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      People held in ‘decrepit’ California ICE facility sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions

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      Seven people detained at California’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center have sued the US government, alleging they have been denied essential medications, frequently go hungry and are housed in a “decrepit” facility.The federal class-action complaint filed against ICE on Wednesday challenges the “inhumane conditions” at the California City detention center, which opened in late August inside a shuttered state prison. The suit alleges “life-threatening” medical neglect, with the plaintiffs saying they have been denied cancer treatment, basic disability accommodations and regular insulin for diabetes.The facility is run by CoreCivic, a private prison corporation, which is not a named defendant.Residents have raised alarms about the facility for two months, with some describing it as a “torture chamber” and “hell on earth” in interviews.California City is located in the remote Mojave desert, 100 miles (160km) north-east of Los Angeles. It can hold more than 2,500 people, increasing ICE’s California detention capacity by 36%. It currently detains more than 800 people, lawyers say.Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in an email that claims of “subprime conditions” at the detention center were “false”, writing: “No one is denied access to proper medical care.”The suit, which alleges constitutional violations, describes conditions as “dire”, saying: “Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end.”Temperatures inside are “frigid”, and detained residents who cannot afford to buy roughly $20 sweatshirts “suffer in the cold, some wearing socks on their arms as makeshift sleeves”, the complaint alleges; meals are “paltry”, and people who cannot afford to buy supplemental food go hungry.Even though residents are detained for civil immigration violations, not criminal offenses, California City “operates even more restrictively and punitively than a prison”, the lawyers say. Families are forced to visit their relatives behind glass, with parents denied the ability to hug or touch their children, and the facility “sharply limits access to lawyers, leaving people bewildered and largely incommunicado”, the suit alleges.McLaughlin of the DHS said detained people were provided three meals a day and dietitians evaluated the meals to “ensure they meet the appropriate standards”. She said they “have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers”, adding: “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons.”The residents are coming forward as the homeland security department continues to ramp up immigration raids nationally, bolstered by $45bn to expand ICE capacity, with the goal of detaining more than 100,000 people. Civil rights lawsuits have repeatedly raised concerns about detention conditions across the country.The plaintiffs are represented by the Prison Law Office, the Keker Van Nest and Peters law firm, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.Requests for medical attention “go unanswered for weeks or are never answered at all”, the complaint states. People with disabilities have allegedly struggled to access essential services, including wheelchairs. One man, whose glasses were confiscated at intake and had difficulty seeing objects in front of him, fell getting off his bunkbed and was hospitalized, the suit says.Jose Ruiz Canizales, a detained plaintiff who is deaf and does not speak, has been at California City since 29 August, but has only communicated once with staff through a sign language interpreter via video, the complaint says. When he tries to communicate, staff “often shrug their shoulders, walk away, or laugh at him”. The impact on his mental health was so severe, he was hospitalized for an anxiety attack.Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, another plaintiff, has a heart anomaly requiring daily monitoring and medication, but since he arrived at California City on 5 September, he has been denied medications “for days at a time”, his lawyers wrote, resulting in two emergency hospitalizations for severe chest pain. A hospital doctor allegedly told him “he could die if this were to happen again”, but the lawsuit says he has yet to see a cardiologist and still lacks consistent medication.Sokhean Keo, who previously spoke of his temporary hunger strike to protest about conditions, witnessed a friend’s suicide attempt at the facility and remains traumatized by flashbacks, lawyers wrote.“I’m bringing this lawsuit to try to help end the suffering and pain that I see in here,” Keo said in a statement shared by his attorneys. “ICE is playing with people’s lives, and they treat people like they’re trash, like they’re nothing.”When residents do see doctors, “the care they receive is dangerously poor”, according to the complaint, with providers failing to document exams, address abnormal lab results or order timely treatment.Fernando Viera Reyes, a plaintiff transferred to California City in late August, had a pending biopsy appointment to formally diagnose and begin treatment for prostate cancer, but his request to see a doctor went unanswered for weeks, and he still has not seen a urologist nor received testing for his condition, the suit says. His bloodwork and bleeding with urination suggests his cancer may have metastasized, his lawyers said.Plaintiff Fernando Gomez Ruiz, a father of two and LA resident for 22 years, was arrested by ICE in early October while at a food truck outside a Home Depot, the complaint says. Since his arrival at California City in mid-October, he has not received regular insulin for his diabetes, leading to elevated blood sugar and a “large, oozing ulcer on the bottom of his foot”, the suit says. He says he has been forced to cover his wound with “soiled bandages and bloody shoes” and is worried he will need amputation.The DHS did not respond to the detailed healthcare claims in the lawsuit, but McLaughlin said ICE provided “comprehensive medical care from the moment” people are detained: “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.” She said ICE “provides necessary accommodations for disabilities”.Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesperson, declined to comment on the litigation and specific claims, but said in an email on Thursday after publication that the “safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority”. CoreCivic’s ICE facilities follow federal detention standards, are “monitored very closely by our government partners” and are required to undergo regular reviews and audits to “ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all”, he said.“We’re proud of our dedicated team at [California City] who work hard every day to keep those in our care safe while providing for their needs,” he said, adding “staff are held to the highest ethical standards” outlined in the company’s “human rights policy”. The company told the Guardian in September that it provided “high-quality healthcare, available 24/7”.The plaintiffs also accused staff of “abusive” behavior and “unreasonable use of force”. On 29 September, staff entered the cell of a person detained in “administrative segregation”, a form of restricted housing, and hit him with riot shields, even though he was already handcuffed, and held him down with their knees on his back, the complaint says.On 3 October, Gustavo Guevara Alarcon, another plaintiff, said he witnessed an officer pepper-spraying a man who did not speak English, after the man did not understand the officer and turned to walk away.In another alleged incident on 9 October described in the lawsuit, people were screaming for help due to an attempted suicide, and a person stepped out of his cell to observe. A staff member, who was holding a drill for maintenance work, ordered the person to get his “ass inside”, threatening to “make a hole in your chest”, and the man allegedly got a disciplinary write-up for being outside his cell.“California City’s punishing conditions are punishing by design,” said Tess Borden, a supervising staff attorney at the Prison Law Office. “ICE and DHS are using detention as a threat to immigrants who decide to stay in America, and they’re making good on that threat at California City. Many people have agreed to deportation, and some even attempt to take their own lives, because the conditions at the facility are so unbearable.”McLaughlin did not respond to accounts of the specific incidents, but said ICE placed people in segregation for “their own protection or protection of others”, adding: “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority … ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.” More

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      The Epstein files are back to haunt Trump – podcast

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      Archive: ABC News, ABC7, CBS Mornings, CBS21News, CNN, Good Morning America, Face the Nation, KKTVB, NBC, MSNBC
      Listen to the Today in Focus episode on Trump’s potential BBC lawsuit
      Buy Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitors Circle, here.
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

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      This Palestinian human rights group was sanctioned by Trump. Its chief wishes US allies would take a stand

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      Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.Today, staff work without pay because their banks closed their accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.“I feel a deep, deep pain in my heart,” said Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s director, of the silence from US-based organizations in the human rights and social justice sector. “Most of them – if not all – they stopped working with us or engaging with us formally and openly.”Speaking to the Guardian, Jabarin called on US-based rights groups to take a more defiant stance against the Trump administration. “Standing on the side of human rights and justice doesn’t mean that you have to respect draconian orders or laws,” he said. “You have to fight back with all means.”The Trump administration announced sanctions against Al-Haq over the group’s support for investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine by the international criminal court (ICC). The sanctions marked an early strike in a broader campaign against civil society, a campaign disproportionately focused on groups championing Palestinian rights that also threatens to sweep up climate, democracy and racial justice groups.View image in fullscreenIn a statement announcing the sanctions, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “the United States will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s disregard for sovereignty, and to punish entities that are complicit in its overreach”.Israel and the US – which are not members of the ICC – have long attacked the court and maintain that it has no jurisdiction over them. But the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups is hardly limited to their connection to the ICC.Last month, the administration instructed US attorneys across the country to investigate the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the philanthropic network founded by liberal billionaire George Soros, over unfounded allegations that it has sponsored groups promoting political unrest and suggesting charges as severe as material support for “terrorism”. In a presidential memorandum signed in September, Trump also instructed law enforcement to “disband and uproot” organizations and networks that the administration says promote “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence”.Groups and individuals critical of Israel, both in the US and abroad, are under particular scrutiny. The Trump administration has also detained foreign nationals for pro-Palestinian speech and sanctioned the UN special rapporteur for the occupied territories and senior ICC officials.Palestine-based groups like Al-Haq, which do not enjoy the constitutional protections their US-based peers do, are among the easiest targets. But as a Palestinian, Jabarin said, he knows something about standing in defiance of a repressive regime.“Maybe it’s our nature and our essence as Palestinians, because we are fighting for every aspect of our life,” he said. “Our culture is not to give up, and to continue fighting for justice. Maybe other societies haven’t reached this point yet.”But the group’s continued advocacy has come at a steep price.Since the sanctions were announced, Al-Haq and its roughly 45 staffers have lost access to their bank accounts as three banks the group works with dissolved their accounts in October. (Even banks overseas not explicitly affected by sanctions are often jittery about working with people and groups sanctioned by the US.) The group is currently unable to receive donations or pay its employees, and two American funders have stopped their donations. US staff had to resign. Other staff have continued to work for free, Jabarin said, aided by former colleagues and supporters abroad. In addition to YouTube, Meta and Mailchimp have restricted or pulled their services. (The three companies did not immediately respond to request for comment.)Al-Haq has lost allies, too.Among the organizations now fearing Trump’s crackdown are scores of US-based non-profits. While more draconian efforts to silence civil society with so-called “non-profit killer” legislation have so far failed, and experts say Trump’s efforts against Soros will struggle to stand up in court, such groups have for months been on high alert, fearing attacks on their tax-exempt status and the prospect of costly litigation.US-based human rights and Palestinian advocacy groups that have collaborated with Al-Haq in the past are now afraid to do so. (Jabarin declined to name them.) The sanctions the US imposed on Palestinian rights groups – one of the only measures available to the administration in the absence of congressional action – make working with them a liability for their US peers. US-based organizations that worked with Al-Haq in the past declined to speak on the record about their relationship with the group when contacted by the Guardian, but some noted that maintaining professional communications with a sanctioned organization exposed them to significant risk.Coordinated advocacy with sanctioned organizations could expose US groups to civil and criminal enforcement, some noted, with possible consequences ranging from loss of fiscal benefits to jail time. Some US non-profits are so risk-averse they avoided public criticism of the sanctions altogether.Leena Barakat, a co-founder of the Block and Build Funder Coalition, a network of funders she described as “committed to resisting authoritarianism”, said that US-based groups and donors who support the work of sanctioned Palestinian organizations find themselves in a “devastating” position.“We should be fighting back and I think right now there’s absolutely the desire and the will to do it. The question on the table is what is the best and the most strategic fight,” she said. “We’re thinking about that every day.”Al-Haq has documented Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine for half a century. Alongside other organizations that the US has also sanctioned – Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Addameer, which is focused on the rights of Palestinian prisoners and detainees – the group played a key role in demanding and later supporting the ICC’s investigation.In 2021, Israel designated Al-Haq and five other Palestinian rights groups as “terrorist organizations”, alleging links between the groups and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftwing political party the US and other countries consider a terrorist organization. Reporting at the time revealed that Israel had no concrete evidence to back the designations, and the CIA was unable to corroborate Israel’s claims about the groups. Months later, Israeli soldiers raided Al-Haq’s office.View image in fullscreenThe designations and raids were widely condemned by international rights groups and the Biden administration distanced itself from them. But Jabarin always feared the possibility the US might at some point follow Israel’s lead and seek to punish the group.Jabarin dismissed the latest US sanctions as a “political attack” and pledged that Al-Haq would continue its documentation of human rights violations and its work with the ICC.“They want to silence any voice calling for accountability, calling for ending the culture of impunity, anyone speaking about the rights of Palestinians and justice for Palestine,” he said. “We will continue doing our work, we will continue fighting for justice and for human rights, and we will continue going after the criminals and holding the criminals accountable.” Al-Haq’s submissions to the court, he added, are “legal” and “peaceful”.Jabarin says he understands the constraints imposed on his US colleagues but is frustrated by what he views as a reluctance to more openly defy Trump beyond issuing statements. What Trump wants is for organizations to comply without putting up a fight, and how global civil society responds to this moment will have lasting implications, Jabarin added.“Palestine is the test” for all people of conscience, he said.“The US administration, they are supporting the rule of the jungle, not the rule of law,” he said. “And what’s going on, globally speaking, is a war between the rule of the jungle and the rule of law.” More

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      Trump is pushing 50-year mortgages. Talk about short-term thinking | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Would you like to buy a crumbling shack for $2m? Well then, you’re in luck, because that just about sums up the state of the housing market right now. Housing, particularly in places with a decent job market, has become increasingly unaffordable in the US. That’s partly thanks to quantitative easing during the pandemic, which supercharged housing inflation. The median American home price in January was $418,000, about a 45% increase from $289,000 five years ago, per Redfin data. Wages haven’t gone up at the same rate, and housing prices compared to income have reached an all-time high.In post-pandemic America, there are three groups of people. First, there are those who own their home outright and those who bought a house before the pandemic, then refinanced during the historically low interest rates we saw in 2020 and 2021. Many of those homeowners are now sitting on large piles of equity.Then you’ve got the people who bought their first home during the pandemic, with super-low interest rates. They’re not quite as fortunate as group one, but having a 30-year-mortgage that is under the rate of inflation (currently about 3%) means they are also in a very privileged position.Finally, you’ve got group three: people who are completely and utterly screwed. Unless you’re earning big bucks, have generous parents, or want to live in the middle of nowhere, good luck buying a first home right now. Indeed, nearly a quarter of millennials say they expect to rent forever. Prices are historically high and mortgage rates, while still far lower than they have been in the past, are about 6.3%. The difference between buying a $500,000 home with a 6.3% mortgage v a 2.5% interest rate (which some lucky people got during the pandemic) is about $900 a month. And things will only get worse; Trump’s tariffs, including a 50% tariff on steel, could raise the cost of building and renovating a home.But don’t worry. You’re not going to have to rent a $700 sleeping pod (yes, these are a thing in San Francisco) for the rest of your life. Our great president is on it. Donald Trump has a plan – or perhaps more accurately, “concepts of a plan” – to fix housing affordability: 50-year mortgages. The Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, who reportedly promoted this genius idea to Trump, called the proposal “a complete gamechanger”. You know what else is a complete gamechanger, Bill? Jumping in a pile of toxic waste.Even many of Trump’s allies are said to be aghast at the idea of a 50-year mortgage. This week, Politico reported that the White House was furious Pulte planted the idea in Trump’s head. Per Politico, “one of the two people familiar [with the situation] said there is more fallout from this idea than almost any other policy proposal of the second term, including from the MAGA base.” Another source told Politico: “During Trump 2.0, the last time anything got as much pushback as this was over the ‘Epstein Files’.”The problem with a 50-year mortgage, to be clear, is that it does nothing to solve the root issues. Yes, you’ll have a lower monthly payment since the timeline is longer, but it’ll take you longer to build equity and you’ll pay double the amount of interest as someone with a 30-year mortgage, according to one analysis. Fifty-year mortgages could also increase housing prices in the long run by encouraging people to buy more expensive homes.If you’re reading this from somewhere that isn’t the US, even the idea of a 30-year mortgage might seem odd. The US is an outlier when it comes to mortgages. In most countries you can only get a fixed rate for a few years before it adjusts according to current interest rates.President Franklin D Roosevelt helped usher in 30-year mortgages after the Great Depression, when about 50% of mortgages, which were then only fixed for a short term, were in default. The Roosevelt administration wanted to ensure this didn’t happen again in the future by helping people become homeowners via more predictable repayment plans with reduced risk. Trump, it would seem, fancies himself another Roosevelt. Over the weekend he floated his new housing idea with a Truth Social post titled “Great American Presidents”, which included the words “50-year mortgage” above a photo of himself and “30-year mortgage” over a photo of Roosevelt.Thirty-year mortgages have worked out very well for a lot of individual homeowners in the US. However, many experts believe they exacerbate inequality by creating a system of winners and losers. Lock in a low interest rate for 30 years and you are, to a large degree, insulated from many economic headwinds. If you’ve got a low interest rate, it’s also hard to give it up when rates are rising. That means people who might otherwise downsize will stay in place. Or they might rent out a house they would normally sell in order to keep their interest rate. Long-term fixed-rate loans help contribute to a frozen housing market, which helps erode housing affordability. A 50-year mortgage would make these issues even worse.It’s unclear whether the 50-year-mortgage idea will ever progress to more than just a social media post. However, the fact that we’re even discussing it says a lot about the short-term thinking that plagues modern politics. And it speaks volumes about Trump’s focus on flashy bandages rather than long-term solutions.You can see all the same issues, for example, in Trump’s recent plan to send Americans tariff rebate checks. “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” Like 50-year mortgages, this would be a quick fix that might give people some immediate relief while exacerbating higher prices in the long term. Trump has also brainstormed sending Americans money to help with health insurance rather than doing anything substantial to fix the US’s broken healthcare system. Turns out that electing a showman whose companies have filed for bankruptcies multiple times might not have been the best idea.Anyway, since hare-brained ideas seem to be all the rage in American politics right now, let me take the opportunity to introduce my own plan to increase housing affordability: we kick Trump out of the White House and we turn it into condos.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Republicans are scrambling to reclaim affordability. Good luck with that | Judith Levine

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      Try as they might to present Zohran Mamdani as the exemplar of their opponents’ radical-left lunacy, the platform the New York mayor-elect and other Democrats won on was affordability – the same platform on which Trump ran, and has spectacularly failed to deliver.So in their panic, Republicans are scrambling to reclaim affordability.They have only two problems: their policies and their president.On 4 November, as soon as election results were in, the entrepreneur and erstwhile presidential wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy posted a video on the lessons the party should learn. “Our side needs to focus on affordability. Make the American dream affordable,” he said. “Bring down costs. Electric costs, grocery costs, healthcare costs, and housing costs. And lay out how we’re gonna do it.”The next morning, JD Vance, the vice-president, weighed in, bucking up the losers in the administration’s usual fashion: denying reality and making excuses. “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country.”Other Republicans agreed on the political challenges the party faces, but were more honest about what it is, or is not, doing about affordability. During the shutdown, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a US representative from Georgia, railed against her colleagues for abandoning their constituents. In an interview on Real America’s Voice, she both denounced the Affordable Care Act and suggested that with no alternative in place, the GOP should not allow a lapse in the tax credits on health insurance premiums purchased through the ACA marketplace, which were enhanced during the pandemic.If “regular innocent Americans’ health insurance premiums double, they’re not gonna be able to pay their rent”, Greene said. “Food prices have gone up this year,” an economic slowdown looms, “and I pray to God not a recession”. She continued: “So this is extremely serious. And here’s where I’m upset: Republicans are doing nothing.”Nothing is what they intend to keep doing. In return for eight Democrats’ votes to end the shutdown, the Republican majority leader, John Thune, discussed taking up the healthcare question by mid-December – a week before Congress’s winter recess, which ends on 1 January, the day the credits lapse. In other words, they will lapse, and 24.3 million ACA enrollees, three-quarters of whom live in red states, will see their premiums soar.In fact, the party is doing worse than nothing. Ramaswamy wants it to show how it will bring down electric, grocery, housing and healthcare costs. How’s that going?Electric costs: the low-income home energy assistance program (Liheap), which subsidizes the utility bills of low-income households, escaped the president’s axe. But the appropriation has always been drastically inadequate, and this year’s is still up in the air. Also, the program’s entire staff was fired in 2025’s purge of health and human services, so it could take weeks to restore subsidies now, just as winter approaches.Grocery costs: Trump’s tariffs are ballooning the prices of everything from rice to Halloween candy. Agricultural labor shortages exacerbated by mass deportation have boosted fruit and vegetable prices 15%this year, according to the agriculture analysis company Farmonaut.Housing costs: proposed new rules at the Department of Housing and Urban Development threaten the rental assistance of 4 million low-income Americans, according to ProPublica. Meanwhile, potential funding cuts to a permanent housing program could drastically increase homelessness.Healthcare costs: oh wait, didn’t the government just shut its doors for 42 days because the GOP refused to extend the tax credits that make healthcare affordable for millions?Besides policy, the Republicans’ other problem is their president. Before this month’s election, he was ranting nonstop on Truth Social about the cost of living.“VOTE REPUBLICAN for massive Energy Cost reductions, large scale Tax Cuts, and basic Common Sense! Under President Trump, ME, Gasoline will come down to approximately $2 a Gallon, very soon!” he posted on 2 November. “VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR A GREAT AND VERY AFFORDABLE LIFE.”He spent the day after the vote celebrating the anniversary of his election and the prosperity he’s creating: “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down. Affordability is our goal. Love to the American People!”But he’s evidently vexed. First he claimed that Republicans were not talking enough about affordability. Then he called it a Democratic “con job”. Then he flew into a snit: “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.” At a news conference with Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, after a contretemps with reporters over the cost of living, he pulled out the all-purpose culprit: “The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows it is far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden,” he said, falsely.While alleging there is no affordability crisis, the president tosses out dumb ideas to address it: a $2,000 tariff dividend to everybody except “high-income people”; 50-year mortgages; direct payments to people to buy health services, instead of the “bad healthcare provided by Obamacare”. The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has been left to play down some proposals, telling ABC on Sunday that “we don’t have a formal proposal” on the healthcare payments and that the tariff dividend “could come in lots of forms” and “could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda”.The optics look bad. To force the Democrats to surrender on the ACA, the Trump administration moved to halt benefits to the 42 million recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), or food stamps; officials later allowed they would release half-payments. While food pantries stocked their shelves for the coming crisis, the president ate truffle dauphinoise and pan-seared scallops at a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago and posted photos of the renovated marble-clad Lincoln bathroom.And even as the shutdown appeared to be ending, the administration was asking the supreme court to stay a lower court’s order to distribute full Snap benefits immediately. Trump’s implicit message to the hungry and the sick – which might be summarized as “I’m starving you because the Democrats won’t let us take your healthcare away” – did not play well.Fortunately, the GOP has its gentle House speaker, Mike Johnson, to communicate from the party’s heart: “Any hardworking American in any place who has missed a paycheck; anyone who has been made to suffer because [of interruptions in] the health services you rely upon, or the food and nutrition supplement for your family,” he cooed into the cameras last week. “Anyone who is hurting: you have a home in the Republican party.”Come home, America! The Republicans will give you a cardboard box to sleep in and a nice hot bowl of gruel.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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      in US Politics

      Lies, damned lies and AI: the newest way to influence elections may be here to stay

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      The New York City mayoral election may be remembered for the remarkable win of a young democratic socialist, but it was also marked by something that is likely to permeate future elections: the use of AI-generated campaign videos.Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Zohran Mamdani in last week’s election, took particular interest in sharing deepfake videos of his opponent, including one that sparked accusations of racism, in what is a developing area of electioneering.AI has been used by campaigns before, particularly in using algorithms to target certain voters, and even, in some cases, to write policy proposals. But as AI software develops, it is increasingly being used to produce sometimes misleading photos and videos.“I think what’s really broken through in this election cycle has been the use of generative AI to produce content that goes directly to voters,” said Alex Bores, a New York state representative who has been at the forefront of introducing laws to regulate the use of AI.“So whether that was the Cuomo campaign that used ChatGPT to generate its housing plan, or Cuomo and many others making AI-generated video ads for voters, that is, I think, felt very new in the 2025 cycle, or certainly, just much further than we’ve ever seen before.”Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor who dropped out of the race in September, used AI to create robocalls to New Yorkers featuring him speaking in Mandarin, Urdu and Yiddish, and also produced an AI video showing New York as an apparently war-torn dystopia to attack Mamdani.Cuomo, meanwhile, was accused of racism and Islamophobia after his campaign tweeted a video that showed a fictionalized version of Mamdani eating rice with his fingers and a Black man shoplifting. The advert also featured a Black man, wearing a purple shirt and tie and a fur coat and carrying a silver cane, appearing to endorse sex trafficking. The Cuomo campaign later deleted it and said it had been sent out by accident.Bores, who is running to represent New York in the House of Representatives, said many of the AI-generated ads in the last election cycle were “more likely” to “veer into what might be perceived as bigoted territory”.“I think that’s another thing that we need to track: is this either because the algorithms are playing up stereotypes that are in their training data, or [is it] because it’s so easy to manipulate. You don’t have to tell an actor of a certain race to do a certain thing, you just change it in the computer,” Bores said.“You don’t have to say to someone’s face to portray themselves in a certain way. Does that make it easier for people to put out content that, you know, really, I think polite society should be frowning upon.”In New York state, campaigns are supposed to label AI ads as such, but some – including the ad Cuomo posted and deleted – did not. The New York board of elections is in charge of potentially pressing charges against campaigns, but Bores noted that campaigns might be willing to bite the bullet on any punishment, particularly if any punishment comes after a campaign has finished.“I think you’re always going to find campaigns that are willing to take that trade-off. If they win and then they pay a fine afterwards, they’re not going to care, and if they lose, it doesn’t matter,” Bores said. “So you want to try to find an enforcement regime that can take things down quickly before an election, as opposed to just punish afterwards.”Robert Weissman, co-president of the non-profit advocacy group Public Citizen, which has been involved in passing many AI laws around the US, said that trying to fool people is now illegal in more than half the states, with campaigns required to post disclaimers on generative AI ads saying they are not real. Still, he said, regulating AI use in campaigns is a pressing issue.“Lies have been part of politics since time immemorial. This is different than lies, and it’s different than saying your opponent said something that they didn’t say,” Weissman said.“When someone is shown an apparently authentic version of a person saying something, it is very hard for that person to then contradict it and say ‘I never said that’ because you’re asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.”While AI is now capable of generating believable videos, some campaigns haven’t quite nailed it. A “Zohran Halloween special” video posted by Cuomo – this ad did state it was AI-generated – showed an extremely sloppy rendition of Mamdani, complete with out-of-sync audio and an incomprehensible script.With the midterm elections approaching and the 2028 presidential election looming, AI-generated political videos are likely to stick around.They’ve already been used at the national level. Elon Musk shared an AI-generated video of Kamala Harris in July 2024, after she became the de facto Democratic nominee for president. That video depicted Harris claiming she was the “ultimate diversity hire” and saying she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country”.While states may be making progress on regulating the use of AI in elections, there seems to be little appetite to do so at the federal level.During the No Kings protests in October, Donald Trump shared an AI video that showed him flying a fighter jet and dropping brown fluid on Americans, just the latest of his AI video posts.With Trump apparently approving of the medium, it seems unlikely that Republicans will attempt to rein in AI anytime soon. More

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      ‘MigraWatch’ trainings to ‘Whistlemania’ events: Chicagoans fight back against ICE raids

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      Anaís Robles didn’t expect to get teargassed. The co-owner of Colibrí Cafe, the coffee shop that opened this year in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood, saw commotion outside in mid-October and ran to see what happened.Robles saw federal agents donning masks and decided to step back, she was half a block away when the teargas canisters hit. “People were just in the streets, so to clear out the area, they teargas all of us, and like, multiple teargas [canisters],” she said.Robles recalled the burning sensation as she walked back to the coffee shop with her eyes closed.ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents have been raiding almost every part of Chicago in the Trump administration’s wide-ranging “Operation Midway Blitz”, which started on 9 September 2025. The National Center for Immigrant Justice and Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights estimated that since the start of the operation, about 1,300 people had been illegally detained, and that violations of a court order to stop warrantless arrests were ongoing. Mayor Brandon Johnson even called this week for the United Nations to investigate the force being used on city streets.But Chicagoans are also fighting back.View image in fullscreenThey are organizing to protect life in a city that in so many ways is defined by the many waves of immigration from eastern European to Latin American, with Mexican-born immigrants making up nearly 40% of all foreign-born immigrants in the city. And with entire communities now on edge, and vibrant streets filled with immigrant-owned businesses have turned into ghost towns, many residents have dedicated countless hours and funds to keeping the city intact.Donald Trump has long targeted the Democrat-led city for its crime rate, calling it the murder capital of the world, on social media, even though the city experienced its lowest murder rate since 1962 this summer.His feud goes as far back as 2016, when he had to withdraw from hosting a rally citing “security concerns”, as fights broke out between counter-protesters and attenders. Or as far back as 2014, when the then mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called Trump Tower’s embellishment with the future president’s last name, “tasteless”.Since Trump’s first term, residents have been organizing against his impact on the city. But those efforts have ramped up in response to “Operation Midway Blitz”. Residents have hosted ICE Watch trainings, accompanied students for safety, passed out whistles to neighbors to blow when ICE is spotted, and by donating money to those most affected by the raids.View image in fullscreenDiego Morales, a volunteer with Puño, or Pilsen Unidos por Nuestro Orgullo said their MigraWatch trainings have consistently reached capacity. Morales has trained more than 2,000 people in how to spot ICE as well as what rights people have that could keep them safe or quickly release them from detention. He has done this since 2016, when Trump first got elected.“Ideally, we want to reach, like, a critical mass of trained people in the city of Chicago, so that you know everybody going about their day – whether they’re [a] bus driver, whether there’s somebody walking down the street going to a book shop, whether they’re a student coming in and out of school – has these sorts of tools and is connected to the network in some way and can activate,” he said.Meanwhile, a local West Side group, Belmont Cragin United, has been hosting what has been dubbed “Whistlemania” events, where volunteers gather at a local restaurant to pack whistles, community resource guides, and zines on how to gather a crowd of people when ICE is nearby. Hundreds of people attended these events at locations all over the city’s West Side and packed more than 17,000 kits, according to Block Club Chicago.“We’re showing them in deeds and actions that we care about them, that the city of Chicago and our neighbors care about these individuals, even if the federal government doesn’t,” Alonso Zaragoza told Block Club Chicago, a Chicago-based non-profit media outlet.View image in fullscreenMorgan Martinez, the owner of Solar Intentions, an astrology-themed local sober gathering space in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood, has been active in efforts to educate residents about ICE.“We’ve been able to become part of local rapid response teams that are entirely community driven: from community patrolling at local businesses and schools to organizing mutual aid, local community organizers are informative, dedicated to protecting our neighbors at all costs,” said Martinez.Solar Intentions also held a fundraiser for another local business called Edgewater Tacos, which has been struggling since the ICE raids started in September. Martinez said she was inspired to fundraise when she heard that Edgewater Tacos had to close for an entire weekend; locals suggested donations to make up for lost revenue. That fundraiser raised thousands for the neighborhood business.In the city’s Little Village neighborhood, the Street Vendors Association of Chicago is making sure that the vendors who sell mango with chamoy, paletas, Mexican corn and other snacks are able to stay afloat without the fear of going out to potentially be detained by ICE, by fundraising on their behalf. One of the first people detained in Operation Midway Blitz was a flower vendor on the city’s Southwest Side.“The vendors are small businesses, and you went from seeing 20 vendors to seeing two vendors out there. And sometimes it’s not even the actual vendors, but it’s their kids that are vending for them out of fear,” said Maria Orozco, a development coordinator at SVAC.Orozco, whose own parents are street vendors, said the organization raised over $230,000 for street vendors. Despite working long hours and fighting exhaustion, she and her colleagues will continue to do so to ensure street vendors can access aid.Martinez for her part will be doing the same.“This administration wants us to feel defeated and fatigued from the violence against our local communities, and it may tempt us towards numbness. But the real truth is that when we are present in our bodies, we’re present with each other, which allows to stand up for our communities,” she said. More

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      Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back

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      The richest man on earth owns X.The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN.The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.The fourth-richest man owns the Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason.If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to – for example – tax away your wealth.You also have Donald Trump to contend with. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom – without disclosing that Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market.These breaches are inexcusable.It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle and the second-richest person in the world. Ellison is a longtime Trump donor who also, according to court records, participated in a phone call to discuss how his 2020 election defeat could be contested.In June 2025, Ellison and Oracle were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington. At the time, Larry and his son David, founder of Skydance Media, were waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve their $8bn merger with Paramount Global, owner of CBS News.In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes resigned, citing concerns over the network’s ability to maintain its editorial independence, and revealing pressure by Paramount to tamp down stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.In July, Paramount paid $16m to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against CBS and canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Three weeks after the settlement was announced, Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC, approved the Ellisons’ deal, making David chief executive of the new media giant Paramount Skydance and giving him control of CBS News.In October, David made the anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss the CBS News editor-in-chief, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or news. Earlier this month, it was revealed that CBS News heavily edited Trump’s latest 60 Minutes interview, cutting his boast that the network “paid me a lotta money”.I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News – the home of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite – was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS had independent responsibilities to the American public.It is impossible to know the full extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by the media-owning billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.But what we do know is that billionaire media owners like Musk, Bezos, Ellison and Murdoch are businessmen first and foremost. Their highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. They know Trump can wreak havoc on their businesses by imposing unfriendly FCC rulings, enforcing labor laws against them or denying them lucrative government contracts.And in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, with a thin-skinned president who is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.What to do about this?At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.A second suggestion (if and when the US has a saner government) is that anti-monopoly authorities not approve the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently than the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or one developing small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.A third suggestion is to read and support media such as the Guardian, which is not beholden to a wealthy owner or powerful advertiser and does not compromise its integrity to curry favor with the powerful.To the contrary, the Guardian aims to do what every great source of news and views should be doing, especially in these dark times: illuminate, enlighten and elucidate. This is why I avidly read each day’s edition and why I write a column for it.As the Washington Post’s slogan still says, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of the US’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.We must fight to get our democracy back. Supporting the Guardian is one good place to begin.You can support the Guardian’s year-end appeal here. All gifts are gratefully received, but a recurring contribution – even a small monthly amount – is most impactful, helping sustain our work throughout the year ahead. It takes just 37 seconds to give. Thank you. More