Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares35 Views

      in US Politics

      How Nancy Pelosi became the Democrat Trump hated most

      by

      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

    • 200 Shares23 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 163 Shares56 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 200 Shares36 Views

      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani’s biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it’s the Democratic old guard | Emma Brockes

      by

      The morning after Zohran Mamdani’s startling mayoral victory in New York, the most arresting visual image was not of the mayor-elect celebrating in an applause-filled room, but the breakdown of voting patterns across the city. Street by street, practically building by building, you could index New Yorkers’ support for Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo to the probable amount of rent they were paying. A middle-income precinct on the Upper West Side, for example, showed up as a small island of Mamdani voters in a sea of Cuomo-voting wealthier neighbourhoods. Solid lower-income support for Mamdani in modest midtown gave way to the incredible banking wealth of Tribeca and its majority support of Cuomo.Allowing for large anomalies – Staten Island, a middle- to lower-income part of the city, voted heavily for Cuomo, as did lower-income Hassidic neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens – the message of the huge turnout for Mamdani in the US’s most expensive city seemed to be one of affordability; even of a referendum on capitalism as we know it. And so the most pressing question became: was it a crank result from an unrepresentative city, or the beginning of a new political wave?The night’s countrywide election patterns indicated a swing away from Donald Trump to the Democrats, which, of course, doesn’t mean that Mamdani’s Democratic socialism is anything the US at large will be willing to buy. Still, the move to the left was sharp enough to return Democrats to some traditionally very Republican areas, including two Democrats voted on to a public service commission in Georgia; the first Democratic female governor voted into office in New Jersey; and a new Democratic governor elected in Virginia. In New York City itself, the swing away from Trump, a mere 12 months after his support surged during the 2024 presidential election, was significant. His endorsement of Cuomo, running as an independent, made no apparent difference whatsoever.It should be said that Cuomo was a terrible candidate, trailing sexual misconduct allegations – all of which he denies – and a record as New York’s governor that foundered horribly during the pandemic. It should also be pointed out that Mamdani didn’t simply beat Cuomo; he galvanised New Yorkers into the highest mayoral election turnout since the 1960s, indicating an electorate voting for him rather than against his opponent.How, then, does the 34-year-old look as a potential leader beyond the very particular ecosystem of New York City, where, at times, it is possible to believe that a tub of margarine promising lower rents, higher minimum wage and fairer taxes might win out over a traditional political adversary? On this question, aspects of Mamdani’s identity – exploited by Cuomo and Trump to racist effect – might actually run in his favour. Mamdani’s age and eloquence obviously flatter him in relation to Trump, but it’s his background that stands out as a decisive advantage.In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mamdani promised working-class New Yorkers: “We will fight for you, because we are you.” This is a great piece of rhetoric, but let’s be honest: Mamdani has the social and cultural capital of someone who grew up in an affluent family in a wealthy part of Manhattan, with one parent who went to Harvard and became a successful film-maker and the other who is a professor at Columbia. And while the mayor-elect went to an academically selective state high school in the city, he attended a private liberal arts college in Maine that now charges $91,000 a year in tuition and living costs.I don’t mention any of this to be snide. Mamdani sells a political message further to the left than any successful American politician has dared to in recent memory, but he doesn’t sound like an outsider. In fact, he sounds as smooth and polished and – can we say it – arrogant as any mainstream political contender.He has neither Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s scrappy, up-from-her-bootstraps energy, nor can he be played for laughs on Saturday Night Live like Bernie Sanders – who, during the 2016 election cycle, Larry David mercilessly if affectionately skewered as a hopeless crank. Even Trump’s characterisation of Mamdani as a communist – the kind of absurd, inflationary claim the president is accustomed to throwing out and having his supporters swallow whole – withers under the slightest scrutiny.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, none of his campaign promises justify use of the word “radical” in the scaremongering sense. Mamdani’s push for a $30 minimum wage sounds like standard political aspiration. He has promised to make buses in New York free – as they were during Covid without the city falling to communism. (On which subject: when the Staten Island ferry went from fare-charging to free in 1997, New York’s commuters didn’t receive it as a communist gesture.) And his promise to increase taxes on those earning more than $1m a year is substantially more generous to affluent earners than anything Rachel Reeves – also not a communist! – is threatening in the forthcoming budget.The election results this week suggest Mamdani as an effective, inspiring force against the corruptions of Trump. But while you can imagine him, years in the future, going toe to toe with JD Vance in a televised presidential debate, his real enemies may be closer to home. To advance beyond New York politics, it’s not just the Republicans he’ll have to beat, but the Chuck Schumer- and Nancy Pelosi-era gatekeepers of the Democratic old guard – who I suspect may find him even more threatening and obnoxious than Trump.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

    • 163 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s supreme court strategy is to redefine ‘tariffs’. Will the justices buy it?

      by

      Donald Trump faced arguably the biggest test so far of his contentious use of executive power at the US supreme court on Wednesday. The stakes could not be higher – “literally, LIFE OR DEATH” for the US, at least according to the president.Trump’s signature, globe-rattling economic policy, his sweeping tariffs regime, was in the dock – specifically, the legal mechanism his administration has used to enforce it. And the man dispatched to defend the White House put forward a somewhat puzzling argument.“These are regulatory tariffs,” D John Sauer, US solicitor general, assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”It was a curious, and more than a little confusing, explanation – tariffs on goods from overseas might raise revenue, but are not revenue-raising – designed to counter rulings by lower courts that set the stage for this test before the highest court in the land.A federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled in August that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of his tariffs, did not grant “the power to tax” to the president.Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. Trump bypassed Congress – lawfully, his aides insist – to drive through a policy estimated to equate to the largest tax hike since 1993.Thus, on Wednesday morning, the administration appeared to argue before the supreme court that these tariffs – taxes paid by myriad US companies on imported products – were not really taxes at all.Critics are not having it. “Anybody can look up in the dictionary,” Maria Cantwell, Democratic senator from Washington, told the Guardian. “Tariffs are an import tax, plain and simple. I would assume the administration understands that.”“I actually am surprised that it was so lacking,” Cantwell added, of the administration’s case.The court did not appear persuaded, either. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “But that’s exactly what they are.”Some conservatives on the bench also sounded skeptical. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice John Roberts.The administration’s argument that the fact tariffs raise money is “only incidental” might be more persuasive if the president spent less time boasting about the amount of money they raised. “My tariffs are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump declared in a speech hours after the hearing.The president has argued – in typically binary terms – that the fate of his flagship economic strategy is aligned with that of the nation. But there are many business owners in the US, grappling with the abrupt imposition of steep tariffs, who believe the fate of their companies has been jeopardized by this regime.While official statistics (at least, those published before the government shutdown) have shown persisting inflation and a stalling jobs market, Trump continues to erroneously claim his agenda is producing stellar results. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” he wrote on social media during Wednesday’s hearing.It is ultimately down to voters, as some did on Tuesday, to deliver their verdict on Trump’s agenda. For now, a handful of small firms, together with a dozen states, have joined forces to challenge the way in which he has rammed it through.“We think that this case is really about executive overreach,” said Stephen Woldenberg, senior vice-president of sales at Learning Resources, a toy company based near Chicago that sued the administration to invalidate Trump’s tariffs as exceeding his authority.At the heart of this case is really a “broader issue”, according to Woldenberg, of who sets taxes – and how – across the US. “We weren’t really willing to let politicians, and really a single politician, decide our fate,” he said.That fate is now in the hands of a court Trump has shaped. The justices have pledged to fast-track their decision. On Wednesday, at least, most sounded unpersuaded by the administration’s defense. More

    • 138 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: supreme court examines president’s global tariffs

      by

      The conservative majority of United States supreme court justices has been widely criticized for granting Donald Trump an increasing amount of leeway to wield his presidential power. On Wednesday, the court questioned one avenue of the president’s authority: his ability to impose sweeping global tariffs.Justices heard oral arguments on the legality of the tariffs, with conservative justices expressing skepticism of the strength of the Trump administration’s position.“The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.The arguments center on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, a 1977 law which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency. Trump cited the law as he slapped steep duties on imports into the US.About 40 legal briefs have been filed in opposition to the tariffs, including from the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby group in the US.US supreme court justices express skepticism over legality of Trump tariffsThe Trump administration faced tough questions at the US supreme court over the legality of its sweeping global tariff regime, as justices expressed skepticism over the law it used to slap steep duties on almost every US trading partner.Should the supreme court ultimately rule against Trump’s tariffs it will force the White House to go back to the drawing board and reconsider how to enforce an aggressive economic policy which has strained global trade ties.Read the full storyUS to cut airline traffic by 10% due to shutdown, Trump transport chief saysTransportation secretary Sean Duffy, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 locations beginning on Friday if the record-breaking government shutdown does not end by then.The reductions are aimed at reducing the stress on air traffic controllers, who have been working throughout the shutdown without pay.Read the full storyTrump goes on posting frenzy a day after Democrats win key electionsDonald Trump appeared to be sharing everything on his mind all at once on Wednesday as he posted more than 30 Truth Social posts in less than two hours.Trump’s posts ranged in subject matter and included recommendations to his followers to buy books written by several of his supporters and allies. Other posts included videos of Trump appearing to read nearly verbatim from his own previously posted Truth Social text posts. They appeared to be artificially generated, but the Guardian could not independently confirm.Read the full storyDemocrats celebrate while Republicans stew over Mamdani’s winLeft-leaning Americans awoke to a rare recent moment of political celebration with Democratic victories in several elections across the country, led by the election of Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York, while Republicans breathlessly hailed the end of the country. Many Republicans’ immediate reaction was to attribute Mamdani’s win to an electorate overrepresented by immigrants, snidely implying they were not “real” Americans.Read the full storyRepublicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measureThe suit, filed by David Tangipa, a Republican assembly member, 18 California voters and the state Republican party in the US district court for the central district of California, argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A new sign was spotted adorning the White House this week, prompting backlash from lawmakers who have noted that Donald Trump is quite literally gilding the White House during a government shutdown.

      Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show is stepping up to help during the US federal government shutdown by opening a new center for food donations.

      Democrats set historic records on election night. Here are six of the firsts they accomplished.

      Trump voters for Mamdani and a new left coalition: political analyst Michael Lange discusses the New York City election’s trends and surprises.

      Trump ally and Fifa president Gianni Infantino announced the creation of a peace prize, which it plans to award at the draw for the World Cup on 5 December in Washington.

      A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director James Comey to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

      Hopes of a composed and level-headed rightwing reaction to the Democrats’ across-the-board electoral success were unceremoniously dashed as leading Maga figures spewed unrestrained vitriol at their victorious opponents.

      Which of our warnings came true in the first year after Trump’s second election?From military-level force in cities to tens of thousands of federal workers fired by the Trump administration, effects have been felt at every level.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 November 2025. More

    • 200 Shares36 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump voters for Mamdani and a new left coalition: the biggest surprises from New York’s election

      by

      Two days before the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange made a big electoral prediction – not just of who would win overall, or in each borough or neighborhood, but block by block. Lange, a political analyst born and raised in New York City, has spent over a decade in progressive politics and has become something of a local celebrity this year for his deep dives into city data and polling.He published his highly detailed prediction map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani would win although failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s strong performance – on his Substack, the Narrative War. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, stretching from Park Slope to Bushwick to Astoria, where he predicted (accurately) that Mamdani would win by huge margins, and the “capitalist corridor” on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the New York Times” in readership and most voters leaned toward Cuomo, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.I spoke with Lange on Wednesday morning to discuss the trends and surprises that emerged on election night.You’ve had a very busy election season. I could see you on Hell Gate’s election live stream last night, with your laptop strapped to you like a busking DJ in Washington Square Park. How was your night?I had to do that because they were dropping around 200,000 ballots into the system every few minutes! I was actually a little nervous at the beginning: Mamdani led the early vote by 12 points, but there were two big batches of ballots that came in after that and his lead went from 12 to 8%. I was worried.You know, there was a world in which yesterday went kind of poorly for Mamdani, where Cuomo was going to end up basically doubling his votes from the Democratic primary. But Mamdani added 500,000 votes to his primary coalition, and that’s a huge reason why he won. He went out and massively expanded his base from the primary.Where did Mamdani get those extra votes from?He built the coalition that the left always wanted to build: it’s multiracial, it’s young, it’s renters and it’s people squeezed by affordability. He improved considerably with Black and Hispanic voters, working- and middle-class voters, compared to the primary. Plus he further maximized his base of liberal progressives, young leftists, and Muslims and south Asians. He couldn’t have won without making those significant inroads.There were also some Trump/Mamdani voters – is that a big trend?It’s definitely a real thing, confined to working-class Latinos, south Asians and Muslims. Voters in immigrant strongholds that went for Trump last year went for Zohran this year. But I wouldn’t say he was winning over white working-class voters and Maga voters.One of the big stories of the night was the sky-high turnout. Who did that help?Both sides. Turnout was significantly higher than I had expected. I thought we might go over 2 million, but it’s closer to 2.3 million – that is a lot of darn voters. There was a decent anti-Mamdani block, who were motivated, but the Mamdani base was also motivated, and that was enough to win.You predicted he’d get over 50% of the vote. Is he on course for that?Right now you would say he’s favored to get over 50%. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still, like, probably 200,000 votes left to report [as of Wednesday morning]. So I don’t think it’s definitive, but I think it’s likely, and I hope he does because then no one can say Sliwa was a spoiler.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, is the other big story of the night. His vote completely collapsed.He didn’t win a single precinct in any borough. Not even Tottenville in Staten Island, which is like an 88% Trump neighborhood. That really surprised me. Cuomo kept very white areas, very wealthy areas and very religiously Jewish areas, and then added all of these Republicans on Staten Island who had a strong turnout. I think there was a lot of tactical voting by the Republicans. They were doing it before Trump tweeted his support for Cuomo, but that definitely helped. It could have even turned the tide if Mamdani’s coalition hadn’t grown.View image in fullscreenWhat about your much mentioned “commie corridor” – was support for Mamdani overwhelming in those parts of Brooklyn and Queens?I think there was a little dilution of the commie corridor in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have more older white ethnic folks. In Astoria, for example, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for Cuomo. So there was a little resistance. But no, mostly the commie corridor is another huge reason why Zohran won – he was polling between 77% and 83% in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bushwick.In the lead-up to the election we reported on whether Mamdani was making inroads with Jewish New Yorkers. Is there any suggestion that he did?There are neighborhoods with a lot of secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – like Park Slope and Morningside Heights – where he did well. But in the wealthy Jewish communities like the Upper East Side, his position on Israel definitely mattered there. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas like Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale in the Bronx – they all leaned Cuomo. And also, you have Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in southern Brooklyn, they were pretty staunchly Cuomo. So I don’t know if there were crazy narrative-busters on this one, but Mamdani did hold more progressive Jewish neighborhoods and even parts of the Upper West Side [which has more reform and conservative Jews] by big margins.Has Mamdani rewritten what New York means politically? Will the commie corridor become a launch pad for leftwing candidates?Yes, it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest political leaders from the left come from a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I’m sure that we’ll see more of that – people will come from these neighborhoods to be elevated nationally.But I think that every city in America can have their own commie corridor. Urban places are the epicenters of leftwing power in America – because they’re young, people rent and they are places where people are crushed by the inequalities we face. More

    • 163 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      What does Prop 50’s passage mean for California, Gavin Newsom and the US?

      by

      Californians overwhelmingly backed Proposition 50, the crucial redistricting measure that Democrats have said is essential to safeguarding democracy and pushing back against the Trump administration.“We stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness, and tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result,” Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday after the ballot measure passed.The effort was a direct attempt to counteract Texas’s partisan gerrymander, undertaken at Trump’s behest, to create several new safely Republican districts. Under Prop 50, California will halt the work of its independent redistricting commission until after 2030 and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic seats.The new map is expected to oust longtime Republican officials, and have significant effects on the 2026 midterms.How did the state vote?As of Wednesday morning, results showed that some 63.8% of voters approved the proposition with just 36.2% voting against the measure in what the Associated Press described as a “swift and decisive victory”. More than 8 million people voted in Tuesday’s election and the measure won the majority of votes along much of the coast and in southern California. It was largely unpopular in the northern and inland regions that will be most affected by redistricting.Who is at risk of losing their seat?These Republicans are at risk under California’s new congressional map: Darrell Issa, whose district covers east San Diego county; Doug LaMalfa, who has represented a large swath of rural northern California for more than a decade; Ken Calvert, a Riverside county representative who has served in the US House since 1993; David Valadao, who represents the southern San Joaquin valley; and Kevin Kiley, the representative for much of eastern California. Kiley introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide, but his proposal did not advance.After the measure passed, Republicans in California sued over Prop 50, and asked the court to block the new maps from taking effect. An attorney representing the plaintiffs – which include Republican state lawmaker David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the state’s Republican party – said that Democrats drew congressional boundaries to increase the voting power of Latinos. The new congressional districts will leave racial representation almost unchanged, according to an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.How will Prop 50’s passage affect the midterms?The measure is expected to have a major effect on the outcome of the 2026 midterms. Past elections have shown that the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats argued Prop 50 will help ensure Republicans do not retain full control of the federal government.“The passage of this new map – which is designed to protect a slew of vulnerable Democrats and will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 – is the most consequential development to date in the mid-decade redistricting wars due to the sheer number of seats that it impacts,” Erin Covey, with the Cook Political Report, said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The outcome of these races in California could ultimately determine which party wins control of the House next November.”What does this mean for Gavin Newsom?The decisive victory of Prop 50 is a major win for the proposal’s biggest champion, Gavin Newsom. The California governor has been one of Trump’s most high-profile opponents and helped rally massive support for the proposal. Newsom is widely expected to seek the White House in 2028 and the win has further raised his profile nationally and elevated his status as a Democratic leader.Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who leads the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian this week that Newsom had gambled on Prop 50 and it appeared it would pay off.“But more than that is the fact that he fought back – that he dared to do this, that people said it was dangerous for him, and he forged ahead with it anyway.” More