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      Democrats should celebrate this week’s victories, but beware: Trump is already plotting his revenge | Jonathan Freedland

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      After the joy, the trepidation. Or at least the preparation. Democrats, along with many others around the world, cheered this week’s wins in a clutch of off-year elections that saw Donald Trump’s Republicans defeated from sea to shining sea. But now they need to brace themselves for the reaction. Because Donald Trump does not like losing. And he will do everything he can to ensure it does not happen again – by means fair and, more often, foul. Indeed, that effort is already under way.For now, the Democrats are still clinking glasses, enjoying a success that tastes all the sweeter for coming exactly a year after they lost everything – the House, the Senate and the White House – to a returning and triumphant Trump. The most dramatic win was Zohran Mamdani’s history-making victory in America’s most populous city, New York, but there was success too at the other end of the continent, as voters in California backed Democrats on an apparently technical measure that could prove hugely significant. In between, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia by healthy, double-digit margins.All this has displeased Trump, but it is the election of Mamdani in Trump’s home city that brought the swiftest response. The forces of Maga have wasted no time in making the man Trump calls a “100% communist lunatic” the face of the Democratic party. The New York Post went early, with a front page showing the new mayor clutching a hammer and sickle, next to the headline “The Red Apple”, with the R reversed to looks suspiciously Soviet. Fox Business also broke out the Bolshevik graphics for a segment on the global threat posed by socialism, featuring international testimony on the failures that ensue when profit is not paramount – including reports on Britain’s own “broken” National Health Service.The Republican goal is clear enough: to ensure that next year’s nationwide midterm elections – where control of the House of Representatives is on the line – can be fought against a Democratic party recast as Mamdani Marxists. Right now, Democrats are confident they can see off that danger, uniting behind a common message of “affordability”, even as they tailor it to different audiences in different places – much as they did this week, with the victors in Virginia and New Jersey pressing the same cost of living themes as Mamdani but in moderate, suburban colours. That approach could work next year, when the battle for the House amounts to 435 separate elections. Come the presidential election of 2028, however, when Democrats will have to forge a single, national message behind a single, national candidate who can appeal to both cities and suburbs, it will be harder.View image in fullscreenStill, that is the kind of challenge politicians are used to tackling. A darker menace looms, and not only in Trump’s heavy hints that he could cut off federal funding to New York. Recall that the president has already broken all precedent by sending US troops into Washington DC and Los Angeles and by attempting to do so in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, supposedly to crack down on rampant crime but, in fact, to assert control over politically disobedient centres of power. No wonder many New York observers suspect it is only a matter of time before Trump dispatches the National Guard to Brooklyn and the Bronx, now that Gotham is in the hands of a sworn foe. Trump always wanted to conquer New York City; now he might just do it.Such a move would be of a piece with the series of actions Trump seems set to take – or is already taking – to ensure the elections of November 2026 are not allowed to go the way they did this week. Put simply, next year’s contests matter too much for him to let that happen. As of now, Trump has total control of all three branches of the US government: the White House, obviously, but also the supreme court and both houses of Congress, thanks to pliant judges in the former and Republican majorities in the latter. The Senate is unlikely to shift, but given the currently tiny Republican majority in the lower chamber, and the usual midterm swing against an incumbent party, every conventional sign would point to a Democratic takeover of the House in 12 months. If that happens, the rubber stamp will be replaced by a genuine check on the president’s power, one that – especially worrying for him – would have the authority to investigate and hold to account both Trump and those who serve him.He is determined to avert that outcome. That’s why he leaned on Republicans in Texas, demanding they redraw congressional boundaries to eke out five more safe Republican seats. It was to offset that earlier Texas move that California Democrats asked voters this week for the power to do some redistricting of their own, to give their party up to an extra five Democratic seats in the House. Californians said yes, even those who fear this tit-for-tat gerrymandering represents a race to the bottom that can only weaken US democracy.But Trump is not done. He has pushed Republicans in North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana to follow Texas’s lead, hoping to squeeze out enough extra seats so that his party keeps the House even if voters desert them next November. Others are bracing for a supreme court decision that could weaken a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, one that currently permits state legislatures to consider race when deciding congressional boundaries. That measure has allowed for the crafting of districts that ensure that voters from minorities see their favoured candidates elected. If the court outlaws that practice, Republican-controlled state legislatures could move to eliminate those districts altogether, depriving Democrats of around a dozen seats in the south.Those are only the most visible threats. In an essay in The Atlantic, David A Graham charts the myriad ways in which Trump and his allies are already working to subvert the midterm elections. Some of it is old-fashioned voter suppression – making the casting of a ballot harder by, say, reducing the availability of early and postal voting or demanding specific forms of ID – while some of it is intimidation.In the elections just gone, the Trump-controlled department of justice sent “monitors” to watch over polling places in Democratic-leaning areas. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are snatching even US citizens off the streets, you can see how the presence of Trump-loyal “monitors” might have a chilling effect, persuading some voters that they’d be safer staying home. The presence of troops in battle fatigues on the streets, which a year from now will come to seem normal in several US cities, will have the same effect – only more so.All of this comes as Trump has gutted the agency charged with keeping elections secure, slashed funding for the protection of voting from cyber-attack and looked on as many diligent election officials, including traditional Republicans, have been driven out of office and replaced by Maga activists.Even if the 2026 elections go ahead unhindered, the danger does not end there. Graham warns that Trump could declare a state of emergency, seizing voting machines before a tally is made official. A defeated Republican House speaker could refuse to seat victorious Democrats (as, in fact, Speaker Mike Johnson is already doing). And, through it all, there would be loud voices on Fox News, on social media and perhaps even on some of the mainstream networks that have recently bent the knee to Trump, defending if not applauding his every move.This week’s results suggest that, if it’s a fair fight, Democrats can win a year from now, finally putting a brake on Trump’s march towards autocracy. But that’s a big if – and with each passing day, it’s only getting bigger.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

      Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      Trump is threatening the basic needs of poor Americans. How low he has sunk | Robert Reich

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      The Democrats had a great day on Tuesday. It’s crucial that they hone their economic message for next year’s midterms to focus on affordability and fairness.Trump is doing the opposite. Although a federal court ordered him to continue to provide food stamps to about 42 million low-income Americans who depend on them, Trump threatened to deny them anyway until the end of the government shutdown.In a post on social media on Tuesday, he said benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), commonly referred to as food stamps, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up the government, which they can easily do, and not before!” The White House later confirmed it would comply with a court order to use emergency funds to support Snap – but the administration said users would receive only half of what they typically do. On Thursday, the saga continued, with a court ordering the administration to fully fund Snap benefits in November; the administration moved to appeal.How low Trump has sunk.Eighty-eight years ago, in his second inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told America that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”It was not a test of the nation’s military might or of the size of the national economy. It was a test of our moral authority. We had a duty to comfort the afflicted, even if that required afflicting the comfortable.The Trump regime has adopted the reverse metric. The test of its progress is whether it adds to the abundance of those who have much and provides less for those who have too little. It is passing this test with flying colors.What is the Democrats’ demand amid the shutdown? That lower-income Americans continue to receive subsidized healthcare. Otherwise, healthcare premiums for millions of lower-income Americans will soar next year in large part because the Trump Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act (really, Big Ugly Bill) slashed Obamacare subsidies.Republicans had rammed the Big Ugly Bill through Congress without giving Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster it because Republicans used a process called “reconciliation”, requiring only a majority vote of the Senate.The Big Ugly Bill also requires Medicaid applicants and enrollees – also low-income – to document at least 80 hours of work per monthMany people dependent on Medicaid won’t be able to do this, either because they’re not physically able to work or won’t be able to do the required paperwork to qualify for an exemption from the work requirement.The Congressional Budget Office, as assessed by KFF, estimates the work requirement will be the largest source of Medicaid savings, reducing federal spending on the low-income Americans by $326bn over 10 years and causing millions to become uninsured.All told, the Big Ugly Bill cuts roughly $1tn over the next decade from programs for which the main beneficiaries are the poor and working class, and gives about $1tn in tax benefits to the richest members of our society.It is the most dramatic reversal of FDR’s moral test in American history.By the time of FDR’s second inaugural address in 1937, most of the country was still ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Yet we were all in it together. The fortunes of the robber barons of the Gilded Age had mostly been leveled by the Great Crash of 1929.Perhaps it was easier under those circumstances to accept the idea that the test of our progress wasn’t whether we added more to the abundance of those who had much but provided enough for those who had too little.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, though, the moneyed interests lord it over America – exerting so much economic and political power that the nation is badly failing FDR’s test.Last weekend, just as millions of low-income Americans were losing their food stamps, Trump threw a lush Great Gatsby-themed party at his Mar-a-Lago estate, replete with 1920s flappers and Gatsby-inspired music from the roaring 20s.Some critics have called it “tone deaf”, but it was an accurate rendition of the tone Trump has set for America.Trump is throwing a huge party for America’s wealthy – giving them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks to ensure that their wealth (and support for him) continues to grow.Meanwhile, he is throwing to poor and working-class Americans the red meat of hatefulness – hate of immigrants, people of color, the “deep state”, “socialists”, “communists”, transgender people and Democrats.This is the formula strongmen have used for a century – more wealth for the wealthy, more bigotry for the working-class and poor – until the entire facade crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy.On Tuesday, millions of American voters refused to go along with this unfairness. They repudiated, loudly and clearly, the formula Trump and his regime have used.It is the responsibility of all of us to return the nation to a path that is morally sustainable.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now More

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      Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

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      It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).“There’s just a massive cognitive dissonance between what real people are going through, and the elite,” said Larry Hannan, communications and policy director of State Voices Florida, a coalition of more than a hundred non-partisan, pro-democracy and civic engagement groups.“Jeff Bezos does not need a $50 food card. But we saw that with the Great Gatsby theme party last week. They just can’t seem to stop doing things that are shockingly out of touch.“We’ve been through shutdowns before, and while obviously the White House bubble is always somewhat insane, presidents are usually smart enough, they usually know not to flaunt this type of stuff. But this administration does not seem to care.”The president’s hour-long address on Thursday had the flavor of a political rally, with familiar insults for old political foes such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and a new one: Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York.View image in fullscreenTrump touched on his economic agenda, and lauded a host of speakers from the worlds of politics, sport and business that filled the two-day agenda, created largely by Francis Suarez, mayor of the city of Miami, to showcase south Florida and its investment opportunities.Lionel Messi, the Argentina soccer star and World Cup winner, provided celebrity glitz from sporting circles, along with tennis champions Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. A conversation between Suarez and María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist who last month won the Nobel peace prize that Trump coveted, was well received on day one.Yet overall it was a curious and unmistakably politically charged event with a field of Trump sycophants on the stage, loudly cheered by a crowd of mostly younger and affluent supporters of the president in the audience, some blending business suits with his trademark red Make America Great Again (Maga) caps.How else to explain the presence of Javier Milei, the rightwing president of Argentina, the country whose shaky economy Trump helped shore up last month with a $20bn currency swap lifeline? Or that of Saudi Arabians Fahad AlSaif, head of its $925bn Public Investment Fund, and Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Riyadh’s ambassador to the US, touting their country as ripe for investment while the Trump family’s financial ties and influence there come under greater scrutiny?Then there was Gianni Infantino, head of Fifa, international soccer’s governing body, dropping hints that Trump is in line for the organization’s first peace prize, an unwanted new award that observers see created specially for the president as consolation for his Nobel snub.Other speakers, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan; Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork and Flow; and Griffin, the hedge-fund manager and Republican donor; have all previously praised, worked with or voted for Trump, offering more than a suggestion of a politically skewed lineup.Suarez, unsurprisingly, saw it differently.“We wanted it to be a sort of a cross-section from different verticals, right?” he told the Guardian.“We got in a room. We said, ‘Hey, what are the leading voices?’ People from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders … sports, business, politics, technology, things that touch everyone’s lives.”He pointed to discussions of upcoming, money-spinning notable events in Miami, including the Formula One grand prix, next year’s G20 economic summit at Trump’s Doral golf resort, and games during the 2026 World Cup, which he called “a generational opportunity”.“Our hope is that Miamians are transformed by the experience,” Suarez said. “We want them to leave thinking, ‘I can be on that stage.’”View image in fullscreenThe advocates of State Voices Florida, however, believe many Miamians are more focused right now on other issues, especially soaring housing and food costs. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis rejected a call from Hannan’s group and others to declare an emergency over Snap benefits and tap state reserves to fund urgent food distribution.“Any civics teacher would tell you it’s his job to look after the people of Florida, and he’s doing the exact opposite,” Hannan said, noting the juxtaposition of a conference of billionaires taking place in the same county in which almost 25% of households rely on Snap benefits to survive.“There just seems to be this detachment at the top. I don’t think the answer is electing a Democrat or electing a Republican, I just think we have to have more empathy for people who are struggling in this state.”Empathy was in short supply in Miami from Trump, a president not known for ever taking responsibility during a crisis.“The radical left Democrats are causing millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to go without benefits,” he said, blaming the out-of-office opposition party for the government shutdown.“I just want to have a country that’s great again. Is that OK?” More

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      Trump news at a glance: administration reduces US flights as shutdown stretches on

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      As the record-breaking federal government shutdown stretches toward day 38, US airspace is about to get a little less busy. The same cannot be said for US airports.Donald Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said flights are being reduced to maintain air traffic control safety during the federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution between Republicans and Democrats to end the federal budget standoff.Airline regulators identified “high-volume markets” where the FAA says air traffic must be reduced by 4% by 6am ET on Friday, a move that would force airlines to cancel thousands of flights and create a cascade of scheduling issues and delays at some of the nation’s largest airports.Trump’s transportation chief, Sean Duffy, wrote on X Thursday that the decision was “not about politics” but rather “about assessing the data and alleviating building risk in the system as controllers continue working without pay”.“It’s safe to fly today, tomorrow, and the day after because of the proactive actions we are taking,” Duffy added.US airlines cancel flights after federal directive to cut air trafficExperts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.The affected airports covering more than two dozen states include the busiest ones across the US – including Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. In some of the biggest cities – such as New York, Houston and Chicago – multiple airports will be be affected.All three airports serving the Washington DC area – Washington Dulles international, Baltimore/Washington international and Ronald Reagan Washington national – will be affected, inevitably causing delays and cancellations for lawmakers as well as other travelers.Read the full storyUS supreme court allows Trump to block passport sex markers for trans and non-binary peopleThe supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out.The court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the decision a “pointless but painful perversion”.Read the full storyUS judge orders Trump administration to fully fund Snap benefits in NovemberThe ruling by US district judge John J McConnell Jr on Thursday was in response to a challenge from cities and non-profits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit. The government said it will rely on $4.65bn on emergency funding.“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund Snap,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individual who rely on those benefits would suffer.”Read the full storyWorkers decry Trump officials as ‘out of control’ as longest shutdown drags onAs the US federal shutdown enters its second month, government workers are accusing the Trump administration of being “out of control” and bullying people who are “simply trying to do their best”.About 700,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay, and about 700,000 additional federal workers have been working without pay through the shutdown.Affected workers say the shutdown has been a continuation of attacks they have experienced under the Trump administration, from mass firings – many of which have been overturned or blocked in federal courts – to drastic budget cuts, pushes to take early retirements or resignation buyouts and threats of withholding back pay for workers furloughed during the shutdown.Read the full storyNancy Pelosi, a force on Capitol Hill for decades, to retire from CongressThe California Democratic representative and the first woman to serve as speaker, announced on Thursday she will retire from Congress, two years after stepping down from House leadership.Even when no longer in leadership, the 85-year-old remained enormously influential among Democrats, quietly counseling her party as they navigate Trump’s second term. In 2024, she played a key role in pushing Biden to withdraw from the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Read the full storyTrump announces plan to cut cost of weight loss drugs and expand accessThe agreement will make oral versions of GLP-1s, which aren’t yet to market but are expected to be approved in the coming months, available at $150 per month for starting doses. The average price for these injectables will be about $350, which will “trend down” to $245 a month over the next two years, the Trump administration said.Trump calls the medications the “fat drug”, his term for these semaglutide or tirzepatide shots, known by their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound.Read the full storySenate blocks Democrats’ bid to check Trump power over Venezuela strikesThe 49-51 vote against passing the resolution, mostly along party lines, came a month after a previous effort to stop strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in international waters similarly failed, 48-51.The new resolution narrowed its scope to attract Republicans, but senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski remained the only two Republicans to cross party lines to support the resolution. Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, who had expressed reservations about the strikes, voted against.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Here’s the list of US airports cutting flights on Friday due to federal government shutdown.

      A former Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington DC was found not guilty of assault by a DC jury on Thursday in the latest legal rebuke of the federal intervention.

      Some Democratic legislators saw Tuesday’s big electoral wins as evidence they should hold the line and extract as much as possible from Republicans before agreeing to end the longest government shutdown in history.

      Democrats praised Nancy Pelosi as a “heroic, trailblazing” member of the US House of Representatives, an “icon” and the “greatest speaker in American history”, following her announcement that after 20 terms in Congress she plans to retire.

      Kevin Roberts, the leader of the conservative thinktank behind Project 2025, has apologized for backing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Hitler fan Nick Fuentes, but is resisting calls to resign.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 5 November 2025. More

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      How Nancy Pelosi became the Democrat Trump hated most

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

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

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

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      Zohran Mamdani is filling disillusioned Americans with hope and inspiration | Osita Nwanevu

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      The thing that should surprise us most about Zohran Mamdani’s election win is that it wasn’t a surprise. Well before the result was called on Tuesday night, weeks of reliable surveys had already suggested his victory in New York City’s mayoral race, by a nine-point margin over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, would be a foregone conclusion ⁠– an extraordinary finish for a man unknown to the vast majority of New Yorkers when he launched his run just over a year ago. The campaign that followed was one of the greatest in American history.True as it may be that both Cuomo and incumbent mayor Eric Adams were deeply flawed candidates marred by scandal, it was by no means inevitable that Mamdani would be the leading candidate against them. ⁠As recently as February, Mamdani was polling at 1% in the Democratic primary, well behind a slew of challengers with more name recognition, more experience and deeper roots in city politics. They were defeated by an ever-growing army of volunteers ⁠– 90,000 by the summer ⁠– led substantially by organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America. Early in the campaign, it was a given to many commentators that an openly leftist campaign for the mayorship of the world’s financial capital would face impossible headwinds. In Tuesday night’s victory speech, Mamdani opened with a quote from Eugene Debs. Per exit polling from CNN, nearly one in four New Yorkers who went to the polls described themselves as socialists.As contested as the definition of socialism remains, Mamdani offered up a version of it New York’s voters clearly liked. Free buses, free childcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations ⁠– the critical test now of course, as we are being reminded hourly by those who hope he fails ⁠– will be whether he can actually deliver on these things and more.Fortunately, Mamdani’s campaign has also given us some reason to suspect, beyond his bright and blazing charisma, that he might have the makings of a hard-nosed administrator. Threading the needle on policing, meetings with the business community, taking in new ideas on housing, all while retaining the support and enthusiasm of a progressive base ⁠– all of this was a preview of the balancing act Mamdani will have to do if he wants to succeed where recent progressive mayors and a long line of frustrated New York City reformers haven’t.View image in fullscreenWhatever he manages to accomplish as mayor, much of potentially national significance can be learned from his candidacy alone. Mamdani is the first New York mayoral candidate in over half a century to have earned more than a million votes. It is true that he did so in a diverse and heavily Democratic city that looks nothing like the US at large. But the very same can be said about cities such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit ⁠– among the swing-state urban areas where maximizing Democratic turnout and vote share is critical to winning both state races and the electoral college. Last year, Donald Trump made gains in all three on his way to very narrowly winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan ⁠and the presidency ⁠– thanks in large part to increases in support from working-class minorities and young men.Both are constituencies where Mamdani rapidly and remarkably built strength over the course of the year ⁠– beating Cuomo by nearly 40 points with men under 30 and by double digits in some minority neighborhoods Cuomo had initially won during the primary. One of the first pieces of media his campaign released was a video of Mamdani doing man-on-the-street videos asking young people, people of color, and immigrants why they either did or didn’t votefor Trump.The answers given ⁠– affordability, Gaza, distrust in the system – were obviously the ones the campaign wanted viewers to hear. But the video’s approach, treating voters to be won with an openness and friendly curiosity rather than hostility or pontifications from on high, was instructive. It demonstrated ⁠– performed, perhaps ⁠– a willingness to listen and learn lacking among moderate pundits and Democrats already making pronouncements that what Mamdani has been able to accomplish tells us nothing whatsoever about what Democrats elsewhere might.That attitude is reflective of the confidence and self-satisfaction that blinded New York’s politicos to the viability of Mamdani’s campaign to begin with ⁠– a disposition leading Democrats and their operatives refuse to be shaken from even now, a full decade into Trump’s ongoing exposure of the cracks in the Democratic electoral coalition. It’s often suggested that the main force ailing party leadership is gerontocracy ⁠– that Democrats such as Chuck Schumer, who refused to endorse Mamdani as the Democratic nominee, are simply too old and personally embittered to recognize talents like Mamdani, pass the torch on to them and embrace new ideas. But this isn’t even half the story. Mamdani was the only serious candidate in this race.View image in fullscreenHis most significant rivals, Cuomo and Adams, have both faced criminal investigations over their conduct in office, and Cuomo resigned in disgrace in 2021. Despite this, out of sheer timidity and careerism, Democratic leaders around the city and around the country, many of them not especially elderly, embraced the two anyway. So too did a bipartisan front of elites. “The coalition opposing Zohran Mamdani,” Jacobin’s Luke Savage writes, “has spanned the New York Post to the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It now also includes the Trump White House and Elon Musk, to say nothing of Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, real estate tycoon Ronald Lauder, and the wider constellation of plutocrats who’ve pumped more than $40m in outside money into the campaign in addition to the more than $12m spent by the Cuomo campaign directly.”Those expenditures didn’t work. And neither did identity politics ⁠– reliably the last refuge of centrists who, of course, also condemn identitarianism from progressives and the right when it suits them. Adams tried to crown Mamdani “king of the gentrifiers” a few weeks ago; less amusingly, the nonstop effort to label Mamdani a threat to Jewish New Yorkers for his stances on Gaza failed so totally that it might encourage other Democratic candidates to be more critical of Israel.Against all odds and despite increasingly desperate and despicable slights against his faith in the last weeks of the campaign, Mamdani will be mayor ⁠– which unfortunately means the attacks against him and the city he will run will only get worse in the months and years ahead. The president has openly contemplated sending troops into New York City; already, he is using the policy levers available to him to upend the city’s governance however he can. In all probability, a grand showdown is coming. We have ample reason already to look to Mamdani for inspiration. From here on out, millions of Americans, in New York and beyond, will be looking to him for leadership.

      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More