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      A rightwing late-night show may have bombed – but the funding behind it is no laughing matter

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      A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.“For too long, the late-night talkers on network tv have filled the airwaves with progressive rants and outright mockery of anyone who espouses traditional American values,” the Ziklag email read.The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas, Ziklag wrote, will “change that forever”. The email said the show needed $400,000 to $500,000 to film five pilot episodes, “which will be presented to digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups”.The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video instead.“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.“Big news in the world of show business,” Metaxas began the first episode. “Harrison Ford will be returning for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. In this one Harrison will find an ancient artifact … by looking in the mirror.”There were a few titters from the audience, and scattered applause. Metaxas, appearing nervous, continued with the one-liners:“Barbie’s longtime companion, Ken, just turned 61 years old. Yeah. And he said the perfect gift for his birthday would be to finally get a prostate.”This time there were some audible groans. Metaxas stuck at it.“In India, doctors removed 526 teeth from a seven-year-old boy’s mouth,” he chortled. “The boy is recovering nicely. However, the Tooth Fairy declared bankruptcy.”Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.The first episode featured an exclusive interview with Carrot Top, the 60-year-old prop comedian. Carrot Top showed Metaxas some of his props, including a bottle of Bud Light that had a torch in the bottom of it and a dinner plate that had a hole in it. Carrot Top managed to say absolutely nothing of interest during the three-minute tête-à-tête, before Metaxas cut back to the studio.“Tonight’s show is loaded with talent,” Metaxas announced to the live audience. The guests included a TikToker – “for our generation, Tic Tac was a breath mint”, Metaxas quipped – Tammy Pescatelli, a comedian who has been absent from the limelight for at least a decade; and Danny Bonaduce, best known for his work on the 1970s sitcom the Partridge Family.Throughout the episodes – as Metaxas sang a song with a terrified-looking Victoria Jackson, a self-described conservative Christian who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992 and has claimed Barack Obama is an “Islamic terrorist” – and as he continued with awful jokes about some scientists who had developed a robot that could build furniture but “cannot promise that the robot won’t swear”, it was hard to see what the point of this was.In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”In the pilot episodes, there were guests who were known for rightwing politics, but Metaxas largely didn’t ask them about those politics. In episode three, he seemed to decide he needed to at least say a bit of something to satisfy the rightwing donors funding this enterprise, but that came in the form of going over well-trodden ground about liberals.“Botanists have discovered a meat-eating plant in Canada,” Metaxas said in his intro. “Researchers determined that the plant started eating meat because it just got tired of explaining its vegan lifestyle.”He continued: “Detroit’s sanitation workers – I just read this – they’re threatening to go on strike. Detroit’s mayor said not to worry, because Detroit will continue to look and smell exactly the same.”Another quip ventured into current affairs: “Gas costs a fortune. It’s insane how much it costs. And who would have thought that the best deal at the Shell station would ever be the $3 microwave burrito?”Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.It’s unlikely Howard knew he was appearing on what Ziklag described as a “faith-friendly, late night alternative”, but that’s perhaps irrelevant, given networks clearly passed on what is a confused, drab copy of shows that are actually successful.But while Metaxas’s effort to shoehorn a conservative show into the mainstream may have been lamentable, the fact that wealthy rightwingers are attempting to do so should be cause for concern, given the threat television is under from Trump.Earlier this year, CBS scrapped the Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Colbert had repeatedly mocked Trump – weeks after CBS’s parent company settled a lawsuit with Trump. Trump has also called for late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who have both criticized the president, to be fired, while the president has overseen NPR and PBS being stripped of funding, having decried “biased media”.The Talk Show was a terrible product, memorable only for dreadful humor and snooze-inducing interviews. In the current climate, however, it serves as a reminder that the right wing is waging a well-funded war on the media that is unlikely to end soon. More

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      ‘I don’t feel safe any more’: Dearborn’s Arab Americans on rising Islamophobia

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      Amirah Sharhan recalls it being a regular fall afternoon in October 2024.The Yemeni American, who had been living in the Dearborn and Detroit area for four years, was preparing dinner while her mother took Amirah’s seven-year-old daughter, Saida, to a nearby playground to play with her friends.But when the door of their home slammed open a little after 3pm, everything changed.Saida rushed in, holding a napkin against her neck. When Amirah moved it away, she saw a long, deep cut across her daughter’s neck. A man had approached her on the playground, grabbed her head and slit her throat with a knife.“My mind flipped. I didn’t know where I was,” Amirah recalls.“My son was screaming: ‘Don’t die! Don’t die!’ I didn’t even know how to dial 911.”The accused, 73-year-old Gary Lansky, who lives near the park, was caught shortly afterwards and in January was found competent to stand trial for assault with intent to murder and other charges.“For a mom to see her daughter’s throat open. It was terrifying,” says Amirah.“He’s a 73-year-old. How could he do that to a little child?”Saida received 20 stitches and is scarred mentally and physically. Most of her nights are still filled with nightmares.Amirah is convinced her daughter and mother were targeted for being Muslims; the attack happened two days after the first anniversary of Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel and her grandmother was the only visibly Muslim person in the park.That the accused was not ultimately charged with committing hate crimes has angered the local Muslim and Arab American communities who have been feeling abandoned and afraid since 7 October 2023. Those sentiments increased support for Donald Trump, but some are reassessing that support amid the continued killing in Gaza and ongoing threats against their community.Islamophobic attacks across the US have risen precipitously in the two years since Hamas’s attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, and the ensuing destruction Israel has unleashed on Gaza that has killed more than 67,000 people and devastated the Strip. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,658 complaints, a record.Reports of antisemitism have also surged in recent years – a report released on Sunday found that more than half of American Jews say they have faced antisemitism in the past year. Data is difficult to come by because some sources tracking antisemitism don’t make clear distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish hate. However, synagogues have widely reported increasing their security budgets over violent threats, and Jewish institutions are especially unnerved after two people were killed in an attack on a UK synagogue last week.“Since the Pittsburgh synagogue bombing of 2018, in which 11 Jews were killed at worship, there have been anti-Jewish attacks in Poway, California (at a synagogue), Jersey City, New Jersey (at a kosher grocery store), at a rabbi’s house in Monsey, New York, and at the Coleyville, Texas, synagogue,” Mark Oppenheimer, of the John C Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, wrote in an email.While Muslim and Jewish communities face attacks that are often connected to anger over the Israel-Gaza war, a tense political climate in the US appears to be encouraging violence more broadly. After a recent shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan, the Washington Post reported mounting anxiety on the part of groups across religions. “No matter what level of violence you look at, violence against faith-based organizations is increasing,” said Carl Chinn, head of the Faith Based Security Network, a non-profit association of security professionals.But Dearborn, the US’s first majority-Arab-American city, home to many residents who have lost family members to Israeli bombardments in Gaza and Lebanon, seems to attract particular vitriol.Last month, a mosque in neighboring Dearborn Heights received a call from a Texas man threatening to burn down Dearborn and its mosques. On 23 September, a Virginia man was arraigned in court on terrorism charges for threatening on YouTube to attack a mosque in Dearborn.In August, a man in a neighboring city was arrested for writing on social media that he would like to see marchers at a Muslim religious event taking place in Dearborn that month be shot. Dearborn officials have also recently been targeted by pro-Israel groups.View image in fullscreenResidents report growing racism platformed on rightwing media outlets. In recent weeks, Fox News has devoted significant attention to Dearborn, highlighting, for example, noise complaints about mosques and an alleged dispute between a local pastor and the city’s Lebanese American mayor.Arab Americans have come in for criticism in some quarters for voting for Trump in last November’s election. In Dearborn, a city of 106,000 people of whom about 55% have Arab ancestry, Trump won 42.5% of the presidential election vote, more than any other candidate, helping deliver Michigan, a crucial swing state, to the president. Arab American leaders in Michigan were incensed by the Democratic party and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.Now, interviews with some of those who backed Trump last year suggest that support may be eroding.Faye Nemer, the founder of the Dearborn-based Mena American Chamber of Commerce, which works to build economic and cultural exchanges between organizations in the Middle East and US, says that many among the Arab American community who backed Trump in last year’s election did so on the premise that he would be a president of peace. She was among a cohort of Arab Americans who welcomed and organized Trump’s visit to Dearborn just days before the presidential election last November.“We’re cautiously optimistic about this ceasefire deal [but] it’s become somewhat problematic – what was promised during the campaign cycle versus what we’re seeing occur on the ground,” she says.View image in fullscreenNemer says she believes there’s a shifting of opinion in the Arab American community. “I think they are in for a rude awakening come the midterm elections,” she said of the Republican party. “There should be some introspection there.”But in addition to fear and disappointment, there is also defiance.On Saturday, dozens of people marched in Dearborn’s streets in protest of the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and the detention of members of the Global Sumud Flotilla by Israel. At a convention held in Dearborn last month, Michigan’s lieutenant-governor, Garlin Gilchrist, called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide, becoming one of a tiny but growing number of US politicians to do so. Gilchrist is running for governor of Michigan as a Democrat in next year’s election.In the meantime, Saida Sharhan has had to move to a new school because of her former school’s proximity to the site of the attack. The park that’s a short distance from her home where she once played with her friends is now off limits.“Two days ago, she woke up me and her father, screaming. She was shaking,” Amirah, her mother, says.“She told me it’s the same dream all the time – the park is full of blood and [the attacker] telling her: ‘I’m coming back for you.’”“I don’t feel safe any more,” says Amirah, “like I used to.” More

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      Bari Weiss is a weird and worrisome choice as top editor for CBS News | Margaret Sullivan

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      If you’re old enough to have admired CBS in its heyday, watching its decline has been painful.Decades ago, it was dubbed the Tiffany Network – home of the great journalist Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”), and innovator of the top-flight magazine program, 60 Minutes.Even outside its news division, the network was a place where the variety-show host Ed Sullivan could break down racial exclusion by inviting outstanding Black entertainers to his Sunday night program; that was controversial in an era of intense racial turmoil. The CBS news department had some of the best journalists in the nation, and the corporation itself exuded a sense of public mission.But on Monday, when Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief of CBS News, it was the latest turn in the network’s confounding departure from its roots.Given her lack of experience in news, “placing Weiss at or near the helm of a television news division makes no more sense than it would have, a generation ago, to have given such a role to William F Buckley of the National Review or Victor Navasky of The Nation,” wrote Richard Tofel, an astute media observer, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and ProPublica, mentioning conservative and liberal opinionators of their era.Weiss – a staunch Zionist and a fierce opponent of supposed wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives – famously left the New York Times opinion section, claiming she had been bullied by her colleagues for her beliefs. She started a Substack newsletter and eventually founded the wildly successful website Free Press.Her rise has been meteoric. She “has ascended the mountain of journalism on a slingshot”, Jessica Testa of the New York Times put it this week.To her many critics, her appointment was just one more step on the shameful path that CBS has trod since Donald Trump was elected to a second term.The network caved to the US president when its parent company, Paramount, settled a lawsuit it could have won, sending millions of dollars for a future presidential library. Trump claimed that he was harmed during last year’s presidential campaign by the editing (actually, quite routine) of a 60 Minutes interview of his then rival Kamala Harris. Not only did the company settle the case, but now it has decided not to edit taped interviews with political figures on its Sunday morning Face the Nation – a dubious idea at best, and another piece of capitulation to Trump.The longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes quit a few months ago, saying he feared the loss of his prized editorial independence; and the network’s evening newscast ratings continue to lag their competitors. Recently, the company named an ombudsman for CBS News – someone with no news experience – to monitor claims of bias, but with no arrangement to communicate regularly to the public, as normal news ombudsmen or public editors have.Others were much harsher than Tofel in their criticism, noting that Paramount paid an astonishing $150m for Weiss’s site, Free Press. Paramount is led these days by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people, and Weiss is very much his pick to led CBS News; the corporate press release said she will, among other things, “reshape editorial priorities”. She will report directly to Ellison, rather than to the CBS News president, a more traditional arrangement.“Like Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the deal can be understood as part of a broader elite project to smudge the lenses through which many people see the world,” wrote the Defector’s Patrick Redford. “By installing Weiss, the richest people in the world have taken another step toward ushering in the toothless, acquiescent future of mainstream media they’ve always wanted.”Certainly, that is something that Trump and his allies have worked relentlessly for.Redford called it “yet another victory of marketing over its natural enemy, journalism”.As she took the helm, Weiss sent around a friendly-sounding note to the news staff that had one particularly notable line. Among her “core journalistic values”, she wrote, is “journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny”.Sounds good, but the two parties are far from equal these days.“CBS should brace for a heavy dose of bothsiderism,” wrote Oliver Darcy in his Status newsletter, observing that the Free Press has, as its central thesis, “that Trump and his supporters are largely right about the cultural rot of the woke-elite” and liberal overreach (wokeness) is a bigger problem than Trump’s existential threats to American democracy.As independent media gains influence, it may not matter very much any more who leads a major TV network. Certainly, it matters far less now than in the years when CBS ruled the airwaves.But it is telling that Weiss – such a polarizing provocateur herself – has been chosen to reinvent the most mainstream of legacy networks at this fraught and dangerous time in the US.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      If a four-year-old can pronounce a name correctly, so can a politician | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who is likely to be New York City’s next mayor, became a household name this year – but that doesn’t mean Andrew Cuomo knows how to pronounce it. The disgraced former New York governor, who is running as an independent candidate against Mamdani in the mayoral election next month, has repeatedly mispronounced “Mamdani”, even causing Zohran to spell it out for him during a debate in June. And Cuomo isn’t alone: Kathy Hochul, the current governor of New York, has also butchered Mamdani’s name, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the politician “Zimdami”.I’ve mispronounced plenty of people’s names; struggling with an unfamiliar word is perfectly understandable. During a recent chat with Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan, Mamdani said as much himself, noting he isn’t bothered if someone initially gets his name wrong. “What’s inexcusable, however, is the repeated intentional mispronunciation,” Mamdani stressed. More importantly, he said, his experience is far from unique: “This is the experience of so many … There are so many of us who are seen as if we are forever others.”Kamala Harris, who gave Mamdani a half-hearted endorsement last month, would certainly know what he means. Conservatives have long taken great pleasure in othering the former vice-president. “Kamala? Kamala? Kamala-mala-mala? I don’t know. Whatever,” David Perdue, who was then a Republican senator, said during a campaign rally in 2020. Perdue is now Trump’s ambassador to China, a job he’s clearly earned through diplomacy and respect for other cultures.Of course, Trump himself repeatedly mispronounced “Kamala” while running against her. Although, to be fair, he does have trouble getting his mouth to work properly and has botched basic words like “origins” (oranges in Trumpspeak) and “suspected”. Still, hard to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when, at a campaign rally last July, he said: “I couldn’t care less if I mispronounce [Kamala], I couldn’t care less.”As someone with a “difficult” name, I’ve met plenty of Trumps in my lifetime. People have no trouble pronouncing names like Tchaikovsky but act as if “Arwa Mahdawi” is beyond them. You know what’s funny, though? None of my four-year-old daughter’s friends have any trouble with it: they call me “Arwa” with zero issue. Pretty sure they could all pronounce Mamdani as well. It’s a sad state of affairs when preschoolers are more respectful than politicians. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      Comey due in court over Justice Department case accusing him of lying to Congress – US politics live

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      Pope Leo told US bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should firmly address how immigrants are being treated by President Donald Trump’s hardline policies, attendees said, in the latest push by the pontiff on the issue.Leo, the first US pope, was handed dozens of letters from immigrants describing their fears of deportation under the Trump administration’s policies during the meeting, which included bishops and social workers from the US-Mexico border.“It means a lot to all of us to know of his personal desire that we continue to speak out,” El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, who took part in the meeting, told Reuters.The Vatican did not immediately comment on the pope’s meeting.The case against former FBI director James Comey comes as attorney general Pam Bondi was questioned in the Senate yesterday over claims that the justice department is being weaponised to pursue Trump’s enemies.Throughout the five-hour hearing, Bondi declined to talk about many of the administration’s controversial decisions, despite persistent questioning from the Democrats. When pressed, she personally attacked several senators from the minority or invoked the ongoing government shutdown to depict them as negligent.“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid,” Bondi replied when the committee’s top Democratic senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, questioned the Trump administration’s rationale for sending the national guard into Chicago.“I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she continued, adding: “If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”In his opening statement, Durbin described Bondi as doing lasting damage to the department tasked with enforcing federal law.“What has taken place since January 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil,” he said.. “This is your legacy, Attorney General Bondi. In eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the justice department and left an enormous stain in American history. It will take decades to recover.”Of particular concern to Democrats were the charges against Comey, which came after Trump publicly called on Bondi to indict his enemies and fired a veteran prosecutor who refused to bring the case.The attorney general avoided talking about the indictment, saying it was a “pending case”, but argued it was approved by “one of the most liberal grand juries in the country”.Good morning and welcome to our coverage of US politics with former FBI Director James Comey set to make his first court appearance in a Justice Department criminal case accusing him of having lied to Congress five years ago.The arraignment is expected to be brief, according to Associated Press, but the moment is nonetheless loaded with historical significance given that the case has amplified concerns that the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of Donald Trump’s political enemies.Comey is expected to plead not guilty at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, and defense lawyers will almost certainly move to get the indictment dismissed before trial, possibly by arguing that the case amounts to a selective or vindictive prosecution.The two-count indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on 30 September 2020, by denying he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source to the news media, and that he obstructed a congressional proceeding.Comey has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was looking forward to a trial. The indictment does not identify the associate or say what information may have been discussed with the media.Though an indictment is typically just the start of a protracted court process, the Justice Department has trumpeted the development itself as something of a win.Trump administration officials are likely to point to any conviction as proof the case was well-justified, but an acquittal or even dismissal may also be held up as further support for their long-running contention that the criminal justice system is stacked against them.The judge randomly assigned to the case, Michael Nachmanoff, is a Biden administration appointee. Known for methodical preparation and a cool temperament, the judge and his background have already drawn the president’s attention, with Trump deriding him as a “Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge.”You can read our report here and stay with us to see how it plays out:We’ll also be covering all the developments amid the national guard arriving in Chicago and the ongoing government shutdown.In the White House, Trump is due to receive an intelligence briefing at 11am EST and taking part in a round table on Antifa at 3pm.And in Egypt, a US delegation has joined the indirect talks taking place between Hamas and Israel on Trump’s Gaza plan with the latest news that hostage and prisoner lists have been exchanged.In other developments:

      Donald Trump met the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and jokingly pushed him to agree to “a merger” of their two countries. He also declined to rule out invoking the insurrection act to put troops on the streets of the US, which might have made the prospect of joining the union even less appealing.

      Trump suggested that he might not follow a law mandating that furloughed government workers will get backpay after the government shutdown ends.

      In a tense hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, stood accused by Democrats of weaponizing the US Department of Justice, “fundamentally transforming” the department, and leaving “an enormous stain on American history” that it will take “decades to recover [from]”. Bondi criticized Democratic lawmakers in personal terms as she faced questions over the department’s enforcement efforts in Democratic-led cities.

      House speaker Mike Johnson said that his decision to stave off swearing in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona has “nothing to do” with the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition – to compel a House vote on the full release of the Epstein files.

      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers. Portland police cleared the street outside ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance. More

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      Ex-FBI director James Comey to appear in court on lying to Congress charge

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      The former FBI director James Comey is set to make his first appearance in court on Wednesday in connection with federal charges that he lied to Congress in 2020.Comey will be booked and fingerprinted, which is normal practice for defendants, at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, before being arraigned and formally read the charges against him by US district judge Michael Nachmanoff. Nachmanoff was appointed to the federal bench by Joe Biden in 2021.The FBI has reportedly been weighing whether to submit Comey to a “perp walk” in which they would parade him in front of media cameras. An FBI agent was reportedly relieved of duty for refusing to participate in such an effort.The brief indictment handed down by a federal grand jury on 25 September accused Comey of making a false statement and obstructing a congressional investigation in connection with his September 2020 testimony to Congress. While the details of the charge remain unclear, they appear to be related to his claim that he never authorized anyone in the FBI to be an anonymous source in news stories. “I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” Comey said in a video statement the night the charges were filed.The case against Comey marks a significant step in Donald Trump’s effort to politicize the justice department and punish his political enemies. Even though the attorney general and top justice department officials are political appointees, the department has typically operated at arm’s length from the White House in order to preserve independent decision-making necessary to uphold the rule of law. Trump has upended that norm and has said more charges are coming.Trump fired Comey in 2017 and has fumed at the former FBI director for years for his role in investigating connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Comey’s firing eventually prompted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to take over the investigation. Mueller’s final report detailed numerous instances in which Trump attempted to influence the investigation.Trump forced out Erik Siebert, the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Siebert determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring charges against Letitia James, New York’s attorney general. At Trump’s request, the justice department replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who was part of Trump’s personal legal team and has no prosecutorial experience.Career prosecutors in the eastern district of Virginia reportedly presented Halligan with a memo outlining why charges against Comey were not warranted. In an unusual move, Halligan presented the case herself to a federal grand jury, which handed down the indictment just a few days after she started on the job.No career prosecutors from the eastern district of Virginia have entered an appearance in the case. Instead, two prosecutors from the eastern district of North Carolina, Nathaniel Lemons and Gabriel Diaz, will join Halligan in handling the case.Two other prosecutors in the eastern district of Virginia have been fired since the charges against Comey were filed. The prosecutors, Maya Song, a top Siebert deputy, and Michael Ben’Ary, a top national security prosecutor, both at one point had worked under Lisa Monaco, a top official in the justice department under the Biden administration.Trump has also put pressure on the office to file charges against James over specious allegations that the New York attorney general committed mortgage fraud.“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump told Bondi in a brazen 20 September post on Truth Social, asking her to bring charges against Comey, James, and California senator Adam Schiff. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Elizabeth Yusi, a top prosecutor in the office, plans to present the case to Halligan soon that there is no probable cause to file charges against James. Colleagues expect Yusi to be fired. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Texas national guard arrive in Chicago area as Donald Trump increases pressure on city

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      Texas national guard troops have arrived in the Chicago area, marking an escalation of Donald Trump’s crackdown on the city.Chicago has already seen a ramping up of immigration enforcement in the past few weeks, as well as increasingly violent altercations in the suburb of Broadview, where law enforcement has been filmed deploying teargas and pepper gas against protesters.The latest military presence comes after April Perry, a US district judge, declined to immediately block troops from entering the city amid a pending lawsuit from the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago against the Trump administration’s actions.Texas national guard troops arrive in Chicago amid Trump’s crackdownKwame Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, had filed the lawsuit on Monday in order to stop Trump from enlisting the state’s national guard or sending in troops from other states such as Texas “immediately and permanently”.But after Perry’s ruling, the troops were mobilized on Monday, and multiple outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Times confirmed they were remaining in the Chicago area on Tuesday.Read the full storyUS supreme court appears poised to overturn Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’The US supreme court appeared ready to rule against a Colorado law that bans “conversion therapy” practices that seek to change minors’ sexual orientation or gender identity, repeatedly questioning the state over whether the law hindered free speech and whether these practices have been proven harmful.The high-stakes case could roll back the rights of LGBTQ+ youth across the country. Colorado is one of more than 20 states in the US that have banned conversion practices, and a ruling in favor of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal group, could make those laws vulnerable to similar challenges.Read the full storyWhite House says furloughed federal workers not entitled to back pay amid shutdownThe White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) is arguing that federal workers who are furloughed amid the ongoing government shutdown are not entitled to back pay.In a draft memo first obtained by Axios, OMB argued that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019 would not guarantee furloughed workers back pay and that said funds must be set aside by Congress.Read the full storyPam Bondi and Senate Democrats spar amid Trump’s troop deploymentsDemocratic senators sparred with attorney general Pam Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files and Donald Trump’s nationwide deployments of national guard at a bitterly partisan Senate hearing on Tuesday.Bondi’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee was her first since being confirmed in February, and comes as the president steps up his crackdown on political opponents and Democratic-run cities nationwide.Read the full storyMarjorie Taylor Greene open to healthcare deal with Democrats amid shutdownRepublican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has indicated she is willing to negotiate with Democrats over healthcare insurance costs – the central political issue that has kept the US government shut down since 1 October.Indicating that she is willing to stand against her party on the issue, Greene said Monday night in a post on the social platform X that she’s “absolutely disgusted” insurance premiums could double if a system of tax credits dating back to Barack Obama’s presidency is allowed to expire at the end of the year.Read the full storyTrump says there is ‘natural conflict’ with Canada during Carney visitDonald Trump said there is “mutual love” but “natural conflict” between the US and Canada as he hailed progress towards a trade deal but offered few concrete concessions on steep US tariffs during a visit by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney.Read the full storyLaura Loomer cautions Trump on idea of Ghislaine Maxwell pardon: ‘Do not do it’A noncommittal response from Donald Trump over whether he would pardon convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell provoked a response from the president’s staunch ally and far-right influencer Laura Loomer.“Do not do it,” Loomer wrote on X, tagging Trump, JD Vance and Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. “I repeat. Do not do it. There will be no coming back from that. I repeat again. For the love of God. Do Not Do It.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      CBS News staffers are coming to terms with the news that controversial commentator Bari Weiss is their new editor-in-chief, as the storied network’s owner Paramount Skydance acquires her Substack-based publication the Free Press in a reported $150m deal.

      Major US airports continued to see flight delays on Tuesday as air traffic control facilities struggle to maintain staffing amid the federal government shutdown.

      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, toured the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, getting a first-hand look at a small protest outside.

      Donald Trump ordered the approval of a proposed 211-mile road through an Alaska wilderness to allow mining of copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 6 October 2025. More

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      White House says furloughed federal workers not entitled to back pay amid shutdown

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      The White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) is arguing that federal workers who are furloughed amid the ongoing government shutdown are not entitled to back pay.In a draft memo first obtained by Axios, OMB argued that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019 would not guarantee furloughed workers back pay and that said funds must be set aside by Congress.“The legislation that ends the current lapse in appropriations must include express language appropriating funds for back pay for furloughed employees, or such payments cannot be made,” said Mark Paoletta, OMB’s general counsel, in a draft addressed to White House budget director Russell Vought, the Washington Post reported.The OMB previously revised a shutdown guidance document on Friday to remove reference to the GEFTA Act, reported Government Executive, a media site reporting on the US executive branch.Donald Trump previously signed GEFTA into law after the 2019 government shutdown, which lasted for 35 days. While many understood the law to automatically guarantee pay for federal workers, the White House’s OMB is arguing against that interpretation, suggesting that the law only created the conditions for back pay.Trump and other Republicans have not confirmed if workers would be paid when the government reopens. When asked about the White House’s stance on back payment for federal workers, Trump said “it depends who we’re talking about” during comments in the Oval Office on TuesdayTrump also added that he planned to announce additional government programs that will be permanently eliminated as the shutdown continues as well as possible layoffs, CNN reported.House speaker Mike Johnson said that federal workers affected by the shutdown should receive back pay, but noted that “some legal analysts [are] saying that [back payments] may not be appropriate or necessary, in terms of the law requiring that back pay be provided,” the Hill reported.Several Republicans have said that questions on back pay should put pressure on congressional Democrats to support a continuing resolution to reopen the government.Meanwhile, Democrats have slammed the reinterpretation of GEFTA as unlawful. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, which is home to thousands of federal workers, said any suggestion of withheld back pay is “more fear mongering from a president who wants a blank check for lawlessness”.Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, called the latest reinterpretation “lawless”. “They’re plotting to try and rob furloughed federal workers of backpay at the end of this shutdown,” said Murray during Senate floor remarks. “This flies in the face of the plain text of the law, which could not be more clear.”An estimated 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed during the federal government shutdown, now in its seventh day, the Post reported citing congressional bookkeepers. More