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    US food banks rush to stock supplies amid the Snap lapse: ‘We’re going to garner all the resources we can’

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    Waves of hungry Angelenos gathered outside the Community Space food bank’s storefront on a recent afternoon, grabbing dry goods like pastries, bagels, lentils and pasta along with refrigerated salads and frozen bags of brisket.The crowd ebbs and flows all day, said founder Gaines Newborn, but as news spread last week that the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) would cease on Saturday, he braced for the need to dramatically increase.“I’ve gotten more calls than we’ve ever gotten from concerned people saying: ‘My food stamps are getting cut, I need a plan,’” Newborn said. “People are trying to get ahead of food insecurity.”As the federal government shutdown stretches into its second month, the Trump administration announced that Snap, which helps around 42 million people afford food each month, will exhaust its funding at the start of November – something that has never happened before in the program’s half-century history.On Friday, two separate federal judges blocked the government’s attempt to stop paying out the benefits, but the administration could appeal the orders to a higher court. Food banks remain on edge for the possibility of a benefit cut, as they face increased demand driven by federal workers who have gone unpaid during the shutdown, along with people who have struggled to afford rising grocery prices.“The scale of what will happen when 1.8 million New Yorkers don’t get that benefit that they rely on to purchase groceries is sort of hard to wrap my head around, honestly,” said Nicole Hunt, director of public policy and advocacy at Food Bank for NYC, which serves the nation’s most populous city.The organization, which is the largest in New York City, planned to step up its aid during the period when Snap is unavailable, but Hunt said they cannot match the level of assistance the federal program provides.View image in fullscreen“We are going to do what we do, which is to show up with food. We’re going to try to concentrate as much as we can on the neighborhoods that are going to be the hardest hit and garner all the resources that we can, but that’s just not a scale that we’re going to be able to meet, and that’s the reality of how important Snap is and how many people rely on it,” she said.The federal government shut down on the first day of October, after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on legislation that would have continued funding. Around 700,000 federal workers were furloughed, with hundreds of thousands more told to continue working for paychecks that will arrive only after funding is restored.The deadlock has continued as Republicans refuse Democratic demands to couple government funding legislation with an extension of tax credits that have lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health plans. While the Senate’s Republican leaders have tried 13 times to pass a bill to reopen the government, Democrats refuse to budge, and there is no sign of a resolution in sight.Snap benefits continued during previous shutdowns – including those that took place in Donald Trump’s first term – and a Department of Agriculture report outlining their plans for the latest funding lapse indicated they would continue during this one, too.But that report was deleted from the department’s website and replaced by a message that attacks Democratic senators and reads: “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said that between money allocated for Snap and funds for other programs that the law allows it to repurpose, the department could keep Snap dollars flowing, if it wanted to.“Clear congressional intent is that this money is available to pay benefits,” Super said at an event organized by the Brookings Institution. “They’re cutting off benefits to put pressure on Senate Democrats, and they put this offensive and dishonest statement on their website trying to blame anyone but themselves for this entirely voluntary termination of Snap benefits.”The program’s lapse will create need beyond the capability of any food bank to fill.View image in fullscreenOn average, Snap provides 95 million meals per month in New York City. In all of last year, Food Bank for NYC distributed 85 million meals, Zac Hall, the senior vice-president of programs, said.“We’re seeing mothers worried about what they’re going to be able to make for dinner for their kids, grandmothers worried about what they’re going to put on the table for Thanksgiving meals,” Hall said.In the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park, Second Harvest Heartland, the country’s second-largest food bank, is stocking more inventory to be ready for Snap’s end, according to Sarah Moberg, the CEO.“The hunger relief network was not designed to do the work of Snap,” Moberg said. “We are designed to meet someone’s acute hunger need in a moment, and Snap is designed to do that so much more efficiently.”The pain of a cutoff would be particularly acute for the federal workers who are already struggling to get by without their normal salaries.“It’s horrible,” said Christina Dechabert, 52, a Bronx resident who has been working without pay for the Transportation Security Administration at John F Kennedy international airport. “You’re talking about trying to survive with no checks. I’ve had to come to a food bank to get food so our family can survive.”One mother in New York, who did not want to be named, said she was considering taking her two-year-old out of daycare as both she and her husband were federal workers.“We’re in a household with both of us not having paychecks, so that’s the toughest part,” she said. “My son’s under three, so there’s no free daycare, so if this goes on another month or so I might just take him out and have him at home so I don’t have to pay for daycare.”Joshua Cobos, a volunteer at Community Space in Los Angeles, is a Snap recipient himself. He hopes the credit he has earned from his hours at the food bank will see him through the benefit cutoff.“I’m racking up as much as I can around here, and with everything coming up I feel like we’re gonna be busy,” Cobos said.Some cities and states moved to pre-empt the financial hit from the Snap cutoff. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, on Thursday declared a state of emergency that would free up $65m in state funds for food banks. Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, is sending $4m in state funding to food shelves to manage the Snap gap, but the need is far greater – $73m comes from federal funds to Minnesota for the program.The Atlanta Community food bank, where the monthly need has grown 70% over the past three-and-a-half years, announced Thursday it would draw $5m from its contingency to stock its pantries in anticipation of a surge of demand from unpaid federal workers and Snap beneficiaries. Andre Dickens, the city’s mayor, also announced a temporary eviction and water shutoff moratorium to support residents affected by the lapse in food aid.Super, the Georgetown Law professor, warned the cutoff for Snap bodes ill for the program’s long-term future in Washington.“This has been something that has not been political or ideological up to this point, and it would be tragic if we cross that line and this does become something that’s just part of partisan warfare,” he said. More

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      The ‘Mamdani of Minneapolis’ is banking on a grassroots campaign to unseat the Democratic mayor

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      On a rainy October day, dozens of volunteers showed up at a Minneapolis park to grab campaign literature they would leave at voters’ doors, hoping to buoy up a Democratic socialist into the mayor’s office.A handful of door-knockers ran into an apartment building to escape the rain, joining Omar Fateh, the mayoral hopeful sometimes dubbed the “Mamdani of Minneapolis”.“We’re running on a campaign to make the city more livable, affordable and to protect all of our residents,” he told one voter, who said they hadn’t been following the race closely.Two others who answered knew Fateh’s name and lent their support. “I think I’m planning on voting for you,” one man told Fateh.Minneapolis voters will decide their next mayor on Tuesday 4 November.Fateh, a 35-year-old who became state senator by ousting an incumbent, has gained attention for comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist on track to win New York City’s mayoral contest. They’re both young, both part of the insurgent left, both Muslim, both state lawmakers. Their platforms, with a focus on affordability, align. Their campaigns tap into grassroots organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Their races use ranked-choice voting, allowing for alliances against the incumbent.Instead of a primary, Minneapolis holds caucuses and a city convention. Fateh earned the endorsement of the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, but it was then revoked by the state party after the electronic voting system failed to capture all votes in the contest, the Minneapolis DFL acknowledged, leaving the race without an endorsed candidate.View image in fullscreen“One of the biggest benefits of the DFL endorsement is name recognition,” Fateh told the Guardian. “But that name recognition became far greater than what we ever could have gotten with the endorsement after they revoked it.”The Minneapolis mayor’s race doesn’t feature the shamelessness of the New York City race – namely, the participation of the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo and the ethically suspect incumbent mayor, Eric Adams. Few have the charisma of Mamdani, nor the organizing and social media prowess of his campaign, one that left-leaning candidates around the country will try to emulate.Minneapolis’s incumbent mayor, Jacob Frey, running for his third term, has his critics – for his handling of the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in the city in 2020, persistent policing problems, a homelessness crisis and contentions with the more progressive city council. Frey, 44, often serves as a moderate check on the council, which includes several Democratic socialists.There are 15 candidates running in the race, four of whom – all Democrats – are considered viable. The three top challengers, including Fateh, have created an alliance, appearing at each other’s events, though only Fateh is explicitly telling voters not to rank Frey on their ballots. Public polling of the race is minimal, complicated by the ranked-choice voting method, though Frey typically shows as the top vote-getter, albeit not cresting the necessary 50% to win in a first ballot.“The fact that Fateh and other candidates are drawing as much support as they appear to be, I think, owes to the fact that the Democratic party has lost credibility among progressive voters,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “This is not a cross-section of America. This is an urban area in one of the most progressive kind of electorates in the country.”The rise of Omar FatehFateh, like Mamdani, is running a campaign full of progressive promises, including raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, a plan for rent stabilization, a public safety system that funds alternatives to police for calls like mental health crises and standing up to Trump. Six of the 13 council members have backed him, as have unions and state lawmakers.He casts Frey’s two terms as “broken promises and vetoes”, noting a 2017 campaign promise to end homelessness within five years and goals for public safety reform after Floyd’s murder.“We have a progressive city council that’s ready to do the work, that has been doing the work,” Fateh told the Guardian. “We just don’t have a mayor as a partner.”Fateh, born in Washington DC, moved to Minneapolis about a decade ago. In 2020, the Democratic socialist launched a challenge to an incumbent Democrat for the state senate, earning the party’s endorsement and eventually becoming the first Somali American and first Muslim in the chamber. As a senator, he pushed through a bill creating labor standards for ride-share drivers and championed a tuition-free college plan.His time in the legislature and reputation as a progressive fighter gave him a base of support in the mayoral contest, elevating him to top contender against Frey, Jacobs said.An increased national profile has brought along an increase in threats, racism and Islamophobia, Fateh told Sahan Journal, a local publication, this week. Earlier this month, he got a message that said: “Two bullets to the head, done.” He has had to take additional safety precautions and pay for security, he told the outlet. “Most campaigns don’t have to think about this,” his campaign manager told Sahan Journal.View image in fullscreenFateh believes the revoked endorsement is in part because of the donor class and how it would look to support a progressive candidate with a populist message, especially in suburban and rural areas where the DFL has lost ground.“The DFL and the Democratic party as a whole like to always say we’re a big tent, we are a wide spectrum, we welcome everybody,” he said. “But a lot of times it seems like when it’s the more progressive wing that they can shut out.”After knocking on doors, Fateh returned to the park, where families set up bubble machines and boxes of fruit snacks and goldfish for a “play date with Omar Fateh”, himself the tired first-time father of a newborn. He is quick to show off pictures of his baby. Frey also has a newborn, his second child – the two politicians’ babies were born within 10 days of each other.An organizer at the play date asked the crowd of a few dozen adults and kids if anyone knows who Fateh is. “I’ve seen him on the phone!” one kid yelled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSarah Quinn, a Minneapolis voter who spoke to the crowd at the event, said she had heard from people who were ready to vote against Frey, but weren’t sure how they would rank the other candidates. People seemed excited to hear about Fateh’s vision, she said, and she was sick of hearing about vetoes of council bills and “low-grade insults back and forth” among the mayor and council.“I feel like Minneapolis has this reputation of being a really progressive city, and I’m not actually feeling that as a resident,” Quinn said. “And so just hearing his agenda has really resonated with me, and I think that he’s somebody that can actually get the shit done with the city council.”The rise of the DSA has served as a boogeyman of sorts for the Democratic establishment: before the Minneapolis convention, one proposal, which was later pulled back, sought to make it so a candidate couldn’t be endorsed by both the DSA and the DFL.Fateh’s campaign has been boosted by the Twin Cities DSA. Brooke Bartholomew, the group’s co-chair, said they had seen new members sign up after Mamdani’s win in the primary.“We have the people power,” Bartholomew said. “That’s part of what DSA brings to the table for Omar Fateh’s campaign is people power – going on those doors, talking to neighbors and helping to build this really diverse coalition.”Is Frey vulnerable?Frey, endorsed by Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, has the money advantage over Fateh and the other two top contenders, Jazz Hampton and DeWayne Davis. That “organizational muscle” that comes from allied groups and the business community could help get out the vote for Frey, said Jacobs, of the University of Minnesota.The Guardian repeatedly sought an interview with Frey and asked to attend a campaign event. The campaign did not make the mayor available, instead sending a statement from a campaign spokesperson.View image in fullscreen“Over the last five years, Minneapolis was tested like never before,” the statement said. “Under Mayor Frey’s leadership, the city has been making a comeback. Violent crime is trending down, the city is creating eight times more deeply affordable housing than before Mayor Frey took office, and Minneapolis is taking the Trump administration to court to defend our neighbors. The mayor is running for one final term to improve public safety by hiring more police officers and implementing police reform, expanding affordable housing, and focusing on delivering excellent core city services. We’re optimistic that Minneapolis voters will support that vision next week.”Since Trump returned to the White House, Frey has vocally defended Minneapolis, which could become a target of Trump’s increased deportation raids or military occupations. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, came to town in late October, stoking speculation that the city could be next on Trump’s list. Frey, flanked by city leaders, put out a video on the day of her visit saying he had been preparing for months for a potential federal influx.“In Minneapolis, we have your back,” Frey said to the city’s immigrant communities. “You will be protected and respected by our city employees regardless of your immigration status.”Opposing Trump is an increasing part of the mayor’s purview, and one that all the contenders say is critical. Fateh wants the city to strengthen the separation ordinance that prevents city employees from aiding immigration activities.While the race is often cast as a two-person contest, Hampton and Davis see lanes for themselves to win, given ranked-choice voting, and not just to help Fateh.View image in fullscreen“I would not be running to prop up someone else’s campaign,” Hampton said. “I’m running to win, and I believe that we can and will. However, if that means door-knocking with other candidates to let everyone see us, that’s what we should be doing.”Davis, a minister and former congressional staffer, said voters were ready to move beyond “leadership by press conference and ribbon-cutting”, and the success of the three insurgent campaigns shows that.The Mamdani comparisons don’t track as much with the Minneapolis race, Davis said. Looking past the weak opposition from Cuomo in New York, Minneapolis has a “very active establishment” of business-oriented Democrats.“I think we are far more divided here,” Davis said of Minneapolis voters. “And so given the ranked choice with us, that division, it’s any guess about how that iteration of choices through ranked choice will end up happening.” More

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      US farmers caught in Trump-China trade war – who’ll buy the soybeans?

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      At the Purfeerst farm in southern Minnesota, the soybean harvest just wrapped up for the season. The silver grain bins are full of about 100,000 bushels of soybeans, which grab about $10 a piece.This year, though, the fate of the soybeans, and the people whose livelihoods depend on selling them, is up in the air: America’s soybean farmers are stuck in the middle of a trade war between the US and China, the biggest purchaser of soybean exports, used to feed China’s pigs.“We are gonna have to find a home for them soybeans some time soon,” said Matt Purfeerst, a fifth-generation farmer on the family’s land. “They won’t stay in our bins for ever.”No other country comes close to purchasing as many American soybeans as China – last year, it was more than $12bn worth. This year, the country has not purchased a single dollar’s worth, cutting off the country that makes up about half of US soybean exports.While Trump has said he intends some sort of payment to go to soybean farmers hurt by tariffs, an announcement of a specific plan is on hold while the government is shut down. He said in a Truth Social post last week that he would be meeting with the Chinese president soon and “soybeans will be a major topic of discussion”.The White House cast blame on Democrats for the government shutdown for the delay in a response to the Guardian on Wednesday, erroneously claiming they were prioritizing healthcare for migrants over farmers.View image in fullscreen“President Trump, [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent, and [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins are always in touch about the needs of our farmers, who played a crucial role in the president’s November victory,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have stalled progress on this issue with their prolonged shutdown to serve illegal immigrants instead of America’s farmers. No decisions have been made, but we look forward to sharing good news soon.”Purfeerst’s family farm grows soybeans and corn, and has some beef cattle. The job is a round-the-clock combination of engineering, business, manual labor, environmental science. And it’s increasingly hard for family farms to make it. Costs for propane, fertilizer and seed have gone up, he said, and the prices for the goods they are selling don’t make up for the increased costs.Soybean farmers have become the “poster child out there right now of how this one particular segment’s getting hurt”, he said. The farm recently welcomed the Democratic US senator Amy Klobuchar for a visit to talk about how the tariffs were playing out, but Purfeerst said political affiliations didn’t matter.“Only 1% of the population is even involved in [agriculture] any more,” he said. “And what gets really challenging is this perception of ag out there, whether it’s on tariffs and prices or environmental issues, farmers kind of seem to be the crosshairs of a lot of it.”Farming areas voted for Trump in 2024, as did much of rural America. One analysis, by Investigate Midwest, showed Trump growing his support among farming-dependent counties in 2024 despite a trade war during his first term that negatively affected farmers.“I’m not gonna get into who I voted for particularly, but I would just have to say, at the time, you got to make decisions who you think is going to be the best leader of the country, and go on with life,” Purfeerst said. “And in four years, you get to vote again. That’s the beauty of our society. It’s not an 80-year regime. It’s a four-year cycle. It’s hard to say what’s gonna come about. I mean, everyone’s got their pros and cons.”View image in fullscreenPurfeerst has options for his soybeans: because of his farm’s location, he can sell domestically to soybean crush facilities in nearby towns, sell on the rail market, or sell in Minneapolis and put product on barges down the Mississippi River. Other soybean farmers, especially those in more remote parts of the midwest where soybeans are mostly produced, aren’t as lucky.Stories from all parts of the country where soybeans are grown have surfaced in recent weeks – in Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, the Dakotas. Farmers face higher costs for inputs like fertilizer and equipment. They rely on China as a purchaser. Soybeans sitting in bins too long is subject to weather and pests. The prices fluctuate, so it’s a gamble to hold on to it that sometimes can pay off, or sometimes lose money.“Let’s say tomorrow we get a trade deal with China, and it’s favorable to soybeans. All of a sudden you might see this market jump from $10 to $12 in three, four days,” Purfeerst said. “So it makes it extremely challenging from a risk management standpoint of: when do you market your crop, and how many eggs do you put in that basket? The potential is $12, but if we don’t get a trade deal, it could go to $9 … There’s a huge volatility in soybeans.”The soybean industry has been warning for months that China’s exit from the market would be devastating, calling on the Trump administration to come up with a trade deal that spares farmers. The American Soybean Association wrote a letter to Trump in August, saying the country’s soybean farmers were “standing at a trade and financial precipice” and “cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer”.Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, declared the first week of October as soybean week, saying in the announcement that “our soybean farmers are confronting a crisis they haven’t seen since the 1980s”.“They’ve produced a bumper crop this year, just to find out they have nowhere to sell their harvest thanks to Trump’s trade policies,” Walz said. “Minnesota’s got the best beans in the world – I encourage Minnesotans to stand with our farmers and continue to advocate for federal trade reform.”It’s not the first time a Trump trade plan has hurt soybean farmers: in 2018, a trade war led to significant reductions in soybean exports to China. Since then, the market has rebounded, though China has ramped up soybean purchases from Brazil and Argentina, stockpiling imports earlier this year.Republican lawmakers have said they are sympathetic to the farmers and want to find a way to help them. James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, said this week that soybean farmers were not to blame for the problem they are facing.“They planted that crop assuming that those foreign markets were going to be there,” Comer said in a recent TV appearance. “I think we need to do something to help the soybean farmers.”A bailout is “really just a Band-Aid”, though it’s one that many farmers would welcome as they are getting squeezed right now, Purfeerst said. Most farmers would prefer an open market, without tariffs, for their products, letting the market dictate prices. They don’t want the trade war now to affect a long-term relationship that makes up a significant chunk of market share. There also should be more emphasis put on increasing domestic uses of soybeans, though a long-range plan like that won’t help the farmers who are stuck right now, he said.“There’s farms that are struggling to make money on soybean acres, and you’ve got to remember: whatever payment we’re getting, whatever that dollar amount might be, if we get anything, it’s not just going in our back pocket,” he said. “We’ve got a fertilizer bill. We’ve got to pay the seed bill. There’s a lot of payments. So really, that money might be in the farmer’s hands for a month, until it gets spent on inputs for next year.” More

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      US justice department sues Minnesota over sanctuary city policies

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      The justice department has sued the state of Minnesota over its sanctuary city immigration policies, making it the latest locality to face legal threats as the Trump administration attempts to carry out the president’s campaign promise of mass deportations.“Minnesota officials are jeopardizing the safety of their own citizens by allowing illegal aliens to circumvent the legal process,” Pamela Bondi, the attorney general, said in a statement.The justice department added that Minnesota’s policies of refusing to cooperate with immigration authorities are illegal under federal law and have resulted in the release of so-called “dangerous criminals”. Immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in US immigration detention.The Minnesota cities of Minneapolis, St Paul and Hennepin county join the ranks of Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and the states of New Jersey and Colorado: Democratic led jurisdictions which are facing similar lawsuits over their sanctuary city policies.A Trump administration court filing in June – amid demonstrations against immigration raids – called Los Angeles’s sanctuary city ordinance “illegal” and asked that it be blocked from being enforced to allow the White House to crack down on what it calls a “crisis of illegal immigration”.Over the summer, the justice department sent letters to 13 states it classified as “sanctuary jurisdictions”, including California and Rhode Island, and 22 local governments, from Boston to Seattle, informing their leaders that they could face prosecution or lose federal funding for “undermining” and “obstructing” federal immigration agents.Last month, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to 34 “sanctuary cities” and counties, according to an executive order Donald Trump signed at the beginning of his second term.Trump campaigned for the presidency on a promise of deporting millions of immigrants from the US. His administration has argued that sanctuary city laws, which limit a locality’s participation with federal immigration agents, violate federal law. Brett Shumate, an assistant attorney general at the justice department’s civil division, said in a statement that “shielding illegal aliens from federal law enforcement is a blatant violation of the law that carries dangerous consequences”.Representatives from Minnesota’s governor and attorney general’s offices, the Hennepin sheriff’s office, and the mayors’ offices for St Paul and Minneapolis had not immediately responded to Reuters’ requests for comment. More

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      MyPillow founder defamed Smartmatic election tech company, judge rules

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      MyPillow founder Mike Lindell defamed the election technology company Smartmatic with false statements that its voting machines helped rig the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge in Minnesota ruled recently.But US district judge Jeffrey Bryan deferred until future proceedings the question of whether Lindell – one of the country’s most prominent propagators of false claims that the 2020 election was a fraud – acted with the “actual malice” that Smartmatic still needs to prove to collect any damages.The judge said there are “genuine fact disputes” as to whether Lindell’s statements were made “with knowledge that they were false or made with reckless disregard to their falsity”. He noted that the defense says Lindell has an “unwavering belief” that his statements were truthful.The statements cited by the judge in his ruling on Friday arose from Lindell’s criticism of the results of the 2020 election in California’s Los Angeles county, which Democratic challenger Joe Biden carried with 71% of the vote over Republican incumbent Donald Trump. The results in LA county helped Biden secure the state’s 55 electoral votes as his electoral college victory sent him to the White House and ended Trump’s first presidency.The county used Smartmatic’s computerized touchscreen ballot-marking devices and was the company’s only customer for the 2020 election. Lindell alleged the machines were rigged to change Trump votes to Biden votes.The judge ruled there were 51 specific times when Lindell falsely claimed – in documentaries he produced and through various media and personal appearances – that Smartmatic interfered with the results.“The court concludes that, based on the record presented, no reasonable trier of fact could find that any of the statements at issue are true,” Bryan wrote.Smartmatic attorney Erik Connolly said they will be seeking “nine-figure damages” from Lindell and MyPillow for “spreading lies” about the company.“Smartmatic did not and could not have rigged the 2020 election,” Connolly said in a statement. “It was impossible, and everything that Mr Lindell said about Smartmatic was false.”Smartmatic has been on a winning streak, having reached settlements in 2024 with two conservative news outlets, including Newsmax and One America News Network. The Florida-based company also still has an active case against Fox News.Lindell also has made similar claims against Dominion Voting Systems. He lost a case involving the Denver-based company in June when a jury ruled that he defamed a former Dominion employee by accusing him of treason. The jury awarded $2.3m in damages.Lindell told the Associated Press shortly after the Smartmatic ruling was filed that he hadn’t seen it – but that it was “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard”.Lindell went on to call Smartmatic “one of the most corrupt companies in the world”, and he vowed to keep fighting until its voting machines are “melted down and turned into prison bars”. He said he will take his crusade to eliminate voting machines in favor of paper ballots all the way to the US supreme court if he has to.Lindell, known as the “MyPillow guy” for his bedding company, also said he recently re-established residence in Minnesota as a step toward a likely run for governor against the incumbent Democratic governor, Tim Walz. While MyPillow is based in the Minneapolis suburbs, Lindell had been living until recently in Texas.Lindell and MyPillow have faced a number of legal and financial setbacks in recent years, but he won a victory in July when a federal appeals court ruled he did not have to pay a $5m arbitration award to a software engineer who disputed data that Lindell claimed proved China interfered in the 2020 election. The court said the arbitration panel overstepped its authority. More

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      Doctors find bullet fragment in neck of 10-year-old Minnesota school shooting survivor

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      Doctors have found a bullet fragment lodged perilously close to the carotid artery in the neck of a 10-year-old boy who narrowly survived the mass shooting in Minneapolis last week after a friend shielded him from the gunfire.Fifth-grader Weston Halsne recounted running under a pew and covering his head while shots fired by the alleged shooter, Robin Westman, came through the stained-glass windows during the shooting at Annunciation Catholic school last Wednesday. He described how his friend Victor Greenawalt had jumped on top of him to shield him.After the shooting, the boy told reporters: “I think I got, like, gunpowder on my neck.”His father, Grant Halsne, has now told NBC News that it was in fact not gunpowder, but a piece of bullet, adding that a doctor described the boy’s survival as a “miracle”.“If it [the bullet fragment] went any further, he would’ve died,” Halsne told the outlet.His son is expected to have the fragment removed later this week and is expected to make a full recovery.An aunt, Allison Hawes, confirmed that her nephew “will need surgery to remove a bullet fragment that is lodged in his neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery”.Hawes wrote on a fundraising page: “You’ve been amazed by his quick wit, awed by his persistence, and charmed by his earnestness.“If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve seen his grief-stricken face and heard, despite his shock, Weston’s account of the horrific details during the mass at Annunciation Church. And in spite of everything, this 10-year-old boy was able to express appreciation for his friends and pray for their recovery.”Weston last week described how he first heard the gunfire. “I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows,” Weston said. “So, they were like, the shots were like right next to me.”The suspect, who was found dead at the rear of the church with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, fired around 120 shots from three different guns, according to Minneapolis police.Police on Sunday revised the number of people injured in the shooting from 18 to 21 on Sunday. Fletcher Merkel, eight, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. Most of the injured were children.Greenawalt’s uncle, Mike Kelly, said his nephew’s “selfless acts” helped spare the lives of his friends. “But he and his sister were injured in the process,” Kelly wrote on a fundraising site.Others injured include Genevieve Bisek, 11, who was shot in the neck. She is listed as “satisfactory”. Her family, who have also launched a fundraising page, said her “medical journey is uncertain”.Sophia Forchas, 12, was listed as in critical condition; Lydia Kaiser in “very serious condition”; David Haeg, six, is being treated in a hospital pediatric intensive care unit; and Astoria Safe, 10, was grazed on the forehead. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she had helped pull two kids next to her down when the bullets started flying.“I had two buddies side by side, and I just pushed their heads down to make sure they were safe,” she said. “I thought it was fireworks, it was just crazy. And the smell was terrible.”Officials have said they are trying “to determine some type of motive” for this shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News the suspect “clearly had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters”.“Ultimately this person committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.The survivor accounts come as a political debate rages over the motives for shooting, with figures on the right pointing to the shooter’s transgender identity, and the left to identify gun control.On Sunday, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused White House official Sebastian Gorka on Sunday of wanting “to deflect from the reality” after Gorka said Westman had a clear “ideological” motive for targeting the Catholic school.“That’s what terrorism is,” Gorka said, prompting Omar to respond: “These people are all over the place because they want to deflect from the reality … which is that, there was, someone who came into that school, through the window, and assassinated two beautiful angels, as they prayed.”Omar called for call for a ban on assault weapons and increased mental health services. “This is not the moment to point fingers,” she said. More

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      Judge blocks White House from defunding 34 municipalities over ‘sanctuary’ policies

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to 34 “sanctuary cities” and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement, significantly expanding a previous order.The order, issued on Friday by the San Francisco-based US district judge William Orrick, adds Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Boston, Baltimore, Denver and Albuquerque, to cities that the administration is barred from denying funding.Orrick, an Obama appointee, previously ruled it was unconstitutional for the Trump administration to freeze funding to local governments with “sanctuary” policies, limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).The April ruling came after cities including San Francisco, Sacramento, Minneapolis and Seattle sued the administration over what they claimed were illegal executive orders signed by Donald Trump in January and February that threatened to cut off funding if Democrat-controlled cities do not cooperate.Cities and counties suing the administration contend that the executive orders amount to an abuse of power that violate the constitution. The administration argues that the federal government should not be forced to subsidize policies that thwart its control of immigration.The administration has since ordered the national guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC, both cities with sanctuary designations, under a law-and-order mandate. On Friday, Trump said Chicago is likely the next target for efforts to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration.“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding: “And then we’ll help with New York.”The number of people in immigration detention has soared by more than 50% since Trump’s inauguration, according to an Axios review published Saturday, reaching a record 60,000 immigrants in long-term detention or around 21,000 more than at the end of the Biden administration.Separately, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, last week issued fresh threats to 30 Democrat-led cities and states, including to the governors of California, Illinois and Minnesota, and the mayors of New York, Denver and Boston, to drop sanctuary policies.Bondi said in the letter that their jurisdictions had been identified as those that engage “in sanctuary policies and practices that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States”.“This ends now,” Bondi wrote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrat leaders uniformly rejected the Trump administration’s assertion. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in response that Bondi’s order was “some kind of misguided political agenda” that “is fundamentally inconsistent with our founding principles as a nation”.The accelerating confrontation between the administration and Democratic-led jurisdictions comes as the Pentagon began ordering 2,000 national guard troops in Washington to carry firearms.US officials told NBC News that the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had authorized national guard members who are supporting local law enforcement will probably carry weapons but troops assigned to city beautification roles would not.The official said troops supporting the mission “to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training”, according to the outlet. More

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      US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise

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      “Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.”The staff at representative Swalwell’s California district office had heard the man’s voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday.“So, I’m fine with anything at this point. I’m tired of it. I’ll just set up behind my .308 and I’ll do my job,” he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. “You want a war? Get your war started.”Swalwell’s staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime.As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security.The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents.“I’m not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,” Swalwell told the Guardian. “This guy’s terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.”Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts.“When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you’re dipping into your campaign resources,” Swalwell said. “You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it’s been costly to do both.”The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness.“I push the envelope,” Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. “If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I’m really a threat, oh well, so be it.”View image in fullscreenGiglio’s made his last call to Swalwell’s office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier.Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road.“We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,” said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year.“It’s hard to know whether there’s an increase in threats to public officials or there’s an increase in the level of enforcement that’s producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,” Simi said.But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats.In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, “substantial numbers” said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.“Lawmakers are reporting that it’s kind of getting worse, the severity of what’s being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,” Ramachandran said.Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. “A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn’t even know who they’re supposed to report these things to,” she said.Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats.“The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,” she said. “There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.”But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance.At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee’s chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators.Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, “so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value”. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel.Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota.Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security.California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that.Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security.Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers’ homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023.Restricting public information about lawmaker’s residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public.“It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,” said Ramachandran. “It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?”Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada’s secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers’ residential information without interfering in election challenges.“Political violence has no place in our country,” he said in a statement. “People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.”The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat.“The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don’t support political violence,” Simi said. “So those that do are an outlier. But there’s some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don’t have great data over time, so that’s a hard question to answer.” More

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris attend funeral of slain Minnesota lawmaker

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      Democratic former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral on Saturday that was attended by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.The former president and vice-president were joined by more than 1,000 other mourners.Hortman was shot to death during a pair of attacks two weeks earlier by a man posing as a police officer. Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor has called the killing an assassination. The shootings also left her husband, Mark, dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded.“Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. I get to remember her as a close friend, a mentor and the most talented legislator I have ever known,” Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in his eulogy.Walz, who was Harris’s running mate in the 2024 White House election won by Donald Trump, added: “For seven years, I have had the privilege of signing her agenda into law. I know millions of Minnesotans get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service and politics.”Neither Biden nor Harris spoke, but they sat in the front row with Walz. Biden was also one of more than 7,500 people who paid their respects on Friday as Hortman, her husband and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota capitol rotunda in St Paul. Gilbert was seriously wounded in the attack and had to be euthanized. Biden also visited the wounded senator in a hospital.Dozens of current and former state legislators from both parties and other elected officials who worked with Hortman also attended.As House speaker, Hortman helped pass an expansive agenda of liberal initiatives such as free lunches for public school students along with strengthened protections for abortion and trans rights during a momentous 2023 legislative session. With the House split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she yielded the gavel to a Republican under a power-sharing deal, took the title speaker emerita and helped break a budget impasse that threatened to shut down state government.Walz said Hortman – who was first elected in 2004 – saw her mission as “to get as much good done for as many people as possible”. And he said her focus on people was what made her so effective.“She certainly knew how to get her way – no doubt about that,” Walz said. “But she never made anyone feel that they’d gotten rolled at a negotiating table. That wasn’t part of it for her, or a part of who she was. She didn’t need somebody else to lose to win for her.”The governor said the best way to honor the Hortmans would be by following their example.“Maybe it is this moment where each of us can examine the way we work together, the way we talk about each other, the way we fight for things we care about,” Walz said. “A moment when each of us can recommit to engaging in politics and life the way Mark and Melissa did – fiercely, enthusiastically, heartily, but without ever losing sight of our common humanity.”A private burial for the Hortmans will be held at a later date.The Hortmans were proud of their adult children, Sophie and Colin Hortman, and the lawmaker often spoke of them.In a voice choked with emotion, Colin said his parents embodied the “Golden Rule”, and he read the prayer of St Francis, which his mother always kept in her wallet. He said it captures her essence. It starts: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”After the service, Walz presented the children with US and Minnesota flags that flew over the state capitol on the day their parents were killed.The man accused of killing the Hortmans at their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park on 14 June, and wounding Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in nearby Champlin, surrendered near his home the night of 15 June.Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, remains jailed and has not entered a plea to charges that could carry the federal death penalty. More