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    ‘Viva Papa Leo!’ At U.S. Masses, Dawn of Homegrown Pope Brings an Air of Electricity.

    The Rev. Gosbert Rwezahura opened Mass on Sunday morning by saying what everyone in the pews was thinking. “Habemus papam!” he exclaimed at Christ Our Savior Parish in South Holland, Ill. Beaming, he added, “He is one of our own!”It was the first Sunday in American history with an American pope seated on the throne of St. Peter in Rome. At parishes across the country, Catholics filed into the pews with a sense of wonder, hope and pride over Pope Leo XIV.At Christ Our Savior, the pride was personal: Today’s parish was formed from others in the area around the South Side of Chicago that includes a now-closed church where the pope attended as a child.Father Rwezahura put it simply: “We are the home parish of the pope!”“I’m so full and so proud, I don’t know what to do,” said Janice I. Sims, 75. “I’m definitely blessed because I lived long enough to see it happen.” Others there traded anecdotes about brushes with the future pope, back when he was known as Robert Prevost: the music director who played at a wedding he officiated, the deacon who went to high school where his mother was the school librarian.At the standing-room-only 10:30 a.m. Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, the Rev. Ton Nguyen began his homily by exclaiming “Viva Papa Leo the 14th!” The congregation applauded. Outside the church, yellow and white bunting hung in celebration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Pope Leo XIV Voted in Democratic and Republican Primaries, Records Show

    Pope Leo XIV voted in Democratic primaries in 2008 and 2010 and in three Republican primaries in the years that followed, state records show.Pope Leo XIV has voted fairly regularly in general elections over the last two decades, and has chosen to participate in both Republican and Democratic primary elections over the years, state and local records in Illinois show.The new pontiff, a Chicago native, has voted in at least 10 general elections since 2000, the records show, most recently in November when he cast an absentee ballot in the presidential election. In primary elections in Illinois, voters may choose any party’s ballot at the polls, and Pope Leo has varied in his selection, picking Democratic ballots years ago and Republican ones more recently.Will County, in suburban Chicago, released records on Thursday showing that the pope had voted in several elections there since 2012, including three Republican primaries between 2012 and 2016.Records viewed on Friday at the Illinois State Board of Elections office in Springfield showed that Pope Leo, who was born Robert Francis Prevost, voted with regularity in Cook County between 2000 and 2010. During that time, he voted in two primaries, selecting Democratic ballots in 2008 and 2010.In Illinois, where Democrats dominate in statewide elections, voters do not register as members of a political party. American citizens living outside the country remain eligible to vote.Pope Leo was born in Chicago and grew up in nearby Dolton, Ill., in a family that was deeply involved in its local parish. Though his career has included long stints in Peru and Rome, he has returned to Illinois several times as an adult, including for graduate school and for postings with the Midwest Augustinians.Susan C. Beachy More

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    May Day: protesters rally across US over workers’ and immigrants’ rights

    Protesters rallied nationwide on Thursday in support of workers’ and immigrants’ rights in the latest round of demonstrations against Donald Trump and his administration.May Day, commemorated as international workers’ day, comes after two massive days of protests in April – 5 April’s hands off rallies and 19 April’s day of action – drew millions to the streets across the country.The 1 May protests were supported by hundreds of organizations and set to take place in nearly 1,000 cities, organizers said, with a focus on rallying against the Trump administration and “billionaire profiteers”. Turnout was predicted to be lower than the previous two April protests because 1 May is a weekday, but tens of thousands were expected to turn out. Cities across the US from New York to Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, saw major demonstrations.“This is a war on working people – and we will not stand down,” a website for the national day of action says. “They’re defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence. Working people built this nation and we know how to take care of each other. We won’t back down – we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that propel opportunity and a better life for all Americans. Their time is up.”View image in fullscreenA map of May Day protests showed several major metro areas had more than one rally planned. A coalition of groups in Los Angeles started the day with an early morning rally, then a program and march to show solidarity with the city’s workers and immigrants. In New York, protests were planned throughout the day.In New York, protesters turned out to support workers, immigrants and others under attack by the Trump administration. Some of those attending the New York rally spoke against Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump’s demands.“Today, we saw lots of new people who are getting energized and activated. The Trump administration is clearly coming for all of these rights that we’ve won, and all of us are taking up the task to fight back,” said Saidi Moseley, 25, an education coordinator and one of the organizers of the May Day march in Union Square.Betsy Waters held a sign saying “due process for all”. The 67-year-old retiree who volunteers full-time said she had come to several marches. “I feel that we have to be out here. We have to be out here making a stand as much as we can,” Waters said. “So I am out here making a stand, saying that what is happening in our country is just not right.”Lydia Howrilka, a 25-year-old librarian from Queens, was holding a “only you can stop fascism” sign. “I am standing in solidarity with my immigrant brothers and sisters in New York. I am standing in defense of democracy,” Howrilka said.Grant Miner, one of a handful of speakers at the New York rally, was abruptly expelled by Columbia University in March for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.View image in fullscreen“I’m trying to speak out about the things that are affecting my workers, which include the ongoing cuts to higher education, as well as the targeting of students for student protests, which are two very big issues facing our workplace reality,” said Miner, who also serves as president of UAW 2710, the Student Workers of Columbia union.As Trump surpassed 100 days in office, a period filled with slashing and burning of the federal government and democratic norms, a resistance has taken shape, growing in size since February. People have started to organize in larger numbers to pressure Democrats to stand up more strongly to Trump.Trump’s approval ratings have fallen from positive to negative, with more people disapproving of him than approving. The focus on workers and immigrants comes as Trump has fired a host of federal workers and his administration has ramped up deportations, including of people who the courts have said were not supposed to be deported.“Everyone deserves respect and dignity, no matter who they are, where they were born, or what language they speak,” the May Day protest website says. “Immigrants are workers, and workers are immigrants. Our fight for fair wages, safe workplaces, and dignity on the job is the same fight for immigrant justice.”Organizers behind the May Day protest in Washington DC said they expected to see up to 3,000 people join the rally in the nation’s capital to demand safety on the job, legal protections and an end to unjust deportations.“We’re seeing people abducted off the streets every day in some of the most violent and cruel ways. We’re seeing people like Kilmar Ábrego García – and he’s only one story. His story is not unusual,” said Cathryn Jackson, the public policy director at Casa, a group that provides critical services to immigrant and working-class families.View image in fullscreenÁbrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, was expected to speak at Thursday’s rally as she continues to fight for her husband to be released from prison in El Salvador and to be returned to the US.“Hundreds and hundreds of people are being deported to some of the worst prisons across the country with no due process,” Jackson said. “This rally today is about solidarity. It’s about saying no matter what the Trump administration tries to do, we are determined to fight back.”Also among the speakers scheduled to address the Washington rally was María del Carmen Castellón, whose husband, Miguel Luna, died in the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore last year.The story of Luna and the five other construction workers who died during the tragedy is “symbolic”, Jackson said. The six men were all construction workers originally from Latin American countries.“This is the story of men working in the middle of the night while all of us were sleeping, getting the roads together, doing the work that many people don’t want to do,” Jackson continued. “We are literally physically building this country, and then being treated the way we are in return.”Delia Ramirez, a Democratic representative of Illinois, addressed the crowd in Franklin Park as the “proud daughter of Guatemalan immigrants”.View image in fullscreen“Today on International Workers’ Day, we are united,” Ramirez said. “We’re united because we understand that this president wants to silence us. He wants to divide us, pit us against each other. But we are not going to be silenced.”The Trump administration knows that “the only thing that will stop fascism is mobilization”, she continued, acknowledging that there will be “really hard days” ahead. “But as long as you keep organizing, I can amplify that voice and continue to stand up to fascism.”Jorge Mújica, the strategic organizer for Arise Chicago and an organizer of the city’s May Day protest, said on Democracy Now that “the Trump administration miscalculated completely” by targeting so many constituencies in its first 100 days.“They are attacking everybody at the same time, and that [has] enabled us to gather a really broad coalition with labor unions, with federal workers, with students, with teachers at universities, and every other community and put together this event on May Day,” Mújica said. More

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    12 States Sue Trump Over His Tariffs

    A dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, sued President Trump over his tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that he has no power to “arbitrarily impose tariffs as he has done here.”Contending that only Congress has the power to legislate tariffs, the states are asking the court to block the Trump administration from enforcing what they said were unlawful tariffs.“These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” said the lawsuit, filed by the states’ attorneys general in the U.S. Court of International Trade.The states, including New York, Illinois and Oregon, are the latest parties to take the Trump administration to court over the tariffs. Their case comes after California filed its own lawsuit last week, in which Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state attorney general accused the administration of escalating a trade war that has caused “immediate and irreparable harm” to that state’s economy.Officials and businesses from Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, have also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the state’s trade-dependent economy, as well as its sportswear industry, as a result of the tariffs.“When a president pushes an unlawful policy that drives up prices at the grocery store and spikes utility bills, we don’t have the luxury of standing by,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in a statement. “These tariffs hit every corner of our lives — from the checkout line to the doctor’s office — and we have a responsibility to push back.”Asked about the latest lawsuit, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, called it a “witch hunt” by Democrats against Mr. Trump. “The Trump administration remains committed to using its full legal authority to confront the distinct national emergencies our country is currently facing,” he said, “both the scourge of illegal migration and fentanyl flows across our border and the exploding annual U.S. goods trade deficit.”The other states in the suit are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont. All of the states have Democratic attorneys general, though Nevada and Vermont have Republican governors.Mr. Trump’s tariffs have shocked and upended the global trade industry. He set a 145 percent tariff on goods from China, 25 percent on Canada, and 10 percent on almost all imports from most other countries.The moves have drawn legal challenges from other entities as well, including two members of the Blackfeet Nation, who filed a federal lawsuit in Montana over the tariffs on Canada, saying they violated tribal treaty rights. Legal groups like the Liberty Justice Center and the New Civil Liberties Alliance have also sued. “I’m happy that Oregon and the other states are joining us in this fight,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, who is working on the Liberty Justice Center’s lawsuit. More

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    Dick Durbin won’t seek re-election after nearly three decades in US Senate

    Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the US Senate, announced he will not seek re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a Senate career that spans nearly three decades.The 80-year-old Illinois senator, who has served since 1996, posted on social media that he plans to leave office in 2027 when his term expires – meaning there will be an open primary for his replacement in the midterms.“I truly love being a United States Senator, but in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch,” Durbin said in a video statement on X.As Senate Democratic whip and ranking member on the judiciary committee, Durbin’s departure represents a significant loss of clout for Illinois. His exit will vacate one of the most powerful positions in Washington and end a career marked by his influence over national policy and directing federal funding to his home state.The veteran lawmaker cited his age as a primary factor in the decision, noting that he would be 88 by the end of a potential sixth term. The news of his retirement was first reported by WBEZ and the New York Times.“It’s time,” Durbin told WBEZ. “You observe your colleagues and watch what happens. For some of them, there’s this miraculous ageing process where they never seem to get too old.”It is not a total surprise, as speculation of his retirement began to trend in Washington earlier this month after his federal financial report showed he raised just north of $42,000 this first quarter of this year, a paltry sum for a politician interested in holding his position in the midterms.Still, Durbin’s announcement is expected to trigger intense competition among Illinois Democrats eager to take his seat. The potential list of successors includes the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has pooled a $19m campaign fund. Representatives Lauren Underwood and Robin Kelly are also considered possible candidates.His departure could provide an opening for Republicans to contest the seat, though Illinois has trended Democratic in recent elections. The last Republican senator from Illinois was Mark Kirk, who lost his re-election bid to Tammy Duckworth in 2016. More

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    Small Plane With 4 Aboard Crashes in Illinois

    The authorities said they were conducting a “fatal aircraft investigation” but did not provide details about the number of people who died.A small plane with four people on board crashed in a field beside a roadway in rural Illinois on Saturday morning, officials said.The authorities did not say how many people died in the crash, but the Illinois State Police said that it was “an active and ongoing fatal aircraft investigation.”The plane crashed around 10:15 a.m. in Trilla, which is about 65 miles south of Champaign. Airplane debris was scattered on the roadway, which was closed several hours after the crash, the State Police said.The plane, a single-engine Cessna 180, crashed about a dozen miles from Coles County Memorial Airport in Mattoon, Ill., the Federal Aviation Administration said.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. It was unknown whether anyone on the ground was injured.“We keep those impacted by the plane crash in our thoughts today,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said on social media. “Thank you to the first responders who rushed to the scene.”In the last week, small plane crashes have killed at least nine people.On Friday night, a small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska, killing three people on board, officials said. On April 12, a small twin-engine plane crashed in a muddy field in New York, killing all six people on board.Flying remains the safest mode of transportation, experts say, but an unusual spate of crashes involving commercial airliners at the start of the year has raised travelers’ anxieties about flying. More

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    Amazon Sellers Struggle with Trump’s Tariff Plans

    When President Trump announced tariffs this month on goods from all over the world, Jing and Eddie Levine, who sell party supplies on Amazon, were on a flight home to Chicago after visiting suppliers in Asia.Amazon was the center of their life. They met at a conference for Amazon sellers in 2016 and had their first kiss at another Amazon conference two years later. They moved in together and grew their business, Treasures Gifted. When they married in 2022, they threw an Amazon-themed wedding, with guests assigned Amazon product numbers instead of table numbers.The Levines tried to make sense of the news. The giant poster that Mr. Trump pointed to during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 2 showed that China would be hit with large tariffs, but so would every country they had just visited — and almost every country on the planet, for that matter.“Thank God the Wi-Fi on the plane was not bad this time,” Mr. Levine said, “because I would have had a heart attack.”The balloons, plates and decorations that the Levines import are just a speck in the trillions of dollars in goods that swirl around the globe. A week after Mr. Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs, he pulled them back for most countries for at least 90 days, while sending tariffs on China even higher.Countries or major companies may be able to lobby the president for a break, as he seemed to give Apple and other electronics makers over the weekend. But the best the Levines of the world can do is wait for news updates and hope their plans haven’t been shredded by Mr. Trump’s vision for unraveling decades of global trade. And like thousands of other small-business owners who sell online, the Levines are struggling to adapt to an e-commerce system that let them tap into international markets but that is now on the verge of falling apart.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘What if we didn’t suck?’: the leftist influencer who wants to campaign for Congress differently

    Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive TikTok star, wants to do campaigns differently. So the very online candidate for a solid blue congressional seat in Illinois is channeling her energy into in-person events.The entry fee for her campaign’s kick-off event was a box of tampons or pads to be donated to The Period Collective, a Chicago-based non-profit that distributes free menstrual products to low-income communities in the area. The debut was such a success, she said, they filled her campaign manager’s SUV with donations. (“I want him to get pulled over so bad,” Abughazaleh quipped in a video for her YouTube series How to Run for Congress.) It’s part of her pledge to disrupt politics as usual and run a campaign that promotes mutual aid and community organizing rather than a candidate-centered “vanity project” that relies on expensive TV ads and “grifty” fundraising texts.“This is about trying a new type of campaign,” Abughazaleh said in an interview with the Guardian shortly after launching her campaign, with a video that asked: “What if we didn’t suck?”Abughazaleh’s campaign arrives at a moment when Democrats are furious with their party’s leadership and demanding change to a political status quo long dominated by septuagenarians and octogenarians. Despite a string of recent electoral gains, polls show the party is demoralized: their popularity is at an all-time low and, according to one survey, the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters say elderly leaders should pass the torch to the next generation of leaders. The party is also desperate to expand their presence – and influence – on social media where their carefully crafted messaging often falls flat.Her pitch seems to have struck a chord. In the week after Abughazaleh launched her campaign, she said it had raised more than $300,000 and received more than 1,000 volunteer sign-ups.“I am sick of waiting around for someone to do something,” she said, speaking via videoconference from her apartment in Chicago, where she has a set-up for recordings and interviews. “There is no mythical, perfect candidate that’s coming out of the woodwork to save us.”After Democrats’ devastating 2024 defeat, Abughazaleh has criticized what she describes as the party’s lack of a post-Trump vision and its attachment to political norms and bipartisanship that Republicans have long abandoned.“This is [the result of] just continually not listening to voters, not considering any other solutions, even if they might be different,” she said. “There’s a lot of talk about being a big tent, but it feels like they’re only extending that tent to the right, and they’re kicking the rest of us out.”Abughazaleh, who boasts more than 200,000 followers on TikTok, flatly rejects the view that Democrats’ losses are the result of the party becoming “too woke” or too supportive of trans rights and pro-Palestinian protests. A Texas native and the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, Abughazaleh displays her keffiyeh – the black and white checkered headscarf that has long symbolized Palestinian rights – prominently in her campaign video. Last year, she was one of the more than 200 content creators credentialed to cover the Democratic national convention in Chicago, where pleas to include a Palestinian American speaker were dismissed.“The Democratic party ignored us during 2024,” she said. “I kept saying, like, talk to one Arab person to just show, like, some empathy on the issue of Gaza, which now we know impacted a lot of voters staying home.”Having worked as an extremism researcher at the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, she warns that authoritarian regimes often begin their power grab by cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights and implored Democrats not to be complicit in the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people.“Democrats deciding that trans people are the reason they lost the election in 2024 – it’s ridiculous. It’s offensive, and frankly, they are contributing to Trump’s authoritarianism,” she said in a recent CNN interview that her campaign clipped and promoted. “A far bigger issue is that we aren’t giving people something to vote for.”Illinois’s ninth district, anchored in Chicago’s North Side and stretching west, is one of the most reliably blue congressional districts in the state and has been represented by Jan Schakowsky since 1999 – the year Abughazaleh was born. In the interview, Abughazaleh said her candidacy was not intended as a “referendum” on the 80-year-old Democrat who has not said yet whether she intends to seek re-election. Nor is it a leftwing challenge, she said, acknowledging Schakowsky’s progressive record.“This is about: we need to try something different,” Abughazaleh said, arguing that the party has lost touch with many of its voters, especially young people. “A lot of these people in Congress never had to go through school shooting drills at school. I did. A lot of them haven’t had to worry about insurance ever in their lives. I don’t have insurance. I use GoodRx as my insurance. These are things that are very common for young people and just not for most people in Congress.”In a statement, Schakowsky said she planned to make a decision on her re-election “soon” but she welcomed “new faces getting involved as we stand up against the Trump administration”.Abughazaleh’s candidacy has also piqued interest on the right. “Now, even longtime liberals are facing the wrath of their own movement,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Campaign said in a statement that claimed Democrats were so astray that they were now “eating their own”.Asked by a reporter whether Abughazaleh’s entry into the race was a worrying sign for Democratic incumbents, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said at the time that he was unaware of her campaign and hailed Schakowsky as a “longstanding, stalwart progressive member”.But he also acknowledged that Democrats were confronting “a lot of energy, a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety” in response to Trump’s return to power.Sharing a clip of Jeffries’ response, Abughazaleh replied: “Nice to meet you, Hakeem! It’s time to get familiar.”Despite her desire to campaign differently, there are some old rules of politics that may be harder to break.Abughazaleh is a recent Chicago transplant who doesn’t technically live in the district, at least not yet, a status that has generated accusations of “carpetbagging”. Addressing the criticism in a YouTube video, Abughazaleh said she and her partner moved to the city abruptly last year and took the first furnished apartment they could find – a place “literally one bus stop” away from the ninth district. The move had nothing to do with her desire to run for office, a decision she said she made after Kamala Harris lost the election and she felt the urge to get involved. Abughazaleh said she intends to move in-district, but cited the cost of breaking her lease as part of the reason she hasn’t done so yet.Supporters also raised concerns about her pledge not to spend money on TV ads, which some argued would put her at a disadvantage in a competitive contest. She said her campaign would re-evaluate the policy.Before entering politics, Abughazaleh spent years monitoring Fox News and other rightwing media at Media Matters. She was laid off last year after legal battles with Musk sapped the progressive group of its resources, in a move that the Freedom of the Press Foundation warned at the time was a worrying example of “billionaires and pandering politicians abusing the legal system to retaliate against their critics”. Musk celebrated her job loss on X: “Karma is real.”In that sense, Abughazaleh can empathize with the tens of thousands of government employees who have lost their jobs as part of Musk’s chainsaw-approach to downsizing the federal workforce.“People are pissed off for good reason. They’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their healthcare, they’re losing the people in their community who are being deported without any due process. Of course, they’re mad, and we should be matching that with anger.”After watching Fox News nearly every day for four years, Abughazaleh said there were some lessons Democrats could learn from the right.“Throwing some metaphorical punches, not reacting to everything,” she said. “What if we didn’t just let them set the agenda all the time? What if we came out strong?” More