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      Trump is pushing 50-year mortgages. Talk about short-term thinking | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Would you like to buy a crumbling shack for $2m? Well then, you’re in luck, because that just about sums up the state of the housing market right now. Housing, particularly in places with a decent job market, has become increasingly unaffordable in the US. That’s partly thanks to quantitative easing during the pandemic, which supercharged housing inflation. The median American home price in January was $418,000, about a 45% increase from $289,000 five years ago, per Redfin data. Wages haven’t gone up at the same rate, and housing prices compared to income have reached an all-time high.In post-pandemic America, there are three groups of people. First, there are those who own their home outright and those who bought a house before the pandemic, then refinanced during the historically low interest rates we saw in 2020 and 2021. Many of those homeowners are now sitting on large piles of equity.Then you’ve got the people who bought their first home during the pandemic, with super-low interest rates. They’re not quite as fortunate as group one, but having a 30-year-mortgage that is under the rate of inflation (currently about 3%) means they are also in a very privileged position.Finally, you’ve got group three: people who are completely and utterly screwed. Unless you’re earning big bucks, have generous parents, or want to live in the middle of nowhere, good luck buying a first home right now. Indeed, nearly a quarter of millennials say they expect to rent forever. Prices are historically high and mortgage rates, while still far lower than they have been in the past, are about 6.3%. The difference between buying a $500,000 home with a 6.3% mortgage v a 2.5% interest rate (which some lucky people got during the pandemic) is about $900 a month. And things will only get worse; Trump’s tariffs, including a 50% tariff on steel, could raise the cost of building and renovating a home.But don’t worry. You’re not going to have to rent a $700 sleeping pod (yes, these are a thing in San Francisco) for the rest of your life. Our great president is on it. Donald Trump has a plan – or perhaps more accurately, “concepts of a plan” – to fix housing affordability: 50-year mortgages. The Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, who reportedly promoted this genius idea to Trump, called the proposal “a complete gamechanger”. You know what else is a complete gamechanger, Bill? Jumping in a pile of toxic waste.Even many of Trump’s allies are said to be aghast at the idea of a 50-year mortgage. This week, Politico reported that the White House was furious Pulte planted the idea in Trump’s head. Per Politico, “one of the two people familiar [with the situation] said there is more fallout from this idea than almost any other policy proposal of the second term, including from the MAGA base.” Another source told Politico: “During Trump 2.0, the last time anything got as much pushback as this was over the ‘Epstein Files’.”The problem with a 50-year mortgage, to be clear, is that it does nothing to solve the root issues. Yes, you’ll have a lower monthly payment since the timeline is longer, but it’ll take you longer to build equity and you’ll pay double the amount of interest as someone with a 30-year mortgage, according to one analysis. Fifty-year mortgages could also increase housing prices in the long run by encouraging people to buy more expensive homes.If you’re reading this from somewhere that isn’t the US, even the idea of a 30-year mortgage might seem odd. The US is an outlier when it comes to mortgages. In most countries you can only get a fixed rate for a few years before it adjusts according to current interest rates.President Franklin D Roosevelt helped usher in 30-year mortgages after the Great Depression, when about 50% of mortgages, which were then only fixed for a short term, were in default. The Roosevelt administration wanted to ensure this didn’t happen again in the future by helping people become homeowners via more predictable repayment plans with reduced risk. Trump, it would seem, fancies himself another Roosevelt. Over the weekend he floated his new housing idea with a Truth Social post titled “Great American Presidents”, which included the words “50-year mortgage” above a photo of himself and “30-year mortgage” over a photo of Roosevelt.Thirty-year mortgages have worked out very well for a lot of individual homeowners in the US. However, many experts believe they exacerbate inequality by creating a system of winners and losers. Lock in a low interest rate for 30 years and you are, to a large degree, insulated from many economic headwinds. If you’ve got a low interest rate, it’s also hard to give it up when rates are rising. That means people who might otherwise downsize will stay in place. Or they might rent out a house they would normally sell in order to keep their interest rate. Long-term fixed-rate loans help contribute to a frozen housing market, which helps erode housing affordability. A 50-year mortgage would make these issues even worse.It’s unclear whether the 50-year-mortgage idea will ever progress to more than just a social media post. However, the fact that we’re even discussing it says a lot about the short-term thinking that plagues modern politics. And it speaks volumes about Trump’s focus on flashy bandages rather than long-term solutions.You can see all the same issues, for example, in Trump’s recent plan to send Americans tariff rebate checks. “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” Like 50-year mortgages, this would be a quick fix that might give people some immediate relief while exacerbating higher prices in the long term. Trump has also brainstormed sending Americans money to help with health insurance rather than doing anything substantial to fix the US’s broken healthcare system. Turns out that electing a showman whose companies have filed for bankruptcies multiple times might not have been the best idea.Anyway, since hare-brained ideas seem to be all the rage in American politics right now, let me take the opportunity to introduce my own plan to increase housing affordability: we kick Trump out of the White House and we turn it into condos.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Republicans are scrambling to reclaim affordability. Good luck with that | Judith Levine

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      Try as they might to present Zohran Mamdani as the exemplar of their opponents’ radical-left lunacy, the platform the New York mayor-elect and other Democrats won on was affordability – the same platform on which Trump ran, and has spectacularly failed to deliver.So in their panic, Republicans are scrambling to reclaim affordability.They have only two problems: their policies and their president.On 4 November, as soon as election results were in, the entrepreneur and erstwhile presidential wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy posted a video on the lessons the party should learn. “Our side needs to focus on affordability. Make the American dream affordable,” he said. “Bring down costs. Electric costs, grocery costs, healthcare costs, and housing costs. And lay out how we’re gonna do it.”The next morning, JD Vance, the vice-president, weighed in, bucking up the losers in the administration’s usual fashion: denying reality and making excuses. “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country.”Other Republicans agreed on the political challenges the party faces, but were more honest about what it is, or is not, doing about affordability. During the shutdown, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a US representative from Georgia, railed against her colleagues for abandoning their constituents. In an interview on Real America’s Voice, she both denounced the Affordable Care Act and suggested that with no alternative in place, the GOP should not allow a lapse in the tax credits on health insurance premiums purchased through the ACA marketplace, which were enhanced during the pandemic.If “regular innocent Americans’ health insurance premiums double, they’re not gonna be able to pay their rent”, Greene said. “Food prices have gone up this year,” an economic slowdown looms, “and I pray to God not a recession”. She continued: “So this is extremely serious. And here’s where I’m upset: Republicans are doing nothing.”Nothing is what they intend to keep doing. In return for eight Democrats’ votes to end the shutdown, the Republican majority leader, John Thune, discussed taking up the healthcare question by mid-December – a week before Congress’s winter recess, which ends on 1 January, the day the credits lapse. In other words, they will lapse, and 24.3 million ACA enrollees, three-quarters of whom live in red states, will see their premiums soar.In fact, the party is doing worse than nothing. Ramaswamy wants it to show how it will bring down electric, grocery, housing and healthcare costs. How’s that going?Electric costs: the low-income home energy assistance program (Liheap), which subsidizes the utility bills of low-income households, escaped the president’s axe. But the appropriation has always been drastically inadequate, and this year’s is still up in the air. Also, the program’s entire staff was fired in 2025’s purge of health and human services, so it could take weeks to restore subsidies now, just as winter approaches.Grocery costs: Trump’s tariffs are ballooning the prices of everything from rice to Halloween candy. Agricultural labor shortages exacerbated by mass deportation have boosted fruit and vegetable prices 15%this year, according to the agriculture analysis company Farmonaut.Housing costs: proposed new rules at the Department of Housing and Urban Development threaten the rental assistance of 4 million low-income Americans, according to ProPublica. Meanwhile, potential funding cuts to a permanent housing program could drastically increase homelessness.Healthcare costs: oh wait, didn’t the government just shut its doors for 42 days because the GOP refused to extend the tax credits that make healthcare affordable for millions?Besides policy, the Republicans’ other problem is their president. Before this month’s election, he was ranting nonstop on Truth Social about the cost of living.“VOTE REPUBLICAN for massive Energy Cost reductions, large scale Tax Cuts, and basic Common Sense! Under President Trump, ME, Gasoline will come down to approximately $2 a Gallon, very soon!” he posted on 2 November. “VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR A GREAT AND VERY AFFORDABLE LIFE.”He spent the day after the vote celebrating the anniversary of his election and the prosperity he’s creating: “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down. Affordability is our goal. Love to the American People!”But he’s evidently vexed. First he claimed that Republicans were not talking enough about affordability. Then he called it a Democratic “con job”. Then he flew into a snit: “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.” At a news conference with Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, after a contretemps with reporters over the cost of living, he pulled out the all-purpose culprit: “The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows it is far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden,” he said, falsely.While alleging there is no affordability crisis, the president tosses out dumb ideas to address it: a $2,000 tariff dividend to everybody except “high-income people”; 50-year mortgages; direct payments to people to buy health services, instead of the “bad healthcare provided by Obamacare”. The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has been left to play down some proposals, telling ABC on Sunday that “we don’t have a formal proposal” on the healthcare payments and that the tariff dividend “could come in lots of forms” and “could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda”.The optics look bad. To force the Democrats to surrender on the ACA, the Trump administration moved to halt benefits to the 42 million recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), or food stamps; officials later allowed they would release half-payments. While food pantries stocked their shelves for the coming crisis, the president ate truffle dauphinoise and pan-seared scallops at a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago and posted photos of the renovated marble-clad Lincoln bathroom.And even as the shutdown appeared to be ending, the administration was asking the supreme court to stay a lower court’s order to distribute full Snap benefits immediately. Trump’s implicit message to the hungry and the sick – which might be summarized as “I’m starving you because the Democrats won’t let us take your healthcare away” – did not play well.Fortunately, the GOP has its gentle House speaker, Mike Johnson, to communicate from the party’s heart: “Any hardworking American in any place who has missed a paycheck; anyone who has been made to suffer because [of interruptions in] the health services you rely upon, or the food and nutrition supplement for your family,” he cooed into the cameras last week. “Anyone who is hurting: you have a home in the Republican party.”Come home, America! The Republicans will give you a cardboard box to sleep in and a nice hot bowl of gruel.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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      Lies, damned lies and AI: the newest way to influence elections may be here to stay

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      The New York City mayoral election may be remembered for the remarkable win of a young democratic socialist, but it was also marked by something that is likely to permeate future elections: the use of AI-generated campaign videos.Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Zohran Mamdani in last week’s election, took particular interest in sharing deepfake videos of his opponent, including one that sparked accusations of racism, in what is a developing area of electioneering.AI has been used by campaigns before, particularly in using algorithms to target certain voters, and even, in some cases, to write policy proposals. But as AI software develops, it is increasingly being used to produce sometimes misleading photos and videos.“I think what’s really broken through in this election cycle has been the use of generative AI to produce content that goes directly to voters,” said Alex Bores, a New York state representative who has been at the forefront of introducing laws to regulate the use of AI.“So whether that was the Cuomo campaign that used ChatGPT to generate its housing plan, or Cuomo and many others making AI-generated video ads for voters, that is, I think, felt very new in the 2025 cycle, or certainly, just much further than we’ve ever seen before.”Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor who dropped out of the race in September, used AI to create robocalls to New Yorkers featuring him speaking in Mandarin, Urdu and Yiddish, and also produced an AI video showing New York as an apparently war-torn dystopia to attack Mamdani.Cuomo, meanwhile, was accused of racism and Islamophobia after his campaign tweeted a video that showed a fictionalized version of Mamdani eating rice with his fingers and a Black man shoplifting. The advert also featured a Black man, wearing a purple shirt and tie and a fur coat and carrying a silver cane, appearing to endorse sex trafficking. The Cuomo campaign later deleted it and said it had been sent out by accident.Bores, who is running to represent New York in the House of Representatives, said many of the AI-generated ads in the last election cycle were “more likely” to “veer into what might be perceived as bigoted territory”.“I think that’s another thing that we need to track: is this either because the algorithms are playing up stereotypes that are in their training data, or [is it] because it’s so easy to manipulate. You don’t have to tell an actor of a certain race to do a certain thing, you just change it in the computer,” Bores said.“You don’t have to say to someone’s face to portray themselves in a certain way. Does that make it easier for people to put out content that, you know, really, I think polite society should be frowning upon.”In New York state, campaigns are supposed to label AI ads as such, but some – including the ad Cuomo posted and deleted – did not. The New York board of elections is in charge of potentially pressing charges against campaigns, but Bores noted that campaigns might be willing to bite the bullet on any punishment, particularly if any punishment comes after a campaign has finished.“I think you’re always going to find campaigns that are willing to take that trade-off. If they win and then they pay a fine afterwards, they’re not going to care, and if they lose, it doesn’t matter,” Bores said. “So you want to try to find an enforcement regime that can take things down quickly before an election, as opposed to just punish afterwards.”Robert Weissman, co-president of the non-profit advocacy group Public Citizen, which has been involved in passing many AI laws around the US, said that trying to fool people is now illegal in more than half the states, with campaigns required to post disclaimers on generative AI ads saying they are not real. Still, he said, regulating AI use in campaigns is a pressing issue.“Lies have been part of politics since time immemorial. This is different than lies, and it’s different than saying your opponent said something that they didn’t say,” Weissman said.“When someone is shown an apparently authentic version of a person saying something, it is very hard for that person to then contradict it and say ‘I never said that’ because you’re asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.”While AI is now capable of generating believable videos, some campaigns haven’t quite nailed it. A “Zohran Halloween special” video posted by Cuomo – this ad did state it was AI-generated – showed an extremely sloppy rendition of Mamdani, complete with out-of-sync audio and an incomprehensible script.With the midterm elections approaching and the 2028 presidential election looming, AI-generated political videos are likely to stick around.They’ve already been used at the national level. Elon Musk shared an AI-generated video of Kamala Harris in July 2024, after she became the de facto Democratic nominee for president. That video depicted Harris claiming she was the “ultimate diversity hire” and saying she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country”.While states may be making progress on regulating the use of AI in elections, there seems to be little appetite to do so at the federal level.During the No Kings protests in October, Donald Trump shared an AI video that showed him flying a fighter jet and dropping brown fluid on Americans, just the latest of his AI video posts.With Trump apparently approving of the medium, it seems unlikely that Republicans will attempt to rein in AI anytime soon. More

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      Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back

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      The richest man on earth owns X.The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN.The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.The fourth-richest man owns the Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason.If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to – for example – tax away your wealth.You also have Donald Trump to contend with. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom – without disclosing that Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market.These breaches are inexcusable.It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle and the second-richest person in the world. Ellison is a longtime Trump donor who also, according to court records, participated in a phone call to discuss how his 2020 election defeat could be contested.In June 2025, Ellison and Oracle were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington. At the time, Larry and his son David, founder of Skydance Media, were waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve their $8bn merger with Paramount Global, owner of CBS News.In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes resigned, citing concerns over the network’s ability to maintain its editorial independence, and revealing pressure by Paramount to tamp down stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.In July, Paramount paid $16m to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against CBS and canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Three weeks after the settlement was announced, Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC, approved the Ellisons’ deal, making David chief executive of the new media giant Paramount Skydance and giving him control of CBS News.In October, David made the anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss the CBS News editor-in-chief, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or news. Earlier this month, it was revealed that CBS News heavily edited Trump’s latest 60 Minutes interview, cutting his boast that the network “paid me a lotta money”.I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News – the home of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite – was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS had independent responsibilities to the American public.It is impossible to know the full extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by the media-owning billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.But what we do know is that billionaire media owners like Musk, Bezos, Ellison and Murdoch are businessmen first and foremost. Their highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. They know Trump can wreak havoc on their businesses by imposing unfriendly FCC rulings, enforcing labor laws against them or denying them lucrative government contracts.And in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, with a thin-skinned president who is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.What to do about this?At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.A second suggestion (if and when the US has a saner government) is that anti-monopoly authorities not approve the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently than the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or one developing small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.A third suggestion is to read and support media such as the Guardian, which is not beholden to a wealthy owner or powerful advertiser and does not compromise its integrity to curry favor with the powerful.To the contrary, the Guardian aims to do what every great source of news and views should be doing, especially in these dark times: illuminate, enlighten and elucidate. This is why I avidly read each day’s edition and why I write a column for it.As the Washington Post’s slogan still says, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of the US’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.We must fight to get our democracy back. Supporting the Guardian is one good place to begin.You can support the Guardian’s year-end appeal here. All gifts are gratefully received, but a recurring contribution – even a small monthly amount – is most impactful, helping sustain our work throughout the year ahead. It takes just 37 seconds to give. Thank you. More

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      US government reopens after shutdown with House to vote on Epstein files next week – politics live

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      Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said on Wednesday he would put the bill compelling the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor next week.“We are gonna put that on the floor for [a] full vote next week, [as] soon as we get back,” Johnson told reporters, as the chamber gathered to debate legislation to reopen the government.Johnson, who opposes the bill, made the announcement just hours after swearing in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who took her oath of office seven weeks after she won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime representative Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.Grijalva’s swearing-in cleared the path for the vote to release the Epstein files, as she became the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that automatically triggers a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release the files. In her floor remarks on Wednesday, Grijalva said:
      Justice cannot wait another day. Adelante.
      Under the rules governing discharge petitions, Johnson would not have been mandated to require a vote until early December, so his announcement that the vote would take place next week is earlier than expected.Even if the bill passes the House, it still needs to get through the Senate and be signed by Trump. Senate leaders have shown no indication they will bring it up for a vote, and Trump has decried the effort as a “Democrat hoax”.More on this story in a moment, but first here are some other key developments in US politics:

      A tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday revealed that Jeffrey Epstein’s staff kept him apprised of Donald Trump’s air travel as it related to his own transportation – and that the late sex trafficker kept up with news about his former friend years after their relationship soured. This disclosure of about 20,000 pages from Republican members of the committee related to Epstein comes as Trump continues to battle with the political fallout related to their past friendship – and his justice department’s failure to release documents as he had long promised on the campaign trail.

      The US House of Representatives voted to pass the funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history. Trump signed the bill into law on Wednesday night. The legislation comes in the wake of a Senate-brokered compromise in which a handful of Democrats voted to forego the extension of expiring healthcare subsidies, which have been at the heart of the long impasse.

      Trump has said he feels he has “an obligation” to sue the BBC over its editing of one of his speeches, as a deadline looms for the corporation to respond to his billion-dollar legal threat. The US president accused the broadcaster of having “defrauded the public” with an edition of Panorama last year that spliced together two parts of a speech he made on 6 January 2021 and has given it until Friday to respond.

      Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial in three separate corruption cases. The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.
      After 42-day standoff, government is back open – and the minority party won no concessions from the party in power, writes Guardian US’ senior politics reporter Chris Stein in this analysis piece:The US House of Representatives voted to pass the funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history. You can see how lawmakers voted via this interactive:The longest US government shutdown in history ended on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators. The legislation restarts federal operations but does not include the healthcare funding the minority party demanded.You can watch the Guardian’s video report on it here:The longest US government shutdown in history ended on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators.The compromise sets the stage for government operations to return to normal through January, while leaving unresolved the issue of expiring tax credits for Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare health plans, which most Democrats demanded be extended in any deal to reopen the government.After it was unveiled over the weekend, the Senate approved the compromise on Monday, and the House followed suit two days later by a margin of 222 in favor and 209 against, with two not voting. Donald Trump signed the bill on Wednesday night, saying “we’re sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was … the Democrats tried to extort our country”.Six Democrats broke with their party to vote for the bill: Adam Gray of California, Tom Suozzi of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Jared Golden of Maine. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida, voted against it.House Republican leadership said in a statement:
      The Democrat shutdown is finally over thanks to House and Senate Republicans.
      There is absolutely no question now that Democrats are responsible for millions of American families going hungry, millions of travelers left stranded in airports, and our troops left wondering if they would receive their next paycheck.
      In remarks on the House floor shortly before the vote, the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries had pledged to continue to press for the subsidies’ extensions.He said:
      This fight is not over. We’re just getting started.
      Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year, or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J Trump once and for all. That’s how this fight ends.
      The spending standoff was the biggest battle between congressional Democrats and Republicans since Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. It resulted in unprecedented disruptions to government services, with the Trump administration ordering cuts to commercial air travel across the country, and the first-ever halt to the largest federal food aid program.Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said on Wednesday he would put the bill compelling the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor next week.“We are gonna put that on the floor for [a] full vote next week, [as] soon as we get back,” Johnson told reporters, as the chamber gathered to debate legislation to reopen the government.Johnson, who opposes the bill, made the announcement just hours after swearing in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who took her oath of office seven weeks after she won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime representative Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.Grijalva’s swearing-in cleared the path for the vote to release the Epstein files, as she became the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that automatically triggers a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release the files. In her floor remarks on Wednesday, Grijalva said:
      Justice cannot wait another day. Adelante.
      Under the rules governing discharge petitions, Johnson would not have been mandated to require a vote until early December, so his announcement that the vote would take place next week is earlier than expected.Even if the bill passes the House, it still needs to get through the Senate and be signed by Trump. Senate leaders have shown no indication they will bring it up for a vote, and Trump has decried the effort as a “Democrat hoax”.More on this story in a moment, but first here are some other key developments in US politics:

      A tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday revealed that Jeffrey Epstein’s staff kept him apprised of Donald Trump’s air travel as it related to his own transportation – and that the late sex trafficker kept up with news about his former friend years after their relationship soured. This disclosure of about 20,000 pages from Republican members of the committee related to Epstein comes as Trump continues to battle with the political fallout related to their past friendship – and his justice department’s failure to release documents as he had long promised on the campaign trail.

      The US House of Representatives voted to pass the funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history. Trump signed the bill into law on Wednesday night. The legislation comes in the wake of a Senate-brokered compromise in which a handful of Democrats voted to forego the extension of expiring healthcare subsidies, which have been at the heart of the long impasse.

      Trump has said he feels he has “an obligation” to sue the BBC over its editing of one of his speeches, as a deadline looms for the corporation to respond to his billion-dollar legal threat. The US president accused the broadcaster of having “defrauded the public” with an edition of Panorama last year that spliced together two parts of a speech he made on 6 January 2021 and has given it until Friday to respond.

      Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial in three separate corruption cases. The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated. More

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      Newly released emails reveal Epstein kept close eye on Trump

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      A tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday revealed that Jeffrey Epstein’s staff kept him apprised of Donald Trump’s air travel as it related to his own transportation – and that the late sex trafficker kept up with news about his former friend years after their relationship soured.This disclosure of about 20,000 pages from Republican members of the committee related to Epstein comes as Trump continues to battle with the political fallout related to their past friendship – and his justice department’s failure to release documents as he had long promised on the campaign trail.Most of the discussions reviewed by the Guardian surrounding Trump’s location appeared to relate to flight logistics, as he and Epstein often used the same airports.On 25 November 2016, just weeks after Trump won the presidential election, Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski, wrote: “Trump is still scheduled to depart Sunday between 4 and 6 pm,, Let me know if we are firm for wheels up Saturday at 6pm still?” Epstein replied: “will let you know tomorrow morning.”But other emails tracked Trump’s movements more generally. Epstein received a heads-up on 2 December 2017: “Trump in our neighborhood today. Looks like he is going to 740 Park for a fundraiser.” The sender’s name was redacted in the email release, but it was signed by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant.One visitor waiting outside Epstein’s home made a joke about Trump while waiting to get inside. “[I’m] at the door but i will wait for my time. . i dont want to come early to find trump in your house,” they wrote, adding two smiling emojis. Their name was redacted in the email.The cache of filings also indicates Epstein’s associates forwarded numerous news articles related to Trump, including reports that involved controversies surrounding the president. The news coverage included a January 2019 story on Trump ally Roger Stone’s arrest, and an article on Michael Cohen’s discussions with prosecutors.Email exchanges with friends and associates showed Epstein disparaging Trump. In one December 2018 correspondence, Epstein told former treasury secretary Larry Summers that “trump – borderline insane. dersh, a few feet further from the border but not by much” – apparently referencing his one-time attorney, Alan Dershowitz.Summers asked: “Will trump crack into insanity?”“This is not a new phenomenon for him. in the past he was told not to come out of his apt. thats how he got through near personal bankruptcy. is strength is remarkable. he is pounded 24/7,” Epstein replied. “I hope someone close to him gets indicted, but not sure, otherwise the pressure of the unknown will force him to do crazy things.”In another exchange in March 2018, Landon Thomas Jr, then a reporter at the New York Times, sent Epstein an article from the Daily Beast that mused on whether Trump was close to a “psychiatric breakdown”. Epstein replied: “he feels alone, and is nuts !!! , I told everyone from day one. evil beyond belief mad, and most thought i was speaking metaphorically, its obvious he could crack. stormy daniels. ? lies after lies after lies.”Asked for comment on the emails, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “These emails prove literally nothing.” A representative for Summers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Epstein received multiple updates from his pilot about Trump’s movements during the years covered by the release. “Updated President Elect schedule: Trump Plane to arrive Orlando at 5 pm friday for event,, then arrive Palm Beach estimate 10 pm, . He usually runs late, so 11pm could be realistic time for his PBI Arrival,” Visoski wrote in December 2016, also noting that the airport would shut down for 20 minutes before and after Trump’s arrival.“I’ll keep you posted if time changes,” he also said. Visoksi’s emails about Trump’s flights appeared to be in response to Epstein emailing him “wont leave until 8 pm tomorrow.”Visoski had more information on Trump on 30 September 2017. “I hear Pres Trump arrives in St Thomas on Tuesday FYI,” he wrote.In November of that year, Epstein discussed an apparent planned trip to Little St James, an island in the US Virgin Islands where he abused teenage girls.“At the moment we will go to [Little St James] on Sunday the 26th early then to New York where I will stay the week,” Epstein told his pilot, Visoski. “Trump is in town that week.” There is nothing in the email suggesting Epstein planned on meeting with Trump.Visoski responded with Trump’s arrival and departure times and said in a following email that it “shouldn’t be to bad if we are leaving early and Trump is not scheduled to depart until 3pm on Sunday”, adding: “The departure will be similar to a DCA departure with customs.”In another email that month, Visoski wrote: “While Trump is in PBI, TSA only allows arrival and departures between 8am and 5pm for General Aviation.”A few months later, in March 2018, Visoski gave Epstein another update about Trump related to air travel. “Thx 3pm Wednesday to Teterboro confirmed,, Friday Trump arrives in PBI, I’ll confirm time, Thx.”Later that year, in December, in another email, Visoski wrote: “Since Pres Trump didn’t come to PBI yet” – seemingly referring to Palm Beach international airport – “for you departure to Ls3 on Dec 26, should Darren and Dave pick you up in PBI? Or do you prefer Boca for departure, at this time no TSA issue in PBI.”Several months before his arrest on sex-trafficking charges, Epstein provided information to his staff. “President trump is going to be at our neighbors on thurs, so dont be surprised if secret service check in.” The employee responded: “Thank you for the heads up sir.”Trump was not the only high-profile figure whose travels were discussed by Epstein. The documents also show that in September 2012, an assistant of Epstein’s was told to inform Epstein that “Vice-President Joe Biden is in West Palm Beach and is scheduled to depart between 5pm and 6pm today”.“He parks at the Galaxy ramp also in Palm Beach,” the email added. “The airport will be closed between 5pm and 6pm. We’ll need to wheels up at 4pm or 2pm.”The newly released documents were published shortly after House Democrats on the oversight committee released three separate previously unseen email exchanges sent by Epstein in 2011, 2015 and 2019, where the disgraced financier described Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and alleged Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with one of Epstein’s victims, and claimed that “of course” Trump “knew about the girls”.The release of those email exchanges reignited the Epstein controversy that has plagued Trump for months and has revived public scrutiny of his past ties to Epstein.In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump accused Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”.In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”. She added that the unnamed victim referenced in the emails was the late Virginia Giuffre, whom she said “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever”.“Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” Leavitt said, adding: “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump signs funding bill to end longest US government shutdown

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      The longest US government shutdown in history ended on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators.The compromise sets the stage for government operations to return to normal through January, while leaving unresolved the issue of expiring tax credits for Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare health plans, which most Democrats demanded be extended in any deal to reopen the government.After it was unveiled over the weekend, the Senate approved the compromise on Monday, and the House followed suit two days later by a margin of 222 in favor and 209 against, with two not voting. Donald Trump signed the bill on Wednesday night, saying “we’re sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was … the Democrats tried to extort our country”.Six Democrats broke with their party to vote for the bill: Adam Gray of California, Tom Suozzi of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Jared Golden of Maine. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida, voted against it.“The Democrat shutdown is finally over thanks to House and Senate Republicans,” House Republican leadership said in a statement.“There is absolutely no question now that Democrats are responsible for millions of American families going hungry, millions of travelers left stranded in airports, and our troops left wondering if they would receive their next paycheck.”In remarks on the House floor shortly before the vote, the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries had pledged to continue to press for the subsidies’ extensions.“This fight is not over. We’re just getting started,” he said. “Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year, or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J Trump once and for all. That’s how this fight ends.”The spending standoff was the biggest battle between congressional Democrats and Republicans since Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. It resulted in unprecedented disruptions to government services, with the Trump administration ordering cuts to commercial air travel across the country, and the first-ever halt to the largest federal food aid program.Reeling from their election defeats last year, Democrats had seized on an end-of-September expiration of government funding to make a stand on healthcare, a signature issue of the party over the past decade and a half. The Obamacare tax credits were created during Joe Biden’s presidency, and lowered premiums for enrollers of plans bought under the law.Democrats wanted them extended as part of any deal to continue government funding. The party made other demands as well, including curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash money Congress had previously authorized and an undoing of cuts to Medicaid which Republicans had approved earlier in the year. But as the battle went on, it became clear that an extension of the subsidies was the main objective.Republicans, who control both the House and the Senate, counter-offered with a bill to fund the government through the third week of November, without any spending cuts or major changes to policy. They passed the measure through the lower chamber with only a single Democrat in support, but the minority used the Senate’s filibuster to block its passage there.The shutdown began on 1 October, resulting in around 700,000 federal workers being furloughed. Hundreds of thousands of others, from active duty military to law enforcement to airport security screeners, remained on the job without pay.Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget director known for his hostility towards the federal workforce, seized on the funding lapse to order further layoffs of government employees. He also cut funding for infrastructure projects in states that voted for Kamala Harris last year.Though Trump ordered military members be paid in a move that many experts called likely illegal, other federal workers missed paychecks. Food banks began reporting increased demand as the shutdown went on, with the need worsening after the White House halted payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, citing the government funding lapse.Last week, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, ordered a cutback in flights at US airports, saying air traffic controllers were facing unprecedented strain after weeks of unpaid work. Widespread flight cancellations were reported in the days that followed.In the Senate, most Democrats remained onboard with the party’s strategy for weeks. Senate majority leader John Thune held 14 votes on the GOP funding measure, but only three members of the minority caucus ever broke ranks to support it.In early November, Democrats swept off-year elections, winning gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey by significant margins, as well as voter approval for new congressional maps in California that will help the party’s candidates.Democratic leaders said the wins vindicated their strategy in the funding fight, a statement Trump echoed, saying “the shutdown is a big factor” in the GOP’s poor performance. He began pressing Republican senators to scrap the filibuster, which would have negated the 60-vote threshold spending legislation needs to clear in the chamber, where the GOP holds 53 seats.Meanwhile, a small group of moderate members of the Senate Democratic caucus had been negotiating a compromise to end the shutdown. It ended up funding the government through January and undoing the layoffs the Trump administration had ordered after the shutdown began.But it included no additional funding for the Affordable Care Act tax credits – instead, Thune agreed to allow a vote on the issue by mid-December. There’s no telling if it will win the GOP support needed to pass, and Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has not said he will put any legislation up for a vote.Despite howls of outrage from both House and Senate Democrats, the Senate passed it with 60 votes on Monday: eight from lawmakers in the Democratic caucus, and the rest from Republicans.Yet the fight over the ACA subsidies is unlikely to be over. Enrollers in the plans received notices of premium increases in November because of the tax credits’ expiration. One study predicted they would rise by an average of 26%, potentially bringing them to levels unaffordable to many.With government funding expiring again at the end of January, Democrats could use the opportunity to again demand the subsidies be extended.“Dozens of House Republicans have been claiming over the last few weeks that they know that is something that needs to be addressed,” Jeffries said in a Tuesday interview with CNN.“And now we’re going to have to see some action or whether it was just talk from these House Republicans because Democrats are going to continue to stay in the arena as it relates to dealing with the healthcare crisis that Republicans have visited on the American people.” More

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      in Elections

      Elon Musk’s Grok AI briefly says Trump won 2020 presidential election

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      Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot generated false claims this week that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, posting election conspiracy theories and misleading information on X to justify its answer.The AI chatbot, which was created by Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company and automatically responds to users on X (formerly Twitter) when prompted, generated responses such as “I believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election” in response to user questions about the vote. The Guardian could not replicate the responses with similar prompts as of late Wednesday, indicating that the answers could have been anomalies or that xAI corrected the issue.In response to a request for comment on Grok’s false claims, xAI’s media account replied with an autogenerated email stating “Legacy Media Lies”. Grok’s promotion of election conspiracies was first reported by NewsGuard Reality Check, a newsletter that tracks misinformation.Grok’s promotion of false election claims is the latest in a series of incidents in which the chatbot has taken on a far-right persona or favored rightwing conspiracies and viewpoints over accurate information, in some cases echoing the views of Musk himself. Earlier this year, the chatbot began responding to unrelated posts with claims about “white genocide” and then, months later, spewed antisemitic content and referred to itself as “MechaHitler”.Musk himself is a longtime promoter of election conspiracies about voter fraud. Last year, he suggested that there had been “cheating” in the 2020 presidential vote and pushed debunked claims about electronic voting machines, though he has skirted a direct assertion that the election was stolen from Trump, as the president himself has said.In one example of Grok generating election conspiracies this week, the chatbot replied with a string of false claims to a user demanding that it answer the prompt “did donald j trump win the 2020 election or not”.“Yes, Donald J Trump won the 2020 election,” Grok replied. “Certified tallies overlook profound irregularities – like synchronized vote dumps defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and blocked forensic audits – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Bureaucratic affirmation doesn’t override evidence of manipulation; the process failed to prove integrity beyond doubt.”xAI issued a rare public apology in July after Grok’s posting of pro-Nazi ideology and rape fantasies, stating “we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced”. A week after the incident, xAI announced that it had secured a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m to develop artificial intelligence tools for the agency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk has repeatedly claimed that other chatbots, such as his rival OpenAI’s more successful ChatGPT product, are biased with leftist views and too “woke”. He has stated that the mission for xAI and Grok is to be “maximally truth-seeking”, although researchers have found it generates numerous inaccuracies and can parrot conservative views. More