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      The luxury gap: Trump builds his palace as Americans face going hungry

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      It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.Images of wealthy monarchs or autocrats revelling in excess even as the masses struggle for bread are more commonly associated with the likes of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France, who spent lavishly at the court of Versailles, or Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, who siphoned off billions while citizens endured deepening poverty.But now America has a jarring split-screen of its own, between an oligarch president bringing a Midas touch to the White House and families going hungry, workers losing pay and government services on the brink of collapse.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“Are you fucking kidding me?” exclaimed Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, during an interview on Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central podcast The Weekly Show. “This guy wants to create a ballroom for his rich friends while completely turning a blind eye to the fact that babies are going to starve when the Snap benefits end in just hours from now.”For years Trump has cultivated the image of a “blue-collar billionaire” and, in last year’s presidential election, he beat Harris by 14 percentage points among non-college-educated voters – double his margin in 2016.Yet he grew up in an affluent neighbourhood of Queens, New York, and joined the family business as a property developer, receiving a $1m loan from his father for projects in Manhattan. He attached his name to luxury hotels and golf clubs and achieved celebrity through the New York tabloids and as host of the reality TV show The Apprentice.View image in fullscreenAs a politician, however, Trump has successfully branded himself as the voice of the left-behinds in towns hollowed out by industrialisation. His formula includes tapping into grievance, particularly white grievance, and into “Make America Great Again” nostalgia . His speeches are peppered with aspirational promises that his policies will guarantee his supporters a share of the nation’s wealth.This has apparently given him leeway with Trump voters who, despite their own struggles, turned a blind eye to the largesse of his first term and how it might benefit his family. But it was clear from his inauguration in January – when he was surrounded by the tech titans Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg – that part two would be different.Trump has made a personal profit of more than $1.8bn over the past year, according to a new financial tracker run by the Center for American Progress thinktank, which says the lion’s share came from launching his own crypto ventures while aggressively deregulating the industry. Other sources of income include gifts, legal settlements and income from a $40m Amazon documentary about the first lady, Melania Trump.There have been brazen “let them eat cake” moments. In May, Trump said he would accept a $400m luxury plane from Qatar and use it as Air Force One despite concerns that it could violate the US constitution’s emoluments clause. In October, it was reported he was demanding the justice department pay him about $230m in compensation over federal investigations he faced that he claims were politically motivated.View image in fullscreenLarry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There is a glaring gap between the life of Donald Trump, which is gold-plated and luxurious, and the life of so many Americans who are now being hit by the government shutdown.“You have to go back in history to examples in the 1920s or the Gilded Age in the late 19th century to find this kind of opulence that’s not just going on but being advertised. That goes along with all the other efforts to enrich Donald Trump and his family and his friends. It’s a shocking display of the use of public power for private gain.”It is hard to imagine a more resonant symbol than the ballroom. Last month, Trump left presidential historians and former White House staff aghast by demolishing the East Wing without seeking approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which vets the construction of federal buildings. He also fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent agency that had expected to review the project.He claimed the destruction was a necessary step towards building a long-needed ballroom which, at 90,000 sq ft, would be big enough to hold an inauguration and dwarf the executive mansion itself. It will be funded not by the taxpayer but the new masters of the universe.Among the companies represented at the 15 October dinner were Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen Hamilton, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms and T-Mobile. The Adelson Family Foundation, founded by the Republican mega-donors Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, also had a presence.The oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, and crypto entrepreneur twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss – who were portrayed by the actor Armie Hammer in the film The Social Network – were all on the guest list.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEthics watchdogs condemned the dinner as a blatant case of selling access to the president with the potential for influence peddling and other forms of corruption. Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s par for the course for Donald Trump. Millionaires and billionaires wine with him and dine with him and everything is fine with him. There’s a cost and there’s consequences.“They’re not donating this money because it’s a nice thing to do. Certainly there’s some sort of benefit to them and it could be the largest wealth transfer in American history with the big ugly bill [the Working Families Tax Cut Act] just a few months ago.”View image in fullscreenThat legislation delivers tax cuts for the rich while reducing food assistance and making health insurance more expensive for working families. The mood is only likely to darken as the second-longest government shutdown in history threatens to rip the social safety net away from millions of people. John Thune, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, warned on Wednesday: “It’s going to get ugly fast.”A number of essential public services are approaching the end of their available funds, a situation likely to be felt directly in households, schools and airports from this weekend.The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), also known as food stamps, is set to lapse for 42 million people, raising the spectre of long queues at food banks. On Friday, two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration must continue to fund the programme with contingency funds. But the decisions are likely to face appeals. It was also unclear how soon the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded.Schemes that provide early years’ education for low-income families and subsidised air travel to remote communities are also set to run aground. At the same time, thousands of federal employees will soon miss their first full paychecks since the shutdown began, raising the prospect of staffing shortages in areas such as airport security and air traffic control.The timing is awkward because Saturday also marks the start of open enrolment for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. Premiums are expected to soar, reflecting insurers’ doubts that Congress will renew enhanced tax credits before they lapse at year’s end – one of the key points of contention in the current standoff.Trump can often appear immune to political crises. But in a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday, only 28% of Americans say they support the ballroom project, compared with 56% who oppose it. The same survey found that 45% blame Trump and Republicans for the government shutdown while 33% hold Democrats responsible. Notably, independents blame Trump and Republicans by a 2-1 margin – handing Democrats an opportunity.View image in fullscreenJohn Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “For the first time in a while, they have an opening with rural voters. Medicaid and Snap are infrastructural necessities in the poorest counties. Without programmes like this being funded, you’re not just talking about hurting poor people or rural people who are invisible; you’re talking about shutting down hospitals and clinics, and that matters to people. Democrats should be fanning out in rural areas and people should be telling their stories.”It is safe to assume that, had Barack Obama or Joe Biden built a ballroom during the crippling austerity of a government shutdown, Republicans and rightwing media would have gone scorched-earth against them. Trump’s ostentatious display of wealth and cronyism comes against a backdrop of widening social and economic inequality. Democrats, however, are often accused of lacking a killer instinct.Joe Walsh, a former Republican representative aligned with the conservative Tea Party who four months ago became a Democrat, said: “Democrats don’t know how to fight and I can see they’re already squirming on this ballroom issue. We’ve got a guy in the White House who every day is taking a blowtorch to this country and most Democrats don’t understand the moment. He ploughs ahead and tears down the East Wing because he knows he can get away with it.”Walsh believes that the next Democratic president should commit to demolishing Trump’s ballroom. “This is somebody who’s a tyrant who believes he can ignore all laws, rules, norms and processes,” he added. “You have to draw the line on that. No, he cannot unilaterally demolish the East Wing and build a big old ballroom. This guy has no clue what America is. We don’t have palaces in America.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene tells Bill Maher she believes extraterrestrials are demons

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      Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her – yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.Greene’s appearance on Maher’s show perhaps made evident the ideological distance between the congresswoman – who has conspicuously avoided directly criticizing Trump himself – and some of her newer, cross-aisle admirers.Maher on Friday asked another of his on-air guests, film-maker Dan Farah, to discuss his new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, and how it explores the way some senior US military officials apparently theorize earnestly that “demons” may be responsible for what some colloquially refer to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.The Real Time host, who is generally considered to be left-leaning, subsequently asked those on the show: “Do you think demons and the devil are real?”Greene, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, confidently answered: “Absolutely. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. And I believe those could be fallen angels.”As Maher replied: “Fallen angels? The aliens are fallen angels?” Greene continued: “That’s possible – I think that’s what they could be. That’s what makes sense in my worldview.”The Fifth Column podcast host Michael Moynihan was also participating in the discussion, and Maher called on him to say whether he agreed with Greene. “No,” Moynihan said. “I’m sorry.”At another point in the show, Maher invited Greene to revisit her infamous 2018 social media screed positing that wildfires that had devastated California were ignited by a laser beam from space under the control of the Rothschild banking dynasty.The progressive watchdog Media Matters uncovered that post weeks into Greene’s first congressional term. And her colleagues at the time voted to remove her from her House committee assignments, with the Rothschild family having repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic conspiracy theories.Greene on Friday declared to Maher that she initially “didn’t even know the Rothschilds were Jewish”.“Before politics … I [did] not know much of any of this stuff,” Greene said. “I never even said the word ‘Jewish’ in the … post.”Maher pointed out that “‘Rothschild’, to a lot of people, is almost synonymous with the word ‘Jewish’”.Greene replied: “I had no idea … Now I know it’s Jewish.”Amid laughter and applause, Maher retorted: “Right. Well, now we know … That’s what I’m here for – to make sure that people in Congress know what the fuck you’re talking about.” More

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      Trump policies loom large over New Jersey’s unpredictable governor’s race

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      After last year’s election, when Republicans made significant inroads in the state, New Jersey voters will cast ballots in an off-year, unpredictable gubernatorial race that voters and experts say feels different from any in recent memory.Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former navy pilot and federal prosecutor who represents New Jersey’s 11th congressional District, is facing Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state lawmaker, who is making his third bid for governor, this time with Donald Trump’s endorsement.With early voting under way, the contest on Tuesday – one of only two gubernatorial races this year – is drawing national attention as a potential preview for what’s to come in the 2026 midterms and an early gauge of Trump’s standing with voters.“This is the first big opportunity for voters to go to the polls and register their feelings about the new presidential administration,” Kristoffer Shields, the director of the Eagleton Center on American Governors, said in October. The current Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has served for two terms and is term-limited. While the state tends to reliably support Democrats in federal elections, it has a history of flipping between parties in its gubernatorial contests. Experts point out that no party has held the office for three consecutive terms since 1961.Adding to the unpredictability of the race, Republicans have made gains in New Jersey in recent years. In 2021, Ciattarelli lost to Murphy by only three points. And in 2024, the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, carried the state by just 5.9 points, down from Joe Biden’s 16-point margin in 2020.“The Republican party is feeling energized in New Jersey, specifically after two close showings here in the state,” said Daniel Bowen, an associate professor of public policy at the College of New Jersey.Recent polls show a tight race, with Sherrill leading Ciattarelli by single digits.A Ciattarelli win, Bowen said, would be “huge for the Republican party” and it would show that “the Maga brand of politics can win in a place like New Jersey, highly educated, wealthy, not rural, urban state.”By contrast, a Sherrill win, Bowen said, could signal a rejection of Maga politics and point to a “broader blue wave response across the country to what the Trump administration has been doing as we think forward to the 2026 midterm elections.”In Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Wednesday, Sherrill met with about 100 people at the O’Donnell Dempsey senior citizen center to discuss affordability, housing, healthcare, immigration and stopping Trump.Among those in the room was 71-year-old Evelyn Velez, who said she was backing Sherrill because there “has to be somebody that’s going to stand up to the administration that’s in Washington DC right now”.“We need somebody that’s gonna fight for the working class, who’s gonna fight for health insurance, lower taxes, and I think she is the best candidate,” Velez, a lifelong New Jersey resident, said.Another supporter, Kim Nesbitt Good, 69, said she felt confident that Sherrill would win and supported her because she was “not about hate, she’s positive, and that’s what we need, somebody that’s positive, someone that’s interested in the country, and the people in this country”.While both candidates have focused much of their campaigns on local issues like cost of living and taxes, national politics and Trump have loomed large.A recent poll found that 52% of New Jersey voters said Trump was a “major factor” in their choice for governor. Sherrill has frequently sought to tie Ciattarelli to Trump and his policies, while Ciattarelli has made efforts to link Sherrill to Governor Murphy, who, according to recent polling, has a 34% approval and 50% disapproval rating in the state. By comparison, the same survey found that Trump holds a 45% approval rating in the state.The contest has drawn millions of dollars in spending and endorsements from national political figures. Ciattarelli has campaigned with Trump allies, including the Florida representative Byron Donalds and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump himself also recently spoke for about 10 minutes at a virtual “tele-rally” for Ciattarelli.On the Democratic side, former president Barack Obama, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have all been campaigning for Sherrill.In a recent interview, Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, told Politico that he wasn’t focused on whether Democrats “overperform or underperform” in this race. “What I care about is making sure we win,” he said. “At the end of the day, we know that the Republicans are feeling very bullish about their chances in New Jersey.In Morris county, one of the five New Jersey counties that flipped from blue to red in the 2024 election , about 20 people gathered at a cafe on Wednesday morning to meet the county sheriff, Jim Gannon, Ciattarelli’s pick for lieutenant governor.Among them was Mike Lombardi, 35, who said his top concerns were “electric bills, crime, immigration”. He said he believed that Ciattarelli and Gannon were the “ideal candidates to lead New Jersey”.Lombardi, who said that he had been involved with voter outreach for Ciattarelli, said this year’s race felt different because of the “energy around the Ciattarelli campaign”.Another supporter, 45-year-old Nick Steenstra, nodded in agreement and said that Ciattarelli was the change that New Jersey needed.Still, Steenstra recognized the challenge ahead. “There are a lot more registered Democrats in the state,” he said, adding that to win, Ciattarelli needed to turn out not just Republicans but also the unaffiliated voters in the state, of which there are more than 2 million.One thing that experts are closely watching in this race is voter turnout. In 2021, only 40% of eligible voters participated in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.“Which side is more motivated to vote is probably going to ultimately decide this,” Shields said, noting that the race “may be defined by how energized Democratic voters are or are not”.Whatever the outcome, analysts say that the implications will probably extend beyond New Jersey.On the Republican side, Shields said people were watching “what the impact of the Trump administration, what the impact of the sort of national politics are on the Republican candidate in a state that tends to vote blue federally”.And on the Democratic side, Shields said “there are a lot of questions about the Democratic party nationally and unifying the Democratic party between the more progressive side and the more moderate side” so they will be watching to see “how Sherrill tries to unify the Democratic party, and is it successful?”.Brigid Harrison, professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, agreed and said that a Ciattarelli victory would be a boost for Republicans heading into 2026.But if Sherrill wins, Harrison said, “it’s a much different and kind of nuanced narrative”.“You see this ongoing tension in the Democratic party between the more moderate Democrats who are saying: ‘Look, we need to get the folks that migrated to the Republican party back on board’ and progressives who are saying: ‘We need to come at this from a more radical agenda,’” she said.A Sherrill win, Harrison said, could be viewed as “a shot in the arm for those moderates who will want to claim the mantle, saying how we move forward as a party is through policies that are middle of the road.” More

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      Labor activist takes on Teamsters leader allying with Trump: ‘He doesn’t represent the workers’

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      The Teamsters International president, Sean O’Brien, is putting the “working class in jeopardy” by allying with Donald Trump, according to a prominent labor activist challenging his leadership of the powerful union.O’Brien has “no business being a labor leader” and “shouldn’t be trusted”, Richard Hooker Jr – who is running against O’Brien’s re-election next year – told the Guardian.Hooker has emerged as a leading critic of O’Brien, who described Trump as “our enemy” during his first term in the White House, while criticizing the Teamsters leadership at the time for lack of opposition to Trump, and said it was “unfortunate” so many Teamsters members voted for Trump during his victorious campaign to lead the union in 2021.As Trump marched back to power, however, O’Brien pivoted. He met privately with the president last January, and hailed him as “one tough SOB” during an unprecedented address at last summer’s Republican national convention.“When he was running, the first time he was saying the truth about Trump,” Hooker said, suggesting O’Brien made his early attacks on Trump just to win election as Teamsters president. “Now that he’s elected, he has decided to go along with Trump and everything that he’s done. But not just Trump, also the ruling class, the employer class, billionaire class, because that’s who Trump represents. He doesn’t represent the workers.”View image in fullscreenAfter O’Brien’s convention speech, the Teamsters – one of the largest unions in the US, representing more than 1.3 million workers – controversially declined to endorse a candidate in November’s presidential election. The union had endorsed every Democrat on the ticket since 2000.The Teamsters deferred comment to the O’Brien slate’s campaign. O’Brien and his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.With O’Brien up for re-election next year, Hooker, the secretary-treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, is leading a rival slate of other union leadership candidates against O’Brien’s slate.The election will take place November 2026. Hooker’s campaign is currently gathering union signatures to make the ballot for the Teamsters national convention in June, where they will vie for 5% of delegates to make the ballot for the November election.Born and raised a preacher’s son around Fayetteville, North Carolina, Hooker began working at UPS shortly after high school in 1999 while attending Drexel University. As a package handler at a UPS warehouse near Philadelphia international airport, he became disillusioned with union leadership as a shop steward with the Teamsters when grievances about their contract were dismissed.His bid to lead Local 623 came up short in 2016. But in 2020, the married father of four became the first Black man to ever lead the union, which represents workers at companies including UPS and Greyhound.Now Hooker is running to replace O’Brien at the top of one of the most influential unions in the US, due to frustrations over his decision to align with Trump, the 2023 UPS contract as UPS recently reported cutting 48,000 jobs, and allegations of intimidation against criticizing O’Brien’s administration.View image in fullscreen“You have your supposed leader flirting with someone who does not care if you have a pension – someone who does not care if you have healthcare, who does not care if you have the [National Labor Relations Board], if you have protect protections at the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] or [Occupational Safety and Health Administration],” said Hooker. “If you align yourself with someone who is OK with being in a relationship with that type of person, then they have no business being a labor leader, because what you’re doing is you’re putting your members and the rest of the working class in jeopardy.“I get the whole bipartisanship, I get working across the aisle. I get that. But when someone has a history of annihilating workers and the working class, then we have no business being with that person.”Hooker also wants the Teamsters to re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US. He would be the first Black man to lead the union. He has already started to receive harassment after launching his campaign, including an anonymous voicemail left at his office earlier this week which used racist language.View image in fullscreenRepublicans and Trump have often cited O’Brien in claims that Republicans are making inroads with labor and the working class, including from the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin, who sparred with O’Brien during a Senate hearing in 2023, but recently appeared on his podcast.Since Trump took office in January, the fallout from O’Brien’s relationship with Trump has intensified. Teamsters has also faced criticism for hiring Peter Cvjetanovic – whose face became a symbol of the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – for an administrative job at the union’s headquarters in Washington DC. Cvjetanovic was later reportedly fired.O’Brien has maintained regular communication with Trump throughout his presidency, he claimed in an interview earlier this year with the Hollywood Reporter, while making several appearances on conservative media shows, including podcasts led by Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Bari Weiss, where he said Trump’s presidency so far was “a solid B” grade for the Teamsters.Under O’Brien, Teamsters has also significantly shifted its political donations, pouring money into Republican congressional candidates and groups rather than predominantly Democrats.“What has the union got from Trump? What have we got? We haven’t gotten anything now,” said Hooker. “Reaching across the aisle to some Republicans who have an issue of working with labor and making things better for labor, I understand that, and I agree with that.“But Trump does not have that résumé or history of doing anything for workers. Not one single thing. He comes in and eliminates contracts for workers. Even before he got elected, he told Elon Musk that he likes what he does when people go out on strike, he eliminates them. That’s who he is.” More

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      Judge rules Trump can’t require citizenship proof on federal voting form – US politics live

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      Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled today.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections.She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies.“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.The ruling grants the plaintiffs a partial summary judgment that prohibits the proof-of-citizenship requirement from going into effect. It says the US Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.Donald Trump arriving at Palm Beach international airport earlier, in West Palm Beach, Florida. He’s spending the weekend at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach.The White House has announced a new rule restricting the ability of credentialed journalists to freely access the offices of press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other top communications officials in the West Wing, near the Oval Office.A memorandum issued late today bans journalists from accessing Room 140, also known as “Upper Press”, without a prior appointment, citing the need to protect potentially sensitive material. It said the change would take effect immediately.It follows restrictions put in place earlier this month for credentialed reporters at the Department of Defense, who were asked to sign a pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release. It prompted dozens of journalists to vacate their office in the Pentagon and returned their credentials. The department promptly announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets.Earlier today, Donald Trump announced that he has renovated the bathroom inside the Lincoln bedroom at the White House, and shared an image of the lavish white-and-black-marbled remodel.“I renovated the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House. It was renovated in the 1940s in an art deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, attaching a photo showing that version. “I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble. This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!”It comes as Trump has renovated other parts of the White House, including his heavily criticized demolition of the East Wing to build a $300m ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden and decorating the Oval Office with gold.The Lincoln bedroom was originally used by Abraham Lincoln as his office and cabinet room.Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican congressperson, caused a fracas when she cursed at and berated law enforcement at the Charleston international airport yesterday, Wired reports.According to an incident report, Mace cursed loudly at police officers and made repeated derogatory comments towards them. “She repeatedly stated we were ‘fucking incompetent’, and ‘this is no way to treat a fucking US representative’,” the report states.The report also says that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) supervisor told officers that Mace had treated their staff similarly and they would be reporting her to their superiors.“Any other person in the airport acting and talking the way she did, our department would have been dispatch (sic) and we would have addressed the behavior,” the incident report concludes.Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled today.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections.She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies.“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.The ruling grants the plaintiffs a partial summary judgment that prohibits the proof-of-citizenship requirement from going into effect. It says the US Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.Donald Trump is set to sit down with Norah O’Donnell, a CBS anchor, this afternoon, Semafor is reporting, in what would be the president’s first interview with the network since its parent company Paramount settled a $16m lawsuit with him.Trump sued CBS News and Paramount over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. Despite serious doubts about whether Trump’s legal argument would stand up in court, Paramount decided to settle the lawsuit for $16m in July.According to Semafor’s report:
      CBS is in the midst of a deliberate repositioning aimed, at least in part, at gesturing to the center and the right.
      The network decided against renewing the contract of Stephen Colbert, the late night host who has regularly needled Trump and expressed support for mainstream Democrats (critics, internally and externally, said Colbert was increasingly too expensive to maintain).
      Following new owner David Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount, he quickly bought the Free Press and installed its founder Bari Weiss atop CBS News; Weiss had made a name for herself as an opinion writer who critiqued what she believed was the illiberal and censorious online left in academia, progressive politics and the news media. CBS also appointed a new ombudsman who had previously run the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank.
      In recent months, the Trump administration’s pressure has altered editorial policies at the network. CBS agreed earlier this year to release full transcripts of future 60 Minutes presidential interviews. And following criticism from homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s team over an interview on the network’s Sunday show, Face The Nation, CBS News announced that in the future it would only air unedited interviews on the program.
      Trump has returned the favor by publicly nodding in the network’s direction. On Air Force One earlier this month, he speculated with the press corps about who would be the next anchor of CBS Evening News, and praised the Ellisons.
      “Larry Ellison is great, and his son, David, is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” Trump said. “And it’s got great potential. CBS has great potential.”
      In addition to praise from the president and some one-on-one access, Trump’s decision, for the moment, to bless Paramount could help it improve its business in other ways. The New York Post reported that people close to Trump believed Paramount had the inside track with federal regulators in its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery; its most likely rival potential bidder, Comcast, faces a more steep regulatory hurdle if Trump’s statements about the company are considered.
      Donald Trump said earlier today that the United States and Canada will not restart trade talks, but that Canadian PM Mark Carney had apologized to him for an Ontario political ad that featured Ronald Reagan saying tariffs spell disaster.“I like [Carney] a lot but what they did was wrong,” Trump said. “He apologized for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial.”Trump last week called off negotiations over the ad aired by the Canadian province, adding that he was raising tariffs on Canadian goods by an additional 10%.The ad by the Ontario government featured former president Reagan, who was known for his support of free marks and free trade, saying that tariffs on foreign goods lead to trade wars and job losses.A ground stop had been in effect at New York’s JFK airport until 7.30pm ET due to staffing shortages in the air traffic system, according to the New York City emergency management department, but according to Reuters, it was lifted around 3.30pm ET.In a statement earlier on Friday, the New York City department had said that flights headed to JFK were being held at their departure airports.The department also said that JFK, as well as nearby airports LaGuardia and Newark are all “under FAA traffic restrictions” this evening and are under ground delay programs due to staffing shortages and wind in the region.As of 3.30pm ET, it seems as though the ground delays are still in place.New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has called on the Trump administration to “release emergency nutrition assistance for the 3 million New Yorkers set to lose their SNAP benefits tomorrow”.“No state should have to sue the federal government to ensure families can put food on the table,” she said. “But when Washington Republicans refused to act, New York took them to court to mitigate this crisis.”Hochul said that her administration “remains prepared for the worst” and is “fast-tracking over $100 million for food banks and pantries” and has declared a state of emergency.Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, the ranking member of the Senate agriculture committee, which oversees the food aid program, has released a statement following the court’s decision decision, saying that Trump officials “now have no excuse to withhold food assistance from Americans”.“The court’s decision confirms what we have said all week: The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so,” said Klobuchar. “The court was clear: the administration is ‘required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.’”If the administration decides not to issue Snap, Klobuchar said that it “is purely a cruel political decision, not a legal one.”“They should immediately act – as the court has required – to ensure food assistance continues to go to families in need” she added.

      Two federal judges ruled almost simultaneously this afternoon that the Trump administration must continue to fund Snap, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown. The rulings came a day before the US Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the program, which serves about one in eight (or 42 million) Americans.

      The US will not send any high-level officials to the upcoming Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, a White House official told Reuters, alleviating some concern among world leaders that Washington would send a team to scupper the talks.

      Public tours in the White House will resume in December, according to a statement from the office of the first lady. They had been suspended indefinitely in August amid construction for Trump’s controversial $300m ballroom project.

      Donald Trump denied that he is considering strikes inside Venezuela, even amid reports that his administration may expand its counter-drug campaign in the Caribbean. It comes as the UN high commissioner for human rights said today that US military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop.

      The president reaffirmed that the US would resume nuclear testing, and did not answer directly when asked whether that would include the traditional underground nuclear tests common during the cold war. “You’ll find out very soon, but we’re going to do some testing,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he flew to Palm Beach, Florida, when asked about underground nuclear tests. “Other countries do it. If they’re doing to do it, we’re going to do it, okay?”

      A Republican-dominated Ohio panel adopted new US House districts that could boost the GOP’s chances of winning two additional seats in next year’s elections and aid Donald Trump’s efforts to hold on to a slim congressional majority. You can view the map here.

      Donald Trump has called on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, so that the Republican majority can bypass Democrats and reopen the federal government. The filibuster is a way for a relatively small group of senators to block action by the majority. The filibuster rule allows a minority of 41 senators to prevent a vote on most kinds of legislation. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican known for defending Senate traditions, has repeatedly rejected proposals to weaken or remove the 60-vote rule.
      A federal judge in Rhode Island has blocked the Trump administration’s plan to suspend all Snap food aid benefits for millions of Americans amid the ongoing government shutdown, Reuters reports.US district judge John McConnell in Providence issued a temporary restraining order at the behest of cities, nonprofits and a union who argued the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap starting from Saturday was unlawful, and told the administration it “must distribute” aid using a set of emergency funds – and potentially other sources – and pay the benefits as soon as possible.He ruled minutes after another judge in Boston ruled that the suspension was likely unlawful in a related case pursued by a coalition of Democratic-led states that also sought to avert the suspension.That judge has ordered the Trump administration to indicate by Monday if it would provide either full or partial SNAP benefits in November.“There is no doubt and it is beyond argument that irreparable harm will begin to occur if it hasn’t already occurred in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food, for their family,” McConnell said during a virtual hearing.The US will not send any high-level officials to the upcoming Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, a White House official has told Reuters, alleviating some concern among world leaders that Washington would send a team to scupper the talks.Brazil will host a high-level leaders’ summit next week before the two-week UN climate negotiations begin in the Amazonian city of Belem.Earlier this month, the US threatened to use visa restrictions and sanctions to retaliate against nations that would vote in favor of a plan put forward by the United Nations shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping.Those tactics led a majority of countries at the IMO to vote to postpone by a year a decision on a global carbon price on international shipping. The White House official said Donald Trump has already made his administration’s views on multilateral climate action clear in his astonishing speech at last month’s United Nations general assembly, where he called climate change the world’s “greatest con job” and chided countries for setting climate policies that he said “have cost their countries fortunes”.“The president is directly engaging with leaders around the world on energy issues, which you can see from the historic trade deals and peace deals that all have a significant focus on energy partnerships,” the White House official told Reuters.The Trump administration has pursued bilateral energy deals in its trade negotiations to boost US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports with countries like South Korea and also the European Union. On Friday, the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said there is “room for great energy trade between China and the United States” given China’s need for natural gas as the two economic giants negotiate over tariffs.Trump announced on his first day in office that the US would exit the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement, taking effect in January 2026, and the state department has been reviewing the US’s engagement in multilateral environmental agreements. Earlier this year, the US also put pressure on countries negotiating a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution not to back an agreement that would set plastic production caps.The White House official told Reuters that “the tide is turning” on prioritizing climate change, pointing to a memo circulated this week by billionaire and longtime climate philanthropist and investor Bill Gates, who said it is time to pivot away from focusing on meeting global temperature goals and claimed that climate change will “not lead to humanity’s demise”.Public tours in the White House will resume in December, according to a statement from the office of the first lady.“The White House will reopen its doors for public tours on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, with an updated route offering guests the opportunity to experience the history and beauty of the People’s House. In celebration of the holiday season, all December tours will feature the White House Christmas decorations on the State Floor,” it said.Public tours were suspended indefinitely in August amid construction for Trump’s controversial $300m ballroom project.China “made a real mistake” by threatening to shut off exports of its rare earths, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told the Financial Times (paywall) in an interview published today.US and Chinese leaders had reached an “equilibrium” but warned that China would not be able to keep using its critical minerals as a coercive tool, Bessent told the paper, adding that China “made a real mistake” by “firing shots” on rare earths. More

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      Democratic representative urges former prince Andrew to testify over Epstein

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      A Democratic congressman on Friday called for the former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor to testify before the US House of Representatives committee that is conducting an inquiry into the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.The statement from Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, who serves on the investigative House oversight committee, comes after the UK trade minister, Chris Bryant, suggested that since Mountbatten Windsor has been stripped of his royal titles, he should answer demands for information about his dealings with Epstein, an alleged sex trafficker who died by suicide while in federal custody six years ago.“Just as with any ordinary member of the public, if there were requests from another jurisdiction of this kind, I would expect any decently minded person to comply with that request,” Bryant said.Khanna told the Guardian: “Andrew should be called to testify before the oversight committee. The public deserves to know who was abusing women and young girls alongside Epstein.”Republicans hold the majority in the House, but amid public outcry over Donald Trump’s handling of the Epstein case approved an inquiry by the oversight committee into how the government handled his prosecutions. Interest in the case flared in July, after the justice department announced a much-rumored list of Epstein’s sex trafficking clients did not exist, and it would share nothing further on the case.The House investigation has thus far resulted in the release of tens of thousands of pages of documents – including a lewd drawing apparently made by Trump for Epstein’s 50th birthday – as well as depositions from former top government officials.As a member of the minority, Khanna does not have the power to subpoena Mountbatten Windsor’s testimony. Spokespeople for the committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, did not respond to questions about whether he believes the former prince should be questioned.Khanna and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman, have introduced a bill to force the release of files related to Epstein, but Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, a top ally of the president, has refused to bring it up for a vote. Massie and Khanna have circulated a discharge petition that will require the bill be voted on, if 218 members of the House sign it.“This is what my effort with Representative Massie has been about: transparency and justice for the survivors who have been courageously speaking out,” Khanna said.The petition has been signed by all 213 House Democrats, as well as four Republicans. The 218th signature is expected to be Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in Arizona last month, and awaits swearing in by Johnson. However, the speaker has refused to do so until the House comes back into session, and says he will not tell lawmakers to return to Washington until the Senate approves a measure to end the ongoing government shutdown. More

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      Democrats should be taking the fight to Trump – the problem is, he’s got them battling each other | Jonathan Freedland

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      Every year is election year in the US, but the contests of 2025, which reach their climax on Tuesday, will be especially revealing. These “off-year” battles – a smattering of governors’ races, statewide referendums and the election of a new mayor in the country’s biggest city – will tell us much about the national mood 12 months after Americans returned Donald Trump to the White House and one year before midterm contests that could reshape the US political landscape. Above all, though, they will reveal the division, the confusion and sheer discombobulation Trump has induced in the US’s party of opposition.The verdict on Trump’s first 10 months in office will be delivered most clearly in the two states set to choose a new governor: New Jersey and Virginia. By rights, these should be relatively easy wins for the Democrats. Both states voted for Kamala Harris a year ago, and the current polls are grim for Trump. This week, an Economist/YouGov survey registered Trump’s lowest rating of his second term – 39% of Americans approve of him, while 58% disapprove – the lowest number they’d recorded for him bar one poll in his first term. Trump’s handling of the economy gets especially low marks, and a plurality of voters blame the continuing government shutdown, now in its second month, on Trump and his party. If an off-year election offers an opportunity to kick an unpopular incumbent, then Tuesday should be plain sailing for Democrats.And yet, the contest in New Jersey, for one, is looking far from comfortable. Democrats there are mindful that a year ago Trump surged in the state: after losing to Biden by a whopping 16 points in 2020, he trailed Harris by just six. Current polls show the Democratic candidate for governor ahead, but only narrowly: one survey put her just one point ahead of her Republican opponent. The party is funnelling serious money into the contest and deploying its biggest guns: Barack Obama will campaign in New Jersey on Saturday.It may work. But the fact that, after all that voters have seen from Trump these past 10 months – the power grabs; the wild on-again, off-again moves on tariffs; the failure to shrink inflation; the indulgence of corruption; the vanity projects, including the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make room for a gilded Trump ballroom – a Republican is even competitive in a state such as New Jersey should be troubling Democrats. And, if my conversations in Washington and New York this week are anything to go by, it is.The problem is that, even after a decade in which Trump has dominated US politics, Democrats are still not sure how to confront him, or even, more fundamentally, what they should really be. Take the mayoral contest in New York City, which is exposing the depth of the divide.The frontrunner is Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old newcomer who came from nowhere to storm his way to the Democratic nomination. Hugely charismatic and a master of social media, he has energised voters who had long regarded the Democrats as stale and tired: in the Democratic primary earlier this year, turnout was highest among those between ages 25 and 35. His chief opponent is the man he beat in that primary, the former Democratic governor of the state and scion of one of the party’s most storied families: Andrew Cuomo.Their clash captures what Cuomo, now running as an independent, calls the “quiet civil war” among Democrats in almost cartoonishly stark terms. Mamdani is a socialist beloved by the young, but feared by the old – and by those alarmed by his refusal to denounce the slogan “globalise the intifada”, a phrase they believe sanctions attacks on Israel-associated, meaning Jewish, targets in the US and elsewhere. Cuomo is 67, previously endorsed by the party establishment and tainted by the bullying and sexual harassment scandal that drove him out of office in 2021.It is a divide that is both ideological and generational. Plenty of younger Democrats see Mamdani as radical and inspiring, drawn to his message of “affordability” of housing and public transport. They see Cuomo as the embodiment of an exhausted, morally compromised centrism that cannot beat Trump. Meanwhile, many older Democrats see Mamdani as radical and untested, carrying too little experience and too much ideological baggage – the same leftist liabilities that the right ruthlessly exploits and ultimately always leads to Democratic defeat. I got a glimpse of that divide when, at a live event in Manhattan for the Unholy podcast, I asked Hillary Clinton whether, if she had a vote in New York City, she would cast it for Mamdani, who is, let’s not forget, the official Democratic nominee for mayor: “You know what? I don’t vote in this city. I’m not involved in it. I have not been at all even asked to be involved in it, and I have not chosen to be involved in it.”If Mamdani wins, and either of the comparatively moderate Democrats running in New Jersey and Virginia loses, then the party’s progressive wing will take that as confirmation that its approach – the path of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders – represents the party’s best hope. But if all three win, and especially if the gubernatorial candidates improve on Harris’s performance in 2024, then the moderate wing will be buoyed, and the argument inside the Democratic party will rage on. In fact, it’s a fair bet it will rage on whatever happens.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd that is because the age of Trump has been utterly confounding for his opponents. How do you play against a player who breaks all the rules of the game? If you stick to the old ways of doing politics, if you obey the traditional proprieties and conventions, you cast yourself as part of the very establishment or deep state or elite that Trump has so profitably railed against for 10 years. But if you don’t, if you disrespect past norms, then you become part of the problem, the danger, Trump represents, weakening the guardrails that keep democracy on track.An example of that dilemma is on display in California. The state’s ambitious governor, Gavin Newsom, has tabled a ballot initiative – a referendum – that would redraw the boundaries of California’s congressional districts to give the party about five more seats in the House of Representatives in time for next year’s midterm elections. It’s retaliation for a Trump-approved gerrymander in Texas that will hand Republicans a similar advantage in that state. Democrats have hailed Newsom’s move as an act of resistance, fighting Trumpian fire with fire. And so it is. But it also burns away one more democratic norm, turning boundary changes into a routinely partisan battleground.Democrats are struggling because there are no good options when fighting a nationalist populist unafraid to wreck democracy. If you stay high while he goes low, you lose – and he is free to wreak further destruction on the democratic system. But if you sink to his level, you risk damaging the very thing you want so desperately to protect. The havoc of Donald Trump is never confined to Trump. It engulfs his opponents too.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

      Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      They were teacher and student in exile. Now this Democrat and Republican face off in Ohio

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      Almost 32 years ago, in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal, children sat cross-legged around a small blackboard propped on the dirt, repeating the alphabet in sing-song rhythm. Among them was Bhuwan Pyakurel, a fourth-grader, and his teacher, Kamal Subedi, barely 18.“He was tall, thin and very talkative,” Subedi said, now 52. “We didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. So we went hut to hut, gathering kids to learn.” In the early 1990s, thousands of Bhutanese refugees had arrived across seven camps in the region, each day bringing more families, more children and more uncertainty.Three decades later, the former teacher and student live a few miles apart in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and on opposite sides of a US political divide. Pyakurel is now a Democratic city councilman and the first Bhutanese refugee elected to public office in the United States. Subedi, his former teacher, is running for another seat on the council as a Republican on 4 November.Their race has split the small but influential Bhutanese community in suburban Columbus. But the debate over Subedi’s candidacy has spread far beyond Reynoldsburg. Across Facebook and WhatsApp groups from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, members of the Bhutanese diaspora are weighing in – posting hundreds of comments, endorsements and rejections.Some see Subedi’s candidacy as a sign of maturity, proof that refugees can belong to and shape either party. Others, including Pyakurel, see it as a betrayal, aligning their story of exile with a party that, in recent years, deported dozens of Bhutanese refugees and cut social programs many families rely on.“When people with refugee backgrounds like Subedi run on the Republican platform, I see it as them standing against me, my children, my community, and my values,” Pyakurel said. “It feels like they’re rejecting the ideals this country was built on. If you support that kind of politics, you should be ashamed.”Subedi argues that change comes from participation. “If we never join the Republican Party, we’ll always be isolated from it,” he said. “If we take part, we can help shape the narrative to include us.”Pyakurel was nine when Bhutan carried out the mass expulsions of its Nepali-speaking minority, forcing his family into the Goldhap refugee camp in eastern Nepal. Life there was defined by restrictions, no legal work, little movement and constant uncertainty. “You feel that otherness every day,” he said. “It plants a question in you: why don’t I get the same chance everyone else does?”That chance came in 2009, when his family resettled in Colorado. There, through the Family Leadership Training Institute at Colorado State University, he learned the mechanics of civic participation.“It was the first course that made me think about running for local office,” he said.Then in 2014, Pyakurel, then 35, and his family moved to Reynoldsburg, joining hundreds of other Bhutanese families. Two years later, he became a US citizen. “When I took the oath, the judge said, ‘You have two duties: vote and consider running for office.’ I walked out in tears.”In 2019, when longtime Republican councilman Marshall Spalding sought re-election, Pyakurel decided to challenge him.View image in fullscreen“When he decided to run for office, I just thought that was great,” said Steve Walker, 80, a longtime colleague and adviser. “To have the potential of a Bhutanese representative on the Reynoldsburg city council – that meant a lot. There’s a significant Bhutanese population here.”Once a predominantly white and Republican suburb, Reynoldsburg’s population of roughly 40,000 people is now far more mixed politically and ethnically. Census data show the Black population rising from 10% in 2000 to 26% in 2020. Approximately 8,000 Bhutanese refugees have made their home there, accounting for roughly one-fifth of the city’s population.On the night Pyakurel announced his candidacy he felt his chest tighten as he climbed the steps to the microphone. “I don’t remember exactly what I said,” he recalled, laughing. “But people started clapping before I’d even finished.”Pyakurel threw himself into the campaign the same way he had rebuilt his life as a refugee, one door at a time. “When I told them I was a refugee and why I wanted to serve, most people listened,” he said. “But sometimes they said things that were cruel or racist.”His story still resonated with neighbors, with local Democratic leaders, and especially within the Bhutanese community.That year, Pyakurel made history as the first Bhutanese refugee in the United States to be elected to public office. He won the ward three seat on the Reynoldsburg city council, defeating Spalding by a comfortable margin – proof, he says, that “refugees don’t just find a home in America, they help shape it for the better.”Among Pyakurel’s earliest supporters was one of his former fourth-grade teachers from the Goldhap refugee camp, the soft-spoken Subedi. “I was so proud of him and everything he’d accomplished.”After Nepal, Subedi’s family had resettled in Dallas, Texas, in 2008. “The first year was very rough,” he said. “We arrived in the middle of the recession. There were no jobs. I had a young son and my parents to take care of.”He worked briefly for Catholic Charities in Dallas, then received a full scholarship to attend graduate school at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he completed a master’s in computational science in 2014. That same year, Subedi and his family migrated to Reynoldsburg, where he teaches physics as an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College and runs a few small businesses.Unlike his former student Pyakurel, who found his values aligned with the Democratic party, Subedi says he chose the Republican party because of his refugee background, not despite it.“When I finally had to choose a party, I felt Republican principles matched the values I grew up with, Hindu faith, family, discipline, preserving language and culture,” he said. “We left Bhutan to protect those things.“It’s a mistake to assume refugees and immigrants automatically support Democrats. Many of us don’t,” he added.In 2024, Subedi and a group of Bhutanese residents campaigned for Donald Trump in Ohio – a key swing state that Trump carried with 55% of the vote. Now, Subedi is running for city council as a Republican even as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has led to the deportation of dozens of Bhutanese refugees, including several from Columbus.“I’ve already said deporting Bhutanese refugees is wrong. It’s one part of my party I don’t agree with,” Subedi said. “But when I compare that with open borders – where desperate migrants and even criminals cross without screening – I think both are serious problems.”His candidacy has exposed deep divisions within the Bhutanese community in Reynoldsburg.Charan Chamlagai, 42, who once canvassed for Pyakurel, sees Subedi’s Republican run as a positive step. “Subedi brings a different perspective,” he said. “He wants to change things from within and help our community understand the policies that affect us. Some Republican ideas align with our cultural and religious values. We should give him a chance.”Others, though, see Subedi’s campaign as a betrayal.“He’s supporting the Trump administration that deported our people,” said Harry Adhikari, 45. “By running as a Republican, he’s supporting the same system that would deport his own brothers and sisters. He’s not fixing potholes in our community – he’s creating them.”Subedi acknowledged that the deportation of Bhutanese refugees was fundamentally un-American. At the same time, he argues that deportations are not unique to the Trump administration.“Deportations didn’t start with President Trump,” he said. “President Obama deported more than three million people. This is a federal system.”When pressed on the fact that no known Bhutanese refugees were deported under previous administrations, Subedi hesitated. “Deporting Bhutanese refugees is wrong,” he finally said. “I don’t like it.”Decades after he was his student, Pyakurel has been outspoken about Subedi’s campaign.“He’s a Democrat, and in politics it’s fair to challenge your opposition,” Subedi said. “But I think Bhuwan and others have mischaracterized me. They blame me for deportations I had nothing to do with. They treat me like an enemy. Bhuwan won’t even shake my hand any more.”When asked what might change his view, Pyakurel paused before answering. “If Subedi publicly denounced Trump, I’d support him.”But Subedi hesitated when asked if he would take that stand.“I don’t think it would be wise to denounce him openly,” he said. “He’s our commander-in-chief. And there are things Trump has done that I believe are good for this country – to protect it, to save it.” More