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      Trump claims new CBS owner will gift him $20m worth of airtime after $16m settlement

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      Donald Trump has claimed that the future owner of the US TV network CBS will provide him with $20m worth of advertising and programming – days after the network canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.The US president recently reached a $16m settlement with Paramount, the parent of CBS News, over what he claimed was misleading editing of a pre-election interview with the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris.While CBS initially called the lawsuit “completely without merit”, a view shared by many legal experts, Paramount is in the midst of an $8bn sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media, which requires the approval of federal regulators.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed the settlement had been paid – and that he was expecting much more from the new owners of Paramount.“Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs [public service announcements], or similar Programming, for a total of over $36 Million Dollars,” he wrote.CBS and Skydance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Trump’s claim that he has been offered millions of dollars’ worth of programming is likely to exacerbate anger over the axing of The Late Show, which CBS announced on Thursday.Days earlier, Colbert, a high-profile critic of Trump, had branded Paramount’s settlement with Trump “a big fat bribe”. He is due to remain on air until May, and declared on Monday that “the gloves are off”.Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, and an ally of Trump.The $16m settlement was already seen by critics as a further example of capitulation by media companies hoping to smooth the waters with the US president. ABC News, ultimately owned by Disney, also agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit over its coverage.After Trump’s latest claim regarding $20m worth of advertising and programming from Paramount, the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter: “This reeks of corruption.” More

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      US House calls early summer recess amid turmoil over Epstein files

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      Republicans announced Tuesday that the House of Representatives will call it quits a day early and head home in the face of persistent Democratic efforts to force Republicans into voting on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.The chamber was scheduled be in session through Thursday ahead of the annual five-week summer recess, but on Tuesday, the Republican majority announced that the last votes of the week would take place the following day. Democrats in turn accused the GOP of leaving town rather than dealing with the outcry over Donald Trump’s handling of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficker.“They are actually ending this week early because they’re afraid to cast votes on the Jeffrey Epstein issue,” said Ted Lieu, the vice-chair of the House Democratic caucus.Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case’s documents.“We’re going to have committee meetings through Thursday, and there’s still a lot of work being done,” said the majority leader, Steve Scalise. “The heavy work is done in committee and there is a lot of work being done this week before we head out.” He declined to answer a question about whether votes were cut short over the Epstein files.At a press conference, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, insisted that Congress must be careful in calling for the release of documents related to the case, for fear of retraumatizing his victims.“There’s no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they’re already doing. And so this is for political games,” he said. “I’m very resolute on this, we can both call for full transparency and also protect victims, and if you run roughshod, or you do it too quickly, that’s not what happens.”Questions surrounding Epstein’s 2019 death and his involvement in running a sex-trafficking ring that allegedly procured underage girls for global elites flared up earlier this month after the justice department announced its determination that he committed suicide in a federal prison, and he had no client list that could be released.The disclosure, along with the department’s statement that it would release no further information about the case, sparked an uproar among many supporters of the president, who believed he would get to the bottom of a supposed “deep state” plot to cover up Epstein’s ties to global elites. Some of Trump’s own officials had promoted such expectations, including Bondi, who in February told Fox News that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”.Congressional Democrats have sought to capitalize on the rare split between the president and his supporters, with an eye towards retaking the majority in the House next year. The venue for those efforts has been the rules committee, the normally low-key body that all legislation must pass through before it is considered by the full House.Democrats on the committee last week repeatedly offered amendments to unrelated legislation that were designed to compel the release of the Epstein files, forcing Republicans to vote them down – a politically difficult vote for many in the party, as it could potentially be used to accused them of wanting to keep the files secret.Frustration among the GOP peaked on Monday, when Democrats planned to use a rules committee hearing to offer more Epstein amendments, and the GOP reacted by refusing to vote on any more rules, essentially paralyzing the House floor. Johnson has attempted to stem the controversy by agreeing to allow a vote on a non-binding resolution on the file’s release, but that won’t happen before the August recess.On Tuesday, a House oversight subcommittee approved a subpoena proposed by Republican congressman Tim Burchett for the testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence related to the sex trafficking case. The justice department is also seeking to speak with her, and it is unclear when she might appear before Congress.Meanwhile, Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has repeatedly broken with his party, and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna have collaborated on a legislative maneuver that will force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, though that is not expected to take place until after the House returns from its recess, in the first week of September.Joe Morelle, the number-two Democrat on the House appropriations committee, warned that cutting short the workweek costs time that lawmakers could use to consider spending legislation that must be passed by the end of September to prevent a government shutdown.“We haven’t done appropriation bills, and yet we’re going to take extra days off simply because we don’t want to go through the discomfort of pushing the president to do what he’s promised to do, what the attorney general has promised to do, what the FBI director has promised to do, that they’re now violating their pledge and their commitment to do,” Morelle said. 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      Losing Stephen Colbert and the Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason | Adrian Horton

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      Last Thursday, when Stephen Colbert announced on air that CBS had decided to cancel The Late Show, its flagship late-night comedy program, after 33 years in May of next year, I was shocked.For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.Reporting in the days since the announcement have lent some credence to CBS’s claim that this was “purely a financial decision”. Though The Late Show has led the field of late-night comedy in ratings for years, it only averages about 2.47 million viewers a night. Its ad revenue plummeted after the pandemic; Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the show loses $40m for CBS every year. Of the network late-night shows – NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – Colbert’s Late Show has the smallest footprint on social media, where Fallon’s celebrity gags still reign supreme. The format of late-night television – a host delivering a topical monologue, house band, celebrity guest interviews – is a living relic of a different time, when a youth-skewing audience would reliably pop on linear television at 11.30pm. The field has been contracting for years, with programs hosted by Samantha Bee, James Corden and Taylor Tomlinson ending without replacement. Ad revenue for the genre as a whole is down 50% from just seven years ago, in the middle of Trump 1.0. It’s long been assumed that the hosts currently in these once-coveted chairs would be the last, their programs expiring when they decided to step down.What’s shocking is that Colbert, who was reportedly set to renegotiate his one-year contract at the end of this season, was not given that time, which just so happens to coincide with a critical window for the intended merger of CBS parent company Paramount with Skydance Media. Three days before the announcement, Colbert called Paramount’s settlement with Trump a “big fat bribe” to incentivize the administration’s approval of this $8bn deal managed by two billionaire families.Regardless of Colbert’s contract timing, it seems the cancellation of The Late Show is a financial decision, just not in the way CBS is framing it. It’s not about the $40m The Late Show is losing per year – a lot of money, to be sure, though a drop in the bucket for the major players here – but the $8bn on the line with this merger. There were presumably other options; Late Night With Seth Meyers dispensed of its house band and musical acts last year to save money. With new billionaire ownership, there could be some business maneuvering, should independent political comedy be a priority. Colbert’s Late Show, a leading critic of Donald Trump on network television, is clearly not; the show may have been a money loser, but in this context, it’s a convenient sacrifice.And though it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at late-night television – I often do – it’s an especially disappointing one, both in the culture at large and in the dwindling 11.35pm time slot. For years, I have argued that the late-night shows have long outstripped their original function as comedy programs. They are satirical, occasionally relevant, sometimes profane, but hardly ever funny, in the traditional sense of making you laugh. Often, they resort to so-called “clapter” – laughter as a polite applause, jokes for agreement rather than laughter – in a deadening anti-Trump feedback loop. With the exception of The Daily Show, a cable program founded for the purpose of political satire, the shows basically serve two functions in the internet era: 1 Generate viral celebrity content as they promote another project, and 2 Comment freely on the news, unbound from the strictures of decorum, tone and supposed “objectivity” that hamstrings so much journalism in the US.The latter was, I’d argue, the most important contribution of late-night television in the Trump era, when the president and his minions exceeded parody, and Colbert was the best at it. Nimble, erudite, self-deprecating but exceptionally well-read, Colbert transformed from extremely successful Fox News satirist to the reverend father of late-night TV: principled, authoritative but hardly ever self-righteous, deeply faithful to the American project, steadfastly believing in the decency of others. (Colbert is a practicing Catholic and die-hard Lord of the Rings fan, facts that sometimes snuck into his monologues.) At times, such old-school values felt insufficient for the moment; the format of late-night comedy as a whole has proven futile, even pathetic, in the face of Donald Trump’s brand of shamelessness, the Maga movement’s ability to turn everything into a joke. But these hosts, and the Daily Show-trained Colbert especially, did something that the rest of news media or the sprawling celebrity and comedian podcast network could not: call bullshit on the administration with the imprimatur of a major television network, and say exactly what they were feeling.That ability proved useful to me, as a viewer, at times when it seemed standard media was incapable of articulating what was happening. During the pandemic, or the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, or on January 6, or when Trump was re-elected, or when Republicans mocked Californians during the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year, late-night television had the freedom to express outrage, and Colbert in particular to express moral injury. The jokes were almost never surprising; they weren’t really even jokes. But it still felt soothing to see someone say them, with corporate backing, at an institution that still carried enough name recognition to, well, merit a “late-night roundup”.Colbert, ultimately, will be fine. He is a skilled comedian whose talents weren’t always well-tapped by the strict format of late-night comedy. Perhaps he will join the legion of comedians with podcasts, speaking directly to fans; perhaps he will release a special. But his absence from late-night television spells doom for the rest of the format, and more importantly for freedom of speech on the big networks. Late-night comedy has been fighting a losing battle for a long time, and The Late Show was never going to out-influence the rising tide of rightwing media, the manosphere or any number of independent shows in a fracturing media landscape. But the fact that he could try, from one of the more famed perches in television, still meant something. More

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      The supreme court is giving a lawless president the green light | Steven Greenhouse

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      Just when we thought the US supreme court couldn’t sink any lower in bowing and scraping to Donald Trump, it issued a shocking order last week that brushed aside important legal precedents as it ruled in the president’s favor. In that case, the court’s rightwing supermajority essentially gave Trump carte blanche to dismantle the Department of Education, which plays an important role in the lives of the nation’s 50 million public schoolchildren, sending federal money to schools, helping students with disabilities and enforcing anti-discrimination laws.Many legal experts, along with the court’s three liberal justices, protested that the court was letting Trump abolish a congressionally created federal agency without Congress’s approval. In their dissent, the liberal justices warned that the court was undermining Congress’s authority and the constitution’s separation of powers. Not only that, we should all be concerned that the court was giving dangerous new powers to the most authoritarian-minded president in US history.In the Department of Education case, the court issued a one-paragraph, unsigned order that lifted a lower court’s injunction that blocked the Trump administration from making wholesale layoffs that went far toward dismantling the department. Recognizing that Article I of the constitution gives Congress the power to create and fund federal agencies and define their responsibilities, prior supreme court decisions have held that presidents don’t have the power to defy what Congress has legislated and gut an agency without Congress’s approval.In a stinging dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department. The Executive’s task, by contrast, is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” Sotomayor added that the court’s order “permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department” was “indefensible”.Making the court’s move even more maddening was its failure to include any reasoning to explain its action – it was the most recent in a string of brief “emergency docket” orders which, without giving any rationale, ruled in Trump’s favor. The rightwing justices might argue that this was a harmless, minor order, merely lifting a lower court’s injunction until the case is fully adjudicated. But by vacating the injunction, the court let Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, speed ahead with her plan to slash the department’s workforce by over 50%, a move that will gut the agency and prevent it from carrying out many functions that Congress authorized it to do. The supreme court’s order is likely to leave the department an empty shell by the time the judiciary issues a final ruling on whether Trump broke the law in gutting the department – and there’s a good chance the judiciary will conclude that Trump acted illegally.The Trump administration insisted that it wasn’t dismantling the education department, that it had merely ordered massive layoffs there to boost efficiency. But the district court judge didn’t buy the administration’s arguments, especially because Trump had spoken so frequently about killing the department.Sotomayor wrote that the constitution requires all presidents, including Trump, to faithfully execute the law. But in this case, Trump seemed eager to execute the Department of Education, while showing scant concern for executing the law. Noting Trump’s repeated vows to abolish the department, Sotomayor chided the supermajority, writing: “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”With that language, the three dissenting justices were in essence accusing the supermajority of aiding and abetting Trump’s defiance of the law. In the court’s 236-year history, rarely have dissenting justices been so emphatic in criticizing the majority for “expediting” a president’s lawlessness.Sotomayor hammered that point home, writing: “The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle.”If the US constitution means anything, it means that the supreme court should stand up to a president who seeks to maximize his power by defying the law. But far too often today’s rightwing supermajority seems to lean in to back Trump. The court leaned in for Trump last year in Chief Justice John Roberts’ much-criticized ruling that gave Trump and other presidents vast immunity from prosecution. The supermajority leaned in for Trump last month when it gave Elon Musk and his Doge twentysomethings access to sensitive personal information for over 70 million Americans on social security.One would think the nine justices would be eager to strengthen the pillars that uphold our democracy: the separation of powers, fair elections, respect for the law, limits on the power of the executive. But the Roberts court has too often weakened those pillars: by giving Trump huge immunity from prosecution, by turning a blind eye to egregious gerrymandering that prevents fair elections and by letting Trump fire top officials from independent agencies long before their terms end. In late June, the supermajority curbed district courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions to put a brake on Trump’s rampant lawlessness – by that time, lower court judges had issued more than 190 orders blocking or temporarily pausing Trump actions they deemed unlawful.In the Department of Education case, the court again weakened a pillar upholding our democracy; it gave Trump a green light to ignore Congress’s wishes and take a wrecking ball to the department. It’s hugely dismaying that the court undercut Congress’s power at a time when Trump has transformed the nation’s senators and representatives into an assemblage of compliant kittens by intimidating them with a social media bullhorn that bludgeons anyone who dares to defy his wishes. Instead of shoring up Congress’s power in the face of such intimidation, the Roberts court has seemed happy to undermine Congress and hand over more power to Trump.On top of all that, it is galling to see the court issue so many pro-Trump orders without giving any rationale. When the US is so polarized and the court so widely criticized for its many pro-Trump rulings, it would seem incumbent upon the court, when issuing orders, to explain why it’s doing what it’s doing. But the court has repeatedly failed to sufficiently explain its decisions, revealing an unfortunate arrogance and obtuseness.Justice Samuel Alito has complained about those who criticize the court over the rushed, unexplained decisions on its emergency docket. Critics have faulted the court for issuing too many orders through that docket, which uses abbreviated procedures to issue orders that remain in force while the courts adjudicate whether Trump’s actions are legal. Alito maintains that with the crush of cases, the court doesn’t have the time to write its usual, carefully wrought decisions.Alito has suggested, rather outrageously, that many critics of the court are engaged in improper bullying. He said that some critics of the emergency docket suggest it has been “captured by a dangerous cabal” that uses “sneaky” methods. Those criticisms, Alito warned, fuel “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court”.When the court issues one order after another that favors Trump, the most lawless president in US history, often without explanation, the court should expect to be criticized for doing too little to defend our democracy and the rule of law. Alito shouldn’t be so thin-skinned or paranoid about supposed intimidation; he does have life tenure.The court’s critics aren’t seeking to intimidate the justices. Rather they are pleading with the rightwing supermajority to stop bowing to Trump and become more resolute in enforcing the law against the most authoritarian president in history, a president who said he could “terminate” parts of the constitution and who claims sweeping powers to singlehandedly nullify laws.The court’s supermajority should remember: we are supposed to have a government of laws, not of strongmen.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      Trump’s shift on Ukraine has been dramatic – but will it change the war? | Rajan Menon

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      Donald Trump presents himself as a peerless president, an unrivaled negotiator, even a “genius”. So it’s a unique moment when he comes close – I emphasize the qualifier –to conceding that another leader has outfoxed him. Trump suggested as much recently when characterizing Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi. “Putin,” he told reporters on 13 July, “really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening.” Melania Trump may have contributed to this reassessment. As Trump recounted recently, when he told her about a “wonderful conversation” with the Russian leader, she responded, “Oh, really? Another city was just hit.”Trump’s new take on Putin is a break with the past. His esteem for Putin – whose decisions he has described as “savvy” and “genius” – has contrasted starkly with his derisive comments about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he memorably disrespected during a White House meeting and even blamed for starting the war.As recently as February, he declared that Russia’s invasion didn’t matter to the United States because, unlike Europe, it was separated from Ukraine by “a big, big beautiful ocean”. He criticized Joe Biden’s assistance to Ukraine as a waste of taxpayers’ money.Now, Trump has not only changed his view of Putin, stunning many within his “America First” MagaA movement; he’s decided to start arming Ukraine. Well, sort of.Trump has gone beyond in effect conceding that Putin has played him. He has decided to sell military equipment to individual European countries so that they can supply Ukraine and restock their arsenals with purchases from the United States. The president formally announced the change during his 14 July meeting with Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general.There was more. Trump warned Putin that if he did not accept a ceasefire – which he has steadfastly refused, just as he has ignored Trump’s demand to stop bombing Ukraine’s cities – within 50 days, Russia would be slammed with tariffs as high as 100%, as would countries that continued to trade with it after the deadline.Two things are clear. First, Trump’s perspective on Putin has changed, unexpectedly and dramatically. Second, a war that Trump once said was none of America’s business now apparently matters. The president said European countries would buy “top of the line” American military equipment worth “billions of dollars” to arm Ukraine. According to one report citing “a source familiar with the plan”, the total will be $10bn.This all sounds like a very big deal. But here’s where it becomes important to go beyond the headlines and soundbites and delve into the details.Take the $10bn figure. That’s certainly not chump change. Moreover, the main piece of equipment specified so far, the Patriot “long range, high altitude, all weather” missile defense system, will provide desperately needed relief to Ukrainian city dwellers, who have endured relentless waves of drone attacks – several hundred a night – followed by missiles that slice through overwhelmed defenses. Ukraine has some Patriots but needs more: it’s a vast country with a dozen cities whose populations exceed 400,000.However, a Patriot battery (launchers, missiles, a radar system, a control center, antenna masts, and a power generator) costs $1bn, the missiles alone $4m apiece. Ukraine may not need 10 Patriot batteries, but even a smaller number will consume a large proportion of the $10bn package. The other system that has been mentioned is the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm), which combines stealth technology and GPS guidance with a 230-mile range. Ukraine will be able to use its American-made F-16 jets to fire Jassms into Russia from positions beyond the reach of Russian air defense systems. But a single Jassm costs about $1.5m, so the costs will add up quickly. Additional items have been mentioned but only generically; still, their price must also be figured in, bearing in mind that the war could drag on. So, $10bn could be depleted quickly.Moreover, beyond a certain point the US cannot sell equipment from its own stocks without regard to its military readiness requirements. Precisely for that reason, the defense department recently declined to send Ukraine some of the equipment promised under Joe Biden.And Trump has not said that there will be follow-on sales to benefit Ukraine once the $10bn mark is reached. Even if he were to change his mind, individual European countries would be able to buy only so much American weaponry without straining their finances, especially because France and Italy have opted out of the arrangement. Trump has been uninterested in joining the recent move by the UK and the EU to impose a $47.60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil sales, toughening the $60 limit the west enacted in 2022. Finally, Trump isn’t going to resume Biden’s multibillion-dollar military assistance packages – 70-plus tranches of equipment, according to the DoD.Trump’s 50-day tariff deadline permits Putin to continue his summer offensive, and may even provide an incentive to accelerate it. Russia has already shrugged off Trump’s tariff threat. Its exports to the US in 2024 amounted to $526m, a tiny fraction of its global sales.By contrast, Trump’s secondary tariffs will hurt Russia, which earned $192bn in 2024 from its global exports of oil and related products, much of that sum from India and China. If the president follows through with his threat, Beijing will surely retaliate, and the consequence will be painful: the United States exports to China totaled $144bn last year. Will Trump proceed anyway, and during his ongoing trade wars, which have already started increasing prices in the US? His track record on tariff threats leaves room for doubt.Ukraine’s leaders are understandably elated by Trump’s reappraisal of Putin. But it’s premature to conclude that it’s a turning point that could change the war’s trajectory. Washington’s new policy may prove far less momentous than Maga critics fear and not quite as transformative as Kyiv and its western supporters hope for.

      Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies More

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      According to our research, 11% of Trump voters can be won back. Here’s how | Dustin Guastella

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      To win in 2028, Democrats need to win back a lot of working-class voters, including a lot of blue-collar Donald Trump voters. Doing so requires dispensing with some long-held myths that have captured the minds of Democratic party strategists. The first is that persuading working-class Trump supporters is a waste of time. They are – so the story goes – so totally absorbed in Magaland that there is no winning them back. Why bother? On the flip side, some liberals insist that some of these voters are winnable, if only Democrats can make themselves more like Trump by embracing tax cuts and tough talk. A third notion, favored by progressives, says that if liberals just crank the progressive economic message up to 11, blue-collar voters will come running home.The truth is, none of these strategies are particularly useful. Because none of them take working-class interests, values and attitudes seriously enough. Fortunately, new research from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) can help shed light on what working-class voters actually want. And it can offer the Democrats a path out of the wilderness.In a report published by Jacobin magazine, we analyzed working-class responses to 128 survey questions from academic surveys stretching back to 1960. We looked at class attitudes toward major topics like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, social norms and economic policies. The result is the most sophisticated, comprehensive and up-to-date portrait of American working-class social and economic attitudes available. And it provides the best evidence yet for the potential of a certain kind of populist politics.Our work shows that working-class voters are, and have always been, decidedly less progressive than their middle- and upper-class counterparts when it comes to social and cultural issues. But the story is more complicated than it seems. It’s not the case, for instance, that blue-collar workers are becoming more socially conservative. Instead of a rising tide of reaction, we show that working-class attitudes have actually drifted slowly toward more socially and culturally liberal positions over decades. At the same time, however, middle- and upper-class Americans have raced toward uber-liberalism, especially in recent years, opening up a yawning class gap on social attitudes. A first step to winning back workers is closing that gap.On the economic front, the situation is different. Most working-class voters are what we call “economic egalitarians” – they favor government interventions to level the playing field, they take inequality seriously, and they support programs that increase the economic and social power of working people. Large majorities favor raising the minimum wage, import limits to protect jobs, increasing spending on social security and Medicare, using federal power to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, expanding federal funding for public schools, making it easier to join a union, increasing infrastructure spending, implementing a millionaires’ tax, and even the notion of a job guarantee. Luckily for Democrats, middle- and upper-class voters have drifted to the left on many of these economic issues, embracing a more social democratic outlook. That bodes well for developing an economic platform that can appeal to the broadest electoral coalition. Yet there is an important caveat here. While working-class voters are strongly in support of a range of progressive measures, they are wary of big new government programs, skeptical of new regulations and broadly suspicious of welfare spending. Their economic progressivism is jobs-centered and pro-worker, not built around cash transfers and expansive social services.So working-class voters are more socially moderate than the middle- and upper-class voters that make up the Democratic party’s core support. Yet they are also broadly economic egalitarians – on some questions even more so than their well-educated and well-heeled counterparts. They agree with a populist economic agenda but not an excessively liberal cultural one. The path to winning them back, and stitching together a majority, then, is clear: adopt social populism. Embrace working-class social and cultural attitudes and a worker-focused economic program that promises to raise the minimum wage, protect industrial jobs from free trade, increase infrastructure spending, expand social security, strengthen Medicare and guarantee full employment.And what about blue-collar Trump voters? After analyzing the broad working class we tried to find just how many Trump-voting workers might be won over by that kind of program. In fact, a lot of them hold progressive views across a range of economic issues. We found that “over 20% of working-class Trump voters were in favor of an economic policy package that included increasing federal funding for public schools, increasing federal funding for social security, and increasing the minimum wage.” Of course, many of these same voters have such conservative views on social issues that they would never vote for a Democrat. But are there any working-class populists in the Trump coalition who hold socially moderate attitudes? There are.Eleven per cent of them, to be exact.We found that about 11% of Trump voters maintained socially moderate and economically egalitarian views.Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it’s a significant slice of the electorate, comprising about 5% of the total. No Democrat could win all of those voters. But given that these are working-class voters, many of whom are concentrated in swing states, each single vote has tremendous electoral value. In fact, even winning half of these voters – a little more than 2% of the electorate – would be significant enough to sway a national election in our age of razor-thin vote margins. Moreover, it could set the Democrats on the path to a more durable majority in the future.Given all this we can put to bed the various myths about working-class voters – that they are bigots, hardened reactionaries, hopelessly unwinnable, etc – and instead embrace a strategy that can win. With the right kind of candidate (preferably a working-class one) and the right kind of political message, Democrats can win back a working-class majority.The evidence is clear: it’s social populism or bust.

      Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics More

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      Trump news at a glance: immigration agents to ‘flood’ US sanctuary cities as marines withdraw from LA

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      The Trump administration is targeting US sanctuary cities in the next phase of its deportation drive, after an off-duty law enforcement officer was allegedly shot in New York City by an undocumented person with a criminal record.Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline border tsar, vowed to “flood the zone” with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents, saying: “Every sanctuary city is unsafe. Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals and President Trump’s not going to tolerate it.”In Los Angeles, meanwhile, 700 active-duty US marines was being withdrawn, the Pentagon confirmed, more than a month after Trump deployed them to the city against the objections of local leaders.Here’s more on these and the day’s other key Trump administration stories at a glance.Trump’s border tsar to target US sanctuary cities Tom Homan has vowed to “flood the zone” of sanctuary cities with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in an all-out bid to overcome the lack of cooperation he said the government faced from Democrat-run municipalities in its quest to arrest and detain undocumented people.The pledge from Donald Trump’s hardline border tsar followed the arrest of two undocumented men from the Dominican Republic after an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer suffered gunshot wounds in an apparent robbery attempt in New York City on Saturday night.Read the full story700 active-duty marines withdrawn from LAThe Pentagon confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the full deployment of 700 active-duty US marines was being withdrawn from Los Angeles more than a month after Donald Trump deployed them to the city in a move state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative.Read the full storyTrump tax bill to add $3.4tn to US debt over next decadeThe president’s signature tax and spending bill will add $3.4tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released on Monday.Major cuts to Medicaid and the national food stamps program are estimated to save the country $1.1tn – only a chunk of the $4.5tn in lost revenue that will come from the bill’s tax cuts.Read the full storyLegal group asks DoJ to look into ‘illegal DEI practices’ at Johns HopkinsA legal group founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller has requested the justice department investigate “illegal DEI practices” at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.In a letter to the justice department’s civil rights division, America First Legal asked an assistant attorney general to investigate and issue enforcement actions against the prestigious medical university for embracing “a discriminatory DEI regime as a core institutional mandate”.Read the full storyHundreds of Nasa workers rebuke ‘arbitrary’ Trump cutsAlmost 300 current and former US Nasa employees – including at least four astronauts – have issued a scathing dissent opposing the Trump administration’s sweeping and indiscriminate cuts to the agency, which they say threaten safety, innovation and national security.Read the full storyTrump officials release FBI records on MLK JrThe Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.Read the full storyEpstein accuser urged FBI to investigate Trump decades ago – reportAn artist who first accused Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of sexual assault almost three decades ago has told the New York Times that she had urged law enforcement officials back then to investigate powerful people in their orbit – including Donald Trump.The artist, Maria Farmer, was among the first women to report Epstein and his partner Maxwell of sexual crimes in 1996 when, according to the new interview with the Times, she also identified Trump among others close to Epstein as worthy of attention.Read the full storyHarvard argues Trump’s $2.6bn cuts are illegalHarvard University appeared in federal court on Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn from the college – a major test of the administration’s efforts to reshape higher education institutions by threatening their financial viability.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Michael Bloomberg is calling on Senate Republicans to oust Robert F Kennedy Jr from his post as Trump’s health secretary.

      The US Federal Reserve is pushing back against claims from the White House that it is undergoing extravagant renovations with a video tour showing the central bank’s ongoing construction.

      Hunter Biden gave a profanity-laced interview during which he attacked George Clooney, denied owning the cocaine found in the White House and spoke about his father’s last efforts in the 2024 race before dropping out.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 July 2025. More

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      Trump tax bill to add $3.4tn to US debt over next decade, new analysis finds

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      Donald Trump’s new tax bill will add $3.4tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Monday.Major cuts to Medicaid and the national food stamps program are estimated to save the country $1.1tn – only a chunk of the $4.5tn in lost revenue that will come from the bill’s tax cuts.The cuts will come through stricter work requirements and eligibility checks for both programs. The CBO estimates the bill will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance by 2034.The bill also makes permanent tax cuts that were first introduced by Republicans in Trump’s 2017 tax bill. The cuts included a reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%, and an increase to the standard deduction. It also includes a tax dedication for workers receiving tips and overtime pay, and removes tax credits that support wind and solar power development, which could ultimately raise energy costs for Americans.Increased costs will also come from boosts to immigration and border security funding. The bill allocates nearly $170bn to immigration law enforcement, including the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency and funding for a wall along the southern border.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that, with interest, the bill will actually add $4.1tn to the deficit. The US national debt currently stands at more than $36tn.“It’s still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4tn to the debt,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement. “Modelers from across the ideological spectrum universally agree that any sustained economic benefits are likely to be modest, or negative, and not one serious estimate claims this bill will improve our financial situation.”Trump signed the bill into law earlier this month after weeks of debate among congressional Republicans. The bill passed the Senate 51-50 before it passed the House 218-214.While Republicans largely celebrated the bill, with Trump calling it “the most popular bill ever signed in the history of the country”, only a quarter of Americans in a CBS/YouGov poll said that the bill will help their family.Democrats meanwhile universally criticized the bill, with Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee saying that while “the GOP continues to cash their billionaire donors’ checks, their constituents will starve, lose critical medical care, lose their jobs – and yes, some will die as a result of this bill.” More