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US revokes six foreigners’ visas over social media comments criticizing Charlie Kirk
by Evelyn Reynolds 15 October 2025, 00:16
Donald Trump’s US state department said on Tuesday it had revoked the visas of six foreigners over social media comments made about the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the state department said in a statement posted on X. “The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”The state department then listed six “examples of aliens who are no longer welcome in the US” in a thread on the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the Trump donor who called himself “a free speech absolutist” before buying the site formerly known as Twitter.The thread included screenshots and quotes from people identified as foreign nationals of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa.None of the individuals was identified by name, but the screenshots made it possible to trace the identities of two people, including one who had been singled out for abuse by conservatives on X.“Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero,” one of the comments posted on X read. “He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”The thread ended with a statement from the state department that Trump and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, “will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws. Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”Last month, a deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, urged social media users to send him posts critical of Kirk, saying he was “disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration has previously ramped up efforts to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreign students it accuses of participating in unrest in the form of protests against Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The administration has also required foreign visitors to make their social media accounts public so that they can be checked before they are allowed to enter the land of the free.In recent months, the administration has expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the US for comments critical of Trump, revoked a visa for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York and cancelled visas of the visas for British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan.The government has also said it is reviewing the status of the more than 55 million holders of visas to enter the US for potential violations of its standards.Those actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as blatant violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the US, not just citizens. More
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Johnson says ‘I don’t have anything to negotiate’ as US shutdown drags on
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 October 2025, 19:01
The top House Republican said he won’t negotiate with Senate Democrats as the government shutdown dragged into its 14th day on Tuesday, while defending the Trump administration’s decision to shuffle Pentagon funds to make sure military personnel get their paychecks.Speaking to reporters, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed: “I don’t have anything to negotiate” and accused Democrats of playing games ahead of the Senate’s scheduled eighth vote Tuesday evening on a House-passed measure to fund the government.He also dismissed Democratic concerns about the legality of the Pentagon’s decision to use unspent research and development funds to pay service members during the shutdown, starting with a paycheck on Wednesday.“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said. “I’m grateful for a commander in chief who understands the priorities of the country.”The payment arrangement came after Donald Trump ordered his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to find money for military salaries over the weekend. Trump said in a post on TruthSocial that he wouldn’t let Democrats “hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE” during the shutdown.The Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget announced that troops will receive their scheduled 15 October paycheck using reallocated funds, eliminating the immediate need for a separate US military pay bill.Johnson has said the Trump administration has “every right” to redirect the appropriated defense department funds, though Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether the action is legal.The speaker continued to blame the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, for the impasse, accusing him of blocking the House-passed “clean” continuing resolution to appease his party’s progressive wing.“We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” Johnson said, adding that he had “no strategy” beyond “doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing”.Johnson claimed the Republican stopgap funding bill contains no partisan priorities, telling reporters on Tuesday: “I don’t have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them.”The Republican speaker has kept the House in extended recess and scrapped scheduled votes as he attempts to pressure Senate Democrats into accepting the Republican proposal without modifications. Playing hardball has drawn praise from the rightwing House Freedom Caucus but criticism from some Republicans who argue the House should negotiate.According to a court filing by the country’s largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, more than 4,000 government employees have been laid off during the shutdown. Senate Democrats representing Maryland and Virginia, states with high concentrations of federal workers, condemned the dismissals on Tuesday.“This is all part of the Trump 2025 playbook,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator. “Stop attacking employees, stop attacking the American people, and start negotiating to reopen the federal government.” More
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I chaired the US Federal Election Commission. Now there’s no cop on the beat | Ellen L Weintraub
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 October 2025, 14:00
Threats to the US electoral process keep accelerating. Donald Trump is issuing increasingly unhinged demands that his political adversaries and those who fund speech that he views as contrary to his political agenda or supports his political opponents be prosecuted. When a prosecutor balked at this political intervention, Trump simply found one who is more compliant.In what appears to be yet another attempt to concoct support for unproven claims of voter fraud, the Department of Justice has issued exhaustive voting records requests to multiple states. Voting rights lawsuits have been dismissed. A division targeting foreign interference in our elections has been dismembered. Attempts are under way to make voter registration more onerous. Alarmingly, at least one commentator has warned that the extraordinary call-out of the military against US civilians on US soil may be a “dress rehearsal” for taking over the 2026 election from the lawful administrators in the states. Even short of a takeover, one could well imagine this administration developing pretexts for troop deployments in Democratic strongholds during voting. Indeed, Trump has already called for the military to use American cities, at least those run by Democrats, as “training grounds” and ominously talks of a “war from within”.American democracy may be under attack, but billionaire mega-donors are fully engaged in protecting their own interests. And as we head into what will undoubtedly be another multibillion-dollar election year, the agency charged with regulating money in politics is missing in action. With the recent announcement of another commissioner leaving the already moribund agency, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will be down to two commissioners. By law, there should be six, but it takes four to make a quorum. Without a quorum, the FEC cannot enforce the law.Fifty years ago, in the wake of Watergate, a scandal featuring a president who used burglars and bags of cash to go after his political enemies, the Federal Election Commission opened its doors to enforce campaign finance restrictions and enable the American people to “follow the money”. In this anniversary year, the commission finds itself, for the fourth time, without even a bare quorum of commissioners to conduct its most important business. Three out of four of these periods have occurred during a Trump administration. The last time, in 2020, as previous fundraising records were being shattered, Trump waited until after the election to restore the quorum.The Trump administration’s gutting of the FEC is another indication of a pervasive contempt for the electoral process and the post-Watergate anti-corruption reforms that would have made Richard Nixon blush. The FEC is just one of the checks on the president’s conduct that Trump has disabled, along with removing Inspectors general, Democratic appointees to boards and commissions throughout the federal government, and others who dare to voice a dissenting view.Watergate was a scandal involving about a million dollars, an amount that shocked the nation back then, but would be considered chump change today, after a 2024 campaign cycle when six separate donors contributed 100 times that amount, moguls lined up to make million-dollar donations to a largely unregulated inaugural committee, 2,500 Super Pacs together raised more than $5bin, and overall, almost $15bn was spent, almost $2bn in undisclosed “dark money”.No one is more aware than I am of the FEC’s shortcomings in enforcing the law and the increasing challenges it will face in a world where the president feels empowered to fire any official who defies him.Having no cop on the beat to address any potential campaign finance wrongdoing, however, will only embolden political actors who would disregard the law, and it leaves those seeking to comply with no way to get definitive guidance. And the resulting backlog of enforcement cases will provide an opening for those commissioners seeking an excuse to avoid investigating alleged illegality. The commission needs a quorum, and specifically, a quorum of commissioners willing to enforce the law and stop engineering loopholes.We are sadly learning how many ways there are for a determined president to undermine government agencies whose missions he finds inconvenient. The president needn’t zero out the budget or fire all the staff to literally decommission the commission. In the case of the FEC, it’s been death by decapitation. Billionaires seeking new ways to wield influence from the shadows will face no deterrence while the American people’s desire for a fair and transparent political system goes unfulfilled.
Ellen L Weintraub is currently a senior fellow at End Citizens United. She served as a commissioner on the FEC from 2002-2025, until her removal by Donald Trump, and served as chair four times More
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Republican in New York’s mayor race: eccentric street vigilante who could secure Mamdani’s win
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 October 2025, 14:00
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With less than a month to go, the race to be New York City’s mayor is continuing to fascinate and bemuse: and in an election that could have political ramifications across the country, it’s a beret-wearing, cat-loving vigilante who seems like he could have the final say.Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the crime-fighting group the Guardian Angels and the Republican candidate to run the largest US city, has little chance of winning the election in November. But his presence may be the thing that helps confirm Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist, as New York’s next mayor.Polling shows Mamdani, who was little known a year ago but has arguably become one the most talked-about politicians in the country, leading Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic governor running as an independent, by as much as 20 points. With Sliwa attracting up to 18% of the vote, an emerging theory popular among some of Cuomo’s wealthy backers is that Sliwa should drop out, allowing his voters to flock to their man.There’s just one problem. The 71-year-old isn’t going anywhere.“Curtis Sliwa never dropped out of anything in his life,” Sliwa told the Wall Street Journal, the Rupert Murdoch-owned, rightwing newspaper that has made it pretty clear it wants Cuomo to triumph, last week.Asked by others if he will exit the race, Sliwa has offered more visceral rebuttals.“A Mack truck hits me and I get turned into a speed bump, and they can’t recover me in the ICU. That’s the only way,” Sliwa said in an interview with amNewYork.It is an attitude that comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed Sliwa’s decades in public life. His role with the Guardian Angels – Sliwa wears the group’s distinctive red beret almost permanently – led to him being shot several times in 1992 after he criticized a mafia boss, and he stubbornly stayed in the mayoral race in 2021, winning 30% of the vote.Sliwa has never faced the pressure he has now come under, however, with Donald Trump and billionaire mega-donors calling for him to quit. According to Sliwa, some of the pressure has been of an illegal nature, with wealthy figures connected to Cuomo offering him money to drop out.View image in fullscreen“They all think that everybody has a price, that’s the way they talk. ‘Come on Curtis, everybody has a price,’” Sliwa told reporters recently. “Curtis Sliwa doesn’t have a price. I came into this world with nothing, I’m going to leave with nothing, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”Sliwa has avoided naming names but insists he has been offered “bribes”.“Seven different people, a total of $10m when you bifurcate it out over the years,” he told Fox5 New York.“Car, Jeep, chauffeur, headquarters to operate out of, helping the Guardian Angels, helping animal welfare – and you know something? If you’re watching out there, you can’t bribe me, buy me, lease me: I’m not for sale.”Sliwa accompanied his words with a chin-flicking gesture, which the New York Post translated as meaning “fuck outta here”. Cuomo’s campaign denied the claims and pointed to Sliwa’s track record with the truth, which has, at times, been patchy: in the 1990s Sliwa admitted he had faked some of the Guardian Angels’ crime-fighting exploits.That hasn’t stopped Sliwa from talking about the alleged bribes – and last week he began campaigning with a private security detail after he said he had received “very credible” threats against him and his wife.Whether Sliwa’s claims are true or not, the pressure on him to quit is undeniable.John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Republican mega-donor and a close friend of Sliwa’s, recently said he should drop out “if he reaches a point that he feels that he’s not turning it around”. In a separate statement last week, Catsimatidis said: “In two weeks from now, if he hasn’t shown any progress, how did Sgt Schultz say it? Machine kaput!”Joe Lhota, who was deputy mayor under Republican Rudy Giuliani, endorsed Cuomo, describing Sliwa as a “fruit loop” to the New York Post. Anthony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s former chief of staff, was more diplomatic, but said “the numbers aren’t there for him to win”. Bill Ackman, the billionaire who backed Trump in 2024, called out Sliwa directly on social media on Thursday.View image in fullscreen“A vote for Curtis Sliwa is a vote for Zohran Mamdani. Curtis Sliwa, it is time for you to leave the race,” Ackman wrote. “Every day you wait to leave the race reduces the probability of stopping Mamdani. I know you don’t want to hand the City to him.”Sliwa has responded to the attempts at coercion as one might expect.“I believe the people have a right to vote and determine who the next mayor is,” the Guardian Angels founder added. “They don’t get picked by billionaires or the professional political class. That’s not how our elections work.”Ackman claimed in his social media post that Cuomo could beat Mamdani in a “one-on-one election”. But it’s not a given that Sliwa’s Republican voters would automatically flock to Cuomo, who has criticized Trump and resigned as New York governor under a cloud after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Head-to-head matchups show Mamdani comfortably beating Cuomo in November.Still, national Republicans want Sliwa gone. Asked about his fellow Republican in an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump described Sliwa as “not exactly prime-time”.In a typically chaotic answer, Trump said Sliwa “wants cats to be in Gracie Mansion”, referring to the mayor’s official residence.“The magnificent home of the mayor, it’s beautiful. Gracie Mansion, to me, is like a fabled place if you’re in New York. No, we don’t need to have thousands of cats living in it,” Trump said.Sliwa has not said he wants thousands of cats living in the Gracie Mansion, although he has suggested using some of the 11 acres the building sits in to house sheltered cats and dogs that would otherwise be put down. Cats hold a particular place in Sliwa’s heart – he and his wife, Nancy, have rescued and fostered hundreds of cats. When the Guardian visited the couple’s studio apartment in 2021 they were sharing the tiny space with no less than 16 cats.Given New York is an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Sliwa is very unlikely to see his Gracie Mansion plans come to fruition. But his willingness to defy the billionaires, and the president, could see him have a big impact on the identity of the mansion’s next resident. More
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Republican and Democratic senators dig in heels over government shutdown
by Evelyn Reynolds 13 October 2025, 16:35
Republican and Democratic senators Lindsey Graham and Mark Kelly have dug their heels in over the government shutdown – which is now approaching two weeks, with the former saying that the closure won’t push him to meet Democrats’ demands for a restoration of Obama-era healthcare subsidies.Graham said on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he was in favor of the Senate voting to reopen the government and prepared to “have a rational discussion” with Democrats – but not with the government shut down.“I’m willing to vote to open the government up tomorrow,” Graham said. “To my Democratic friends: I am not going to vote to extend these subsidies.”Graham, speaking to Democrats, added: “It’s up to you. If you want to keep it shut down, fine. It’s not going to change how I approach healthcare.”The senator’s comments came as Vice-President JD Vance warned that permanent cuts to the federal workforce will only get “deeper” as the shutdown continues.Vance told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures that “the longer it goes on, Maria, the more significant they’re going to be. If you remember, we went nine days before announcing any significant layoffs.“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance continued.More than 4,000 federal workers have so far been identified for job terminations. The Senate has voted multiple times over the last two weeks on a stopgap funding measure but not enough Democrats have joined the proposal to reach a 60-vote threshold.Graham’s comments may indicate a hardening approach to negotiations over healthcare subsidies with or without a functioning government.“The subsidies we’re talking about here,” Graham told NBC. “If the (Obama’s) Affordable Care Act is so affordable, why, every time I turn around, are we spending $350 billion to keep it afloat?”The dispute on the network continued with Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, criticizing Republicans for refusing to negotiate with Democrats.“We need a real negotiation, and we need a fix. We need this corrected for the American people. This is for so many people – their healthcare is running towards a cliff, and if we don’t fix this, it’s going to go right over it,” Kelly told host Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.Against increasing pressure to reach a deal, with both sides weighing the political cost of a lack of a resolution, House speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that Republicans had “probably a hundred different ideas about how to fix it but we can’t do that overnight”.He said Democrats’ demands for a resolution to the healthcare subsidies issue without lengthy discussions were “impossible and inappropriate”.“It’s not a deliverable and they know it,” Johnson said. “They chose that issue because they thought it would sell well to the public and it would show they were fighting Trump. It’s all a big facade and I’m so frustrated by it.” More
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Doge-ish comes to Florida: a DeSantis loyalist is going after ‘waste’ in Democratic cities
by Evelyn Reynolds 12 October 2025, 12:00
The words of Blaise Ingoglia, the Ron DeSantis loyalist handpicked to lead the Republican Florida governor’s Doge-style assault on local government spending, could not have been more prophetic.“Expect a knock on the door from us,” Ingoglia warned on 1 October as he announced upcoming audits for Democratic-run cities and counties whose “excessively wasteful” pecuniary habits displeased the DeSantis administration.The knock came soon enough, but in an unexpected place. Two armed police officers in bulletproof vests, sent by the criminal investigations division of Ingoglia’s Florida department of financial services, turned up at the home of a retired couple in Largo, demanding to know whether they had sent him a handwritten postcard that contained only three words: “You lack values.”“It was designed to intimidate us,” said James O’Gara, a military veteran who said the non-threatening card was one of dozens he has sent to various local, state and national politicians as part of a campaign of peaceful protest.“I presume that most of them aren’t even read, they just get thrown in the garbage. But I wrote one to Blaise Ingoglia about his Doge activities, and two law enforcement officers are standing at my doorstep telling my wife they need to speak to me.“They’re all in black, ‘police’ in giant reflective lettering across their vests, weapons at their side and all the other stuff on their belts. It was very intimidating for not even a threatening statement. I mean, the whole financial responsibility issue … they used very little judgment, or very little good judgment.”Sydney Booker, Ingoglia’s communications director, insisted he had not seen the postcard, and that the decision to conduct a threat assessment on the O’Garas was made “solely by law enforcement personnel”.In a statement to the Guardian, she said: “While it is unfortunate that this incident occurred, the chief financial officer trusts that law enforcement officials are taking necessary steps to protect public safety and the safety of elected officials while also preserving the first amendment rights of Floridians, especially in light of recent events.“As a conservative who believes in free speech, the CFO has never shied away from candid conversations and vigorous debate throughout his career in public service, and he does not plan to start.”Booker did not address a question about whether the visit was a justifiable use of resources given Ingoglia’s pledge to eliminate wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money. But O’Gara rejected the assertion that it was necessary for public safety, and said it was a sinister move designed to quash dissent.“It flatly doesn’t protect the politicians and it doesn’t protect the rights of citizens,” he said.“They were making small talk about my being in the infantry, about being in the army. Somebody had to do some research beyond just looking up my voter registration and getting my address.”The episode has parallels to previous incidents in which Florida state officials dispatched law enforcement to private homes. A Fort Myers man said he was visited in September last year by a detective carrying his personal information and challenging his signature on a petition for an abortion rights ballot amendment DeSantis was trying to defeat.A year earlier, officers from DeSantis’s newly formed election fraud police unit arrested at gunpoint two men accused of voting illegally. The cases were later dismissed.Ingoglia’s scrutiny of city and county budgets, meanwhile, is facing headwinds.Officials in Broward county, the most heavily Democratic county in the state, are pushing back on his claim of $189m in “excessive, wasteful spending”. They say it is a faulty calculation of its general revenue fund based on “inaccurate, factually incorrect numbers” of new residents and inflation, rather than any specific examples of waste or fraud.Ingoglia’s figure, they say, also overlooks new mandates from the state that the county is now required to fund.“We wrote to him, we said: ‘Please show us where you got your starting point from, your population growth number and your inflation numbers, because they don’t match any of the generally accepted numbers.’ He has not enlightened us,” said Steven Geller, a Broward county commissioner and former mayor.“If you use his formula with the generally accepted number, numbers plural, we are under the number he says we should be.”Geller also pointed to new demands on county coffers for items that previously came from state funds, including the operation of driver’s license offices, some tax collection and the enforcement of a “draconian” state law that makes homelessness a crime.“The CFO might have a point if the legislature would stop giving us unfunded mandates. However, even ignoring that, the CFO used an inflation factor which is not the generally accepted inflation number, and in fact, we can’t find any number that matches the number he used,” he said.Geller said DeSantis “blasted Broward for overspending” the same day he revealed his Doge initiative, without having examined any of the county’s figures.“We’re the largest Democratic county in Florida. We have 2 million people and nine county commissioners, all of us Democrat. So is it a coincidence we’re the first county they Doge’d, or that he announced the results before they had any data?” he said.In addition to Broward, Ingoglia has appeared in recent days in several other Democratic-run municipalities, making broad allegations of fraud and excessive spending. But analysts say there is little evidence, other than a few individual examples of comparatively small amounts going towards LGBTQ+ events or diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.Officials in the cities of St Petersburg and Orlando, and Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas and Seminole counties, all have rejected Ingoglia’s claims.Robert Jarvis, professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad college of law, said the motivation of DeSantis, who will be termed out of office in 2027, for the Doge purge was purely political. It is tied, he said, to the governor’s efforts to abolish or reform property taxes and secure more power for the state.“There’s no evidence that local governments in Florida are wasting money. And so there’s no reason for what DeSantis is doing from a financial standpoint,” he said.“Even Ingoglia admits he hasn’t found any wasteful spending, but they’re going after the things they like to go after, like Pride parades, DEI initiatives, things the DeSantis base is against.“And going after his enemies allows him to ignore how he has wasted money on things like Alligator Alcatraz, a tax holiday for assault weapons, going after Disney in lawsuits that he keeps losing.”Jarvis said Ingoglia, who was appointed chief financial officer by DeSantis and is running for election to the role next year, appeared a useful ally of the governor at the right time.“Next year, DeSantis wants to have that referendum to cut local property taxes and be able to say, after he goes out of office, that he saved all this money at the state level, and got property taxes rolled back,” he said.“If that comes to be, it will hurt local governments, but DeSantis does not care about local governments, just like the Florida legislature has been at war with local governments for years.“Local governments tend not to do what Republicans want them to do. They tend to be more focused on actually delivering services to their residents.” More
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Democrats are captive to outdated etiquette. It’s endangering democracy | Ryan W Powers
by Evelyn Reynolds 12 October 2025, 11:00
In early August, dozens of Democratic lawmakers fled Texas for Illinois, denying Republicans the quorum needed to pass new congressional maps projected to give the party as many as five additional seats. Their absence paralyzed the state legislature, turning a walkout into political resistance and drawing national attention.As the standoff dragged on, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, offered an unorthodox countermove: a proposal to suspend his state’s independent redistricting commission and draw maps designed to hand Democrats a comparable advantage. He unveiled the plan with spectacle, mimicking Donald Trump’s signature style through all-caps declarations, a mocking nickname for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (“KaroLYIN”) and AI-generated celebrity endorsements.While Texas Democrats ultimately returned and the Republican redistricting plan has advanced, Newsom has been cast as the emerging leader of Democratic opposition to Trump. Why did it take the party nine months to find one?It wasn’t for lack of need. Just last summer, Trump ousted independent agency heads who contradicted his narrative, deployed the national guard to Washington DC against the mayor’s wishes and granted the attorney general license to enlist the justice department in partisan battles. Each step pushed democratic norms closer to the breaking point.The real answer is that the most powerful liberal institutions – the Democratic establishment, major donors and the professional class around them – are captive to outdated etiquette. They prize agreeability as an end in itself: disruption is discouraged, compromise exalted, restraint worn as a badge of honor. And because these institutions shape liberal culture from the top down, their attachment to niceties dulls urgency and narrows the space for bold, breakout leadership.What makes Newsom unique is his willingness to defy convention when circumstances demand it. The lesson is not in his theatrics, but in the reminder that strategically breaking norms can sometimes accomplish more than following them.California’s independent redistricting commission is written into the state constitution, which means Newsom’s proposal cannot advance without voter approval in November. Even if successful, redistricting alone is only a stopgap. The deeper fight is cultural: whether the Democratic establishment can break its attachment to rigid politeness before democracy withers.The stakes are not theoretical. The Trump administration has undermined judicial independence, hollowed out federal agencies and run straight through one of elite liberalism’s most entrenched institutions: big law.For decades, elite law firms have been essential to Democrats, supplying both the funding and talent that sustains the party’s infrastructure. Yet when faced with punitive executive orders, some of these very institutions – once defenders of liberal democracy – folded, signing settlement deals that critics have labeled unconstitutional and undemocratic.Until recently, I was an associate at a big law firm. After publishing an op-ed about the constitutional dangers of a Trump-Palantir partnership – implicating my firm’s client Trump Media, and a former client, Palantir – I was warned that continuing to speak out could cost me my job. What came next was more interesting: a test of how far one act of dissent could ripple through a system built to contain it.Instead of leaving quietly, I challenged big law publicly. I announced my firing on Instagram with a caption that began “Candidly, I’m disgusted” and concluded with a stern rebuke of big law’s surrender to Trump “in shadowy back rooms, on billion-dollar yachts”. The post was raw, even theatrical, but its real purpose was to spotlight a more substantive op-ed I had written on the corporate legal sector’s complicity in democratic backsliding.Within hours, the post went viral. Political commentators with a combined audience of more than 10 million amplified it on social media, and leading legal publications picked up the story. The op-ed drew more than 50,000 readers, including Fortune 500 CEOs, non-profit leaders and the dean of Harvard Law School. Even the prominent legal scholar Laurence Tribe shared the piece.What began as a messy act of dissent had become legitimized critique. Some elites may have clutched their pearls at the breach of decorum, but the spectacle renewed debate over big law’s role in creeping authoritarianism.In elite liberal spaces, the expectation is always the same: stay quiet, exit gracefully, never make a scene. Yet nonviolent unruliness has power precisely because it breaks the code of composure. Psychologists call this the “expectancy violations theory”: when behavior defies what’s anticipated, it commands outsized attention and carries significant weight. That impact is magnified when it comes from insiders with status or access.This dynamic suggests that liberalism’s best strategy is to subvert its own norms. Critics may argue that spectacle undermines substance, or that breaking etiquette diminishes the credentials that lend Democrats authority. But in today’s attention economy, spectacle is often how substance gets noticed. Breaking strict decorum is not the enemy of liberalism; it may be the very tool that keeps it alive.Elections bear this out. In Wisconsin’s supreme court race this year, the candidate Susan Crawford broke from traditional judicial etiquette. She waged a decisively bold campaign, labelling her opponent Brad Schimel “a rightwing extremist” and mocking him as “Elon Schimel” in light of his endorsement by the controversial tech billionaire. Behavior that might once have seemed undignified instead helped drive record turnout and carried her to a decisive victory.By contrast, in Ohio’s 2022 Senate race, the US representative Tim Ryan built a campaign on moderation and convention, presenting himself as a steady unifier. That strategy failed to resonate with the electorate, overshadowed by the deliberately unorthodox and provocative campaign of his opponent, JD Vance, now the vice-president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe cult of congeniality has left Democrats out of touch. Their resistance, defined by hollow gestures like waving “No King!” and “Save Medicaid” signs on the House floor, only underscores how mismatched the party is to the moment. The reason is clear: politics has evolved, but the Democratic establishment still clings to the Obama-era script of unwavering politeness and reserve that now defines a bygone age.That era ended with the mainstream embrace of rightwing populism. In the late 2000s, the Tea Party clawed its way into the national spotlight by angrily heckling Democratic lawmakers, parading AR-15s outside political events and staging unruly rallies on the National Mall. The movement dominated headlines, heavily influencing the Republican party’s agenda and showing that unruliness itself could confer political legitimacy. By the 2010 midterms, Republicans had turned that ethos into an electoral strategy and managed to flip 63 House seats, the party’s largest gain since 1948.If the Tea Party proved that disrupting norms could win elections, Trump showed that it could seize an entire party. Once a familiar face on red carpets and network television, he built a political base by rejecting etiquette: apparently mocking a reporter’s disability live on stage, attacking a federal judge’s ethnic background and urging supporters to use physical force against protesters at his rallies. Acts that might once have disqualified a candidate instead became evidence that longstanding norms were now optional.Even so, Democrats should not use rightwing populism as a blueprint. That approach is rooted in demolition: attacking institutions indiscriminately, sometimes through brute force. What’s needed instead is an approach rooted in defense: reinforcing institutions carefully and rejecting violence wholesale. When Nicole Collier, a Texas state representative, camped out in the House chamber, she was not attempting to upend the legislature. She was pushing back against a Republican power play that threatened its integrity.Skeptics may argue that this style of politics risks alienating moderates or deepening division. But unruliness is not an end in itself: it is a temporary shock meant to restore democratic vitality. Here, abandoning etiquette is less about breaking order than resetting it. As the economist Karl Polanyi observed, such interruptions act like an immune response, jolting institutions back to health so decorum can return.Of course, bold disruption carries risk. Breaking composure can cost reputations, careers, even relationships. From Harry Belafonte, ostracized by Hollywood and mainstream media for defiant civil rights activism, to Larry Kramer, rejected by his peers for uncompromising Aids advocacy, history shows that those who put action above etiquette often paid dearly. But sacrifice itself – the willingness to acceptance consequences – is what transforms dissent into political pressure.The task now is to channel deliberate, nonviolent unruliness into strategy. Trump’s return to the White House made clear that authoritarianism does not yield to decorum. Voters recognize this: a recent survey found that nearly three-quarters of Democrats believe their leaders aren’t fighting hard enough. Newsom has now stepped forward, with Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, and Obama himself – the onetime apostle of gentility – lending their support. Breaking ranks will not always succeed, but caution all but ensures defeat. The choice is plain: abandon outdated norms, or watch democracy slip away.What’s giving me hope nowWhat gives me hope are the people living out Jane Goodall’s final lesson: that hope is a discipline we practice together, not a feeling we hold alone. The ones who show up at town halls, register young people to vote and lean into the small, human bonds that keep hope alive. Connection is everything.
Ryan W Powers is a legal analyst who writes a weekly newsletter on democracy, dissent and the law More
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‘Using us as political pawns’: federal workers reel over threats of firings and withheld back pay
by Evelyn Reynolds 12 October 2025, 10:00
With no end of the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain furloughed. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. They are being “held hostage by a political dispute”, according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked.In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees would not necessarily receive back pay – despite a legal guarantee – prompting further unease throughout the federal workforce. “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” the US president said.The administration, meanwhile, continues to threaten mass firings if Democrats stand by their demands. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial,” Trump told reporters. “And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”On Friday, Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) director, announced on social media that layoffs had begun. Several federal agencies started announcing layoffs, but details remained scant on how many workers would be impacted.After a brutal year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing anxiety over their pay – and the future of their jobs.“This is the third time I’ve been furloughed in my federal career,” said Priscilla Novak, a furloughed federal employee researcher. “But this is the first time there were threats of having people be fired en masse. I’ve been checking my email every day to see if I’m fired yet.”“Even before the shutdown, it’s just kind of been one thing after another for us,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I think a lot of us are expecting the worst, hoping for the best.”“Not knowing when my next paycheck is going to get here is definitely very daunting,” Farruggia, also executive committee chair of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC workers, added. “But at least I paid rent this month, so that was probably the most important thing. If some of my other bills go by the wayside, then it is what it is, and I don’t really have any other options to seek out.”“What I’m hearing is a lot of anxiety, confusion, and chaos,” said Brent Barron, a US Department of Labor employee who serves as president of the National Council of Field Labor Locals, which represents workers at the department outside Washington DC. Some staffers don’t even know whether they’re furloughed or not, he claimed, let alone “whether or not they’re going to continue to have a job” for much longer.“There are a lot of employees out there that can’t even miss one check, let alone have this thing drag on for weeks and weeks and weeks,” said Barron. About three-quarters of the labor department has been furloughed. “All we want to do is do our jobs.”A law signed by Trump during his first term, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, guarantees all federal workers receive retroactive back pay once a government shutdown is over.“It really baffles me that this administration can just flaunt whatever law and say they don’t have to follow it,” said Barron. “This is a law that was passed in 2019 by Congress and signed by the president. And we all know who was president in 2019.”Trump officials are now facing calls to clarify that the federal government will follow the law, and ensure that every furloughed employee receives back pay.“Given the clarity of the law, there is no place for the Administration to backpedal on its obligation to pay furloughed workers,” labor unions and Democracy Defenders Fund, a watchdog group, wrote to the OMB on Wednesday. “The Administration’s statements appear to be a naked attempt at inflicting pain on innocent parties to gain advantage in the shutdown.”OMB is led by Vought, an architect of the rightwing Project 2025 blueprint. In a private speech in 2023, Vought spoke of wanting to put officials “through trauma” to reduce the capacity of the federal government. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”As the administration continues to threaten mass layoffs, raising the prospect of further cuts beyond the 300,000 federal employees set to be removed from the government by the end of this year through firings and attrition programs, officials have also been ordered by a federal judge to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the agencies affected, and whether any federal employees have been recalled to work to carry out reductions in force.“The American people and the workers who keep this country running are being held hostage by a political dispute, by a petty political dispute that they have nothing to do with,” Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trades department, said during a press conference this week. “This is entirely vindictive and the only victims are going to be this country.“We’ve all seen the reports every single time we go through this stupid process of a shutdown, how much the American taxpayers lost. It’s a drain on our economy. It’s a drain on our safety. It’s a drain on the people that live here. So we need to put this to an end.”‘People cannot focus on their jobs’Almost all Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are required to work without pay during shutdowns, in a bid to minimize the threat of disruptions at key travel hubs like airports.The uncertainty has been particularly unnerving for newer, lower-paid employees, according to Cameron Cochems, a lead TSA officer and vice-president for AFGE Local 1127, which represents the administration’s employees in Idaho.Workers are worried about when they start missing paychecks, he said, adding that several have asked where to get low interest loans to float them through missed paychecks.“It feels kind of like there’s just a train coming and you can hear the whistle blowing, but every day it gets a little closer and closer to us,” Cochems told the Guardian. “And right now we can barely hear the whistle because we’re still focused on our jobs, we’re still focused on the mission, which is protect the nation’s transportation system to ensure freedom of movement for people in commerce.“But once that paycheck doesn’t come, I think that that train whistle is going to get louder in everyone’s heads, and it could get so loud that people cannot focus on their job because they’re focusing on things like ‘The bank is calling me for the fifth time today’, or ‘I don’t know how to pay for my daycare,’ things like that.”Threats made about federal workers not being entitled to back pay by Trump and his top officials have heightened anxieties and fears and “thrown a lot more people for a loop, especially the people that are disadvantaged, single parents or living paycheck to paycheck”, added Cochems.“It just feels like they’re intentionally using us as political pawns, and they intentionally want to make our jobs and lives unstable,” he said.“Even worse than morale is the future implication for how our government runs,” added Novak. “I think having a strong civil service that is not politically motivated is the most effective to render modern services for our citizens. Furloughed workers want to go back to work. We need Congress to pass a budget.”The White House and office of management and budget did not respond to multiple requests for comment. More

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