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    ‘We will not be bullied’: House Democrats involved in video to troops confirm FBI is seeking to question them – live

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    Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.In a lengthy social media post, Donald Trump wrote on Thuesday that his attempt to hold on to the House through gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterms is not yet done.“It looks like the Indiana Senate Republicans will be coming back in two weeks to take up Redistricting,” Trump reported.He went on to threaten any state lawmakers who fail not support the effort to tilt the electoral map in Indiana more in favor of Republicans with primary challenges.“I am glad to hear the Indiana House is stepping up to do the right thing, and I hope the Senate finds the Votes. If they do, I will make sure that all of those people supporting me win their Primaries, and go on to Greatness but, if they don’t, I will partner with the incredibly powerful MAGA Grassroots Republicans to elect STRONG Republicans,” the president wrote on his social media platform.Interior secretary Doug Burgum announced today the new cost of an annual national parks pass for international tourists.For US residents, the cost of a yearly pass (which grants access to 63 of America’s national parks) will stay at $80. But for those visiting, they’ll have to fork out $250.When visiting any of the 11 most visited parks, non-residents will also pay a new $100 per person fee (in addition to the usual entry fee). There will also be five extra “fee free days” for US residents.Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said today she would not seek re-election. Instead, she will finish out the remainder of her third term and leave office in January 2027.Bowser, once a vocal critic of Donald Trump, found herself complying when he returned to the White House in January, launched a federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, and deployed national guard troops to the district earlier this year. While critics blamed Bowser for acquiescing to the administration, supporters felt she exercised tactical soft-power given the legal limitations of leading the nation’s capital.In a video posted to social media, Bowser noted that her administration “brought our city back from the ravages of a global pandemic, and summoned our collective strength to stand tall against police who threaten our very autonomy while preserving home rule that is our North Star.”Bowser added that she’s “cherished the opportunity” to serve her hometown for 10 years, and has “happily given all my passion and energy to the job that I love”. Notably, she did not say which candidate she would endorse to succeed her.In September, I reported on how Bowser had to navigate her political summer stand-off with Trump.Donald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say.The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level.But, the federal pardon could wind up having a big effect on people like Matthew Alan Laiss, who is accused of voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in the 2020 election. According to a federal indictment handed down in September, Laiss moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August of 2020 and voted first with a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania and then in person in Florida on election day. Both votes were for Trump, Laiss’ lawyers wrote in court documents. He has pleaded not guilty.The case is still in its early stages. Last week, Laiss’ lawyers, public defenders Katrina Young and Elizabeth Toplin, argued that the charges should be thrown out because Trump had pardoned him.They argued that Trump’s 7 November pardon was sweeping. It applies to any US citizen for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any state or state official, in connection with the 2020 presidential election.” And while it lists a number of people the pardon specifically applies to, it also says the pardon is not limited to those named.That language is so broad, lawyers for Laiss wrote, it also applies to their client.Elissa Slotkin, one of the two Democratic senators in the video to troops, said today she was aware that the FBI’s counterterrorism division “appeared to open an inquiry” into her.She wrote:
    The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place. He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet. He uses legal harassment as an intimidation tactic to scare people out of speaking up.
    A reminder that after the video was published online, Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” in a post on Truth Social. He also re-shared several comments from other users calling for the arrest, trial and execution of the Democratic members of Congress.For her part, Slotkin remained resolute today. “This isn’t just about a video,” she said in her statement. “This is not the America I know, and I’m not going to let this next step from the FBI stop me from speaking up for my country and our Constitution.”Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and former majority leader, has critiqued a possible US co-authored peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which might require land concessions.“The most basic reality on the ground is that the price of peace matters. A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” he lawmaker wrote in a post on X. “America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one.”Last week, McConnell said that Vladimir Putin has “spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool”. He added that the president “ought to find new advisors” if administration officials are “more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace”. In response, vice-president JD Vance said that every criticism of the peace deal “either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground”.It’s almost 1:30pm in Washington, and here’s were things stand today.

    As he prepared to pardon two lucky turkeys, Waddle and Gobble, the president said he thought a peace deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting very close but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” Donald Trump said. Earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “tremendous progress” had been made towards a deal. In a post on X, she added that “a few delicate, but not insurmountable” details remain and “will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States”.

    The FBI has requested interviews with the six Democratic members of Congress who took part in a video where they told members of the military to “refuse illegal orders”, according to Reuters. Citing an unnamed justice department official, Reuters reports that the FBI is asking for interviews with senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, as well as House representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio. The FBI declined to comment when the Guardian reached out about the latest report.

    For his part, senator Kelly called the Pentagon’s announcement that it is investigating the him for possible breaches of military law for taking part in the video as an act of “intimidation”. In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MS NOW, Kelly added: “I don’t think there’s anything more patriotic than standing up for the constitution. And right here, right now, this week, the president clearly is not doing that.”
    In his remarks before the pardoning just then, Trump also said he thought a deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting “very close” but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” he said.“I think we’re getting very close to a deal, we’ll find out … I think we’re making progress,” he added.My colleagues over on the Europe blog report that a short while ago Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with Trump in talks he said should include European allies.In a speech to the ‘coalition of the willing’, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the Ukrainian president urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war.Gobble is officially pardoned. Along with Waddle, he’ll live out the rest of his days in North Carolina. More

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      Democrats accuse Trump of ‘intimidation’ campaign as FBI seeks interviews

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      A group of Democrats accused by Donald Trump of “seditious behavior” have said that the US president is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against them as a “tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress”.The four politicians, along with two others, had made a video encouraging US military service members to resist unlawful orders – a message that angered Trump, who posted on social media that the group were “traitors” and thus could be jailed or even face the death penalty.The statement, released by congressional lawmakers Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, confirmed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate sergeants at arms requesting interviews with them.“No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our constitution,” they said, adding that they had each sworn an oath “to support and defend” the US constitution.“That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” they added.The statement deepens a dispute between the Trump administration and Democrats, including Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly and Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, over the video message, which urged the military and intelligence services members to “refuse illegal orders”.Slotkin said the FBI’s counter-terrorism division had notified the group that “they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us” and described the move as a “scare tactic” by Trump.“To be honest, the president’s reaction and the use of the FBI against us is exactly why we made the video,” she said.“He believes in using the federal government against his perceived adversaries, and he’s not afraid to use the arms of the government against people he disagrees with. He does not believe the law applies to him … which is exactly why we made the video, to give people some assurance that they weren’t alone as they watch this stuff unfold.”The Pentagon has also said it is conducting a review of misconduct allegations against Kelly that could, it said, result in him being recalled to active duty to face court-martial proceedings. More

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      ‘Living an American nightmare’: LA hearing details lasting trauma of ICE raids

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      The Trump administration’s ICE raids across southern California have had disastrous effects on the region’s immigrants and swept up US citizens in the process, community leaders and residents said at a congressional hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.Andrea Velez, an American arrested by US immigration officials over the summer, described how she was accosted by masked agents while on her way to work. She said she was charged with assaulting an officer and held for two days in a federal detention center, where detainees had to pay for a cup in order to have water. The charges against her were ultimately dismissed due to what her attorney described as a lack of evidence.Democrats organized the hours-long congressional oversight hearing in Los Angeles in order to hear testimony about the impacts of Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation agenda, and look at alleged civil rights abuses by federal agents and the “unlawful” detention of US citizens.“Every person in our country has a right to due process, regardless of immigration status. It’s critical that the Oversight Committee document and hold accountable those that are defying the constitution, violating civil rights, and terrorizing families and communities,” Robert Garcia, a Democratic California congressman, said in a statement.The White House said earlier this month that the federal government had arrested more than 150,000 undocumented immigrants and deported nearly 140,000 people since Trump took office.His administration has made southern California a focal point for its aggressive mass deportation campaign. Federal agents have descended on car washes and Home Depot stores, and near schools and workplaces, leaving southern California communities in fear and parks and churches empty. The federal government has been accused of “blatant racial profiling” and civil rights violations.“Right now we are living an American nightmare,” said Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic representative from Texas.The situation has left lasting effects on southern California communities and residents affected by the raids.Velez said in her testimony: “I still live with the trauma everyday.”Karen Bass, LA’s mayor, described the raids as “an attack from our own federal government” and an affront to cities and people across the US.“We will hold every federal agency accountable, and we will relentlessly defend the rights of every resident in Los Angeles – and across this nation,” Bass said. “Reports that Angelenos, including US citizens, were forcibly held, physically attacked, and deprived of their freedom without cause are not only outrageous – they are intolerable.”Garcia on Monday announced the creation of a new oversight dashboard documenting “verified incidents of possible misconduct and abuse” during federal immigration enforcement operations”.The US Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. More

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      Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is ‘non-controversial’

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      Senator Mark Kelly said it was “non-controversial” for him and other congressional Democrats to implore military personnel to disobey “illegal orders” from the Trump administration – hitting back at accusations of “serious allegations of misconduct” leveled against him by the Pentagon.“I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial – and that was that members of the military should follow the law,” the Arizona Democrat senator, a former US navy officer and astronaut who flew on four separate space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, told MS Now on Monday night.Kelly then alluded to how the president went on social media to say Kelly and the others had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” – while also republishing another user’s post containing the phrase “hang them”.“And in response to that, Donald Trump said I should be executed, I should be hanged, I should be prosecuted,” Kelly said to political talkshow host Rachel Maddow.He added: “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the constitution.”Kelly’s remarks came after the Pentagon announced it was launching an investigation into the senator after Trump protested that Kelly and the other five Democratic lawmakers “should be in jail right now” for releasing a video advising service members that “threats to our constitution” are coming “from right here at home”. The video also said military members can “refuse illegal orders”.On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the FBI had contacted US Capitol police in Washington DC to schedule interviews with the six Democrats in question.The Pentagon warned that it could recall Kelly to active duty to be court-martialed and cited a federal law that bans military retirees against interfering “with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces”.In a statement of his own, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, argued that the video at the center of the controversy was “despicable, reckless, and false”.“Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their commanders undermines every aspect of ‘good order and discipline,’” Hegseth said.Trump weighed in with his own point of view, calling the senators’ statement “seditious behaviour at the highest level” and for an example to be set. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! punishable by DEATH!”Active military members in the US – whose oath is to the constitution rather than the president – can face execution for the crime of sedition. Civilians, meanwhile, can be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years if found to have engaged in seditious conspiracy.Meanwhile, the US Manual for Courts-Martial states that military requirements to obey orders do not apply “to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime” – while also prohibiting “contemptuous speech”.The dispute between the Trump administration and Kelly – whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination in 2011 while she was meeting her congressional constituents – comes amid claims from Democrats that the Pentagon has issued illegal orders. Democrats allege that the purported illegal orders include sending military personnel to the seal the US-Mexico border and in carrying out deadly strikes on so-called fast boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean that the administration claims were carrying illegal narcotics.Elizabeth Beaumont of Middle Tennessee State University’s Free Speech Center told the Associated Press that US military regulations “have been used to restrict political expression as well as other activities”.The dispute also hits a nerve on the use of “sedition” after Trump supporters were accused of precisely that by carrying out a deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 – when the first of his two non-consecutive presidential terms in ended in defeat to Joe Biden.Some of the mob members even called for the hanging of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president at the time, who oversaw a congressional session certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Trump then granted presidential clemency to more than 1,500 Capitol attackers shortly after his second term began in January.In his remarks on Monday to MS Now about Trump and the video, Kelly said “sending a mob to round me and the other folks up … says a lot more about him than it says about me. He doesn’t want accountability.”Retired air force officer and Nebraska Republican congressman Don Bacon offered some measure of calm to the political mud-slinging, calling the Democrats’ video “unnecessary and foolish” but also drawing attention to the Pentagon’s response with an insult over its formal Department of Defense name.“Amateur hour once again at the Department of Dense,” Bacon wrote on X.Bacon added that Kelly and his fellow Democrats in the video “said don’t follow illegal orders – that is the law by the way”.“Good luck prosecuting someone who is quoting the law,” Bacon continued. “The administration should have just pointed out how dumb it was. The threats looked dumber.” More

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      The Comey and James dismissals are a reminder of Trump’s lawlessness | Austin Sarat

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      Monday brought good news for two of Donald Trump’s most hated enemies: the former FBI director James Comey, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James. A federal judge dismissed the sham indictments the administration had obtained against them.Judge Cameron McGowan Currie reminded the president and his attorney general of the great lessons of a society governed by the rule of law: how things are done matters as much as what is done. Without fair procedures, no one can be safe from the arbitrary exercise of government power.This is never more apparent than when leaders target their political opponents and seek revenge against those who do not fall in line. The US is learning this lesson in real time as the Trump administration politicizes prosecution.Recall the president’s infamous 20 September direction to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general.“Pam,” Trump posted to Truth Social, “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as the last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’“Then,” he continued, “we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past … I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot.”The president ended by making it clear what he wanted and why he wanted it. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Two days later, Bondi installed Halligan as interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia with an apparent mandate to go after Comey, James and others. Several days after that, Comey was indicted in federal court, accused of lying to Congress; the next month, James was indicted in a mortgage case. Both denied wrongdoing and said the cases were intended to punish them for past clashes with him.On Monday, Currie delivered a decisive rebuke to Trump and Bondi when she threw out the Comey and James indictments. She found that Halligan’s appointment violated the clear language of the statute governing such appointments and of the constitution itself.As a result, all of the actions flowing from her appointment, including the indictments of Comey and James, were “unlawful exercises of executive power”. While Currie left the door open for the administration to refile indictments against Comey and James, in Comey’s case, the time allowed under the applicable statute of limitations has run out.As the Washington Post notes, Currie’s decision is just the latest in a series of judicial rulings “disqualifying Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks in New Jersey, Nevada, and Los Angeles”. Like her colleagues, Currie made clear that Trump’s Department of Justice had again distinguished itself by its dangerous combination of lawlessness and incompetence.Her opinion is good news for defenders of the rule of law. It should also strengthen the hand of other judges who want to push back against the administration’s vindictive prosecutions.Judges, like Currie, are never eager to dismiss an indictment issued by a grand jury. They are inclined to trust the grand jury process and are reluctant to cast aside the investment of time and resources that a good prosecutor makes in securing an indictment.In 1988, the supreme court held that, in most cases, dismissal of an indictment is appropriate only if errors in the handling of the grand jury process prejudiced a defendant by “substantially” influencing the decision to indict or raising “grave doubt” about whether the decision was free from such influence.As the attorney James M Burnham has written, this high bar “plays a central role in the ever-expanding, vague nature of federal criminal law because it largely eliminates the possibility of purely legal judicial opinions construing criminal statutes”. Burnham wants judges to be more active in policing indictments and making sure they are legally justified.Currie did just that. She found that Halligan lacked the authority to seek indictments of Comey or James because the justice department had not followed the applicable law governing the appointment of interim US attorneys. That law is, in her words, “unambiguous”.It allows the attorney general to appoint an interim US attorney, who can serve for a period of 120 days. It falls to a federal district court, not the administration, to choose a successor or extend the term of the current interim appointee – as happened with Halligan’s predecessor.The purpose of the law, Currie noted, was to prevent the president from circumventing the constitutional requirement that US attorneys go through a Senate confirmation process by making a series of interim appointments back-to-back.But Senate confirmation takes time. Alas, how inconvenient when the president demands that his enemies must be brought to justice now.Bondi may have known what the law required when she appointed Halligan to do the president’s bidding. But she seems to interpret her role as serving Trump and pushing the outer boundaries of the law until a judge has the temerity to tell her she can’t.Like federal judges in other cases, that is what Currie did. Along the way, the judge noted that Halligan was a “White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience”, who appeared alone before the grand jury after career prosecutors in her office concluded that neither had committed any crime.In the end, the judge, having pointed out the lawlessness and incompetence that accompanied Halligan’s appointment and the Comey and James indictments, reminded Bondi and the president that the legal requirements governing appointments, as the supreme court once said, are “more than a matter of etiquette or protocol”. No matter how much the president insists or how many all-caps messages he posts to Truth Social, those requirements cannot be discarded, she concluded, to suit the president, since they are “among the significant structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme”.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      Is the Democratic party embracing Bernie Sanders-style politics? | Dustin Guastella

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      Since the Democrats’ sweeping victories on 4 November, a strange thing has happened among the party factions: a semblance of unity has emerged.At first, “affordability” became the slogan of rapprochement. Moderates, populists and socialists agreed Democrats must campaign around the cost-of-living crisis and hang the broken economy around Donald Trump’s neck.At the same time party grandees – left, right and center – quietly agreed to ditch wokeness and embrace common-sense appeals to American solidarity and equality. Ideologically, we see the same convergence. Last week, writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma argued that the left has pulled the moderates toward populism, while the centrists have won debates on a number of cultural issues.And this week, James Carville – the bête noire of every leftwing Democrat and Bernie Sanders voter, the architect of Clintonian centrism – writes in the New York Times that he is become a populist.Here is Carville (James Carville!) describing what Democrats should do:“I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”Carville advocates a program that includes raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour (blowing past the old progressive demand of $15 an hour), universal childcare, free university education, and major investments in utilities. But more important than the suite of policies itself, the editorial signals to Democratic bigwigs that populism has won. A decade after he announced his first campaign for president, it seems that Sanders has won his crusade for the soul of the Democratic party.Winning consensus on the need for a “seismic” economic program is no small feat and it will go a long way to helping Democrats win back their working-class base. Still, there is a lot of work to be done and many pitfalls along the way.First, progressives must resist the temptation, so attractive to scorned factions, to reject centrist overtures. There is a danger that if moderates fulsomely embrace a social populist program, figures on the left will attempt to differentiate themselves by reanimating the dead-end politics of fringe woke causes.But being lefter-than-thou serves no one and would only succeed in helping the right paint the left as a collection of sky-pilots, eggheads, and weirdos. This is, in part, the lesson of the old Socialist party of Norman Thomas. Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the political narrative, and much of the practical program, of the socialists of his day. However, instead of embracing FDR’s social-democratic turn, Thomas & co tried more and more to distinguish themselves and discredit Roosevelt claiming that he only “carried out the socialist program on a stretcher”.Some on the left attacked Roosevelt’s enormously popular New Deal and lambasted Democrats as cynics and opportunists. The result was to hasten the political irrelevance of the very figures most responsible for inspiring a great populist revival in the 1930s. If today’s left wants to avoid a similar fate, they should embrace the new populists of the center and work with them to craft visionary social policy. And they should have the humility to revise their own opinions when the centrists have a point.Second, the turn toward populism will remain incomplete until party leaders are willing to stridently declare war on the economic elite – the same elite who fill the campaign coffers of powerful Democrats. Not only is it essential for candidates to draw lines between themselves and the very rich to demonstrate their populist convictions, but without naming the “millionaires and billionaires” as the cause of so much economic misery, Democrats will be unable to mount a serious challenge to rule by the rich.Many moderates who have lately flirted with populism have as yet been unwilling to point the finger at Wall Street and Silicon Valley as the villains of the contemporary order. Yet, it is precisely because the ultra-wealthy have hijacked American society that so many working-class Americans struggle to pay their bills. The fact is we cannot win a society that is more equal and more prosperous without directly challenging the plutocrats at the top.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFinally, policy matters. Becoming the party of “economic rage” is a good way to win elections but to fix the crisis (crises?), the new social populism must go beyond the standard welfare state toolbox. Carville and other newfound populists have made a huge political leap in embracing a suite of big, new public services and for that they should be commended. Yet it isn’t enough.No doubt, we urgently need bold redistributive programs to rebalance income and wealth and to address the persistent cost crunch. But these alone will not fix our broken economy. Nor are such programs popular enough to propel a populist takeover in Washington. To get a sense of just what is wrong, consider that since Bill Clinton was president, we have shed some 7m middle-income jobs in manufacturing, and in an exaggerated inverse-proportion we have gained some 700 billionaires.If a renewed leftwing populism is to succeed it needs to address this. We need to de-globalize the economy, to disentangle the home market from the increasingly dysfunctional world market. We need to bring manufacturing home and reindustrialize the rustbelt.We need to reign in and repatriate the hyper-global banking sector. We need to rebuild American infrastructure from coast to coast. And we need to strengthen the power of labor on the shop floor by leveling the legal playing field between workers and employers. All of this would amount to a democratic reorganization of the political economy away from the global rich and toward the domestic working class.This would be a populism worthy of the name and if moderate Democrats are embracing such a call, they ought to be welcomed with open arms. And if the hour isn’t too late, this kind of appeal might be the only chance Democrats have of winning back the working class and retaking Washington.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More

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      Trump news at a glance: James Comey, Letitia James welcome judge’s decision to toss criminal cases

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      A federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the case was unlawfully appointed.Lindsey Halligan, who Trump named the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September, had “no lawful authority to present the indictment” against the former FBI director and New York attorney general, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, wrote in her opinion.She added that “all actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment” were “unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside”.The decision is a major win for Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress five years ago, and James, who was charged with mortgage fraud. Both unequivocally denied wrongdoing and said the cases were a thinly veiled effort by the Trump administration to punish them for opposing the president.Currie dismissed both cases “without prejudice”, which means the government could theoretically try to bring the charges again under a properly appointed US attorney. But it is unclear if they could even do that in Comey’s case because the statute of limitations for the crime he is charged with passed on 30 September 2025.US judge throws out criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country,” James said in a statement. “I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day.”Comey also praised the decision.“I’m grateful that the court ended the case against me which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence,” he said in a recorded video. “This case mattered to me personally, obviously, but it matters most because a message has to be sent that the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.”Read the full storyUkraine makes significant changes to US ‘peace plan’, sources sayUkraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” to end the conflict, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned that no deal could be reached quickly.Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week, sources indicated, amid a flurry of calls between Kyiv and Washington. Ukraine is pressing for Europe to be involved in the talks.Read the full storyPentagon investigating US senator over call for troops to refuse illegal ordersThe Pentagon says it is investigating the Arizona senator Mark Kelly for possible breaches of military law after the federal lawmaker joined a handful of other Democrats in a video calling for US troops to refuse unlawful orders.It is extraordinary for the Pentagon to directly threaten a sitting member of Congress with investigation. Until Donald Trump’s second presidency, the institution in charge of the US military had usually strived to appear apolitical.Read the full storyTrump begins process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist groupsTrump began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.Trump signed an executive order directing secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, according to a White House factsheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.Read the full storyVenezuela accuses US of using ‘narco-terrorism’ allegations to justify ‘regime change’Venezuela’s government has accused the US of peddling “ridiculous hogwash” about its supposed role in sponsoring “narco-terrorism” as Washington continued to turn up the heat on Nicolás Maduro’s regime and leftwing European politicians warned South America faced being plunged into “a torrent of bloodshed”.The Trump administration officially designated a Venezuelan group known as the “Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns) a terrorist organization – despite widespread doubts over its actual existence.Read the full storyFox Corp chief told Sean Hannity that Trump could not go on air in 2020 if he attacked network
      New revelations about the tense relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump in the fall of 2020 have emerged in a trove of thousands of court documents released Sunday as part of a massive defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.One exchange showed that Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, told star anchor Sean Hannity in a 1 October 2020 text chain that Trump could not appear on Fox again if he attacked the network.Read the full storyTrump hints support for fringe theory that Venezuela rigged 2020 electionDonald Trump on Sunday appeared to endorse the discredited conspiracy theory that Venezuela’s leadership controls electronic voting software worldwide and caused his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.White House officials have previously said that Trump’s increasingly bellicose policy toward Venezuela is driven by concerns about migration and the drug trade. But the president’s new comment, made on Truth Social, hints that his hostility to Venezuela may also be based on an outlandish, implausible theory ruled to be false by a judge in 2023.Read the full storyTrump DoJ’s focus on Maga goals harms other investigations, experts warnDonald Trump’s weaponization of the US department of justice to focus on retribution against political foes, on fulfilling Maga goals and on granting pardons for allies has seen thousands of lawyers depart or be fired and weakened investigations in civil rights, national security and other areas, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A church employee is under arrest in Houston, Texas, after being accused of posing as an ICE agent to extort money from a woman he had booked to give him a massage.

      A controversial and secretive private company backed by the US and Israel that distributed food in Gaza has announced the end of its operations in the devastated territory.

      The Trump administration announced it will cancel temporary asylum for about 10,000 Myanmar nationals living in the US, despite the country being ruled by a military dictatorship that has a record of executing dissidents.

      The North Dakota supreme court revived the state’s abortion ban on Friday, once again making it a felony for doctors to perform the procedure except in medical emergencies or in some cases of rape or incest.

      A flurry of social media posts from Maga influencers have laid bare the disorientation felt by members of Trump’s base at the spectacle of Friday’s cordial Oval Office meeting with Mamdani, who the president previously painted as a “communist lunatic”.

      Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma, has died at 111. She spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 23 November 2025. More

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      Trump begins process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist groups

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      Donald Trump on Monday began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move that would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, according to a White House fact sheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.The Trump administration has accused Muslim Brotherhood factions in those countries of supporting or encouraging violent attacks against Israel and US partners, or of providing material support to Palestinian militant group Hamas.“President Trump is confronting the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational network, which fuels terrorism and destabilization campaigns against US interests and allies in the Middle East,” according to a White House fact sheet.The Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s as an Islamic political movement to counter the spread of secular and nationalist ideas. It swiftly spread through Muslim countries, becoming a major player but often operating in secret.Republicans and right-wing voices have long advocated for and considered terrorist designations for the Muslim Brotherhood.Trump mounted a similar effort during his first term. Months after his second term began, Rubio said the Trump administration was working to designate the movement as a terrorist organization.Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, last week imposed the same designation on the Muslim Brotherhood at a state level. More