One bizarre element of the Republican effort to signal that their party is working overtime to end the shutdown, even as Trump golfs in Florida, was a social media post on Saturday from Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator. Mullin posted four photographs of himself and two other Republican senators meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, with the caption: “Working through the weekend with President Donald J Trump. It’s always an honor to be in the Oval Office– I never take this opportunity to serve Oklahoma for granted.”What Mullin failed to make clear is that the photographs were taken on Friday, before Trump left for a weekend golf trip at his Florida resort. Mullin himself had previously posted one of the photographs in a social media video Friday night.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Washington National Opera may move out of Kennedy Center due to Trump ‘takeover’

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      The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971.The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello. The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s takeover, said Zambello.“It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center,” she said. “But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options.“The two things that support a company financially, because of the takeover, have been severely compromised,” she said.Ticket sales were about 40% unsold compared with before Trump declared himself chair, said Zambello. Many have decided to boycott the center. Every day she receives messages of protest from formerly loyal members of the audience, she says.“They say things like: ‘I’m never setting foot in there until the “orange menace” is gone.’ Or: ‘Don’t you know history? Don’t you know what Hitler did? I refuse to give you a penny,’” she said.“People send me back their the season brochure shredded in an envelope and say: ‘Never, never, will I return: while he’s in power.’”Before February’s coup, the opera performances were running at 80%-90% of capacity. Now, Zambello said, they were at 60%, with at times the appearance of fuller houses created by the distribution of complimentary tickets.Philanthropic giving to the company – an important source of its funding – was down, she said. “Donor confidence has been shattered because many people feel: ‘If I give to the Kennedy Center, I’m supporting Donald Trump,’” she said.“The building is tainted,” she said. It had been “politicized by the current management”.Previously, the board of trustees “was always a mix of Republicans and Democrats. It did not matter that someone was a Republican or a Democrat. What mattered was that they were leading a big, important institution.”She said that the new management of the institution “do not have experience in the arts”. Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the center, has previously served in various foreign policy roles, including US ambassador to Germany.In addition, staffing in key areas such as marketing and development had been hollowed out, both in terms of experience and numbers, she said. “There was a promise from the new management that they would help us find new donors, increase contributions – which they have not done for our benefit,” she said.The new management of the center had not vetoed any of Zambello’s programming choices, but “they have suggested that we produce more popular operas”, she said. “This season, we are producing The Marriage of Figaro, Aida and West Side Story … I don’t see how we can get more popular than that.”Zambello said that when she joined the company in 2012, she committed to 50% non-white casting.“The management has questioned some aspects of it, and we have explained these are the best people for the roles,” she said, adding: “America is an incredibly diverse country, and so we want to represent every part of this country on our stage.”They had also questioned, she said, singers’ fees: “They have said: ‘Could we consider less expensive artists?’ We’re a feeding ground for bigger companies in this country. So we’re already hiring people who are on the rise and whose fees will get a lot more expensive later.”Grenell had, said Zambello, issued an edict requiring all shows to be “net neutral”, that is, with costs fully covered by box-office returns and donor contributions. But, she said, “We’re at the point where now we can’t present a net-neutral budget without an epic amount of outside funding, or knowing that our patrons would come back.”The slump in ticket sales was reflected across the board at the center, including for its concert seasons and theater, according to an analysis published by the Washington Post last week, which showed the box office down by 40% compared with a 2018 baseline.According to Zambello, box-office figures have now ceased to be internally circulated among the center’s creative teams as part of the standard system of daily show reports.The president declared his intention to become chair of the institution on 7 February, firing its bipartisan board of trustees. He replaced them with those of his own choosing; they elected him unanimously to the position days later. The president of the center was removed and replaced with Grenell.The moves were widely condemned. Weeks later, when JD Vance and the second lady, Usha Vance, who was inserted on to the Kennedy Center board by Trump, attended a concert given by the National Symphony Orchestra in March, patrons booed them.Usha Vance was already a trustee of the WNO, which has an independent board and its own endowment. “She was a supportive board member when she was a senator’s wife, and she has been a supportive board member as second lady, and we are grateful to have her patronage,” said Zambello.“I believe that she is someone who is an equalizer,” she said. “We can’t turn our backs on half this country. We have to find a way to all communicate and function together. I don’t believe in ‘us’ and ‘them’.”Artists have by and large remained loyal to WNO, Zambello says. However, in March, the creative team behind the opera Fellow Travelers, a love story set amid Eisenhower’s purge of gay employees from federal jobs in the 1950s, withdrew their work from the programme.The show was replaced by a production of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s allegory on the anti-communist witch-hunts of McCarthyism.WNO is an independent company, but it has an affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center, meaning that it agrees to produce a certain number of shows in the building; shares back office functions such as marketing and development; and receives a subsidy from the center of about $2m-$3m per year.The affiliation agreement was made in 2011, soon before Zambello became artistic director, in order to stabilise the finances of the company. It was renewed shortly before Trump declared himself chair of the Kennedy Center.WNO is understood to be looking at alternative venues in DC for its forthcoming season, which runs from October 2026 to May the following year. Theaters of the scale required to produce main-stage opera are scarce, though auditoriums used by the city’s Shakespeare Theater Company could potentially be taken from time to time for smaller-scale works.The Kennedy Center declined to comment. More

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      Students and faculty at over 100 US universities protest against Trump’s attacks

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      Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students’ and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.The day of action was organized under the banner of Students Rise Up, a network of students including both local groups and national organizations such as Sunrise Movement and Campus Climate Network. Students were joined by faculty and educational workers’ unions like the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United.Protesters called on university administrators and elected officials to denounce the president’s months-long effort to force US universities to abide by its ideological priorities and urged them to reject Trump’s “compact”, which would give universities preferential access to federal funding in exchange for a commitment to advance the administration’s conservative agenda. Only one university, New College of Florida – a public school that state legislators have turned into a bastion of conservatism – has so far accepted it.“Universities should be a place of learning, not propaganda machines,” Alicia Colomer, managing director at Campus Climate Network, said ahead of the protests. “That’s why students, workers and alumni around the country are taking action.”As the day unfolded, hundreds of students across the country walked out of classes, unfurled banners and rallied on campuses, often joined by faculty and other staff. In addition to denouncing the compact, they called for a more affordable education and for the protection of all students – from transgender to international ones.At the University of Kansas, about 70 students demanded administrations divest from weapons manufacturers and Israel, refuse to collaborate with ICE, safeguard gender-affirming housing and meet faculty’s demands for fair contracts. At Duke University, in North Carolina, professors held signs demanding the university stand with immigrants, pay its workers a $25 hourly wage, and protect trans and international students. At Brown University in Rhode Island – one of the first institutions to reach a settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year – passersby were invited to endorse a banner listing a series of demands by dipping their hands in paint and leaving their print, while a group of faculty members nearby lectured about the history of autocracy.View image in fullscreen“Trump came to our community thinking we could be bullied out of our freedom,” said Simon Aron, a sophomore and co-president of Brown Rise Up. “He was wrong.”In New York City, students and faculty from multiple campuses gathered by the midtown headquarters of the investment firm Apollo Global Management to protest against its CEO, Marc Rowan, a billionaire Trump donor and key architect of the compact whom they say “has no business making policy for higher education”.They cited Rowan’s involvement with the online University of Phoenix, which they described as “the largest single producer of student debt in the country” and his role in paving the way for the ongoing abuse of civil rights legislation to target universities over students and faculty’s criticism of Israel.A spokesperson for Apollo did not respond to a request for comment but the firm reportedly instructed staff to stay home on Friday in anticipation of the protest. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Rowan defended the compact, writing that American higher education was “broken” and that “course correction must come from the outside”.Amy Offner, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that the campaign against Rowan is part of a broader effort to protect US higher education from the influence of ultra-wealthy individuals. “Billionaires should not control what can be taught and studied in the United States,” she said.The protests marked the first time that students, faculty and staff have staged such a large-scale response. “There is only one way forward in saving higher education and democracy writ large and that is students, faculty, staff united,” Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, said on a call with protest organizers last week. “We have to become a new political force.” 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