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      US Senate vote marks step towards ending federal shutdown

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      The US Senate on Sunday took a key vote on a bill that would end the record-setting federal government shutdown without extending the healthcare subsidies that Democrats have demanded.Senators began voting on Sunday night to advance House-passed stopgap funding legislation that Senate majority leader John Thune said would be amended to combine another short-term spending measure with a package of three full-year appropriations bills.The package would still have to be passed by the House of Representatives and sent to Donald Trump for his signature, a process that could take several days.Senate Democrats so far have resisted efforts to reopen the government, aiming to pressure Republicans into agreeing to extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans, which expire at the end of the year. Thune said that, per the deal under consideration, the Senate would agree to hold a separate vote later on the subsidies.Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, told reporters that he would vote against the funding measure but suggested there could be enough Democratic support to pass it.“I am unwilling to accept a vague promise of a vote at some indeterminate time, on some undefined measure that extends the healthcare tax credits,” Blumenthal said.“The Senate might get a vote” on the health insurance credits, Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, said. “I’ll emphasize ‘might.’ But is Speaker Johnson gonna do anything? Is the president gonna do anything?”Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has previously said he would not hold a vote on a plan to extend the tax credits that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans who are not insured through their employers.Two leading progressives in the Senate Democratic caucus were even more dismissive of the emerging compromise. “It’s a mistake,” Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told Punchbowl News. “It would be a policy and political disaster for Democrats to cave,” Bernie Sanders of Vermont said.Democrats in the House expressed their dismay. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, promised to fight the proposed legislation. “We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said in a statement.“A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them”, Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat who leads the House progressive caucus, wrote on X. “Republicans want health care cuts. Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise – it’s capitulation. Millions of families would pay the price.”“Unacceptable,” Florida congressman Maxwell Frost chimed in. “There are 189,000 people in my district who will be paying 50-300% more for the same, and in many cases worse, healthcare. I won’t do that to the people I represent. I’m a NO on this ‘deal.’”Democrats outside Washington denounced the compromise as well. “Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, wrote on social media.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunday marked the 40th day of the shutdown, which has sidelined federal workers and affected food aid, parks and travel, while air traffic control staffing shortages threaten to derail travel during the busy Thanksgiving holiday season late this month. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said the mounting effects of the shutdown have pushed the chamber toward an agreement. He said the final piece, a new resolution that would fund government operations into late January, would also reverse at least some of the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal workers.“Temperatures cool, the atmospheric pressure increases outside and all of a sudden it looks like things will come together,” Tillis told reporters. Should the government remain closed for much longer, economic growth could turn negative in the fourth quarter, especially if air travel does not return to normal levels by Thanksgiving, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett warned on the CBS Face the Nation show. Thanksgiving falls on 27 November this year.Americans shopping for 2026 Obamacare health insurance plans are facing a more than doubling of monthly premiums on average, health experts estimate, with the pandemic-era subsidies due to expire at the end of the year. Republicans rejected a proposal on Friday by Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to vote to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of tax credits that lower costs for plans under the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare.Adam Schiff, a Democratic California senator, said on Sunday he believed Trump’s healthcare proposal was aimed at gutting the ACA and allowing insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.“So the same insurance companies he’s railing against in those tweets, he is saying: ‘I’m going to give you more power to cancel people’s policies and not cover them if they have a pre-existing condition,’” Schiff said on ABC’s This Week program. More

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      ‘Godfather of the Trump presidency’: the direct through-line from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump

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      He spent the twilight of his career denouncing Donald Trump as a threat to the republic he loved. But Dick Cheney arguably laid the foundations of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.The former vice-president died on Monday aged 84. The White House lowered flags to half-mast in remembrance of him but without the usual announcement or proclamation praising the deceased.Cheney, who served under George W Bush for eight years, was one of the most influential and polarising vice-presidents in US history. Some critics said they would never forgive him for pushing the US to invade Iraq on a false pretext but suggested that his opposition to Trump offered a measure of redemption.Perhaps Cheney’s defining legacy, however, was the expansion of powers for a position that he never held himself: the presidency. Cheney used the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks as a pretext to assert a muscular executive authority that Trump now amplifies and exploits to challenge the system of checks and balances.Some commentators perceive a direct through-line from the Bush-Cheney administration’s policies – such as pre-emptive war, warrantless spying and the creation of novel legal categories like “enemy combatant” – to the Trump administration’s actions against immigrants, narco-traffickers and domestic political opponents.“Dick Cheney is the godfather of the Trump presidency,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “Trump is unchained because Dick Cheney had been at war for half a century against the restraints put in place after Vietnam and Watergate. He believed that action was more important than following constitutional rules.”The debate over the balance of power between the White House, Congress and courts did not start with Cheney. In 1973, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr published The Imperial Presidency, arguing that the executive branch had begun to resemble a monarch that often acted without the consent of Congress.However, by the time of the Ronald Reagan administration, young conservatives felt the presidency had become hamstrung. This sentiment culminated in a 1989 American Enterprise Institute volume titled The Fettered Presidency, articulating a doctrine to regain what they saw as constitutionally appropriate powers.As a young chief of staff in the Gerald Ford administration, Cheney experienced the fallout of the Watergate scandal. He concluded that a sceptical Congress, reacting to the abuses of Richard Nixon, had gone too far, leaving the presidency dangerously weakened.Jacobs said: “Dick Cheney took it as his mission to tear all that down. He saw the efforts to return accountability in the 70s after Watergate and Vietnam as profoundly and dangerously limiting presidential power. He talked openly about Congress self-aggrandising and warned that the country would face ruin.”Cheney believed that new constraints such as the War Powers Act, a 1973 law that limited the president’s power to commit US forces to conflict without congressional approval, had hobbled the executive, making it nearly impossible for a president to govern effectively, particularly in national security.In a 2005 interview, he said: “I do have the view that over the years there had been an erosion of presidential power and authority, that it’s reflected in a number of developments – the War Powers Act … I am one of those who believe that was an infringement upon the authority of the president.“A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the 70s served to erode the authority, I think, the president needs to be effective especially in a national security area.”Cheney’s ideas were formalised as the “unitary executive theory”, which asserts that the president should possess total and personal control over the entire executive branch. This effectively eliminates the independence of a vast array of government institutions and places millions of federal employees under the president’s authority to hire and fire at will.As Bush’s No 2, Cheney was dubbed “Darth Vader”. When America was attacked on 9/11 with nearly 3,000 people killed, the trauma created a political climate in which extraordinary measures were deemed necessary. Cheney turned a crisis into an opportunity to broaden executive power in the name of national security.He was the most prominent booster of the Patriot Act, the law enacted nearly unanimously after 9/11 that granted the government sweeping surveillance powers. He championed a National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping programme aimed at intercepting international communications of suspected terrorists in the US, despite concerns over its legality.The Bush administration also authorised the US military to attack enemy combatants acting on behalf of terrorist organisations, prompting questions about the legality of killing or detaining people without prosecution at sites such as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.This doctrine is now being used by the Trump administration to justify deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in Latin America. It claims the US is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has declared them unlawful combatants.Last month the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, wrote on social media: “These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than al-Qaida, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”In 2002 a set of legal memorandums known as the “torture memos” were drafted by John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general, advising that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the “war on terror”.Jeremy Varon, author of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror, said: “That championed the unitary executive theory and then said as an explicit argument anything ordered by the commander in chief is by definition legal because the president is the sovereign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In its own day it was considered a dubious if not a highly contestable legal theory, but the Trump administration is almost pretending that it’s settled law and then using expansive ‘war on terror’ powers to create a war on immigrants, a war on narco traffickers and even potentially a war on dissenting Americans as they protest in the streets.”Varon, a history professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, added: “The great irony is that Trump represents, on the one hand, the repudiation of the neoliberal neocon globalists like Cheney and Bush that entangled America in forever wars. But now America First is being weaponised, making use of ‘war on terror’ powers to capture, brutalise, dehumanise and kill people without any sense of legal constraint.”As an architect of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney pushed spy agencies to find evidence to justify military action. He asserted that then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. Officials used that to sell the war to members of Congress and the media, though that claim was later debunked.The government’s arguments for war fuelled a distrust among many Americans that resonates today with some in the current Republican party. But it did not lead to a significant pushback from Congress aimed at preventing future presidents making a similar mistake.The trend for executive power has been fuelled by an increasingly polarised and paralysed Congress, creating a vacuum that successive administrations, including those of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, have filled with executive action, unwilling to cede powers once gained.The ultimate battle for the unitary executive theory is now being waged within the chambers of the supreme court. Recent rulings from the court’s conservative majority signal a shift away from longstanding precedents that have, for nearly a century, placed limits on presidential authority.Since taking office in January, Trump has unleashed a barrage of unilateral presidential actions. He has waged a campaign to remove thousands of career government workers from their posts and shut down entire federal agencies. His deployment of national guard troops to major US cities and attacks on law firms, media organisations and universities have earned comparison with autocrats around the world.Cheney himself did not approve. He became a severe and outspoken critic of Trump, arguing that the president’s actions went “well beyond their due bounds”, particularly regarding the integrity of the US electoral system. His daughter, Liz Cheney, became one of the most prominent opponents of Trump within the Republican party but eventually lost her seat in the House.Ken Adelman, a former US diplomat who knew Cheney since working with him the 1970s, was not surprised that he took a stand. He said: “Trump stood for everything Dick did not stand for and that was foreign policy, you support your friends and you oppose the totalitarians, strong alliances, strong defence and free trade.“He was very uncomfortable and then finally turned and absolutely opposed Donald Trump with every fibre of his bone, which shows that conservatives can oppose Trump and should oppose Trump because he’s not conservative and he’s not decent and he’s not honourable.”Some commentators contend that while Cheney operated to enhance the power of the institution of the presidency for policy and national security reasons, Trump has leveraged that power for self-aggrandisement, pushing beyond boundaries that Cheney himself recognised.Robert Schmuhl, a professor emeritus of American studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said: “Clearly in his time as vice-president, he pushed that envelope almost as far as anyone could. But the distinction is that Cheney was trying to enhance the power of the presidency for policy and security reasons, while Donald Trump seems to be pushing for greater power in the presidency that also has a personal dimension for him.”Others agree that, along with the rhymes between Cheney and Trump, there are significant differences. Jake Bernstein, co-author of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, said: “You can draw a line between Cheney and Trump. Trump has taken that to the max; as they say in Spın̈al Tap, he’s turned it to 11. It’s a qualitative difference.“Yes, Cheney believed that power had tilted too much towards Congress and had to go back to the executive and certainly believed that, particularly in issues of war-making, the executive should be completely unfettered. He also understood a lot of this balance between Congress and the executive was based on norms that were elastic and could be stretched in one direction or another.“But he was absolutely at heart an institutionalist and he didn’t want to break those norms. He didn’t want to destroy those institutions. He would have been appalled by the neutering of Congress that’s going on under this current Trump administration. Basically Trump is president and speaker of the House at the moment, and that would have offended Cheney.” More

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      Who are the contenders for Nancy Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat?

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      Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.In statements released on Thursday, both candidates praised Pelosi with Wiener describing her as the “greatest speaker in United States history”.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is more than a legislator – she is an icon of American politics. She led the fight for healthcare and obliterated Trump when he tried to repeal it,” Wiener said, adding that her “finest moments” were fighting for marginalized people, including during the Aids crisis.Chakrabarti said Pelosi “set the standard for Democratic leadership with determination, discipline and tactical brilliance” and that her retirement marked the start of a “long-overdue generational shift”.“Thank you, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, for your decades of service that defined a generation of politics and for doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one,” he said.Still, Chakrabarti is trying to put some daylight between himself the Democratic party grandees.The 39-year-old progressive, who worked for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, announced his candidacy in February by arguing that it was time for change and that Democratic leaders were unprepared to handle Trump’s second presidency.Chakrabarti, a software engineer who graduated from Harvard, formally launched his campaign at a rally in San Francisco’s Mission District last month. He recently said in a statement Democrats needed a “new kind of leader who is not a part of the establishment, because the establishment has failed us”. Chakrabarti pledged to back universal healthcare and childcare, ban stock trading for members of Congress and “to stop funding the genocide in Gaza”.Since launching, Chakrabarti’s campaign had built “one of the largest grassroots operations in San Francisco history” with more than 2,000 volunteers, he said.Wiener, 55, is a Harvard-educated attorney and prominent San Francisco Democrat who has served in the state legislature since 2016. He authored a recently passed bill banning federal and state law enforcement from wearing masks and has promoted legislation to address California’s housing crisis and expand climate action.He has long been interested in Pelosi’s seat, but said he would run only if Pelosi decided to step down. In 2023, Wiener formed an exploratory committee that has already raised $1m for a future congressional run.Announcing his candidacy last month, Wiener said “we need more than rhetoric and good intentions from Democrats” and that he was seeking office to stand up to Trump as the president wages a “full-on war against immigrants and LGBTQ people” and the cost of living continues to increase.The San Francisco Chronicle reported there has been speculation that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a Democratic strategist, might run, while Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, is also said to be considering running. 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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      What does Prop 50’s passage mean for California, Gavin Newsom and the US?

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      Californians overwhelmingly backed Proposition 50, the crucial redistricting measure that Democrats have said is essential to safeguarding democracy and pushing back against the Trump administration.“We stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness, and tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result,” Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday after the ballot measure passed.The effort was a direct attempt to counteract Texas’s partisan gerrymander, undertaken at Trump’s behest, to create several new safely Republican districts. Under Prop 50, California will halt the work of its independent redistricting commission until after 2030 and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic seats.The new map is expected to oust longtime Republican officials, and have significant effects on the 2026 midterms.How did the state vote?As of Wednesday morning, results showed that some 63.8% of voters approved the proposition with just 36.2% voting against the measure in what the Associated Press described as a “swift and decisive victory”. More than 8 million people voted in Tuesday’s election and the measure won the majority of votes along much of the coast and in southern California. It was largely unpopular in the northern and inland regions that will be most affected by redistricting.Who is at risk of losing their seat?These Republicans are at risk under California’s new congressional map: Darrell Issa, whose district covers east San Diego county; Doug LaMalfa, who has represented a large swath of rural northern California for more than a decade; Ken Calvert, a Riverside county representative who has served in the US House since 1993; David Valadao, who represents the southern San Joaquin valley; and Kevin Kiley, the representative for much of eastern California. Kiley introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide, but his proposal did not advance.After the measure passed, Republicans in California sued over Prop 50, and asked the court to block the new maps from taking effect. An attorney representing the plaintiffs – which include Republican state lawmaker David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the state’s Republican party – said that Democrats drew congressional boundaries to increase the voting power of Latinos. The new congressional districts will leave racial representation almost unchanged, according to an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.How will Prop 50’s passage affect the midterms?The measure is expected to have a major effect on the outcome of the 2026 midterms. Past elections have shown that the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats argued Prop 50 will help ensure Republicans do not retain full control of the federal government.“The passage of this new map – which is designed to protect a slew of vulnerable Democrats and will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 – is the most consequential development to date in the mid-decade redistricting wars due to the sheer number of seats that it impacts,” Erin Covey, with the Cook Political Report, said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The outcome of these races in California could ultimately determine which party wins control of the House next November.”What does this mean for Gavin Newsom?The decisive victory of Prop 50 is a major win for the proposal’s biggest champion, Gavin Newsom. The California governor has been one of Trump’s most high-profile opponents and helped rally massive support for the proposal. Newsom is widely expected to seek the White House in 2028 and the win has further raised his profile nationally and elevated his status as a Democratic leader.Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who leads the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian this week that Newsom had gambled on Prop 50 and it appeared it would pay off.“But more than that is the fact that he fought back – that he dared to do this, that people said it was dangerous for him, and he forged ahead with it anyway.” More

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      US supreme court to hear oral arguments on legality of Trump imposing tariffs

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      Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the world will be scrutinized by the US supreme court today, a crucial legal test of the president’s controversial economic strategy – and his power.Justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments today on the legality of using emergency powers to impose tariffs on almost every US trading partner.In a series of executive orders issued earlier this year, Trump cited 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, as he slapped steep duties on imports into the US.The supreme court – controlled by a rightwing supermajority that was crafted by Trump – will review whether IEEPA grants the president the authority to levy a tariff, a word not mentioned in the law. Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. The court has until the end of its term, in July 2026, to issue a ruling on the case.Lower courts have ruled against Trump’s tariffs, prompting appeals from the Trump administration, setting up this latest test of Trump’s presidential power. The supreme court has largely sided with the administration through its shadow docket to overrule lower courts.Should the supreme court ultimately rule against Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose 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.Should the court side with the administration, however, it will embolden a president who has repeatedly claimed – despite warnings over the risk of higher prices – that tariffs will help make America great again, raising “trillions” of dollars for the federal government and revitalizing its industrial heartlands.Trump himself has argued the court’s decision is immensely important. The case is “one of the most important in the History of the Country”, he wrote on social media over the weekend, claiming that ruling against him would leave the US “defenseless”.“If we win, we will be the Richest, Most Secure Country anywhere in the World, BY FAR,” Trump claimed. “If we lose, our Country could be reduced to almost Third World status – Pray to God that that doesn’t happen!”But some of his senior officials have suggested that, if the court rules against their current strategy, they will find another way to impose tariffs. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who plans to attend the oral arguments in the case, has said the administration has “lots of other authorities” to do so.According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, Trump’s tariffs amount to an average tax increase per US household of $1,200 in 2025 and $1,600 in 2026.A coalition of 12 states and small businesses, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont, have sued the Trump administration to block the tariffs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral other small businesses also filed suit against the Trump administration to block the tariffs. The cases, Learning Resources, Inc v Trump and Trump v VOS Selections, were consolidated by the court.“No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences,” Jeffrey Schwab, Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel, said in a statement on the lawsuit filed on behalf of small businesses against the tariffs. “The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates – including tariffs – to Congress, not the President.”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.The US Chamber has urged Congress to reclaim its constitutional role in setting tariffs, stating in a letter on 27 October to the US Senate: “American families are facing thousands of dollars in higher prices as a result of these increased taxes. Small businesses, manufacturers, and ranchers are struggling with higher costs, with additional economic pain likely in the coming months.”The US Senate voted 51 to 47 last week to nullify Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, with four Republicans joining Democrats in the vote, though the House is not expected to take similar action.But despite opposition in the Senate, the House of Representatives is unlikely to take similar action. House Republicans created a rule earlier this year that will block resolutions on the tariffs from getting a floor vote. More

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      US Senate rejects funding package for 14th time with shutdown in 35th day

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      The US federal government shutdown was poised to move into record-breaking territory on Tuesday after the Senate rejected for the 14th time a funding package already passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.With the shutdown now in its record-equalling 35th day, frantic behind-the-scenes talks were under way to bring the standoff to a close amid expressions of alarm from Democrats and Republicans alike about its disruptive effects on millions of Americans.The shutdown threatened services such as the federal food stamps program and has seen employees furloughed or working unpaid. It will exceed the 35-day closure that occurred during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in 2018, if it continues past midnight tonight.With concerns over its impact mounting, the Trump administration moved on Monday to provide emergency funds that would keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) operating at 50% capacity following court rulings stating that it could not legally withhold financial backing. The program provides food aid to 42 million Americans and costs around $9bn a month.But Trump, who has hitherto made little effort to end the impasse, reopened the fears over Snap on Tuesday, by threatening to hold the program hostage until Democrats capitulate and vote in favour of the government funding package.He wrote on social media that Snap benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”While the Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, Democrats are able to block the bill’s passage thanks to the filibuster, which needs the votes of 60 senators for passage. Trump has urged Republicans to use their majority to scrap the filibuster.The president’s latest threat over Snap seemed to be a sign of growing edginess over a shutdown that he has sought to blame on Democrats but which polls indicate a majority of the public believe is the responsibility of the Republicans and his administration.Unlike the earlier shutdown during his first term, when he fought Congress in 2018-19 for funds to build the US-Mexico border wall, the president has been largely absent from this shutdown debate.Republican and Democratic senators are quietly negotiating the terms of an emerging deal. With a nod from their leadership, the senators are seeking a way to reopen the government, put the normal federal funding process back on track and devise a resolution to the crisis of expiring health insurance subsidies that are spiking premium costs across the country.“Enough is enough,” said John Thune, the Senate majority leader and a South Dakota Republican, as he opened the deadlocked chamber.Labour unions have stepped up pressure on lawmakers to reopen the government.“We’re not asking for anything radical,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said. “Lowering people’s healthcare costs is the definition of common sense.”With the House speaker, Mike Johnson, having sent lawmakers home in September, most attention is on the Senate, where party leaders have outsourced negotiations to a loose group of centrist dealmakers from both parties.Central to any solution will be a series of agreements that would need to be upheld not only by the Senate, but also the House and the White House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSenators from both parties, particularly the powerful members of the appropriations committee, are pushing to ensure the normal government funding process can be put back on track.“The pace of talks have increased,” said Gary Peters, a Democratic senator from Michigan.A substantial number of senators also want some resolution to the standoff over Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end.However, the White House is demanding that Democrats vote to fund the government before talks over healthcare can begin. White House officials are said to be in close contact with GOP senators who have been quietly speaking with key Senate Democrats.The loss of federal subsidies, which come in the form of tax credits, are expected to leave many people unable to buy health insurance.Republicans, with control of the House and Senate, are reluctant to fund the healthcare program, also known as Obamacare. However, Thune has promised Democrats a vote on their preferred proposal, on a future date, as part of any deal to reopen government.That’s not enough for some senators, who see the healthcare deadlock as part of their broader concerns with Trump’s direction for the country.Democrats, and some Republicans, are also pushing for guardrails to prevent the Trump administration’s practice of unilaterally slashing funds for programs that Congress had already approved, by law, the way billionaire Elon Musk did earlier this year at the “department of government efficiency”. More

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      Democrats must not cave in to Trump | Bernie Sanders

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      Democrats in the US Senate must stand with the working families of our country and in opposition to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. They must not cave in to the president’s attacks on the working class during this ongoing government shutdown. If they do, the consequences will be catastrophic for our country.This may be the most consequential moment in American history since the civil war. We have a megalomaniacal president who, consumed by his quest for more and more power, is undermining our constitution and the rule of law. Further, we have an administration that is waging war against the working class of our country and our most vulnerable people.While Trump’s billionaire buddies become much, much richer, he is prepared to throw 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have – which could result in 50,000 unnecessary deaths each year. At a time when healthcare is already outrageously expensive, he is prepared to double premiums for more than 20 million people who rely on the Affordable Care Act. At a time when the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, Trump is prepared, illegally, to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, despite a $5bn emergency fund established by Congress. That decision would threaten to push 42 million people – including 16 million children – into hunger.And all of this is being done to provide $1tn in tax breaks to the 1%.Let’s be clear: this government shutdown did not happen by accident. In the Senate, 60 votes are required to fund the federal government. Today, the Republicans have 53 members while the Democratic caucus has 47. In other words, in order to fund the government the Republican majority must negotiate with Democrats to move the budget forward. This is what has always happened – until now. Republicans, for the first time, are simply refusing to come to the table and negotiate. They are demanding that it is their way or the highway.To make matters worse, the Republican contempt for negotiations is such that the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given his chamber a six-week paid vacation. Unbelievably, during a government shutdown – with federal employees not getting paid, millions facing outrageous premium increases and nutrition assistance set to expire for millions more – Republicans in the House of Representatives are not in Washington DC.Trump is a schoolyard bully. Anyone who thinks surrendering to him now will lead to better outcomes and cooperation in the future does not understand how a power-hungry demagogue operates. This is a man who threatens to arrest and jail his political opponents, deploys the US military into Democratic cities and allows masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pick people up off the streets and throw them into vans without due process. He has sued virtually every major media outlet because he does not tolerate criticism, has extorted funds from law firms and is withholding federal funding from states that voted against him.Day after day he shows his contempt for the constitutional role of Congress and the courts.Given that reality, does anyone truly believe that caving in to Trump now will stop his unprecedented attacks on our democracy and working people?Poll after poll shows that the Americans understand the need for strong opposition to Trump’s unprecedented and dangerous agenda. They understand that the Republican party is responsible for this shutdown. And, despite the Democratic party’s all-time low approval rating, independents and even a number of Republicans are now standing with the Democrats in their fight to protect the healthcare needs of the working families of our country.What will it mean if the Democrats cave? Trump, who already holds Democrats in contempt and views them as weak and ineffectual, will utilize his victory to accelerate his movement toward authoritarianism. At a time when he already has no regard for our democratic system of checks and balances, he will be emboldened to continue decimating programs that protect elderly people, children, the sick and the poor while giving more tax breaks and other benefits to his fellow oligarchs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the Democrats cave now it would be a betrayal of the millions of Americans who have fought and died for democracy and our constitution. It would be a sellout of a working class that is struggling to survive in very difficult economic times. Democrats in Congress are the last remaining opposition to Trump’s quest for absolute power. To surrender now would be an historic tragedy for our country, something that history will not look kindly upon.I understand what people across this country are going through. My Democratic colleagues and I are getting calls every day from federal employees who are angry about working without pay and Americans who are frantic about feeding their families and making ends meet. But my Democratic colleagues must also understand this: Republicans are hearing from their constituents as well. There is a reason why 15 Republican Senators are finally standing up to Trump and, along with every member of the Democratic caucus, support funding Snap benefits.There is a reason why 14 Republican members of the House are on record calling for the extension of tax credits for the Affordable Care Act. Understandably, Republicans do not want to go home and explain to their constituents why they voted to double or, in some cases, triple healthcare premiums. They do not want to go home and explain why they are throwing large numbers of their constituents off healthcare. They do not want to go home and explain why they are taking food off the tables of hungry families.We are living in the most dangerous and pivotal moment in modern American history. Our children and future generations will not forget what we do now. Democrats must not turn their backs on the needs of working people and allow our already broken healthcare system to collapse even further. Democrats must not allow an authoritarian president to continue undermining our constitution and the rule of law. The choice is clear. If the Democrats stand with the American people, the American people will stand with them. If they surrender, the American people will hold them accountable. More