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      US airlines cancel flights after aviation agency directive to cut air traffic

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      Reductions in flights will begin at 40 major US airports from Friday to help address air traffic controller shortage safety concerns as a result of the government shutdown.The Associated Press published a list including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago airports after airline regulators identified “high-volume markets” where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says air traffic must be reduced by 4% by 6am ET on Friday, a move that would force airlines to cancel thousands of flights and create a cascade of scheduling issues and delays. United, Southwest and Delta airlines on Thursday evening began cancelling flightsOn Thursday evening, Delta said it will be cancelling 170 flights on Friday and “fewer” on Saturday because it is a lighter travel day. Southwest said it will cancel 120 flights for Friday and United said it plans to cut 4% of its flights Friday through Sunday.The FAA has said flights are being reduced to maintain air traffic control safety during the ongoing federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution between Republicans and Democrats to end the federal budget standoff, now in its 37th day. Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.The affected airports covering more than two dozen states include the busiest ones across the US – including Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. In some of the biggest cities – such as New York, Houston and Chicago – multiple airports will be be affected.All three airports serving the Washington DC area – Washington Dulles international, Baltimore/Washington international and Ronald Reagan Washington national – will be affected, inevitably causing delays and cancellations for lawmakers as well as other travelers.Scott Kirby, the United Airlines CEO, said in a statement the goal of regulators “is to relieve pressure on the aviation system so that we can all continue to operate safely. That is the FAA’s highest priority, and ours as well. No matter what environment we’re operating in, we will not compromise on safety.”Kirby added the airline “will continue to make rolling updates to our schedule as the government shutdown continues so we can give our customers several days’ advance notice and to minimize disruption”.Delta Air Lines said it would comply with the directive and “expects to operate the vast majority of our flights as scheduled, including all long-haul international service, and will work to minimize customer impact while keeping safety our top priority”.Delta also said it would provide additional flexibility to customers to change, cancel or refund their flights, including basic economy fares, without penalty.The flight reductions, according to ABC News, will start at 4% on Friday and increase to 10%. The flights affected by these reductions are scheduled during the hours of 6am to 10pm.The likely airspace shutdown comes two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday – typically the busiest travel period of the year – and raises pressures on lawmakers to reach a deal to end the shutdown.Air traffic controllers, already in short supply, have been working unpaid since 1 October, with many working mandatory overtime and others taking second jobs, according to Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, who said the cuts would be to “alleviate the pressure”.“Many of the controllers said, ‘A lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks,’” Duffy said on Wednesday. He accused Democrats of being responsible for any “mass chaos” that ensues even though the shutdown is the result of both Republicans and Democrats refusing to agree to a deal.In a statement, American Airlines said most customers would be unaffected and long-haul international travel would remain as scheduled, and that customers could change their flight or request a refund. “In the meantime, we continue to urge leaders in Washington to reach an immediate resolution to end the shutdown,” the statement said, adding thanks to “to the air traffic controllers, TSA officers, CBP officers and other federal employees who are working right now without pay”.The agency’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is responsible for the scheduling and safety of more than 44,000 flights and more than 3 million airline passengers daily across more than 29m square miles of airspace.The government shutdown has left shortages of up to 3,000 air traffic controllers, according to the administration, in addition to at least 11,000 more receiving zero wages despite being categorized as essential workers.Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator, said the flight reductions are intended to keep the airspace safe during the shutdown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,” Bedford said. “We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns.“Our sole role is to make sure that we keep this airspace as safe as possible. Reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations. This is not based on light airline travel locations. This is about where the pressure is and how to really deviate the pressure,” Bedford added.Geoff Freeman, the US Travel Association president and CEO, said in a statement that the government shutdown was “forcing difficult operational decisions that disrupt travel and damage confidence in the US air travel experience”.Aviation expert John Nance told ABC that regulators were “probably trying to do their best” to prevent any reduction in the margins of safety. “We’re facing the potential of almost a shutdown of the national airspace … You cannot continue to operate this in a way that ignores the diminution of safety. This is an incredibly serious situation.”From Friday to Sunday evening, at least 39 air traffic control facilities reported potential staffing limits, according to an Associated Press analysis of operations plans shared through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center. The figure, which is probably an undercount, is well above the average for weekends before the shutdown.During weekends from 1 January to 30 September, the average number of airport towers, regional control centers and facilities monitoring traffic at higher altitudes that announced potential staffing issues was 8.3, according to the AP analysis. But during the five weekend periods since the shutdown began, the average more than tripled, to 26.2 facilities.The shutdown may also have other consequences, including slowing the investigation in a UPS cargo plane crash on Tuesday in Louisville that killed at least 12 people.“At a minimum, the shutdown will certainly slow down the investigation,” said Matt Stoddard, an Atlanta-based transportation attorney, in a statement to the Guardian. “National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators must interact with other parts of government and those other departments’ responses will certainly be slowed.”The Associated Press contributed reporting

      This article was amended on 6 November to correct the number of days the US government has been shut to 37 and update the name of the agency managing US airspace to Federal Aviation Administration. More

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      US judge orders Trump administration to fully fund Snap benefits in November

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      A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits for November.The ruling by US district judge John J McConnell Jr gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, though it is unlikely the people that rely on it will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund Snap,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”The Trump administration said last month that it would not pay benefits at all for November because of the federal shutdown. Last week, two judges ordered the government to pay at least partial benefits using an emergency fund. It initially said it would cover half, but later said it would cover 65%.The plaintiffs want the benefits to be fully funded.The US Department of Agriculture said last month that benefits for November wouldn’t be paid because of the federal government shutdown. That set off a scramble by food banks, state governments and the nearly 42 million Americans who receive the aid to find ways to ensure access to groceries.The program serves about one in eight Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8bn per month nationally. More

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      US supreme court allows Trump to block passport sex markers for trans and non-binary people

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      The supreme court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.The decision by the high court’s conservative majority is Trump’s latest win on the high court’s emergency docket, and it means his administration can enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, hailed the decision, saying in a post on X: “Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport. In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”Meanwhile, the court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calling the decision a “pointless but painful perversion”.She added: “Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable out-come has become an unfortunate pattern. So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded. This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification.“What the Government needs (and what it does not have) is an explanation for why it faces harm unless the President’s chosen policy is implemented now. It suggests that there is an urgent foreign policy interest in dictating sex markers on passports, but does not elaborate as to what that interest might possibly be,” Jackson wrote.“As is also becoming routine, this court misunderstands the assignment,” she added.The state department changed its passport rules after Trump, a Republican, handed down an executive order in January declaring the United States would “recognize two sexes, male and female”, based on birth certificates and “biological classification”.Transgender actor Hunter Schafer, for example, said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she’s marked female on her driver’s license and passport for years.The plaintiffs argue that passports limited to the sex listed on a birth certificate can spark harassment or even violence for transgender people.“By classifying people based on sex assigned at birth and exclusively issuing sex markers on passports based on that sex classification, the State Department deprives plaintiffs of a usable identification document and the ability to travel safely,” attorneys wrote in court documents.Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed non-binary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from non-binary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.Solicitor general D John Sauer then turned to the supreme court, pointing to its recent ruling upholding a ban on transition-related health care for transgender minors. He also argued Congress gave the president control over passports, which overlap with his authority over foreign affairs.“It is hard to imagine a system less conducive to accurate identification than one in which anyone can refuse to identify his or her sex and withhold relevant identifying information for any reason, or can rely on a mutable sense of self-identification,” Sauer wrote in court documents.Since taking office in January, Trump has ramped up attacks against LGTBQ+ communities across the country. In October, his administration threatened to pause federal funding unless states remove references to gender identity and the existence of transgender and non-binary people from a federal sex education program.At least 11 states and two territories acquiesced to Trump’s demands. Meanwhile, 16 states and Washington DC sued the administration over the demand.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ICE plans to open call center to help law enforcement locate unaccompanied minors

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      US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a new call center to help law enforcement agencies track down unaccompanied migrant children.According to a homeland security department Request for Information (RFI) notice released this week, ICE stated there was an “immediate need to establish and maintain” a call center equipped with “data-enabled technology”.The agency said the center’s purpose was to “support partner encounters in the field … focused on locating unaccompanied alien children”.The facility, slated to open in Nashville, Tennessee, will operate 24 hours a day and is expected to handle between 6,000 and 7,000 calls daily. The document did not specify why Nashville was chosen for the call center. ICE anticipates the center will open by March and reach full operational capacity by June.In the RFI, ICE also asked potential contractors to outline what kinds of “enabling technology” they would recommend to “integrate partner and alien data with our systems to maximize call efficiency and reduce call time”.In response to a Guardian request for comment, assistant homeland security secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement: “Your reporting is inaccurate,” without providing any details.ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In addition to the planned call center, CoreCivic Inc, the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, is headquartered in Nashville. Since Donald Trump took office in January, the company has reported strong financial gains, announcing $538.2m in earnings for the second quarter of this year, a 9.8% increase over the same period last year.The surge in profits for private prison companies, along with those of technology firms such as Palantir, which recently secured a $30m contract with ICE to build a database aimed at streamlining detentions and deportations, comes amid an escalation in immigration raids nationwide. These actions have provoked fierce backlash from the public, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups alike.Reports of the planned ICE call center come as the Trump administration appears to have revived the practice of family separations in its renewed effort to deport millions, according to multiple cases reviewed by the Guardian. Immigration attorneys and former officials say the move is intended to pressure immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US voluntarily.Meanwhile, in a memo obtained by the Guardian last month, the Trump administration laid out plans to offer migrant children $2,500 as a “one-time resettlement support stipend” in exchange for their self-deportation.This latest escalation builds on policies from Trump’s first term, which included a “zero-tolerance” approach that directed the justice department to prosecute anyone who crossed the border without legal status. That policy led to the separation of at least 5,500 migrant children from their parents and guardians at the US-Mexico border.After widespread backlash from the public, as well as from both Democrats and Republicans, Trump signed an executive order in 2018 to formally end the family separation policy. More

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      How Nancy Pelosi became the Democrat Trump hated most

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      Nancy Pelosi arrived in Congress in 1987 aiming to spur a reluctant Washington into taking action against the Aids epidemic that was then ravaging the gay community in her home town, San Francisco.Nearly four decades later, she will exit the House of Representatives after a historic career in which she has made her influence felt nationwide. A Democrat who was the first woman ever to serve as speaker of the House, her fingerprints are on landmark legislation passed during Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s presidencies that affect millions of Americans and today remain among the most contentious topics in the Capitol.In a country that grew increasingly polarized during her time in Congress, it should be no surprise that reactions to her departure are textbook examples of America’s partisan extremes.“Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will go down in history as the greatest speaker of all time. Her tenure has been iconic, legendary, historic and transformational,” said Hakeem Jeffries, her successor as House Democratic leader.“The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country,” Donald Trump told Fox News.Taking office near what turned out to the tail end of four decades of Democratic control of the House, Pelosi was there to see Congress fulfill her hope of addressing Aids through the passage of the Ryan White Care Act, in 1990. In the years that followed, she climbed the ranks of party leadership until becoming speaker in 2007, following blowout election victories for Democrats the year prior.Under Obama, she oversaw passage of the Affordable Care Act, which transformed the nation’s healthcare system, as well as his efforts to revitalize the economy after the 2008 recession. When Biden’s election brought the Democrats back into power in 2021, Pelosi was by his side, wrangling a slim House majority to pass laws that addressed the climate crisis and revamped the nation’s infrastructure and critical industries.Her collaboration with the two Democratic presidents gained her a reputation as one of the country’s best-known liberals, and a modern trailblazer for female politicians. Perhaps it was inevitable that Trump, who beat two different Democratic candidates to win the presidency and has his own history of sexist comments and troubling conduct, would become her principal antagonist.Pelosi had clashed with George W Bush along with John Boehner and Paul Ryan – the Republicans who succeeded her as speaker after Democrats lost their House majority in the 2010 elections – but her feud with Trump was like few others in Washington.Shortly before she returned as House speaker in 2019, Pelosi and the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, met with Trump in the Oval Office for what turned into a prolonged, televised squabble. When they got together months later to discuss a volatile situation in Syria, the White House released a photo showing a standing Pelosi pointing her finger at the president. “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump tweeted, though the speaker’s supporters saw plenty to like in her defiant stance.She rolled her eyes and did a mocking slow clap at the president’s State of the Union address that year. He refused to shake her hand when they crossed paths in the House chamber for the annual address in 2020, and she tore up his speech at its conclusion. It was no surprise that some of the violent Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 talked about killing her, but, with Pelosi whisked to a military base, could do no more than sack her office. The following year, a man broke into her San Francisco home, looking to take her hostage and interrogate her over the investigation into the first Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The speaker was not home, and he ended up brutally injuring her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPelosi would oversee Trump’s two impeachments, first for his attempt to spur Ukraine into meddling in the 2020 election, then again for the January 6 attack. It was these dishonors that Trump made a point of mentioning when news broke that she would be stepping down.“I’m very honored she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice,” he said, having earlier added that “she was rapidly losing control of her party, and it was never coming back”.It’s worth dwelling on the last point, considering Pelosi’s last great act in Congress was orchestrating a pressure campaign that ousted Biden, another of Trump’s enemies. Regarded by many in her party as a master tactician even after stepping down and taking the rare title of speaker emerita in 2023, she saw Biden as unelectable and a liability to down-ballot Democratic candidates after his terrible performance in a debate against Trump.Pelosi wanted a competitive process for finding another Democratic nominee, but Biden instead endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, who would go on to decisively lose to Trump, paving the way for his return to power. Her relationship with Biden, meanwhile, was left in tatters.The Democratic party went into a tailspin after Harris lost and their candidates failed to hold either chamber of Congress. A year later, the party swept off-year state elections, raising the party’s hopes that its mojo was coming back and Democrats would retake the House in 2026.However it goes, Pelosi will not be there. Two days before announcing her retirement, she held forth to CNN about Trump, calling him “a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth”.But she also had some words for the next generation of lawmakers who will arrive in Washington soon enough: “Treat everyone as your friend, but know who your friends are.” More

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      Trump’s supreme court strategy is to redefine ‘tariffs’. Will the justices buy it?

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      Donald Trump faced arguably the biggest test so far of his contentious use of executive power at the US supreme court on Wednesday. The stakes could not be higher – “literally, LIFE OR DEATH” for the US, at least according to the president.Trump’s signature, globe-rattling economic policy, his sweeping tariffs regime, was in the dock – specifically, the legal mechanism his administration has used to enforce it. And the man dispatched to defend the White House put forward a somewhat puzzling argument.“These are regulatory tariffs,” D John Sauer, US solicitor general, assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”It was a curious, and more than a little confusing, explanation – tariffs on goods from overseas might raise revenue, but are not revenue-raising – designed to counter rulings by lower courts that set the stage for this test before the highest court in the land.A federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled in August that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of his tariffs, did not grant “the power to tax” to the president.Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. Trump bypassed Congress – lawfully, his aides insist – to drive through a policy estimated to equate to the largest tax hike since 1993.Thus, on Wednesday morning, the administration appeared to argue before the supreme court that these tariffs – taxes paid by myriad US companies on imported products – were not really taxes at all.Critics are not having it. “Anybody can look up in the dictionary,” Maria Cantwell, Democratic senator from Washington, told the Guardian. “Tariffs are an import tax, plain and simple. I would assume the administration understands that.”“I actually am surprised that it was so lacking,” Cantwell added, of the administration’s case.The court did not appear persuaded, either. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “But that’s exactly what they are.”Some conservatives on the bench also sounded skeptical. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice John Roberts.The administration’s argument that the fact tariffs raise money is “only incidental” might be more persuasive if the president spent less time boasting about the amount of money they raised. “My tariffs are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump declared in a speech hours after the hearing.The president has argued – in typically binary terms – that the fate of his flagship economic strategy is aligned with that of the nation. But there are many business owners in the US, grappling with the abrupt imposition of steep tariffs, who believe the fate of their companies has been jeopardized by this regime.While official statistics (at least, those published before the government shutdown) have shown persisting inflation and a stalling jobs market, Trump continues to erroneously claim his agenda is producing stellar results. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” he wrote on social media during Wednesday’s hearing.It is ultimately down to voters, as some did on Tuesday, to deliver their verdict on Trump’s agenda. For now, a handful of small firms, together with a dozen states, have joined forces to challenge the way in which he has rammed it through.“We think that this case is really about executive overreach,” said Stephen Woldenberg, senior vice-president of sales at Learning Resources, a toy company based near Chicago that sued the administration to invalidate Trump’s tariffs as exceeding his authority.At the heart of this case is really a “broader issue”, according to Woldenberg, of who sets taxes – and how – across the US. “We weren’t really willing to let politicians, and really a single politician, decide our fate,” he said.That fate is now in the hands of a court Trump has shaped. The justices have pledged to fast-track their decision. On Wednesday, at least, most sounded unpersuaded by the administration’s defense. More

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      US to cut airline traffic by 10% due to shutdown, Trump transport chief says

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      The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high volume markets” beginning on Friday if the government shutdown does not end by then.The announcement did not specify which 40 airports would see the reduction and said that a complete list would be announced on Thursday with cuts likely at the nation’s 30 busiest airports, including those serving New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Dallas. The reduction will affect cargo, private and passenger traffic.Reuters reported that the cuts would begin at 4% on Friday, escalate to 5% Saturday and 6% at Sunday, before reaching 10% next week, and that international flights were to be exempted from the initial cuts. Aviaion analytics firm Cirium estimated that the cuts would reduce as many as 1,800 flights and over 268,000 airline seats.The comments come after Duffy warned earlier this week that the US may close portions of its airspace if the shutdown, now on its record-breaking 36th day, does not end.Duffy and Bedford repeatedly framed the decision as a pre-emptive, safety and data-driven measure. Bedford said that air traffic was currently operating safely, but that the FAA was concerned about widespread reports of fatigue from flight controllers.“As we slice the data more granularly, we are seeing pressures build in a way that we don’t feel, if we allow it to go unchecked, will allow us to continue to tell the public that we operate the safest airline system in the world” Bedford said.“Many of these employees, they’re the head of household,” Duffy said. “When they lose income they are confronted with real-world difficulties on how they pay their bills.”The 10% reductions are aimed at reducing the stress on air traffic controllers, who have been working throughout the shutdown without pay.Duffy said that the FAA was offering cash bonuses to retiring air traffic controllers to stay on staff, and that the FAA academy was increasing recruitment in efforts to ease the shortage.View image in fullscreenBedford said that the FAA would be meeting with airline representatives to discuss how to implement the traffic reduction. Bedford and Duffy said that there was potential for further action if the shutdown continued, and if it was deemed necessary for passenger safety. He did not offer specifics when asked about how to ensure that routes or airlines would not be disproportionately affected, or how smoothly the FAA expected the reduction to go, given that the agency estimates it handles more than 44,000 flights and 3 million passengers per day.The air traffic reduction is expected to exacerbate the flight delays and long security wait times that have plagued American airports since the shutdown began.“I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kind of measures,” Bedford said. “We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns.”The shutdown, which began on 1 October, has since left shortages of up to 3,000 air traffic controllers, according to the administration, in addition to at least 11,000 more receiving zero wages despite working as essential workers over the last two weeks. The FAA is already short roughly 3,500 positions from targeted staffing levels.Duffy said that the controllers received a partial payment at the onset of the shutdown and “a big fat zero” for their checks two weeks ago, and could expect the same tomorrow.Troubles with the American air traffic control system did not begin with the shutdown – a 2023 study found that 20 of the nation’s 26 most critical airports had staffing levels below the 85% minimum level, and communications outages this spring at Newark’s Liberty Airport brought national scrutiny to the issue, as well as the collision of a military helicopter and passenger jet that killed 67 people outside of Washington DC’s Reagan National airport.Stocks of major US airlines dipped around 1% in extended trading. The announcement comes just weeks before Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, and some of the busiest travel of the year.On Wednesday morning, the shutdown entered its 36th day, becoming the longest in United States history. Duffy’s tweets announcing the 10% reduction in staffing came on the heels of a post he made with AI-generated art blaming congressional Democrats for the shutdown.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump news at a glance: supreme court examines president’s global tariffs

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      The conservative majority of United States supreme court justices has been widely criticized for granting Donald Trump an increasing amount of leeway to wield his presidential power. On Wednesday, the court questioned one avenue of the president’s authority: his ability to impose sweeping global tariffs.Justices heard oral arguments on the legality of the tariffs, with conservative justices expressing skepticism of the strength of the Trump administration’s position.“The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.The arguments center on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, a 1977 law which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency. Trump cited the law as he slapped steep duties on imports into the US.About 40 legal briefs have been filed in opposition to the tariffs, including from the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby group in the US.US supreme court justices express skepticism over legality of Trump tariffsThe Trump administration faced tough questions at the US supreme court over the legality of its sweeping global tariff regime, as justices expressed skepticism over the law it used to slap steep duties on almost every US trading partner.Should the supreme court ultimately rule against Trump’s tariffs it will force the White House to go back to the drawing board and reconsider how to enforce an aggressive economic policy which has strained global trade ties.Read the full storyUS to cut airline traffic by 10% due to shutdown, Trump transport chief saysTransportation secretary Sean Duffy, said on Wednesday the federal government would be reducing airline traffic by 10% at 40 locations beginning on Friday if the record-breaking government shutdown does not end by then.The reductions are aimed at reducing the stress on air traffic controllers, who have been working throughout the shutdown without pay.Read the full storyTrump goes on posting frenzy a day after Democrats win key electionsDonald Trump appeared to be sharing everything on his mind all at once on Wednesday as he posted more than 30 Truth Social posts in less than two hours.Trump’s posts ranged in subject matter and included recommendations to his followers to buy books written by several of his supporters and allies. Other posts included videos of Trump appearing to read nearly verbatim from his own previously posted Truth Social text posts. They appeared to be artificially generated, but the Guardian could not independently confirm.Read the full storyDemocrats celebrate while Republicans stew over Mamdani’s winLeft-leaning Americans awoke to a rare recent moment of political celebration with Democratic victories in several elections across the country, led by the election of Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York, while Republicans breathlessly hailed the end of the country. Many Republicans’ immediate reaction was to attribute Mamdani’s win to an electorate overrepresented by immigrants, snidely implying they were not “real” Americans.Read the full storyRepublicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measureThe suit, filed by David Tangipa, a Republican assembly member, 18 California voters and the state Republican party in the US district court for the central district of California, argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A new sign was spotted adorning the White House this week, prompting backlash from lawmakers who have noted that Donald Trump is quite literally gilding the White House during a government shutdown.

      Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show is stepping up to help during the US federal government shutdown by opening a new center for food donations.

      Democrats set historic records on election night. Here are six of the firsts they accomplished.

      Trump voters for Mamdani and a new left coalition: political analyst Michael Lange discusses the New York City election’s trends and surprises.

      Trump ally and Fifa president Gianni Infantino announced the creation of a peace prize, which it plans to award at the draw for the World Cup on 5 December in Washington.

      A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director James Comey to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

      Hopes of a composed and level-headed rightwing reaction to the Democrats’ across-the-board electoral success were unceremoniously dashed as leading Maga figures spewed unrestrained vitriol at their victorious opponents.

      Which of our warnings came true in the first year after Trump’s second election?From military-level force in cities to tens of thousands of federal workers fired by the Trump administration, effects have been felt at every level.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 November 2025. More