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      Pennsylvania city divided over Trump as it reels from economic whiplash

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      It was set to be the most expensive project that the beaten-down manufacturing sector of Erie, Pennsylvania, had seen in decades. In a blighted corner of town, a startup planned a $300m plant that would turn plastic waste into fuel for steel factories.Neighborhood advocates in Erie’s impoverished east side hoped the facility would provide the jobs and prosperity they needed. Environmentalists decried the pollution they expected the plant to bring. Unions got ready for what they hoped would be hundreds of jobs created by its construction, with more to come once it opened.And then it was over. Mitch Hecht, founder of the company pursuing the project, announced that a Department of Energy loan crucial to the plant’s funding was put on hold as a result of Donald Trump’s policies, which “had a severe and immediate impact on our ability to move forward”.It was the latest bout of economic whiplash to strike the county on north-west Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie shoreline, just months after its voters helped return Trump to the White House. Those who backed the president say they are sticking with him, even as his administration’s spending cuts have upended projects and budgets and tariffs have created new uncertainties for businesses.Once reliably Democratic at the presidential level, Erie county has emerged as hotly contested territory ever since 2016, when Trump became the first Republican to win the area in 32 years. Joe Biden carried the county by a slim 1,417 votes four years later, but it flipped back to Trump in 2024 by nearly the same margin.“We’re set up in this moment for extreme growth over the next 15, 20, 30 years, and as we try to just hobble off the starting line, we’re just getting whacked over the head by these larger macro policies and intentional immigration policies that create an inflation environment,” said Drew Whiting, CEO of the Erie Downtown Development Corporation.View image in fullscreenThe non-profit’s renovation efforts have helped open a food hall and new apartments and shops in what was once the poorest zip code in the US, and its latest project is a mixed-use space that could create 100 jobs and bring in up to $10m a year in tax revenue. But since the start of the year, costs of labor and materials have jumped 37%, which Whiting blamed on a dollar weakened by economic uncertainty, along with labor shortages worsened by Trump’s immigration crackdown.A short drive from downtown, a placard reading: “A recycling revolution is happening in Erie” standing outside a long-shuttered paper mill is the only sign remaining of the plastic waste facility that the startup International Recycling Group (IRG) planned to build there.Though environmental groups warned IRG’s plant would create more pollution and lead to garbage filling Lake Erie, projects intended to fight the climate crisis and address long-running problems such as how to dispose of plastic waste were priorities of the Biden administration, and last year, IRG announced it had received a $182m loan commitment from the energy department.On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that paused disbursements of such funds, and by April of this year, Hecht had announced that the loan had been put on hold, and the project would be canceled. IRG did not respond to a request for comment, and the Department of Energy did not respond to an email sent during the government shutdown.Railing against “waste, fraud and abuse” in Washington, Trump has put on hold numerous federal programs. Erie’s food bank, Second Harvest, has lost $1m that would go towards food purchasing, or about 25% of their budget, due to such funding cuts, its CEO, Gregory Hall, said.Meanwhile, need for their assistance has only grown, climbing 43% in the past two to three years as food prices rose and local grocers went under. A deadlock in the state legislature over approving a budget, which began in July, has only worsened the financial situation. “It has been a plethora of different funding cuts, different programs canceled, that is truly having an impact on not only the amount of food, but the types and quality of food that we can provide to the neighbors in our region,” Hall said.Trump’s solution to the ills plaguing communities like Erie is tariffs, which he says will encourage businesses to bring jobs back to the US from overseas, and protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. Businesses are divided over how significant the levies are, and whether the turmoil they have brought will be worth it.“It’s greatly impacted profitability, but it’s also it’s leading to the product not getting harvested,” said Roger Schultz, a farmer outside Erie who said his largest markets for apples, Canada and Mexico, are far less interested in taking his crop this year because of the levies.He was skeptical that the president’s promises of new trade deals would lead to those markets reopening.“Fundamental changes have happened out there in the marketplace, and no amount of pleading or price cutting or, ‘Hey, won’t you try this,’ is going to get you back in that,” Schultz said.At the injection plastic firm Erie Molded Packaging, sales have risen 15% this year, and its president, Tom Tredway, said he is looking at expanding their factory, thanks in part to tax deductions for businesses included in Trump and the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While all of their suppliers and customers are in the US, the thin-gauge aluminum that is used in liners for their plastic containers is manufactured abroad, and tariffs have driven the prices higher.“It’s a nuisance more than anything,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenJezree Friend, vice-president of the Manufacturer and Business Association, an Erie-based advocacy and training group, described the higher costs as a necessary evil.“It’s a growing pain that gets you now. I think a lot of the business owners recognize that and are actually OK with that, by what they’re telling me,” he said.When Second Harvest distributes groceries, people line up in their cars hours early out of concern that the food on hand may run out. Those who supported the president on a recent Wednesday said they were pleased with what he had done so far.“I think he stands up for the people. I think he’s doing right,” said Norm Francis, 81, who runs a business fixing stained glass. “Corporate greed”, he said, was to blame for food prices that had become increasingly unaffordable for him, but the tariffs were “the right thing to do”.Ahead of him in line was Sally Michalak, 73, a retiree who was counting on Trump’s deportation campaign to curb inflation.“He’s getting rid of the illegals, so once all that settles down, I think grocery prices will go down,” she said.As for his funding cuts, Michalak shrugged them off as a necessary component of transforming a government she viewed as broken.“It’s just one of these deals where, if the house burns down, you have to tear it down completely before you rebuild it, and that’s what he’s doing,” she said.Rebuilding was on the mind of Gary Horton, executive director of the Urban Erie Community Development Corporation, as he sat in the gymnasium of a shuttered elementary school not far from where IRG would have built its plant. Closed in 2012 as enrollment in the neighborhoods around it declined, the Burton school has been used by local police for active shooter drills that have left paint splatter on the walls and bullet casings on the floor.Two years ago, Horton’s group bought it and turned the grounds into a community garden, with plans to hopefully reopen the school if the neighborhood’s economy turned around, hopefully with the help of the plastics plant.“The success of it would have helped us here, but it would have also helped maybe cultivate an atmosphere where other developers or other owners of projects would do the same thing,” Horton said.Now that the project has been canceled, “the odds of doing something right now aren’t great,” Horton conceded. “But we still have the challenge, and we still have the opportunity.” More

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      US Senate fails to pass bill to pay federal essential workers and troops through shutdown

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      The Senate failed on Thursday to pass legislation that would keep federal workers deemed essential and troops paid throughout the ongoing government shutdown, which stretched into its 23rd day with no end in sight.The upper chamber held a vote on Republican senator Ron Johnson’s “shutdown fairness act”, which would guarantee pay for certain federal employees even when government funding lapses.“With Democrats continuing the Schumer shutdown, they should at least agree to pay all the federal employees that are forced to continue working,” Johnson said when he introduced the bill last week.But Democrats opposed the legislation, arguing that it would just give Donald Trump more power by letting the president choose which employees receive pay.“The bill, the Republican bill, is a ruse. It’s nothing more than another tool for Trump to hurt federal workers and American families and to keep this shutdown going for as long as he wants,” Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, said.The bill did not receive the 60 votes necessary to advance, with only three Democratic senators – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and the Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff – breaking with their party to support it.Congress has been paralyzed since the start of the month, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on extending government funding beyond the end of September. The ensuing shutdown has led to an estimated 700,000 federal workers being furloughed, while hundreds of thousands of others are working without pay.Last week, Donald Trump authorized the defense department to pay US military personnel, using funds meant for research and development. Budget experts who spoke to the Guardian have described the move as likely illegal.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has kept his chamber out of session since 19 September, in a bid to pass a Republican-backed government funding bill that cleared the House along near party lines.Democrats have rejected the measure, which would extend funding through 21 November, and instead demanded that Republicans extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans that are set to expire at the end of the year. They also want curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding that Congress has approved, and the reversal of cuts to the Medicaid program for poor and disabled Americans.The Senate’s Republican leader, John Thune, has said he is willing to negotiate over the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but only once the government reopens. He has held 12 votes on the Republican spending bill, which has yet to receive enough Democratic support to advance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday, Democratic senators debuted two counterproposals to pay federal workers. The “military and federal employee protection act” proposed by Michigan’s Gary Peters would provide a one-time payment to federal workers from the start of October to the date the bill is enacted.The “true shutdown fairness act”, proposed by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, would pay all federal workers during a shutdown, whether they are furloughed or required to continue working.Neither received a vote in the Senate.Fetterman, whose state broke for Trump last November, released a video after the Senate vote in which he urged his fellow Democrats to change their approach.“Reopen this government and have an earnest conversation about extending those tax credits,” he said, standing alongside Dave McCormick, a Republican who is Pennsylvania’s junior senator. More

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      Shouting and ready to ‘bump chests’ with Trump – but nobody moved the needle in the final New York mayoral debate

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      The second and final debate before early voting in New York City’s mayoral race was a bitter affair, with sharp exchanges and few courtesies.Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, worked to defend his polling lead while his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, sought to puncture his credibility – dismissing the 34-year-old state lawmaker as a “kid” who, he said, Donald Trump would knock on his “tuchus”.Over the course of the hour and a half forum, the deep seated-rivalry between Mamdani and Cuomo – the 67-year-old former governor now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary – dominated the stage.“Like two kids in a schoolyard,” said the swaggering Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, who has defied pleas by Cuomo, wealthy donors and even his own former employer to drop out of the race.They clashed over education reform, transportation funding, Israel policy and whether to close the notorious prison on Rikers Island. But Wednesday’s showdown offered few breakthroughs that would shift the race’s trajectory.Both Cuomo and Sliwa argued that Mamdani lacked the experience required to lead the nation’s largest city, a familiar charge for the assemblyman, who is roughly half their age.“The issue is your inexperience,” Cuomo said of Mamdani, highlighting his own lengthy service in government at the state and federal level.“The issue,” Mamdani retorted later, “is that we’ve all experienced your experience.”To draw attention to Cuomo’s record as governor, the Mamdani campaign brought several guests to the debate, including Charlotte Bennett, one of the women to publicly accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Cuomo resigned during his third term as governor amid the scandal, which he has described as “political”. He has denied the allegations and on Wednesday noted that a portion of Bennett’s lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.Stepping into the fray, Sliwa – whom moderators described as “more of a New York character than a policy expert” – supplied some of the evening’s sharpest zingers: “Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library.”Mamdani leads Cuomo in nearly every recent poll by at least a dozen points. Unless Sliwa drops out, Cuomo seems unlikely to close the gap before the 4 November election.Mamdani’s rise has excited progressives across the country, offering a fresh model of leadership at a time when the Democratic party’s old guard is under pressure to exit stage left.Throughout the evening, Mamdani sought to cast himself as the candidate of generational and political change. Cuomo and Sliwa, he said, “speak only in the past because that is all they know”.“I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city,” he continued, harshly denouncing Cuomo as “a desperate man, lashing out because he knows that the one thing he cares about, power, is slipping away from him” and “Donald Trump’s puppet”.Trump has not endorsed a candidate for mayor of his home town, but suggested on Tuesday that he’d prefer Cuomo to Mamdani.“You have never had a job, you’ve never accomplished anything,” Cuomo said, during one heated exchange with Mamdani. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives.”Yet the president loomed large over the race, as the candidates each insisted they were best equipped to handle the president.Cuomo, who is courting Republicans and Trump voters, returned repeatedly to his record of confronting the president, invoking the pandemic and their public feuds as proof that he alone has the mettle and experience to stand up to Trump’s threats. A Mamdani win, he warned, would be Trump’s “dream” scenario, arguing that the president would use his opponent’s progressive policies as a pretext for taking over the city.Mamdani pledged to “end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government” and said he would oppose federal interventions in the city, calling ICE a “reckless entity that cares little for the law” in response to a question about an immigration enforcement raid that targeted Canal street vendors in Manhattan this week.But to Cuomo’s claims, Mamdani accused the former governor of fear-mongering.“I know what actually keeps you up,” Mamdani said, speaking directly to New Yorkers. “It’s whether or not you can afford to live a safe and dignified life in this city. I have plans for our future. My opponents only have fear.”Sliwa criticized his opponents’ approach, warning against antagonizing the famously mercurial president, whom he said holds “most of the cards”.“My adversaries have decided to bump chests with President Trump to prove who’s more macho,” Sliwa said. “You can’t beat Trump.”The bickering continued until the end, when the candidates were asked to name one thing that New York got right during the pandemic.Sliwa, who before taking the stage said he would rather be impaled Braveheart-style than work for Cuomo, said the former governor got nothing right.Mamdani recalled that it only took him 15 minutes to get his Covid-19 vaccine shot. “That was an efficient experience,” he said.“Thank you for the compliment,” Cuomo said, with a broad smile.Mamdani deadpanned that it was a “city-run vaccine site”.“No, it wasn’t,” Cuomo insisted. More

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      Personal attacks rather than policy: key takeaways from New York’s final mayoral debate

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      Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and current frontrunner for New York City mayor, faced off with Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor now running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, at the second and final New York mayoral election debate on Wednesday night.Here are some key takeaways from the evening.1. Tensions continued to rise between Cuomo and Mamdani The debate made clear that the most heated rivalry was between Cuomo and Mamdani. From the beginning, Cuomo accused Mamdani of lacking substance and relying on recycled ideas from Bill de Blasio’s administration, claiming the Democrat “has no new ideas”.Mamdani countered by arguing that Cuomo focused more on pushing other candidates to drop out than actually proposing solutions, while also pointing out what he called Cuomo’s failures as governor, including delays in housing initiatives.The tension escalated midway when Mamdani was questioned on being evasive or unclear on his ideology. He blamed Cuomo for slow housing progress during his governorship. Cuomo snapped back that governors didn’t build housing, prompting both to start speaking over each other. Later, Mamdani reignited the confrontation by directly questioning Cuomo about allegations of sexual harassment, asking:. “What do you say to the 13 women who you sexually harassed?” Cuomo dismissed the question as immature and insisted the cases were dropped, despite ongoing litigation. Their exchanges set the tone for a debate marked by personal attacks rather than policy clarity.2. The recent ICE raids in New York resurrect last week’s conversation on TrumpImmigration and the recent ICE raids in New York were among the first issues raised, bringing Donald Trump back into the conversation in a major way. Cuomo said that ICE should not go after low-level offenses like street vending, and he would have personally called Trump to intervene and rein in federal agents. This provoked Mamdani, who accused Cuomo of being too cozy with Trump and labeling the former governor as “Donald Trump’s puppet”.Sliwa, instead of outright rejecting Trump, said he’d negotiate with him to “get the best deal possible for New York”. The candidates then argued over who Trump supposedly supports. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani to win so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling Mamdani “Trump’s dream”. Mamdani rejected the claim, saying it was part of Cuomo’s fear-based campaigning. Ultimately, the ICE conversation quickly shifted to become a proxy battle over how each candidate would deal with Trump himself: either confront him or cooperate with him.3. Sliwa threw out a handful of zingers, at both Cuomo and MamdaniMuch like last week’s performance, Sliwa offered brief moments of levity throughout – particularly whenever he served as the middle man between Cuomo and Mamdani. At one point, he referred to both men as “fighting like kids in a school yard”.“Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin. And, Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City,” he said.When Cuomo blamed rising homelessness on policies enacted after he left the governorship, Sliwa mocked him, saying: “You didn’t leave. You fled from being impeached.”Regarding a potential endorsement from the current mayor, Eric Adams, Cuomo said yes; Mamdani and Sliwa said no. “Absolutely not, put that crook in jail!” said Sliwa.4. The safety of Jewish New Yorkers becomes a topic of debate for the second timeThe treatment and safety of Jewish New Yorkers became a major point of contention, especially surrounding Mamdani’s candidacy. Cuomo referenced a public letter signed by 650 rabbis accusing Mamdani of threatening “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city”. He accused Mamdani of enabling rising antisemitism and “stoking the flames of hatred against Jewish people”.Sliwa went further, claiming Mamdani supports “global jihad”, a charge Mamdani firmly denied, saying: “I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad.” Mamdani argued the attacks were politically motivated and based on his identity as a Muslim candidate positioned to possibly lead the city. He defended his record and laid out plans to ensure Jewish safety, including expanding public school lessons on Jewish history and protecting Jewish children at schools and synagogues. 5. Mamdani was attacked by both Cuomo and Sliwa for evading questionsA recurring criticism aimed at Mamdani throughout the debate was his perceived tendency to dodge hard questions and give vague answers. This became most apparent when he was asked about education reform. He spoke about the importance of quality public education and improving literacy but did not outline a detailed plan. When pressed on zoning amendments under the “City of Yes” reforms, Mamdani said he “has not yet taken a position” on them, which Cuomo and Sliwa used to suggest he avoided commitment on contentious issues.Cuomo repeatedly accused Mamdani of lacking the knowledge or experience to govern, saying: “You don’t know how to run a government and you don’t know how to handle an emergency.” Sliwa joined in, saying Mamdani lives in “fantasies, not reality”, and dismissed his ideas like a $30 minimum wage and universal free buses as unrealistic. 6. The status quo ultimately did not shiftThe 90-minute debate seemed unlikely to have changed the minds of voters as election day, which is in less than two weeks, comes closer.Cuomo kept hammering home the point that his experience should make him the right choice, given his long career in government at the state and federal level, as opposed to Mamdani, the state assemblyman who is almost exactly half his age.Mamdani, for his part, cast himself as the candidate of change, focused on affordability and trying to reverse a situation in which New York is becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live”.Sliwa is an engaging presence on television, but did little to change the perception that he remains more of a quirky cultural figure than a likely government administrator.Robert Mackey contributed reporting More

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      Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa fling zingers in New York mayoral debate as they try to win over voters

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      New York City’s three mayoral contenders had a fiery debate on Wednesday night in their final televised face-off less than two weeks before voters decide the city’s next leader on 4 November.Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa participated in a tense and often chaotic discussion. The current mayor, Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race weeks earlier, once again did not attend.“It’s us versus them,” Sliwa declared in his opening remarks, grouping Cuomo and Mamdani together despite their mutual disapproval of one another.Mamdani opened by accusing both rivals of focusing more on urging each other to drop out than on offering new ideas. The former governor’s allies have urged Sliwa to withdraw to consolidate anti-Mamdani votes, though it is unclear how many conservatives would back Cuomo.Cuomo claimed Mamdani “has no new ideas” and merely rehashed ideas from former mayor Bill de Blasio, prompting Mamdani to fire back: “I have plans for our future, my opponents only have fear.”Beginning with the topic of ICE raids in New York, Cuomo said federal immigration agents should not focus on quality-of-life offenses like street vending, calling those a police matter. He added he would have personally called Donald Trump to rein in ICE.Sliwa countered that, unlike Cuomo and Mamdani, he would “negotiate with Donald Trump and try to get the best deal possible”. Mamdani hit back, calling Cuomo “Donald Trump’s puppet”.The two then sparred over which candidate Trump preferred. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani elected so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling the progressive “Trump’s dream”.The debate later turned to the city’s record 150,000 homeless students. Mamdani spoke about plans to double a program pairing shelter families with city workers for regular check-ins. Cuomo said the “homeless rate has more than doubled” since he left office, without clarifying his figures.Sliwa quipped, “You didn’t leave. You fled from being impeached,” earning one of the night’s loudest rounds of applause.On housing, Mamdani said he would “freeze the rent” but also help landlords. Cuomo defended past rent hikes as needed and insisted Mamdani could not freeze rents because he doesn’t control the city’s rent guidelines board.“If you want a candidate for mayor who tells you everything he can’t do, then Andrew Cuomo is your choice,” Mamdani replied, clarifying that the mayor appoints board members.When the “City of Yes” zoning reforms came up, Sliwa opposed them while Cuomo and Mamdani voiced conditional support. Pressed further, Mamdani said: “I have not yet taken a position on those ballot amendments.”Questions about Mamdani’s support for Jewish New Yorkers dominated the middle portion of the debate. Cuomo cited a letter from 650 rabbis claiming Mamdani threatened “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city”. He accused the Muslim candidate of helping “stoke the flames of hatred against Jewish people”.Sliwa went further, alleging Mamdani supports “global jihad”. Mamdani replied, “I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad,” and suggested this attack was being fabricated because he was the first Muslim on the verge of leading the city.He added that he would ensure the safety of Jewish children and expand a new public-school curriculum on Jewish history “so that children in this city learn about the beauty and the breadth of the Jewish experience”.All three candidates said they would retain Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner.Things heated up even more between Cuomo and Mamdani nearly halfway through the debate after the latter was questioned on being evasive or unclear on his ideology.Mamdani initially said: “When it comes to our schools, I believe that every single child should have an excellent public education.” He then mentioned public school funding and a need for greater literacy levels, but did not further explain his plan for overhauling schooling in New York City. He switched gears and called out Cuomo specifically for taking so long during his tenure as governor to establish more housing.Cuomo immediately fired back to note that the governor doesn’t build housing, prompting Mamdani to interject: “Not if it’s you!”Things quickly escalated as the men talked over each other with increasingly louder comebacks. Cuomo, again, mentioned Mamdani’s inexperience while Mamdani took aim at Cuomo for his shortcomings as governor.“You don’t know how to run a government and you don’t know how to handle an emergency,” Cuomo said to Mamdani at one point.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter being told by moderators to keep order, Sliwa weighed in and said his fellow candidates were “fighting like kids in the school yard”. Of Mamdani, Sliwa said, “Your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” while of Cuomo he said, “Your failures could fill a public school library.”One moderator, Errol Louis, had to remind the candidates that “they know how this works”, warning them against talking over one another.Sliwa described his son’s experience with gang violence and said the perpetrators got only “a pat on the wrist” under juvenile law. Later, amid a discussion of psychiatric hospital capacity, Cuomo jibed that he’d “save one for Sliwa”.When asked whether they would accept a potential Eric Adams endorsement, Cuomo said yes while Mamdani and Sliwa said no.“Absolutely not – put that crook in jail!” said Sliwa.During candidate questioning, Mamdani confronted Cuomo about harassment allegations against the former governor, noting accuser Charlotte Bennett was in the audience: “What do you say to the 13 women who you sexually harassed?”Cuomo dismissed this, saying Mamdani was not “mature” and that the cases were dropped, though litigation is still ongoing.During the debate, one of Cuomo’s accusers – Lindsey Boylan – called out Cuomo on X and celebrated Mamdani for mentioning the allegations.“I am one of these women. I have been legally abused by Andrew Cuomo for years after being harassed as his staffer. Now he wants to be mayor. Shame on you Cuomo and thank you ⁦[Mamdani]⁩ for speaking out on this injustice,” she wrote.Speaking about Rikers Island, Sliwa and Cuomo opposed the mandated 2027 closure while Mamdani supported it, calling the jail a “stain on the history” of New York. Cuomo warned its closure would “release 7,000 criminals into New York City”. Mamdani said Adams has made it “nearly impossible” to meet the deadline but pledged to try.The exchange devolved again into bickering. Cuomo touted infrastructure projects such as the Second Avenue Subway and the Mario Cuomo Bridge to highlight his experience. Mamdani retorted: “You will hear from Andrew Cuomo about his experience as if we don’t know about it. We experienced your experience! The issue is your experience!”Discussing wages, Mamdani said New York was becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live”, proposing to phase in a $30 minimum wage.“Zohran Mamdani deals with fantasies, not reality,” Sliwa replied.The candidates also clashed over Mamdani’s plan for universal free buses. Cuomo said it would “subsidize the rich”.In a contentious debate full of quarrels and zingers, the night ended rather predictably, with all three mayoral candidates declining to name a candidate that they would like to see run for president in 2028.Election day for the New York City mayoral race is Tuesday, 4 November. Early voting begins on 25 October and runs through 2 November. More

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      US sanctions major Russian oil companies and calls for Moscow to accept immediate Ukraine ceasefire – live

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      The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.After imposing new sanctions on Russian oil firms he called “tremendous” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had canceled a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president in Budapest.“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just, it didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future,” Trump said, while sitting with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, in the Oval Office.Asked by a reporter to comment on his treasury secretary’s statement that Putin had not been honest in his talks with Trump, the president said: “Well I think that, in terms of honesty, the only thing that I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere, they just don’t go anywhere.”Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, told Fox Business News, “President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped. There were talks in Alaska, President Trump walked away when he realized that things were not moving forward.”“These are tremendous sanctions,” Trump also said. These are very big against their two big oil companies — and we hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, just yielded the Senate floor after speaking for 22 hour and 37 minutes.Merkley said at the start of his speech that he was “holding the floor to protest Trump dragging us further into authoritarianism.”In particular, the Oregon senator said, he objected to the idea of letting Donald Trump claim, against all evidence, that he had the right to send military forces to Portland because the city a small protest constituted “an insurrection”.“Our founders did not want the president to be a king,” Merkley said. “A king can decide on a whim to deploy troops against his own people, presidents cannot.”The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.A federal district court judge in Portland, Oregon, rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift a temporary restraining order that blocks the deployment of national guard troops in the city.The judge, Karin Immergut, previously issued two orders blocking the deployment of national guard troops, after finding that Donald Trump’s claim that the city she lives in is “War ravaged” was “simply untethered to the facts”.Immergut’s first order, blocking the deployment of Oregon national guard troops, was reversed by a three-judge appeals court panel on Monday, but her second order, which bars the deployment of national guard troops from any state or the District of Columbia, remains in effect because the government appealed only her first order and not the second one.Immergut, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in his first term, issued the second order in response to Trump’s clear attempt to evade her first order by flying troops from California’s national guard to Oregon.Justice department lawyers asked Immergut to dissolve the second order based on the reasoning of the two appeals court judges who accepted Trump’s claim that a small protest against immigration raids in Portland, by dozens of protesters, required the deployment of the military.Instead, she scheduled a hearing for Friday morning in Portland. The judge’s orders to the lawyers for Trump and Oregon asks them to address the possible rehearing of the three-judge panel’s decision by a larger panel of the appeals court, which that court will consider on Thursday.A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday agreed to extend her order blocking Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to the Chicago area, possibly by 30 days.The district court judge, April Perry, said at a hearing that her order will extend until she decides the case, unless the US supreme court steps in to lift it, as the Trump administration has requested.In a filing on Tuesday, the solicitor general, John Sauer, one of Trump’s former personal defense attorneys, urged the supreme court to issue an emergency order lifting the temporary restraining order (TRO) that would let federalized guard troops be deployed.“Every day this improper TRO remains in effect imposes grievous and irreparable harm on the Executive,” Sauer wrote.The surprise demolition of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for Donald Trump’s vast ballroom, is not going down well with former staffers of the office of the first lady, which had been located in the East Wing for decades.“My heart is breaking for the evident loss of prestige for the first ladies and their staffs,” Penny Adams, who worked in the East Wing for former first lady Pat Nixon, told East Wing Magazine, a newsletter that covers first ladies present and past.“The photos were jarring when I first saw them,” Michael LaRosa, a press secretary for Jill Biden wrote in an email to the same newsletter. “Initially, they felt like a gut punch. It was also a bit eerie and sad to see some of the interior reduced to rubble.”Adams also said that some former Nixon staffers had tried, and failed, “to push back on this devastation”.One of Trump’s most cherished possessions is a 1987 letter from Richard Nixon, the disgraced former president, who passed on praise of the future president’s appearance on a daytime talkshow that year from the former first lady.“Dear Donald,” Nixon wrote. “I did not see the program, but Mrs Nixon told me you were great on the Donahue show.”“As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office, you will be a winner!”As we prepare for the meeting between Nato secretary Mark Rutte and Donald Trump, a reminder of the context of these talks.This is a snap meeting, put together as progress between Ukraine and Russia has stalled. Recently, the White House said there were no immediate plans for the president to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, despite Trump touting a second bilateral meeting in Budapest.The last time Rutte was in Washington was for a meeting with Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders in August.According to Nato officials, cited by multiple outlets, Rutte is hoping to discuss a 12-point peace plan with Trump. Drawn up by Europe and Ukraine, the plan calls for a ceasefire based on current battle lines, return of the deported children and a prisoner exchange.The White House did not respond to a question from the Guardian today about when demolition of the East Wing would be completed, as construction continues. An administration official did say that “the scope and size of the project has always been subject to vary and the process developed”. They added that the National Capital Planning Commission “does not require permits for demolition, only for vertical construction” and that “permits will be submitted to the NPC at the appropriate time”.The New York Times reported that the teardown should be completed by this weekend, according to an official speaking anonymously.Earlier, my colleague Lauren Aratani reported that the White House had yet to submit plans for Donald Trump’s new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings, though demolition is already under way.The treasury secretary Scott Bessent just gaggled with reporters outside the White House.He said that a “substantial pickup” in sanctions on Russia are coming soon. “We are going to announce either after the close this afternoon, or first thing tomorrow,” he said.As Jeff Merkley hits the 20th hour of his Senate floor speech, his Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber have praised his efforts, and joined him on the floor to ask questions and give him small breaks as he continues his marathon monologue.The senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, called it “incredible”, characterizing the speech as part of the “fight to protect American families from Trump’s reckless and corrupt administration”.Earlier, senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, said that it “says a lot” about the Trump administration that Merkley can spend hours “talking all the different ways Trump is hurting hardworking Americans and not run out of things to say”.Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey who currently holds the record for longest floor speech (coming in at over 25 hours), said Merkley was “demonstrating how Trump is moving us towards tyranny, instead of standing up for American ideals”.Donald Trump has urged US cattle farmers to “get their prices down” in order to encourage Americans to buy their beef.On Truth Social, the president said that ranchers throughout the country “don’t understand” that the only reason they are “doing so well” is because of Trump’s tariffs on several countries, “including a 50% Tariff on Brazil”.He added:
      If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!
      Over the weekend, Trump told reporters he was considering importing beef from Argentina in order to lower prices for consumers.The revelation that a top federal prosecutor used an encrypted messaging application and had messages set to auto-delete after eight hours is “deeply troubling” and may be illegal, a watchdog group said.Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, used Signal to communicate with Anna Bower, a journalist for Lawfare, about the criminal case she is pursuing against New York attorney general Letitia James. Bower published the full conversation Monday evening and said Halligan had set messages to auto-delete after eight hours.“The story about US attorney Lindsey Halligan’s use of Signal is deeply troubling. That she used the app apparently to discuss government business with a reporter and configured her messages to disappear after eight hours, raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the Federal Records Act and the justice department’s own records-retention rules,” said Chioma Chukwu, the executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit that frequently files lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain federal records.“Even if portions of the conversation might contain information not typically subject to immediate public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, federal law still requires that such records be preserved for specified periods. Setting such communications to automatically delete is not only inconsistent with those obligations but patently unlawful,” she said. “If Halligan failed to ensure these Signal messages were preserved, her actions may have violated federal law and warrant investigation or corrective action by attorney general Pam Bondi and acting archivist Marco Rubio.”The justice department did not return a request for comment.Federal law generally requires government employees to preserve official government records and sets penalties for destroying them.Per my last post, it’s worth underscoring that Platner has achieved significant momentum since he entered the race to challenge incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins.Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, launched her bid for Senate recently – making the schism between the old and new guard of the party abundantly clear.Meanwhile, Jordan Wood, another Maine Democratic candidate for Senate, said today that Platner’s Reddit comments are “disqualifying and not who we are as Mainers or as Democrats”.He added:
      With Donald Trump and his sycophants demonizing Americans, spewing hate, and running roughshod over the constitution, Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity. Graham Platner no longer can. More

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      Trump nominee to lead whistleblower office drops out after racist texts surface

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      Paul Ingrassia, Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee federal whistleblower protections, has dropped out after racist text messages he sent surfaced this week.Ingrassia, currently a White House liaison at the Department of Homeland Security, was the subject of a report on Monday published in Politico. The report featured text messages where he allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday evening, Ingrassia said: “I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time.“I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”After the release of the alleged text messages earlier this week, reporters asked John Thune, the Senate majority leader, if the administration should pull Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the office of special counsel. Thune said on Monday: “I think so. He’s not going to pass.”Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also said on Tuesday, prior to Ingrassia’s withdrawal, that he would not support Ingrassia’s nomination: “I’m a no. It never should have got this far. They ought to pull the nomination.”By late afternoon on Tuesday, at least five Senate Republicans told the Washington Post they opposed Ingrassia’s nomination. Had his nomination gone to a vote, Ingrassia could have lost up to three Republican votes on the homeland security committee, which Republicans control by a single seat. Democrats were expected to vote unanimously against the confirmation.The 30-year-old’s attorney, Edward Paltzik, questioned the authenticity of the messages to Politico and suggested they could be AI-generated. He said they were “self-deprecating” and “satirical humor”, adding that his client is “the furthest thing from a Nazi”.Prior to the publication of the alleged texts, Ingrassia found himself in hot water after a separate Politico report from earlier this month revealed he had been investigated by the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation took place after he allegedly canceled the hotel reservation of a female colleague before a work trip and told her that they would share a room. Politico noted that the woman filed a complaint against Ingrassia and later retracted it. Ingrassia has denied any wrongdoing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s nomination of Ingrassia came down in June and would have seen the agency that protects federal employees from prohibited personnel practices such as retaliation from whistleblowing being led by a relative novice.Historically, the agency has been led by nonpartisan lawyers with decades of experience. Ingrassia was admitted to the New York bar last year.Joseph Gedeon contributed reporting More

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      North Carolina Republicans advance map to secure another seat in Congress

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      North Carolina Republicans in the state senate passed a new congressional map on Tuesday, intent on contributing more Republicans to the US Congress as the national redistricting battlefield widens.Currently, North Carolina has a 10-4 partisan split in favor of Republicans in Congress. The new map would result in an 11-3 split, replacing congressman Don Davis, a Democrat, with a Republican.State law does not give North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein, a veto of redistricting legislation. The state house, controlled by a large majority of Republicans, will receive the redistricting legislation, and is expected to pass it quickly – likely on Wednesday, said Matt Mercer, communications director for the North Carolina GOP.The recourse for critics of partisan gerrymandering is to replace state representatives by winning elections, Mercer said. The maps are a product of the time, and the shoe has been on the other foot for North Carolina Democrats, he added.“I think Democrats are just kind of setting up this loser mentality where ‘we’re never gonna win’,” Mercer said. “Well, Republicans won in 2010, with maps that the Democrats specifically drew to give themselves more power. It’s about the moment, good candidates and good campaigns, and also convincing the voters of your choice.”Davis’s seat in the north-east corner of the state had already been precarious. Shifting as few as 3,152 votes in the state’s first congressional district would have given his Republican opponent, Laurie Buckhout, the victory in 2024, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.Davis’s term has been marked by bipartisanship, said state congressman Rodney Pierce, a Democrat representing counties in the district. Redrawing a map to force Davis out is an attack on bipartisanship, Pierce said. “What does it say to the public at large?” he asked. “What does it say to Republicans who may want to work across the aisle with Democrats? What does it say to Democrats?”Donald Trump won 50.9% of votes in North Carolina in 2024. Democrats hold half of its statewide elected offices, including the governor, secretary of state and attorney general. In 2024, 46% of votes for Congress went to Democratic candidates.State law – and a state supreme court controlled by Democrats – had prevented extreme gerrymanders in the past. But Republicans elected a majority of North Carolina supreme court justices in 2022.Buoyed by Rucho v Common Cause – a 2019 US supreme court case from North Carolina that ruled partisan gerrymandering was effectively legal – North Carolina immediately replaced a court-mandated congressional map. That move split the state’s delegation 7-7, with one drawn by Republican legislators that elected 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats in 2024.The loss of those three seats represents the entire margin of partisan control of Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans left the first congressional district in competitive territory, hoping to avoid a legal challenge on the basis of racial gerrymandering. The first district holds all eight of North Carolina’s majority-Black counties and has long been represented by a Black Democrat.But the US supreme court is considering a challenge to the Voting Rights Act that could effectively end protections from gerrymandering for Black voters.Much of the district is impoverished. About 45% of Halifax county residents receive Medicaid benefits, Pierce said. He would not expect a Republican to approach the problems of rural healthcare in poor, Black counties the way a Democrat might, Pierce said, quoting former North Carolina congresswoman Eva Clayton.“I’ll say what she says. It’s not that I don’t think that they’re capable of it. They certainly are. Will they do it is another question.” More