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      Shutdown stretches into 28th day as Senate again fails to pass spending legislation

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      The US government shutdown stretched into its 28th day with no resolution in sight on Tuesday, as the Senate remained deadlocked over spending legislation even as a crucial food aid program teeters on the brink of exhausting its funding.For the 13th time, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill that would have funded federal agencies through 21 November. The minority party has refused to provide the necessary support for the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate because it does not include funding for healthcare programs, or curbs on Donald Trump’s cuts to congressionally approved funding.The quagmire continued even after the president of the largest federal workers union called on Congress to pass the Republican proposal, citing the economic pain caused to government workers.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight. Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay – today,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement released on Monday.But the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, signaled no change in his party’s strategy of holding out for concession from the Republicans, citing the imminent rise of premiums for Affordable Care Act health plans. Though tax credits that lower their costs expire at the end of the year, many enrollees in the plans have received notices of steep premium increases ahead of Saturday’s beginning of the open enrollment period.“Families are going to be in panic this weekend all across America, millions of them. How are they going to pay this bill? How are they going to live without healthcare? It’s tragic, and of course, it didn’t have to be, but Republicans are doing nothing,” Schumer told reporters at the US Capitol.The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, seized on the AFGE’s statement to argue that Democrats were being irresponsible for refusing to back the bill, which Republicans in the House of Representatives approved on a near party line vote last month before the speaker, Mike Johnson, ordered the chamber into a recess that has yet to end.View image in fullscreen“It’s not very often that I get a chance to say this, but I agree with the AFGE,” Thune said.He reiterated that he would negotiate with Democrats over the expiring tax credits, but not with “a gun to our heads”.“I sincerely hope, in the best interest of every American who is impacted by this shutdown, and particularly those who are going to be really adversely impacted come this weekend, that the enough Democrats will come to their senses and deliver the five votes that are necessary to get this bill on the president’s desk,” Thune said, adding that he planned to hold further votes on the spending legislation.Both parties traded blame for the imminent expiration of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), also known as food stamps. The Department of Agriculture has announced that it does not have the money to continue providing the benefit after 1 November, though on Tuesday, more than two dozen states sued the Trump administration, arguing that funds are available for Snap benefits to continue.North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer said Democrats should either support a proposal from fellow Republican senator Josh Hawley to allow Snap to continue during the shutdown, “or they could just reopen the damn government, which is what they should be doing and should have been doing for the last month”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Dakota senator Mike Rounds said the tax credits should be addressed by bipartisan action, but criticized the affordability of Affordable Care Act health plans. “The Obamacare product itself is fatally flawed. It continues to create a death spiral coming down with regard to the increasing costs. There are people out there, real people, that are going to get hurt because Obamacare is not working,” he said.In an interview, Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren signaled no change in the party’s strategy for the shutdown, which began at the start of the month after Congress failed to pass legislation to continue funding that expired at the end of September.“Millions of people across this country are receiving their health insurance premium notices, and telling Democrats and Republicans, lower those costs,” Warren said. “Democrats are in there fighting to lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans. Donald Trump would rather shut down the government than help out these families.”Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who has repeatedly broken with Trump as she faces what is expected to be a tough re-election contest next year, said she did not buy that the agriculture department lacked funding to continue Snap, but noted the money it had on hand was not enough to cover the program’s costs.However, Collins expressed concerns about the readiness of air traffic controllers, who did not receive a fully paycheck on Tuesday due to the shutdown. She noted that on two recent flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, her plane had to divert at the last second.“I can’t help but think that reflects the strain on air traffic controllers,” she said. More

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      Republican Indiana governor calls special session to redraw congressional maps

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      The Indiana governor, Mike Braun, announced on Monday that he is calling a special session to consider redrawing congressional districts in the state, the latest state to work on its maps ahead of 2026.Indiana is one of several Republican-led states the Trump administration has pressured to undertake mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans, which began with a push in Texas to redraw lines to add Republican seats.California is considering a ballot measure to redraw its lines to favor Democrats, a move initiated in response to Texas. Virginia’s Democratic house speaker, Don Scott, also said last week the state would hold a special session to redistrict to benefit Democrats, potentially adding two or three Democratic seats. Several other states, including Indiana and North Carolina, have now launched redistricting efforts to benefit Republicans.“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” Braun said in a statement on Monday morning.Indiana currently sends seven Republicans and two Democrats to Congress.Republican state lawmakers in some states, including Indiana and Kansas, have pushed back on the idea of redistricting. But Braun has said, if the state doesn’t redraw its maps, “probably, we’ll have consequences of not working with the Trump administration as tightly as we should.”John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, highlighted the opposition in a statement on Monday. “Between the overwhelming opposition from Hoosiers and the relentless pressure from Washington – including but not limited to Vice-President [JD] Vance taking two taxpayer-funded trips to the state, threats to cut federal funding, and phone calls from President Trump – Governor Braun clearly called this special session solely because he got orders from Washington,” he said. “Hoosiers do not want a mid-decade gerrymander.”Also on Monday, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is reportedly headed to Illinois to meet with local leaders about redrawing the congressional maps. Jeffries will meet with the Illinois legislative Black caucus and Black members of Congress, a nod to the fact that Black lawmakers will be needed to pass a new map, according to Punchbowl News.Last week, the Illinois senate Black caucus warned that it wouldn’t support a new map if it dilutes the Black voting population, Punchbowl noted. There are three historically Black districts among Illinois’s 17 congressional seats. Only three of the state’s seats are held by Republicans. More

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      Leader of top federal worker union calls for end of US government shutdown

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      The head of America’s largest federal workers union says it is time to end the government shutdown, now the second-longest in US history, as hundreds of thousands of employees miss another round of paychecks.Everett Kelley, who leads the American Federation of Government Employees representing more than 800,000 workers, avoided assigning blame to either party in the Monday morning letter but said lawmakers must stop playing politics and pass a stopgap funding measure to reopen the government, its closure now eclipsing the four-week mark.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” Kelley wrote in the statement. “Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.” NBC News first reported the letter.A “clean” continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill that keeps the government running at current funding levels without attaching other political demands. Republicans say they have offered that in their measure, but Democrats argue the bill shortchanges key services and are using their power in the Senate to push for a deal on health insurance subsidies that expire at year’s end.Because of this stalemate, hundreds of thousands of federal and Washington DC government employees are either working without pay or furloughed. The union represents workers across nearly every federal agency, from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and army nurses to food safety inspectors and veterans affairs staff, many of whom are now lined up at food banks after missing their second paycheck, Kelley said.“These are patriotic Americans – parents, caregivers, and veterans – forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington,” Kelley said. “That is unacceptable.”But the crisis extends beyond federal workers: roughly 42 million Americans who receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program face losing their benefits as soon as 1 November if the shutdown continues, after the US agriculture department warned states it would run out of money to pay for the program.Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican-backed continuing resolution 12 times, demanding commitments on extending Affordable Care Act health subsidies. Three Democrats and one independent who caucus with the party have broken ranks to support the measure, but it remains short of the 60 needed to advance. The Republican senator Rand Paul is the sole Republican to defect on the measure.The AFGE is already suing the Trump administration over mass layoffs organized during the shutdown and over partisan emails sent from government accounts without employees’ knowledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKelley called for three immediate steps: reopening the government under a continuing resolution, ensuring full back pay for all affected workers, and addressing policy disputes through normal legislative debate rather than shutdown tactics.“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” he said. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.”The shutdown reaches the one-month mark this week, with no negotiations scheduled between the parties.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told CNN on Sunday that he and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, requested a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the shutdown before he went out of the country but had been rebuffed. The president has said he will only meet with Democrats after they vote to reopen the government.“A strong America requires a functioning government – one that pays its bills, honors its commitments, and treats its workforce with respect by paying them on time,” Kelley wrote. “The government belongs to all of us. Let’s open it back up and keep America moving forward.” More

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      Should Californians vote to redistrict and fight Texas’s fire with fire? | Moira Donegan

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      What, exactly, is Congress for? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress, too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, that is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via non-partisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation or revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered non-competitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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      There are many ways to characterize Proposition 50, the single ballot initiative that Californians will be voting on this election season.You could say it’s about redrawing congressional district lines outside the regular once-a-decade schedule. You could say, more precisely, that it’s about counterbalancing Republican efforts to engineer congressional seats in their favor in Texas and elsewhere with a gerrymander that favors the Democrats. You could, like the measure’s detractors, call it a partisan power grab that risks undermining 15 years of careful work to make California’s congressional elections as fair and competitive as possible.The way California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Democrats are selling it to voters, though, boils down to something much simpler and more visceral: it’s an invitation to raise a middle finger to Donald Trump, a president fewer than 40% of Californians voted for and many loathe – for reasons that extend far beyond his attempts at election manipulation. For that reason alone, the yes campaign believes it is cruising to an easy victory.“There’s actually a double tease here,” said Garry South, one of California’s most experienced and most outspoken Democratic political consultants who has been cheer-leading the measure. “Trump and Texas, the state Californians love to hate. How can you lose an initiative that’s going to stick it to both?”Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, proposes amending the California constitution and suspending the work of the state’s independent redistricting commission until 2031 so the Democrats can carve out five additional safe seats. That wouldn’t significantly change the power balance in California, since Democrats already occupy 43 of the state’s 52 House seats.But it would compensate for the five seats that Texas Republicans, acting on Trump’s direct urging, wrested for themselves earlier this year. “Fight fire with fire,” has been Newsom’s mantra, and several influential national figures in the Democratic party – everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent New York congresswoman, to former president Barack Obama – have signed on.Democrats are optimistic they will see a significant vote shift in their favor next year, because Trump’s approval ratings are already underwater in the swing states that he narrowly won last November, and in California he is polling as low as 29%.But that won’t translate into more congressional seats if district boundaries are redrawn in a way that protects vulnerable Republican incumbents and eliminates meaningful competition. According to one estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans already have a net 16-seat advantage for themselves in House races, thanks to gerrymandering efforts across the country in the wake of the 2020 census. The Texas move increases that advantage to 21 seats. And similar, smaller-scale moves in Missouri and North Carolina bring it to 23.“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama charges in a widely aired campaign ad that began circulating last week. “With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks.”Polls and focus groups suggest many Californians have mixed feelings about abandoning their state’s non-partisan district maps, but a slim majority say they see the need to do so anyway and plan to vote yes on 4 November.Support for the measure has been rising steadily. Earlier this month, the yes vote was barely cracking 50% in most of the polling, and about 15% of poll respondents said they were undecided. Another 30% indicated that their support for or against was soft.Two surveys published this week, however, showed Proposition 50 passing by at least a 20-point margin and the yes vote is now up in the high 50s or low 60s. Fully three-quarters of those intending to vote yes told a CBS News poll conducted by YouGov that they were doing so to oppose Trump, just as the yes campaign has been urging.Ballot initiatives are not quite like other elections, though, especially in an off-year election likely to result in lower turnout than usual.“The history of [these] campaigns in this state shows that late-deciding voters tend to vote against initiatives,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican campaign consultant who teaches political communications at Berkeley and the University of Southern California. “They’re expressing an inherent skepticism that arises if voters don’t know a lot about a measure. They want to guard against it making their lives worse.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest polling data suggests that such last-minute skepticism may not apply in this case, most likely because Trump is such a polarizing, and motivating factor. Polls consistently show higher support for Proposition 50 among so-called “high propensity” voters – those who show up at the polls time after time – and early mail-in voting returns indicate stronger than usual numbers, with registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by almost a two-to-one margin.The “yes” side has outraised the “no” side and been far more visible in campaign ads and appearances. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker who represented a southern California district for 16 years, promised over the summer to raise $100m to defeat Proposition 50 but has managed only a tiny fraction of that – less than $6m, according to the secretary of state’s office. And the big Republican guns who might ordinarily have hit the campaign trail have been conspicuous by their absence – something that suggests to many political observers they think the fight is unwinnable.Overall, the yes campaign has outraised the no campaign by about $138m to $82m.Even the pleas of the no campaign’s most visible advocate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, have proven ineffective. According to an Emerson poll, two-thirds of voters say it makes no difference to them what Schwarzenegger thinks. As a Republican, he lacks credibility with many Democrats, and as a moderate who loathes Trump, he has little traction with the Republican base. More than 20% of voters say his advocacy actually makes them more likely to do the opposite of what he wants.The problem for the no campaign, according to South and others, is that there is no message persuasive enough to counter the visceral appeal of “screw Trump”, particularly at a time when California voters are angry about ICE raids, military deployments in US cities including Los Angeles, federal funding cuts, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and more.Some groups, including one led by the billionaire Charles Munger Jr that has ploughed more than $30m into the no campaign, have pushed the argument that Proposition 50 is undemocratic. But national polling has consistently shown that appeals to democracy do little to sway voters because both sides think it is at stake. Calling Proposition 50 a “power grab” merely reminds voters that Republicans in Texas grabbed power first.Other opponents, including Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate in next year’s governor’s race, have sought to stir voter discontent with Newsom and cast the initiative as one more distraction cooked up by a governor with national ambitions when he should be focusing on the state’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. Hilton calls Proposition 50 an “illegal and corrupt contribution to [Newsom’s as yet unannounced] presidential campaign”.That works as red meat for the Republican base. But the last time Republicans tried to turn the California electorate against Newsom in a stand-alone ballot initiative – a recall vote in 2021 – Newsom prevailed by a 62-38 margin. And Newsom’s approval numbers have only increased as a result of Proposition 50.“The no side has two problems with its core argument,” South said. “It’s too complicated, and it’s too abstract. The average voter doesn’t have a clue what their congressional lines are. And, in addition to that, they don’t care.“So the choice comes down to: you can screw Trump, or you can pay homage to a redistricting commission that voters approved in 2010 and probably don’t remember. There’s no way this thing loses.” More

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      Aukus should expand to other shipbuilding nations, US congressman suggests, as Albanese returns to Australia

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      A leading US congressman admits the US must substantially boost its defence manufacturing capacity in order to sell Australia nuclear submarines under Aukus, floating the idea of adding Japan, South Korea or Norway to the pact to help build more ships.Anthony Albanese has returned from Washington DC with Donald Trump’s endorsement of Aukus and a fresh show of support from longtime backers of the military pact in the US congress. Both Republican and Democratic politicians reaffirmed their support to help Australia buy second-hand US nuclear submarines, even as concerns still remain about whether US shipyards – currently not working fast enough to meet the US navy’s own requirements – can produce enough boats to sell to Australia.Congressman Adam Smith, Democratic leader of the House armed services committee, said Aukus was important to help the US meet its “massive needs” in national security, but that the country needed to build more submarines.“I think we’ve got some work to do. I’m confident we can get there, but that’s why the partnership is so important. We have to improve our defence industrial base, we can’t do that on our own,” he told Guardian Australia.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“I hope we can explore partnerships with other nations as well; South Korea, Japan, Norway. They’re all capable shipbuilders. I hope we can grow the Aukus partnership on those goals.”Under the Aukus agreement, Australia will contribute billions to increase US defence industry capacity. Albanese told a breakfast meeting of US congressional leaders that Australia had already sent US$1bn (A$1.6b), with more to come.“There’ll be $1bn on its way before Christmas,” the prime minister said.“And then a further $1bn next year because we understand that we want to uplift your industrial capacity so that we make a contribution for when we purchase your Virginia-class submarines.”Albanese has indicated the US could seek minor updates to the Aukus agreement, after Trump’s naval secretary raised plans to “clarify some of the ambiguity” in the deal.Smith welcomed Trump’s endorsement of Aukus, revealing he and others “were worried some people at the Department of Defense had some reservations”.View image in fullscreen“This is a huge positive, I hope this [Trump] administration will see it through,” he said.“Many of us who have been strong advocates for Aukus have been apprehensive about where the Trump administration would end up. Seeing where they ended up, Albanese seems to have done a very effective job. I’m glad the meeting went well.”Australia, the UK and the US have discussed, formally and informally, cooperation with other nations under the Aukus framework. Japan has been continually nominated as a potential partner under pillar II of the pact, which goes to advanced technological capabilities, while South Korea has also been discussed in that stream.But Smith suggested a potentially wider sense of cooperation with nations outside the Aukus partners.“The discussion is very nascent, it’s just getting started. I’d see it more on shipbuilding and repair than submarines specifically, but those nations are allies of ours,” he said.“Japan was the first that we thought of, but I want personally to be as ambitious as possible in this project and look for partners and allies across the world to help us meet our defence needs.”The Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, was contacted for comment. He said last month during a visit to Japan “we continue to look to areas where we can cooperate with Japan under the banner of Aukus, or more generally, in terms of industrial collaboration, but also innovation.”Concerns over the pace and efficiency of current US shipbuilding have raised worries over whether Australia will be able to buy the Virginia-class submarines as scheduled. The US navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of about 2.33 a year to have enough boats to sell any to Australia, but as of July was building about 1.13 a year.The US navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of 2.00 a year just to meet its own defence requirements.At the end of his trip, Albanese said he was pleased by the US support for Aukus.“Ambassador [Kevin] Rudd has done a great job of building support across members of Congress for the Aukus arrangements,” he said.Albanese met members of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee during his trip. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Jim Risch, the Democratic and Republican ranking members respectively, said they hoped “our relationship only continues to grow, most notably with the continuation of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement”.“Together, we will push back against adversaries like China that threaten us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific,” they said.Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas who until recently chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Guardian Australia that Aukus “keeps Chairman Xi [Jinping] up at night.” He met Albanese during his visit, calling for the Pillar II arrangement to be expanded to explore cooperation on more technology. More

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      Democratic senator’s anti-Trump floor speech ends after nearly 23 hours

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      Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.He repeated those words as he finished speaking just before sunset the following day, and thanked the No Kings protesters who had filled the streets of American cities in anti-Trump demonstrations the prior weekend.“They were ringing the alarm bells. They were saying that it is absolutely unacceptable to have an authoritarian government,” Merkley said.The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said the Oregonian delivered an “amazing tour de force over these many hours. Jeff Merkley has been the Paul Revere of 21st-century America, literally, figuratively, riding from one corner of this country to the other, alerting people to the danger.”Republican whip John Barrasso followed him up by saying Merkley’s speech was “what I can only describe as rubbish” and noting it did nothing to resolve the deadlock over government funding that has forced a shutdown.Merkley spoke a day after a federal appeals court had allowed the president to send the national guard into Portland over the objections of local leaders, who say there is no merit to the president’s claim that the city is a “war zone”. Trump has also ordered a similar deployment of troops into Chicago, where federal agents are carrying out an aggressive crackdown targeting people they believe to be undocumented immigrants. The supreme court is poised to consider a legal challenge to that move.The senator touched on those deployments to cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic, as well as other instances where the president is seen as retaliating against his political enemies, including the charges a handpicked US attorney has filed against the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, and former FBI director James Comey.“Equal justice under law – that’s the vision here in America. Not unequal injustice, which is what the president is pursuing by taking the power of the government and going after individuals that he does not like or perceives to be political opponents,” Merkley said.“That’s what you read about in authoritarian governments far away, and you go, that would never happen in the United States of America, but it is happening right here, right now.”Merkley’s address is the second instance this year in which a Democratic senator has staged a lengthy floor speech to condemn Trump’s policies. About two months after Trump’s inauguration, Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke for 25 hours and five minutes, setting a new record for the longest speech ever by a solo senator.On Wednesday morning, the Oregon senator stood speaking from a lectern where he had placed a small glass of water and a copy of How Democracies Die, a 2018 book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt detailing how representative governments around the world have been dismantled.Among those who joined him on the floor was Booker, who said: “We are seeing a time now that if we do not ring the alarm bells, more and more Americans will be hurt by a president who is acting more like an authoritarian leader than a democratically elected executive.”Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal likened Trump’s partial demolition of the White House East Wing to layoffs and funding cuts he has ordered across the government.“This destruction that Donald Trump is doing to the White House is emblematic of the wrecking ball he is taking to our democracy. Put aside the waste of money that could be used to improve our education system, solve food insecurity, guarantee the election integrity of this nation – the damage that he’s doing to this iconic symbol of America is so costly to our image and esteem around the world,” Blumenthal said.Ron Wyden, Oregon’s senior senator, said in an interview that his counterpart was “making some particularly, relevant and important points about the threat”.Asked if other Senate Democrats were planning such lengthy speeches, Wyden said: “You take them one at a time, but I think what Senator Merkley is doing is very important.”The speech comes on the 22nd day of the government shutdown that began at the start of the month, when Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on legislation to extend funding beyond the end of September.The Senate has held 11 unsuccessful votes on a Republican-backed bill to extend funding through 21 November, which Democrats have blocked because it does not including healthcare funding that they are demanding, as well as curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding approved by Congress.After Merkley finished his speech, the Senate’s Republican leaders moved to hold a 12th vote on the funding bill. 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      Top Democrat on House oversight panel demands Pam Bondi release Epstein files

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      The top Democrat on a congressional committee investigating the government’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s case demanded on Wednesday that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, turn over files related to the alleged sex trafficker, citing revelations from the posthumous memoir of a prominent abuse survivor.Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, published this week, details how Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell groomed and manipulated her.In Congress, the House oversight committee has been investigating the government’s handling of the prosecution of Epstein, who died in 2019 while in federal custody. In his letter to Bondi, the committee’s Democratic ranking member Robert Garcia said that the attorney general must hand over further documents about the case, citing details of Epstein and Maxwell’s abuse Giuffre reveals in her book.“Virginia Giuffre’s allegations are heartbreaking and horrific, including testimony that prominent world and US leaders perpetrated sexual assault and sex trafficking of girls and young women. Ms Giuffre clearly contradicts the agency’s claim that the Epstein files did not justify further investigation,” Garcia said in a statement.He called on the justice department to comply with a subpoena that the Republican-led panel’s members approved in August, writing to Bondi: “Your refusal to release the files and your continued disregard of a congressional subpoena raises serious questions about your motives.”Concerns over Epstein’s case flared up in July, when the justice department announced the alleged sex trafficker had died by suicide and no list of his clients existed to be released. That contradicted claims made by Trump and Bondi, as well as conspiracy theories alleging Epstein was at the center of a larger plot.In response, the House oversight committee opened its inquiry into the government’s handling of the case, while the Trump administration moved unsuccessfully to release transcripts of the grand jury that indicted Epstein. A top justice department official also interviewed Maxwell, who is incarcerated, and she was later relocated to a lower security prison.Trump has condemned the outcry over Epstein as a “Democrat hoax”. Despite that, three House Republicans have joined with all Democrats on a petition that will force a vote on legislation to release files related to the case, which is expected to be resolved once the ongoing government shutdown ends.Giuffre died by suicide in April this year, aged 41. After the Guardian published extracts of her memoir last week, the UK’s Prince Andrew gave up his honors and use of the Duke of York title. He has denied allegations he sexually assaulted Giuffre when she was 17, and admitted no liability when settling a civil case she brought for a reported £12m (about $16m).The House oversight committee’s investigation has led to the release of a lewd drawing Trump is said to have made for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Tens of thousands of pages of documents have already been released, many of which were already public. More