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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

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      Trump policies loom large over New Jersey’s unpredictable governor’s race

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      After last year’s election, when Republicans made significant inroads in the state, New Jersey voters will cast ballots in an off-year, unpredictable gubernatorial race that voters and experts say feels different from any in recent memory.Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former navy pilot and federal prosecutor who represents New Jersey’s 11th congressional District, is facing Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state lawmaker, who is making his third bid for governor, this time with Donald Trump’s endorsement.With early voting under way, the contest on Tuesday – one of only two gubernatorial races this year – is drawing national attention as a potential preview for what’s to come in the 2026 midterms and an early gauge of Trump’s standing with voters.“This is the first big opportunity for voters to go to the polls and register their feelings about the new presidential administration,” Kristoffer Shields, the director of the Eagleton Center on American Governors, said in October. The current Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has served for two terms and is term-limited. While the state tends to reliably support Democrats in federal elections, it has a history of flipping between parties in its gubernatorial contests. Experts point out that no party has held the office for three consecutive terms since 1961.Adding to the unpredictability of the race, Republicans have made gains in New Jersey in recent years. In 2021, Ciattarelli lost to Murphy by only three points. And in 2024, the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, carried the state by just 5.9 points, down from Joe Biden’s 16-point margin in 2020.“The Republican party is feeling energized in New Jersey, specifically after two close showings here in the state,” said Daniel Bowen, an associate professor of public policy at the College of New Jersey.Recent polls show a tight race, with Sherrill leading Ciattarelli by single digits.A Ciattarelli win, Bowen said, would be “huge for the Republican party” and it would show that “the Maga brand of politics can win in a place like New Jersey, highly educated, wealthy, not rural, urban state.”By contrast, a Sherrill win, Bowen said, could signal a rejection of Maga politics and point to a “broader blue wave response across the country to what the Trump administration has been doing as we think forward to the 2026 midterm elections.”In Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Wednesday, Sherrill met with about 100 people at the O’Donnell Dempsey senior citizen center to discuss affordability, housing, healthcare, immigration and stopping Trump.Among those in the room was 71-year-old Evelyn Velez, who said she was backing Sherrill because there “has to be somebody that’s going to stand up to the administration that’s in Washington DC right now”.“We need somebody that’s gonna fight for the working class, who’s gonna fight for health insurance, lower taxes, and I think she is the best candidate,” Velez, a lifelong New Jersey resident, said.Another supporter, Kim Nesbitt Good, 69, said she felt confident that Sherrill would win and supported her because she was “not about hate, she’s positive, and that’s what we need, somebody that’s positive, someone that’s interested in the country, and the people in this country”.While both candidates have focused much of their campaigns on local issues like cost of living and taxes, national politics and Trump have loomed large.A recent poll found that 52% of New Jersey voters said Trump was a “major factor” in their choice for governor. Sherrill has frequently sought to tie Ciattarelli to Trump and his policies, while Ciattarelli has made efforts to link Sherrill to Governor Murphy, who, according to recent polling, has a 34% approval and 50% disapproval rating in the state. By comparison, the same survey found that Trump holds a 45% approval rating in the state.The contest has drawn millions of dollars in spending and endorsements from national political figures. Ciattarelli has campaigned with Trump allies, including the Florida representative Byron Donalds and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump himself also recently spoke for about 10 minutes at a virtual “tele-rally” for Ciattarelli.On the Democratic side, former president Barack Obama, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have all been campaigning for Sherrill.In a recent interview, Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, told Politico that he wasn’t focused on whether Democrats “overperform or underperform” in this race. “What I care about is making sure we win,” he said. “At the end of the day, we know that the Republicans are feeling very bullish about their chances in New Jersey.In Morris county, one of the five New Jersey counties that flipped from blue to red in the 2024 election , about 20 people gathered at a cafe on Wednesday morning to meet the county sheriff, Jim Gannon, Ciattarelli’s pick for lieutenant governor.Among them was Mike Lombardi, 35, who said his top concerns were “electric bills, crime, immigration”. He said he believed that Ciattarelli and Gannon were the “ideal candidates to lead New Jersey”.Lombardi, who said that he had been involved with voter outreach for Ciattarelli, said this year’s race felt different because of the “energy around the Ciattarelli campaign”.Another supporter, 45-year-old Nick Steenstra, nodded in agreement and said that Ciattarelli was the change that New Jersey needed.Still, Steenstra recognized the challenge ahead. “There are a lot more registered Democrats in the state,” he said, adding that to win, Ciattarelli needed to turn out not just Republicans but also the unaffiliated voters in the state, of which there are more than 2 million.One thing that experts are closely watching in this race is voter turnout. In 2021, only 40% of eligible voters participated in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.“Which side is more motivated to vote is probably going to ultimately decide this,” Shields said, noting that the race “may be defined by how energized Democratic voters are or are not”.Whatever the outcome, analysts say that the implications will probably extend beyond New Jersey.On the Republican side, Shields said people were watching “what the impact of the Trump administration, what the impact of the sort of national politics are on the Republican candidate in a state that tends to vote blue federally”.And on the Democratic side, Shields said “there are a lot of questions about the Democratic party nationally and unifying the Democratic party between the more progressive side and the more moderate side” so they will be watching to see “how Sherrill tries to unify the Democratic party, and is it successful?”.Brigid Harrison, professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, agreed and said that a Ciattarelli victory would be a boost for Republicans heading into 2026.But if Sherrill wins, Harrison said, “it’s a much different and kind of nuanced narrative”.“You see this ongoing tension in the Democratic party between the more moderate Democrats who are saying: ‘Look, we need to get the folks that migrated to the Republican party back on board’ and progressives who are saying: ‘We need to come at this from a more radical agenda,’” she said.A Sherrill win, Harrison said, could be viewed as “a shot in the arm for those moderates who will want to claim the mantle, saying how we move forward as a party is through policies that are middle of the road.” More

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      California is voting on redistricting. An election skeptic runs the process in one county

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      When Clint Curtis was appointed to oversee voting in California’s Shasta county earlier this year, the Florida-based lawyer and election skeptic pledged to “fix” the voting process.Curtis had never before administered an election and didn’t live in this rural northern California region. But he was well-known to followers of the US election denialism movement, who believe the voting system is not secure and that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Curtis, a former congressional candidate, described himself as an expert in elections law and had long argued that voting machines could be hacked and that the government could manipulate the results of elections.The ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors was hopeful he could overhaul their elections and set an example for the rest of the US.Now, that vision is being put to the test.On 4 November, California voters will decide on a high-stakes redistricting proposal in the first election Curtis is tasked with administering.The special election is one with particular national importance: the ballot measure proposes to suspend the work of California’s independent redistricting commission and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic seats in the US House of Representatives. The effort is a direct attempt to neutralize Texas’s partisan gerrymander, which, engineered at Trump’s behest, created several new safe Republican districts.Curtis says he’s overseeing the most transparent election in county history, with a livestream of ballot processing and a new area set aside for observers.“We’re showing people everything, which means they actually have no reason to mistrust it, because they can watch it with their own eyes,” he said.View image in fullscreenCritics say Curtis’s changes have made them distrust an election system they once felt confident in. They’re alarmed by a statement from the California secretary of state’s office that Curtis hadn’t worked with the department on his plans for the election as he had said. The county’s board of supervisors, which appointed Curtis, threatened to censure him after he stopped sharing press releases with a well-known local media outlet.They’ve raised concerns about a reduction in drop boxes all well as about several temporary staff members Curtis has hired, many of whom have been outspoken critics of the elections office and its workers, and one who even unsuccessfully sued the county after she lost a local race last year.“How is this going to increase trust in the community?” asked resident Dawn Duckett, who previously served on a county elections commission. “You [had] this vocal minority of people that [had] concerns. Now you’ve got everybody else now concerned about elections. The whole county is in a state of chaos and turmoil.”Shasta, a county of 180,000 people where Republicans outnumber Democrats more than two to one, has been attracting national attention for its far-right politics and thriving election-denier movement for years.In the wake of the 2020 election, a group of local activists convinced of widespread voter fraud waged a years-long campaign against former election officials and staff – one that resulted in many of them leaving the office.The former registrar of voters, Cathy Darling Allen, in 2022 told a US Senate committee that activists had weaponized election observation activities; that she and staff faced interference and bullying from residents who accused them of election fraud; and that record numbers of poll workers didn’t show up for work. Tensions continued to heighten and that same year, local “election integrity” activists, unaffiliated with the elections office, visited the homes of some voters while wearing gear labeled “official voter taskforce”, which Allen said at the time could amount to voter intimidation.Allen was one of a few county election officials with a national profile, said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director of the non-profit Verified Voting, with a reputation for competence, knowledge of election procedure and an openness to policy conversations. But the attacks on her and the office were relentless.The activists found support from at least part of the county leadership, with some members of the board of supervisors not shy about their desire to affect change nationally by dramatically remaking voting in Shasta county. Their efforts have drawn interest from people such as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who has for years pushed misinformation about the integrity of voting machines. Some have claimed, without evidence and despite their own successful elections, that voting in the county has been manipulated for years.In 2023, Shasta’s governing body cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine company at the center of baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud, without consulting the elections office. The board of supervisors sought to implement a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate before the state thwarted their plans. They established an ill-fated elections commission that made recommendations, such as hand-counting ballots, that would have violated state law.View image in fullscreenWhen health issues forced Allen to retire with more than two years left in her term, the board opted to appoint a former prosecutor, Tom Toller, to the role rather than Allen’s deputy, Joanna Francescut, who had more than 16 years’ experience.He became a vocal defender of the office, stating that he never saw evidence of fraud and that the workers were talented and dedicated. But the campaign against the office continued. Laura Hobbs, a failed supervisor candidate, sued the office, claiming that an error in the placement of her name on the ballot cost her the election. A judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, citing a “profound” lack of evidence.Toller also resigned owing to health issues and endorsed Francescut, but earlier this year the board moved to appoint Curtis rather than the assistant elections clerk and registrar of voters. During a public interview, Curtis highlighted his appearances on the shows of Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon and his work with Mike Lindell, and said he had decades of experience in elections law. He had spent years advocating for hand-counting votes, and arguing that elections were not secure.He told the board that restoring trust in elections was personal to him, repeating an account he has shared countless times over the years – that as a computer programmer he once developed a software that could change votes. “I broke it. I better fix it,” he said.In voting to hire Curtis, the supervisor Chris Kelstrom said his appointment could “change voting not only in Shasta county but possibly the whole state and possibly the whole nation”.Curtis quickly fired Francescut, and moved to start reshaping Shasta elections.In his new role, Curtis installed additional cameras in the Shasta county elections office to capture ballot processing, removed a gate at the front and significantly reduced the number of ballot drop boxes. He hired Brent Turner, a San Francisco Bay Area-based attorney and elections reform activist who served on the board of the California Association of Voting Officials, as his deputy.“This was a very contentious place. They were fighting with the public. They were locking them behind these basically spiked walls. They locked them up. Couldn’t let [observers] see anything,” he said of the facility. (As election workers faced growing hostility from observers, the former registrar of voters, Allen, in 2023 had tall metal fencing installed in the office.)Curtis and Turner provided a tour of the office to the Guardian. The mood inside was jubilant as longtime prominent critics of the department processed ballots in the weeks before the election. State law prevents the county from hand-counting, and Curtis said his focus was on taking additional security measures.But cameras, Lindeman noted, have done little to move people who are obsessed with transparency and believe something sinister is happening.“We always see room to do things even better, but the idea that someone can just wave a wand in the great beyond and make the results something different is not factual,” he said. “And it does a real disservice to Americans to attempt to mislead them in that way.”In Curtis’s view, the office was meeting its goals in establishing an election that everyone can trust. “I’ve looked at a million elections. This is the first [that] I don’t have to sue people so that’s good,” he said. “From a lawyer’s perspective, we’re very solid.”But Curtis himself has already faced the threat of a lawsuit, accusing him of targeting a local media outlet, Shasta Scout, because of coverage he didn’t like.The outlet had published a story revealing that the secretary of state’s office said it had not approved Curtis’s plans for the election, contradicting his claims, said Annelise Pierce, the editor and founder of Shasta Scout. Turner, Curtis’s deputy, told Pierce that she was coming close to “meddling” in elections and might be engaging in election interference, Pierce said.Curtis soon excluded Shasta Scout from receiving press releases, telling the non-profit that his office only “notifies potential media outlets that appear legitimate”. The First Amendment Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group, warned Curtis that excluding Shasta Scout was a violation of the first amendment and made the county vulnerable to a lawsuit.Less than a week later, the board of supervisors voted unanimously to condemn Curtis’s actions and said it would censure him if it happened again.“The board’s vote was a real surprise to our community, because we’ve seen this board sort of play a little fast and loose with first amendment rights over the past year,” Pierce said. “And we’ve reported on that. But in this case, they really strongly supported access, and I think that’s a win for the community.”The elections office moved to publish all its press releases online in the aftermath of the incident. Turner said Shasta Scout had received “bad information” and was speaking to the wrong people in the secretary of state’s office.“Those people were giving information which was not correct, because we have been in constant conversation with the secretary of state since I’ve been here,” Turner said. (The office said that it had not approved Curtis’s plans, telling Shasta Scout: “We have not seen, nor have been provided, with any such plans.”)For his part, Curtis said the board received only one side of the story and he had reported Shasta Scout to the IRS and US Department of Justice for what he described as a questionable non-profit status. Pierce said the outlet, one of more than 500 associated with the Institute for Nonprofit News, was operating legally and its filings were up to date. She said Curtis told her that he viewed Shasta Scout as a partisan outlet, but that he declined to provide her with examples of reporting he took issue with.“We’re a non-profit news organization that believes in non-partisan reporting. We don’t take a stance on things like Prop 50 or who should be elected to office,” she said. “We respect our readers. We just try to provide them with the information that will help them to make those decisions.”At a meeting of the board of supervisors in late October, several residents said Curtis’s attack on the outlet had them on edge. So did recent changes and Curtis’s decision to hire some of the same local activists who had campaigned against the elections office and its staff for years. Among the new hires was Hobbs, the failed supervisor candidate, who filed another lawsuit against the office earlier this year.“It’s an extreme concern to me to have many election deniers basically have total access to the ballots and to the elections office,” said Steven Kohn, a local business owner who has frequently spoken to the board in support of the office. He said that he believed Shasta county has long had fair elections and that he was no longer confident in the office.View image in fullscreenCurtis said he has encouraged people of all political backgrounds to apply for jobs within the office, and that some concerned residents “just want to whine”. Turner was quick to clarify Curtis’s comments.“I think they’re rightfully nervous, because there have been issues with the systems, and people get nervous about change, but these are upgrades, security upgrades that, by the use of transparency, it shores up the system and you have to recognize that systems always can be upgraded,” he said.Bringing together critics with the office staff they used to criticize has served as a “psychological integration”, Turner said, adding that morale is high. The office has been in “consistent and ongoing” conversations with the state about the changes, Turner said, and he hopes it can serve as an example to other counties. The California secretary of state’s office said in a statement to the Guardian this week that staff visited Shasta to observe the county’s new processes, but that it had not approved any proposed plans.The saga in Shasta county stands apart from other places, said Lindeman of Verified Voting, describing Curtis as a contender for the “most clearly unqualified” elections official in the country.Lindeman expressed concern about recent comments from Curtis that logic and accuracy testing, which ensures voting equipment is fully functional, is a “waste of time”. “That’s like saying that umbrellas are a waste of time because a brick might fall on your head,” Lindeman said. “Good logic and accuracy testing is the first line of defense to help protect voters’ votes.”But Lindeman was rooting for the county, saying: “I will be hoping that Clint Curtis manages to lead a successful election for the people of Shasta county, who certainly deserve it.”Curtis has already announced his plans to run for office when his term is up, writing on his campaign website that “if politicians can gain this seat back, America will never return to real elections again”. Francescut too is running with the endorsement of other elections officials, retired sheriffs and her predecessor Toller, who wrote that her “professionalism and impartiality transformed this former election skeptic”. More

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      Pandemic childcare funding is running out across the US: ‘The whole system is beginning to implode’

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      On an early fall day, toddlers played at Westwood Academy, a highly rated Denver childcare center serving children aged six weeks to five years. The room glowed with natural wood and light while preschoolers settled onto colorful floor circles to hear a book read aloud. “Where’s your circle?” one of the children asked the teacher.Westwood is located in west Denver, a lower-income part of the city; median family income in the surrounding area is less than $43,000 a year, according to census data.It is precisely because Westwood owner RB Fast serves this population that she and her peers are struggling to make the budgetary math work. The American childcare system, primarily a market-based, pay-to-play system, has always had inequities, but those inequities are growing ever sharper as federal pandemic-era funding, a boon to many families, has run out across the nation. Combine that with flat federal funding and for-profit childcare catering to affluent families, and, as Fast said, childcare “has become a service for high-income families, not low-income families”.In January, Denver joined many other Colorado counties in freezing enrollment for the state’s childcare subsidy program known as the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP). Given the high percentage of Westwood families using subsidies – Fast said that when full, the center had two-thirds of children receiving CCCAP – the freeze has meant would-be enrollees cannot afford a slot. So when a family moves away, there is no one able to replace them, despite high demand.As a result, Westwood has seven unfilled spots in its 16-slot preschool classroom. “I have slots available, and I could serve families tomorrow,” Fast said, “if there were subsidies.” The lack of public aid can also start a vicious cycle: when spaces are unfilled, revenue drops, and the bottom line falls apart for the whole program. If the CCCAP freeze continues indefinitely, Westwood’s future is uncertain.Programs serving lower-income families commonly struggle to maintain stable operations, often relying on meager public subsidies available in each state through the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). Even though these subsidies are inadequate – and nationally, only one in seven eligible families receive them due to underfunding – they can be a financial lifeline. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government surged money to the states, and that money was used to stabilize program operations and provide financial relief to families.Colorado, for instance, gave out more than $250m of such grants from 2021 to 2023, nearly double its current annual CCDBG allocation. Researchers from the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver found that the stabilization grants helped to keep programs open while allowing them to raise staff wages and reduce fees for parents. That was also the case nationally in states from Alabama to Alaska.When the pandemic funding began to dry up in September 2023, the impacts predictably fell on lower-income families and communities of color with less wealth or ability to navigate the renewed scarcity. However, the funds’ expiration did not occur all at once; many states distributed remaining money for months if not years after, and about a dozen have used their own dollars to extend the stabilization funding.Now, as the country wrestles with rising costs of living and economic uncertainty, pressures are again beginning to spike. No significant increase in CCDBG appears to be on the horizon, as budget bills moving through Congress hold federal funding largely flat.Within this context, Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, noted that the center’s ongoing survey of families has begun seeing some of the highest rates of reported hardship since they began tracking in 2020. “The disproportionate impacts have been present for a long time, and they’re being exacerbated by the current circumstances,” Fisher explained, adding that with hardship rising even among families with young children in the middle- and upper-income brackets, “it becomes clear that the whole system is beginning to implode”.The mother of a five-month-old, Denver resident Iyanah French went to apply for CCCAP when her child was born but was told the freeze meant she couldn’t even be placed on a waitlist. She found the experience “overwhelming”, adding that “you have to work in this world”. She eventually found a slot thanks to the non-profit supportive housing complex in which she lives.Even within low-income populations, childcare scarcity can land unevenly. Colorado state representative Lorena Garcia is also executive director of the non-profit Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition. She noted that “English-speaking families are able to get information a little bit faster about what’s happening, so they can start looking for other options. But non-English-speaking families get their information a little bit later.”Colorado parents aren’t the only ones feeling pinched by post-pandemic changes.As of 1 August, New Jersey froze enrollment in its childcare assistance program, citing a $30m budget shortfall. The state also told already-enrolled families to expect an increase in their monthly co-pays. Other states, including Arizona and Virginia, have not enacted freezes but have subsidy waitlists in the thousands. And in many states, even families able to wrangle a voucher face decreasing options for using them: childcare programs in places like Indiana and North Carolina have begun to close in significant numbers due to harsh economics and inadequate support, including the only licensed program on the latter state’s Hatteras Island.Experts and advocates worry that the Republican budget-reconciliation bill passed this summer will worsen these trends. Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at the non-profit Zero to Three, explained that Medicaid and Snap cuts will force state legislatures to use more scarce state dollars that could otherwise go to childcare. Both low-income families and childcare educators – many of whom are low-income themselves, due to the sector’s notoriously low compensation – will struggle with the personal impact of the cuts. Boteach said: “So on three fronts, even though the words ‘Child Care and Development Block Grant’ were not said in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, there’s going to be a lot of [childcare] pain, particularly for lower-income families and families of color, and families in rural areas.”Still, there is a seeming paradox: despite the childcare sector’s myriad struggles, the total number of childcare programs has been modestly increasing in recent years. While there is no comprehensive data for 2025, the non-profit Child Care Aware of America reports from surveys of 40 states that the number of licensed centers nationally increased by more than 4,000 from 2022 to 2024. The increase is likely driven by growth among childcare programs that serve more affluent clienteles. For instance, Heather Tritten, president and CEO of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a statewide non-profit, says that Colorado has also seen a small increase in licensed slots in the past year. Yet, Tritten questioned, with regards to equitable access: “Are they the right slots?” She added: “I think there’s sort of a dual economy when it comes to childcare: there’s the childcare that’s available for people who can afford childcare. And then there’s the childcare that is probably not available to people who are less able to afford it.”Many of the experts interviewed for this story offered that the solution to equitable childcare access is not merely better funding for subsidy programs, but a transformed system that eliminates the two-tier distinctions altogether. Ideally, Garcia said, “our childcare system wouldn’t be a private business model. It would be a public good, and we would take lessons from K-12 so that we’re not overpromising and underfunding”, and “we would design the system on a needs-based model and not a profit-based model”.There are indeed vast differences in how childcare and K-12 education are funded in the US, despite sharing many of the same features in terms of shaping children’s learning, supporting parents’ ability to work and serving as community infrastructure. The average per-child funding in K-12 education is more than $17,000, while it is less than $2,000 for early care and education. Shifting toward a more comprehensive childcare system could thus enhance social equality in a deeper sense: Tritten of the Colorado Children’s Campaign concluded: “It would be great to figure out how to have this conversation in a way that isn’t about just the haves and the have-nots, but about all children and the needs of all children. Because it doesn’t matter how much money your parents have, you still have the same needs in terms of what you need from birth until that first day of kindergarten to ensure that you’re ready for school.”This article was produced in partnership with New America’s Better Life Lab More

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      Katie Miller is threatening the citizenship of a critic | Arwa Mahdawi

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      It’s Miller Meltdown TimeSome couples bond over shared hobbies; others over shared values. The Maga bigwigs Stephen and Katie Miller, on the other hand, appear to have connected over their shared love of terrorizing immigrant children.The political power couple, who married in 2020, bonded during Donald Trump’s first term, when Stephen helped engineer a family-separation policy at the border that ripped more than 5,000 children, as young as four months old, from their immigrant parents. At the time, Miller (then going by her maiden name, Waldman) was an immigration spokesperson, and a big fan of Stephen’s hardline policies. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself – to try to make me more compassionate – but it didn’t work,” she told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff in 2018, according to his book on the border policy, Separated. The book also quotes Miller saying she didn’t expect to change her mind: “My family and colleagues told me that when I have kids I’ll think about family separation differently. But I don’t think so.”Fast-forward to the present day and the married couple now share three young children. Stephen is White House deputy chief of staff and possibly the most dangerous man in the Trump administration. Miller, meanwhile, quit a mysterious role at Elon Musk’s private ventures back in May to start a podcast about motherhood as part of an apparent plan to recruit more women to Maga. Yep, the woman who couldn’t muster up any compassion for kids in cages is now a momfluencer.Miller seems to have been correct in her earlier assessment: having kids hasn’t made her think differently about family separation, a practice that attorneys and former immigration officials allege has been revived. What has changed, however, is the fact that she’s now weaponizing her poor children against anyone who dares challenge her. And now that her husband is Trump’s right-hand man, she’s not just going after immigrants – she’s threatening to strip one of her critics of US citizenship.This week, Miller appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show, along with a panel that included the leftwing commentator Cenk Uygur, to discuss Islamophobic attacks on the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Miller kicked off the discussion with an incomprehensible point about the anti-Israel movement and then accused Uygur of “using coded language to attack American Jews and to say that we should not be here and we should not be in existence”.Uygur retorted by saying she was lying, adding: “It’s very normal for a Miller to be completely and utterly lying.” An epic meltdown ensued.“Piers, quite frankly, I’m really sick and tired of this racist bigoted rhetoric that can comes from people like you against my husband, against my family and my children,” Miller yelled. (Uygur had said nothing about Miller’s children.) “I am raising Jewish children in this country … ”“Who brought your children into this?” Uygur then said. “What a weirdo.”Miller, who doesn’t appear to have much experience being challenged during an interview, then started ranting at Piers Morgan about how Uygur saying “the Millers lie” is coded language for them being Jewish. After some more screaming, she also told Uygur: “You better check your citizenship application and hope that everything was legal and correct … because you’ll be just like Ilhan Omar,” a frequent subject of Republican attacks.You can watch the whole thing for yourself but the bottom line is this: the wife of the US homeland security adviser apparently threatened to denaturalize someone because she didn’t like the fact he criticized her.This, to be clear, is hardly some one-off. Threatening to deport your critics, even those with American citizenship, seems to be Maga policy now. The representative Nancy Mace, a Trump loyalist, for example, has said she would “love to see” Omar, a progressive representative, “deported back to Somalia”.Various Republicans are also threatening to deport Mamdani; indeed, Miller’s meltdown occurred during a discussion about how the representative Randy Fine of Florida and Andy Ogles of Tennessee have been pushing the federal justice department to investigate Mamdani’s citizenship. (Mamdani was born in Uganda, moved to the US at age seven and became a citizen in 2018.) Fine, who has suggested Omar is a “Muslim terrorist” and called for Gaza to be nuked, recently demanded the federal government “review every naturalization of the past 30 years – starting with Mamdani”.Fine doesn’t really need to be demanding this, by the way, because the government is already on it. Back in June, the justice department announced plans to prioritize efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their US citizenship. Barack Obama, I should note, also led a denaturalization push – but the difference between that and Trump 2.0 is the way in which the president is using deportation fears to chill political speech and intimidate his enemies.While people of color are the main target of these attacks, even some privileged white people are being threatened with deportation or the loss of their citizenship because of their opinions – a terrifying throwback to McCarthyism. Back when Musk and Trump were feuding, for example, the president responded to a question on whether he’d deport the South African tech billionaire by saying: “I don’t know, we’ll have to take a look.” And, in July, Trump said he was thinking of revoking the citizenship of Rosie O’Donnell, an American-born comedian and actor who has repeatedly criticized the president. To be clear, Trump can’t legally take away the citizenship of someone born in the US. But as we all know by now, Trump rarely seems to look at the law as an impediment.Expect more of this. The Trump administration has made it very clear to 24.5 million naturalized Americans in the US that they’d better keep their mouths shut to keep their passports. Ultimately, Miller’s threat on Piers Morgan’s show wasn’t just directed at Uygur, it was a warning to everyone in America: criticize Maga and there will be consequences.Kat Abughazaleh, who is running for Congress, says she has been indicted by the DoJ for protesting ICEAbughazaleh called the charges “yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA disgraced Andrew has been demoted to plain old Mr Mountbatten WindsorShortly after the publication of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous book, Nobody’s Girl, King Charles announced that Andrew’s titles were being removed. It’s not quite justice, but it’s something.Kim Kardashian thinks the moon landing was fakeOh dear.Horrifying mass killings in Sudan after El Fasher seizedThere is evidence of mass killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), after they took control of the city in Sudan’s western Darfur region last weekend. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), an ally of the UK and the US, has been repeatedly accused of supplying weapons to the paramilitary RSF in Sudan. According to the UN, the RSF is also using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war. The US and the UK must end arms sales to the UAE. We have crept into a new dark age where genocide appears to have been normalized.France adds consent to rape law in the wake of Gisèle Pelicot caseThe country’s Senate has approved a bill defining rape and other sexual assault as any non-consensual sexual act. Previously, rape was defined as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.Ms Rachel is one of Glamour Magazine’s women of the yearRachel Accurso has been one of the most vocal voices in the US for Gaza – and has been smeared and harassed because of this. Her “nursery school tenderness and moral clarity … explains why she’s not just a streaming juggernaut but a cultural flashpoint”, Glamour writes.The week in pawtriarchyShoppers at a Spirit Halloween in Texas were spooked after a pet monkey wearing a diaper escaped from its owner and began swinging from the rafters. Eventually, the monkey’s owner offered it a cookie and it came down. While the video is cute, there’s been a disturbing trend of monkeys being trafficked into the US because people see them on TikTok and want to keep them as pets, which is often cruel and inappropriate. Weird how it seems easier to get hold of a pet primate in Texas than it is to get abortion care for a life-threatening pregnancy.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      A South Park Halloween: latest episode destroys Trump over White House demolition

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      The second episode of South Park’s abrupt 28th season was meant to air this past Wednesday (the immediately preceding season 27 was just five episodes) but ended up being pushed back to Friday. This worked in the show’s favor, since tonight’s installment, titled The Woman in the Hat, is very much a Halloween special.After shuttering Tegridy Farms, the Marsh family find themselves rudderless, living out of motels while patriarch Randy looks for work (thanks to the federal government shutdown, he can’t go back to his former job as a government geologist). Out of desperation, Randy moves his family into the old folks’ home where he’s stashed his elderly father.This leads a bitter Stan Marsh to lament that “South Park sucks now … and it’s because of this political shit”. Reminiscing about simpler times when the boys used to do things together, he teams up with best friends Kyle and Kenny, as well as Kyle’s uber-stereotypical relative from New York, Cousin Kyle, to launch a new meme coin. Cousin Kyle works his “savvy Jew-jitsu” to “screw a lot of people out of their money”.Meanwhile, in Washington DC, President Trump oversees the destruction of the White House’s East Wing. Although he’s promised his lover Satan that the remodeling is for a new nursery for their forthcoming love child, he fully intends to build yet another party space for himself. Trump’s plans get derailed when he receives word from his inner circle – including a brown-nosed Pam Bondi (her face covered in literal feces, or “rectoplasm”) and a ghoulish Stephen Miller – that unknown forces are conspiring to kill his and Satan’s baby. Despite attempting to force an abortion himself, an already paranoid Trump is freaked out by the news, and he finds himself haunted by the ghostly specter of wife Melania, appearing as a ghostly figure from out of a J-horror film, a la The Ring or The Grudge.(The true murderous mastermind behind everything, JD Vance, continues to plot with co-conspirator Peter Thiel, who is keeping a demonically possessed Eric Cartman on ice.)These disparate threads converge when Cousin Kyle seeks out White House approval for the boys’ crypto dump, only to find himself part of an impromptu seance alongside Trump, Bondi, Miller, Vance, Don Jr, Kristi Noem and FCC head Brendan Carr (still suffering from injuries sustained a few episodes back). A ghostly wrath descends upon the party and threatens to expose both Trump’s Epstein ties and Vance’s power grab until Cousin Kyle, ravaged by guilt, admits that “crypto’s just a money-laundering scheme for the rich to get richer!” Cut to a screeching Fox News alert announcing that Bondi – her entire face still covered in feces – has indicted Cousin Kyle for crypto fraud. He gets sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Bondi vows to “indict anyone who says bad stuff about our amazing president”.Back home, a defeated Stan realizes that “there’s just no really going back to the way things used to be”. Kyle attempts to console him, promising that things will return to normal at some point down the line, but the dark, Shining-esque note that the episode closes on casts doubt on this.Another solid building block in what, when all is said and done, promises to be South Park’s most ambitious season (or two seasons) yet. While the show has always tackled current events, its never folded them into its long-term storytelling in such a way.At the same time, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker clearly recognize that the fervency of these latest seasons’ political satire is alienating some of their longtime fans, who likely feel that the show has gone too far in this direction. The self-satirizing within this episode may not placate those critics, but it puts Stone and Parker’s perspective into sharp relief: as the world has changed, so too has South Park. Per voice-of-reason Kyle, there’s no point in trying to go back to simpler times – all anyone can do is “make the most of where we are”. More

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      US food banks rush to stock supplies amid the Snap lapse: ‘We’re going to garner all the resources we can’

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      Waves of hungry Angelenos gathered outside the Community Space food bank’s storefront on a recent afternoon, grabbing dry goods like pastries, bagels, lentils and pasta along with refrigerated salads and frozen bags of brisket.The crowd ebbs and flows all day, said founder Gaines Newborn, but as news spread last week that the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) would cease on Saturday, he braced for the need to dramatically increase.“I’ve gotten more calls than we’ve ever gotten from concerned people saying: ‘My food stamps are getting cut, I need a plan,’” Newborn said. “People are trying to get ahead of food insecurity.”As the federal government shutdown stretches into its second month, the Trump administration announced that Snap, which helps around 42 million people afford food each month, will exhaust its funding at the start of November – something that has never happened before in the program’s half-century history.On Friday, two separate federal judges blocked the government’s attempt to stop paying out the benefits, but the administration could appeal the orders to a higher court. Food banks remain on edge for the possibility of a benefit cut, as they face increased demand driven by federal workers who have gone unpaid during the shutdown, along with people who have struggled to afford rising grocery prices.“The scale of what will happen when 1.8 million New Yorkers don’t get that benefit that they rely on to purchase groceries is sort of hard to wrap my head around, honestly,” said Nicole Hunt, director of public policy and advocacy at Food Bank for NYC, which serves the nation’s most populous city.The organization, which is the largest in New York City, planned to step up its aid during the period when Snap is unavailable, but Hunt said they cannot match the level of assistance the federal program provides.View image in fullscreen“We are going to do what we do, which is to show up with food. We’re going to try to concentrate as much as we can on the neighborhoods that are going to be the hardest hit and garner all the resources that we can, but that’s just not a scale that we’re going to be able to meet, and that’s the reality of how important Snap is and how many people rely on it,” she said.The federal government shut down on the first day of October, after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on legislation that would have continued funding. Around 700,000 federal workers were furloughed, with hundreds of thousands more told to continue working for paychecks that will arrive only after funding is restored.The deadlock has continued as Republicans refuse Democratic demands to couple government funding legislation with an extension of tax credits that have lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health plans. While the Senate’s Republican leaders have tried 13 times to pass a bill to reopen the government, Democrats refuse to budge, and there is no sign of a resolution in sight.Snap benefits continued during previous shutdowns – including those that took place in Donald Trump’s first term – and a Department of Agriculture report outlining their plans for the latest funding lapse indicated they would continue during this one, too.But that report was deleted from the department’s website and replaced by a message that attacks Democratic senators and reads: “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said that between money allocated for Snap and funds for other programs that the law allows it to repurpose, the department could keep Snap dollars flowing, if it wanted to.“Clear congressional intent is that this money is available to pay benefits,” Super said at an event organized by the Brookings Institution. “They’re cutting off benefits to put pressure on Senate Democrats, and they put this offensive and dishonest statement on their website trying to blame anyone but themselves for this entirely voluntary termination of Snap benefits.”The program’s lapse will create need beyond the capability of any food bank to fill.View image in fullscreenOn average, Snap provides 95 million meals per month in New York City. In all of last year, Food Bank for NYC distributed 85 million meals, Zac Hall, the senior vice-president of programs, said.“We’re seeing mothers worried about what they’re going to be able to make for dinner for their kids, grandmothers worried about what they’re going to put on the table for Thanksgiving meals,” Hall said.In the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park, Second Harvest Heartland, the country’s second-largest food bank, is stocking more inventory to be ready for Snap’s end, according to Sarah Moberg, the CEO.“The hunger relief network was not designed to do the work of Snap,” Moberg said. “We are designed to meet someone’s acute hunger need in a moment, and Snap is designed to do that so much more efficiently.”The pain of a cutoff would be particularly acute for the federal workers who are already struggling to get by without their normal salaries.“It’s horrible,” said Christina Dechabert, 52, a Bronx resident who has been working without pay for the Transportation Security Administration at John F Kennedy international airport. “You’re talking about trying to survive with no checks. I’ve had to come to a food bank to get food so our family can survive.”One mother in New York, who did not want to be named, said she was considering taking her two-year-old out of daycare as both she and her husband were federal workers.“We’re in a household with both of us not having paychecks, so that’s the toughest part,” she said. “My son’s under three, so there’s no free daycare, so if this goes on another month or so I might just take him out and have him at home so I don’t have to pay for daycare.”Joshua Cobos, a volunteer at Community Space in Los Angeles, is a Snap recipient himself. He hopes the credit he has earned from his hours at the food bank will see him through the benefit cutoff.“I’m racking up as much as I can around here, and with everything coming up I feel like we’re gonna be busy,” Cobos said.Some cities and states moved to pre-empt the financial hit from the Snap cutoff. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, on Thursday declared a state of emergency that would free up $65m in state funds for food banks. Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, is sending $4m in state funding to food shelves to manage the Snap gap, but the need is far greater – $73m comes from federal funds to Minnesota for the program.The Atlanta Community food bank, where the monthly need has grown 70% over the past three-and-a-half years, announced Thursday it would draw $5m from its contingency to stock its pantries in anticipation of a surge of demand from unpaid federal workers and Snap beneficiaries. Andre Dickens, the city’s mayor, also announced a temporary eviction and water shutoff moratorium to support residents affected by the lapse in food aid.Super, the Georgetown Law professor, warned the cutoff for Snap bodes ill for the program’s long-term future in Washington.“This has been something that has not been political or ideological up to this point, and it would be tragic if we cross that line and this does become something that’s just part of partisan warfare,” he said. More

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      Trump’s military pressure on Maduro evokes Latin America’s coup-ridden past

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      The ghosts of sometimes deadly Latin American coups of the past are being evoked by Donald Trump’s relentless military buildup targeting Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic socialist leader, whom Washington has branded a narco-terrorist.Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile toppled in a military coup in 1973, and Rafael Trujillo, the longstanding dictator of the Dominican Republic who was assassinated in 1961 in an ambush organized by political opponents, are just two regional leaders whose fates serve as a warning to Maduro.Allende is believed to have killed himself, although some doubt that explanation, as troops stormed the presidential palace in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in a coup – fomented by then president Richard Nixon’s administration – that ushered in the brutally repressive military regime of Gen Augusto Pinochet.The CIA is believed to have supplied the weapons used to kill Trujillo.Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, escaped into exile after being overthrown in a 1954 coup also instigated by the CIA. But the event triggered a 30-year civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people and resulted in 50,000 disappearances.The agency is also thought to have made at least eight unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s communist regime, which is still in power and is closely allied to Maduro.The plot to depose Castro also included the failed Bay of Pigs invasion carried out by Cuban exiles and organized by the CIA in the early months of John F Kennedy’s presidency in 1961, but which was defeated by Cuba’s armed forces.Now, as the US stages its biggest naval buildup in the region since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, some believe Maduro’s life is equally at risk.Washington is preparing to carry out military strikes imminently inside Venezuela on already pinpointed targets that have been identified as military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to reports.US officials are leaving little doubt that this could lead to fatal consequences for Maduro.“Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the Miami Herald quoted a source with close knowledge of US military planning as saying. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”The Trump administration has offered a $50m bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan leader, after announcing in August that it was doubling the $25m reward initially offered during Trump’s first presidency.Explaining his decision this month to authorize covert CIA actions against Venezuela, Trump pointedly refused to say whether US forces were authorized to “take out” Maduro. However, Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA Latin America analyst, said the intense security surrounding the Venezuelan leader in effect rendered the reward a “dead or alive” proposition, meaning any attempt to snatch him is likely to result in his death.“Anybody who’s going to try to take him is going to be so heavily armed that any defense that he put up would lead to them pulling triggers,” said Armstrong.“Let’s say it’s locals and they want the bounty. Most of them will assume that they’ll get the bounty dead or alive. Our forces would be a little bit more disciplined, but then imagine the adrenaline that anybody trying to do a snatch would have coursing through their veins. They’re going to be trigger-happy.“Only a fool would think that they can go in there and say, ‘OK, let me put handcuffs on you and escort you to the car.’ That’s not how it’s going to work.”Maduro has survived at least one apparent attempt on his life, when two drones exploded as he was speaking at a military parade in Caracas in 2018. Television footage shows several members of his security team rushing to his side to shield him after the explosions.Maduro accused neighboring Colombia of being responsible, although some opponents suggested the episode was a false flag operation staged to win sympathy.In May 2020, Venezuelan security forces foiled an attempt by about 60 dissidents, accompanied by two former US Green Berets, to capture and oust him in a plot that involved infiltrating the country by sea. The episode was afterwards dubbed the “Bay of Piglets” in mocking reference to the botched plot against Castro.But a fresh sign of Washington’s determination to get its hands on Maduro emerged this week when the Associated Press reported that a US agent, working for the Department of Homeland Security, had unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Venezuelan president’s pilot into diverting his plane to enable American authorities to capture him.The Trump administration has deployed a daunting array of military hardware off the Venezuelan coast in what appears to be an intimidating statement of intent to bring about regime change in the country.Last week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald Ford, the biggest aircraft carrier in the US navy, would sail from Europe to join a military force consisting of destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-1 and B-52 bombers, and special forces helicopters.At least 57 people have been killed in more than a dozen US military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Washington has accused Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials of being at the head of a cartel smuggling drugs into the US. Maduro denies the charge and experts dispute the significance of Venezuela’s role in the illegal drug trade.Trump has intensified the pressure further by authorizing the CIA to carry out covert activities inside Venezuela, although the contents of his instructions are classified and unknown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArmstrong argued that Trump was aware that his policy could prove fatal for Maduro.“What person wouldn’t be aware of that potential because you’re trying to take out a head of state, a tenacious head of state,” he said.“We do assassinations on a routine basis of people that we suspect of not even being senior members of groups that we consider to be terrorists. If we’re authorizing the assassination of regular combatants in the war on terror, how crazy is it to think that the administration would authorize the use of lethal means, if necessary, to snatch the head of a cartel.”Another former CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their previous involvement in targeted assassinations in the Middle East, said decisions to authorize such killings were normally taken with great care and based on threat severity.“It is very specific and usually because there is a lethal threat to America and our allies. They are done super carefully,” the former agent said.“The president and the [national security council] come up with the plan, and then they decide who’s going to take the shot … Is it going to be the military [or some other agency], will it lead to war?”High-profile assassinations in recent times include Osama bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in 2011; Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods force, killed by a drone strike ordered by Trump in 2020; and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s former deputy in al-Qaida, who was killed by a drone in Afghanistan in 2022 during Joe Biden’s presidency.“Bin Laden was an easy decision – he killed thousands of Americans, and even before the 9/11 attacks he had done lesser stuff,” said the ex-officer. “Suleimani, too, was easy because he had killed so many Americans.”Maduro, however, presents a less clearcut target, even though Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has described the Venezuelan regime as “the al-Qaida of the western hemisphere”.“The idea of going after a guy, Maduro, who is a sitting leader of a sovereign country, whether we like the country or not, just seems really strange and disproportionate,” the former agent continued. “Maduro is not Hitler. Bin Laden, Suleimani and al-Zawahiri were not heads of countries.“If you look at our history, even in the last 40 or 50, years, we’ve been staying away from going after world leaders.”Disclosures about the CIA’s role in backing coups and assassination attempts on foreign leaders during the 1950s and 1960s led to committees being established in Congress to oversee the agency’s activities.While there is no evidence that Trump has authorized Maduro’s assassination, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, told senators during his confirmation hearings that he would make the agency less risk averse and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president.Armstrong suggested the administration’s preferred course was to goad Maduro’s opponents in the Venezuelan military and other parts of society to topple him in a coup, setting the scene for a democratic transition while precluding the need for direct US action.But some analysts believe such a scenario would probably spawn a replacement loyal to the leftist movement spearheaded by Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chávez – with a full-blown democratic transformation potentially taking years to bear fruit.Angelo Rivero Santos, a former Venezuelan diplomat in the country’s US embassy and now an academic at Georgetown University, said the chances of a coup were likely to be dashed by domestic realities and the fact that even Maduro’s critics have rallied around the flag in response to recent US pressure. .“The year 2025 is not 1973,” he said, referring to the coup that deposed Chile’s Allende. “Statements from the opposition show that this is not heavily supported inside the country.” More