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      Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.Since Patel’s alleged admission to Driscoll, the DoJ and the FBI have been gutted and repurposed for Trump’s retribution system. Six of the FBI’s senior executives were fired or forced out in the early weeks of the administration. About 4,500 professional attorneys at the DoJ have accepted a “deferred resignation program”. At least seven federal prosecutors, including those in the southern district of New York, resigned in protest over what they viewed as political interference in dropping the corruption case against the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, in exchange for his cooperation with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups of immigrants. The public integrity section of the DoJ, which handles corruption cases, has been reduced to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been decimated: 70% of its staff has left. One-third of senior leaders at the DoJ have quit. The section enforcing environmental law has lost half its leadership.In the Adams case, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest against what she described as “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, appeared as the enforcer with Adams on Fox News to declare: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City.” And Emil Bove, previously the acting deputy attorney general and a former Trump attorney, who arranged the deal, was awarded an appellate federal judgeship, a potential stepping stone to the supreme court.Trump’s immunity for crimes committed while in office, granted by the extraordinary ruling of the Republican majority on the supreme court, thus thwarting his prosecution over the January 6 insurrection and preserving his political viability for the 2024 election, is the foundation stone on which he stands to protect his stalwarts. With such immunity, he has been freed to authorize corruption. The effect of the supreme court decision permeates his administration and the Republican party down to its bones. Trump v United States has metastasized. As Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean said about the Watergate scandal, it has become “a cancer on the presidency”.The understanding that nobody significant who is working for or supporting Trump can ever expect to face the bar of justice for criminal behavior has been absorbed as an operating principle. In his service, they are released from following the rule of law in favor of obedience to the rule of the leader. As Trump stated in granting a commutation to former Republican congressman George Santos, convicted of stealing of Covid unemployment insurance benefits, credit card fraud, embezzlement of election funds and identity theft, among other crimes, “at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Santos is now able to attend the Kennedy Center Honors, when disco queen Gloria Gaynor is bestowed her award and belts I Will Survive – apparently one of his favorites.In his inside-out world, Santos the con is transformed into Trump’s projection of himself as a victim. Santos is washed clean; he is resurrected. The Santos commutation, after serving 84 days of an 87-month sentence, was a minor masterstroke for Trump to demonstrate even more than contempt for the law and his exultation of stupidity. Santos was not just the class clown of the House Republican conference. The fake descendant of Holocaust survivors, phony Goldman Sachs banker, bogus real estate tycoon, but real Brazilian drag queen, was an albatross for congressional Republicans. Trump’s commutation is another one of his gestures to demonstrate that House Republicans will swallow any embarrassment and insult with servility.Santos’s commutation represents the obverse but essential element of the retribution system – the rewards system. The favors began on his inauguration day, when Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 people involved in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, followed by pardons for 23 anti-abortion activists convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, 16 politicians as of June (including those from his first term), financial fraudsters and closely connected donors. One of the January 6 pardoned prisoners, Christopher Moynihan, was arrested on 20 October for attempted murder of the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. More than 10 of the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump have been rearrested, charged or sentenced on a variety of charges, including child sexual assault and plotting to kill FBI agents.Homan, the “border czar”, has no need for a pardon or commutation. He was exempted from prosecution by Trump’s justice department after having reportedly been taped in a sting operation by FBI agents in September 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag in exchange for promising to deliver federal contracts once he assumed his position under Trump.Homan has offered a series of conflicting explanations about the money. On Fox News, he insisted he did “nothing criminal”, a non-denial denial. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered a different explanation, announcing that Homan had never taken the cash. When the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, asked Bondi on 7 October, “what became of the $50,000?”, she did not answer, but spewed a falsehood that Whitehouse had taken a campaign donation from someone who had held meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. Apparently taking the cue, Homan went on the rightwing NewsNation to say: “I didn’t take $50,000 from anybody.” In short, he has claimed he has not done anything illegal in not doing it. If he were to write about it, Homan might borrow the title from OJ Simpson’s If I Did It.Trump’s pardons and grants of clemency often bypass the traditional review process of the pardon attorney at the justice department, even though he has replaced the professional Liz Oyer with the crackpot Ed Martin, who was an organizer of Stop the Steal rallies and attorney for January 6 defendants. As the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin led the purge of DoJ prosecutors of January 6 insurrectionists. But Martin’s tenure was abbreviated when it was clear his confirmation to hold the job permanently would be rejected by the Senate. Trump sent him to DoJ, where he is also the head of the new “weaponization working group”. Martin has overseen the cellophane-thin indictment of the Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud, which she denies. Trump has fired her, but the supreme court has allowed her to stay in her job until it hears the arguments in the case in January 2026.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s scheme of indicting “enemies within” on contrived mortgage application fraud charges extends to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial fraud, and targeting the California Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment. Trump has enlisted for this particular retribution campaign the enthusiastically thuggish Bill Pulte, like Trump another unworthy entitled heir, grandson to the billionaire founder of a home building empire, to dredge up the thin gruel to make the accusations. Pulte has a history of making belligerent insults, even to a family member who filed a lawsuit against him to stop his “degrading and threatening harassment”. In early September, at the new exclusive private club in Washington for Trump people, the Executive Branch, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, confronted Pulte for “trash-talking him” to Trump. “I’m going to punch you in your fucking face,” Bessent said, according to the New York Post. Yet Trump still apparently values Pulte for his utility as one of his loudmouth bullies.Martin peeked into the James case with a letter to her attorney Abbe Lowell on 12 August asking for her to resign as “an act of good faith”, adding that his letter was “confidential”. Lowell replied that given the letter’s obvious violation of the code of “professional responsibility” for justice department attorneys, “I was not sure it was actually from you.” Lowell also noted that Martin had staged a strange “photo opportunity”, standing in front of James’s brownstone in Brooklyn accompanied by a photographer from the New York Post, “outside the bounds of DoJ and ethics rules”. Even more bizarrely, Martin wore a trenchcoat, perhaps in homage to the character of Columbo, a fictional detective made famous in a TV series of the 1970s but earlier played by the actor Thomas Mitchell, Martin’s uncle. “One has no conceivable idea of any proper or legitimate reason you went to Ms James’ house, what you were doing, and for what actual purpose,” wrote Lowell.When Trump demanded the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, his recent appointee as the US attorney in the eastern district of Virginia, Erik Siebert, refused on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence for the allegation. He was promptly replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former beauty contestant and insurance lawyer from Florida, who had assisted in Trump’s documents case at Mar-a-Lago, and had been elevated to a senior associate staff secretary in his White House. Six top attorneys in the eastern district’s office either resigned in protest or were fired. One of the longtime professional prosecutors who was fired, Michael Ben’Ary, taped a letter to the door, stating: “Leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security.”Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York, was fired in July. She filed a lawsuit claiming her “politically motivated termination” was “unlawful and unconstitutional” and solely the result of her relationship to her father. Perhaps coincidentally, she was the prosecutor in the cases of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.Just when James Comey filed a motion for the judge to dismiss the case against him as a vindictive prosecution, a reporter at Lawfare, Anna Bower, revealed that Halligan had initiated text messages on Signal petulantly complaining to her about her stories on the Letitia James case and demanding corrections. In fact, Bower had only tweeted a New York Times article that cast doubt on the central contention of the prosecution that James used a second home as a rental property. Halligan demanded changes in the article that Bower did not write, but Halligan claimed she couldn’t discuss them because of grand jury secrecy, which she broadly hinted at. Then, when Bower informed her she would publish their exchange, Halligan belatedly insisted it was off the record. She noted that she erased her messages on Signal on a regular basis, which violates the Federal Records Act. In the world of yesterday, Halligan would have been instantly removed and under investigation from both the DoJ and congressional committees. A DoJ spokesperson responded to Bower with the department’s official statement: “Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts.”The sheer amateurishness of Halligan may make Trump’s system appear unprecedented, which it is certainly in American history. Nixon at his worst only aspired to what Trump is putting into practice. But aspects of it have had their parallels in the purges that were characteristic of authoritarian regimes of the past. “In other words, this system is the logical outgrowth of the Leader principle in its full implication and the best possible guarantee for loyalty,” wrote Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.The cranks, incompetents and ambitious losers recruited to carry out Trump’s vengeance invariably display a spectrum of quirks. His preference would be that they would all be a chorus line of former beauty queens. “It’s that face. It’s those lips. They move like a machine gun,” Trump has mused about his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Whoever the Trump misfit might be, beauties or Ed Martin, they are replaceable widgets that function within the system he has created. Trump wages war on the “enemies within” with the eccentrics at his disposal. They represent the revenge of the second-rate or less, taking positions once held by the most qualified and then wreaking havoc on their meritorious betters in a wave of resentment. They reflect their damaged leader. That is the beating heart of Trumpism.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘He didn’t deserve that’: widow speaks out after husband’s violent death at ICE facility

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      A few hours before the Texas sun set, Stephany Gauffeny held her newborn son close to her chest as she started walking in a cemetery. The grave she stopped at had no headstone, but Gauffeny, 32, had written her husband’s name on a red ribbon.She married Miguel García-Hernández in 2016, nearly 10 years before he was shot at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas in late September.“I am trying to cope because that’s what I am supposed to do, but what hurts me the most is to hear my kids ask where daddy is,” said Gauffeny, speaking to the Guardian in her first interview since his death.“My eight-year-old daughter with autism waited for him until the last minute. They would talk over the phone while he was detained, but one day before the funeral, I had to tell her that daddy was in heaven and that he would be watching her and that she wouldn’t see him.”García-Hernández ended up in ICE custody early on 24 September after a short time in jail for a DUI. That same morning, while he was shackled inside a government van, a gunman opened fire outside the ICE field office in Dallas where he was awaiting intake.View image in fullscreenFederal authorities have said the attacker was targeting ICE officials, but only detainees were hurt, including García-Hernández, 31, who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.“I was coming back from a doctor’s appointment for my pregnancy and I was so excited to tell him about our son, but I got a call saying that my husband was in the hospital,” said Gauffeny, switching between English and Spanish intermittently.“I walked into the [hospital] room and I just started crying. His arms were restrained to the bed and he had handcuffs on his feet.”García-Hernández died on 29 September from his gunshot wounds. His third child with Gauffeny was born three days later. He would have turned 32 on 5 January, the day of their 10th wedding anniversary, Gauffeny said as she stood sorrowfully in front of García-Hernández’s grave.She believes the rising political violence and anti-immigration agenda in the US played a part in her husband’s violent death.The couple had been focusing hard on the new home they bought a few months ago in Arlington, on the outskirts of Dallas. There, they lived with their children, as well as two girls from Gauffeny’s previous relationship whom García-Hernández had helped raise.“He talked about little projects like turning the garage into a room, painting some parts of the house, getting a new fence and doing it all by himself,” said Gauffeny, her voice cracking.“It hurts to look around now, you know? Who is going to do it?”García-Hernández was born in San Luis Potosí, a central state in Mexico, and crossed the US border without papers when he was 14. Though the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program has benefited hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants with similar cases since 2012, he arrived just too early to qualify.García-Hernández lived in the Dallas area for nearly two decades, most recently making a living painting and remodeling homes. Gauffeny said he had applied for a Biden administration initiative, dubbed Keeping Families Together, that was designed to allow the undocumented spouses of US citizens to get legal status. However, a federal judge in Texas blocked the policy just a few months after it started.View image in fullscreenMartina Alvarado, a lawyer who tried to help García-Hernández fix his immigration status, said he was awaiting a waiver that, if granted, would effectively erase his illegal entry into the US and allow him to get a green card based on his marriage to an American citizen.Gauffeny said her husband was planning to open his own painting company as soon as his immigration case was resolved, and he had been saving money for the equipment.Since Donald Trump took office for a second time, his administration has aggressively expanded immigration raids across the country, granting deportation agents a broad mandate to target those in the country without proper documents, even if they’re not criminals. The crackdown has spurred massive protests and growing concerns over tactics by federal agents.The contentious climate around immigration under the Trump administration can also be palpable far from the neighborhoods and the streets where federal agents roam. After the shooting and the death of García-Hernández, Gauffeny said she received hateful messages from strangers on social media.“Some comments said they were happy that it happened because he shouldn’t have been here illegally,” said Gauffeny.“He and I never hid the fact he entered illegally, you know, but what I keep saying is that he didn’t deserve that and we’re going to fight this.”Eric Cedillo, a Dallas attorney who has been helping Gauffeny since the shooting, said they are contemplating filing a lawsuit, without specifying details at that time.García-Hernández’s mother, Maria García, was deported to Mexico earlier this year and was initially unable to see her son when he was hospitalized. But she was allowed into the US after the Mexican government intervened. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry said “an extraordinary humanitarian parole was arranged for García-Hernández’s mother to travel to the US”.The statement did not provide information on what, if any, economic assistance has or will be given to Gauffeny to cover expenses related to García-Hernández’s funeral.View image in fullscreenAt the funeral, a Mexican flag was laid next to his grave by the Brown Berets of North Texas, a community defense group that runs an “ICE Watch” in the area. When Stephany visited with newborn Miles Alexander last week, the flag was gone but some roses remained.Gauffeny said that securing the burial site was possible thanks to money donated to a GoFundMe page created by her sister-in-law. There is no headstone on García-Hernández’s grave yet because she cannot afford it.“My biggest concern now is to have a place to live in the future. Our mortgage is very expensive and we were already struggling when he was detained. I am scared for my kids,” Gauffeny said.Before leaving the cemetery in Arlington, Gauffeny recalled that her husband had bought a Bible in Spanish while in the custody of Tarrant county for the DUI. Days after his death, his belongings came in the mail, including the Bible, which he had bookmarked.She said: “It was on a page in Genesis. He wanted to read the Bible from the start to the end but couldn’t continue because he was killed.” More

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      Why we’re holding a teach-in about American history at the Smithsonian | Kellie Carter Jackson and Nicole Hemmer

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      On 26 October, podcasters, professors, journalists and ordinary citizens will gather on the steps of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for a teach-in in defense of history and museums.The teach-in comes at a moment when the Smithsonian system faces unprecedented attacks from the Trump administration, which has threatened to bar funding for any exhibits that touch on the darker sides of US history. The threats against the Smithsonian are part of the administration’s war against history and historians: interfering in history curricula at schools across the country, redirecting federal grants to projects that promote American exceptionalism, and yoking the country’s 250th anniversary celebration to the Maga agenda.That’s why we’re staging an intervention in the form of a teach-in, put together by the hosts of two historical podcasts, This Day and The Memory Palace. In an authoritarian regime, one of the first things that is taken from the public is honest and credible information. The past itself becomes treacherous terrain: authoritarians attempt to seize control of the country’s history, reworking it into a vision of a glorious, powerful, patriotic – and largely fictional – past. The people and events may be real, but the stories they’re used to tell are false. In such a moment, telling the truth, and teaching the truth, about the country’s history is an act of both defiance and solidarity.A teach-in represents a different kind of activism than the No Kings rallies held last weekend. Such rallies show mass opposition to the regime; but a teach-in represents a step toward deeper organizing and activism. Consider the first teach-in ever held in the US: It took place 60 years ago, in 1965, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professors planned a one-day strike to oppose the Vietnam war but met stiff resistance from Governor George Romney, the state legislature and university administrators. So instead of withdrawing their labor, they decided to use it.Marshall Sahlins, an anthropology professor, first suggested the idea of a teach-in. “They say we’re neglecting our responsibilities as teachers,” he said. “Let’s show them how responsible we feel. Instead of teaching out, we’ll teach in – all night.” Organizers gathered in the apartment of two fellow professors, Zelda and William Gamson, to plot their protest: an all-night event with lectures, debate and open discussion. (The Smithsonian teach-in will flip this format, running from dawn until dusk.)Led by faculty and Students for a Democratic Society, the teach-in lasted for 12 hours. Faculty gave mini-lectures and participated in debates to enormous audiences. About 3,500 people, including 200 professors, attended the teach-in, which spilled into new spaces as the crowd grew. Organizers improvised as the night went on: one can imagine faculty and students offering poetry, a performance or singing. It was the perfect incubator for the anti-war protest movement, rooting students in well-sourced information about the stakes of the war and the harm that was being produced. The demonstration was powerful and contagious. The teach-in quickly spread to campuses all over the country.In the decades that followed, teach-ins became a fixture on college campuses. Teach-ins about apartheid, about reproductive rights, about sexual consent, about the Iraq war, about Palestine – the policy issues that grabbed students’ attention were transformed into opportunities to deepen their understanding while building communities of informed activists. Nor were they limited to campuses. In the 1990s, activists held teach-ins about globalization in advance of the World Trade Organization protests; in 2011, teach-ins became a central component of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Teach-ins move beyond soundbites, slogans and chants; they challenge attenders to dive into nuanced conversations. To borrow from the scholar bell hooks, they turn the community into a classroom. They can provide context, describe consequences and instruct the uninformed or misinformed. They can also provide a syllabus of sorts or reading lists. If authoritarian regimes thrive on ignorance and apathy, then a key antidote in every oppositional movement is learning and action.The Teach-In in Defense of History and Museums builds on this long legacy. And it comes at a critical time in the battle over the nation’s past. While it is a coincidence that Trump is in office while the US celebrates its 250th anniversary, his administration’s push toward a particular kind of whitewashed narrative is not. From the moment he announced his run for president, Trump has positioned himself as a culture warrior in the fight to define not just America’s future, but also its past. In his first year in office, white supremacists marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, in a deadly fight over the town’s Confederate statues – and the meaning of its racist history. A few years after that, Trump responded to the 1619 Project and its exploration of the legacy of slavery with his own 1776 Commission.So it is little wonder that as Trump has attempted to radically expand his power in his second term, he has focused so much attention on seizing control of the nation’s past as well. But America’s past does not belong to Trump, the right wing, or even the left. This weekend’s teach-in will emphasize stories about the country’s history rooted in archives and evidence, but also in a shared belief that the work to strengthen American democracy cannot succeed unless it is rooted in a real understanding of the country’s contentious past – its joys and its sorrows, its benefits and its harms, its brilliant promise and its unrealized dreams. And it will also model an alternative to the “debate-me-bro” culture that defines so much of political life in the US today, showing that activism works best when it is not about scoring rhetorical points but rather deepening our understanding of the issues and nation we seek to shape.What is powerful about the Smithsonian is that literally it stands on its own and metaphorically speaks for itself. From the original star-spangled banner, to Lincoln’s top hat, to a stool in a Greensboro lunch counter, to Archie Bunker’s chair, these relics make America. Defending museums is about more than preserving nostalgia. It is about protecting what was, what is and what could be.

      Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 associate professor and chair of the Africana studies department at Wellesley College. Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University More

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      From scapegoats to city hall: how New York Muslims built power and shaped Zohran Mamdani

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      Life was never the same for New Yorkers after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, with every resident coping with the trauma and devastation of that day.But for Muslim New Yorkers there was an added burden: the suspicion and sometimes physical harm now lurking around every corner.Vigilante violence against Arabs and Muslims exploded across the city and around the country. In what feels very much like a precursor to today’s ruthless ICE raids, mass arrests swept up Muslims on flimsy immigration pretexts, with many of them being held under extremely abusive conditions. The contemporary national security state was born atop the vestiges of Muslim civil rights.Twenty-four years later, the situation in New York appears completely different. The country’s largest city is now poised to elect its first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who won the Democratic slot on the ranked-choice primary earlier this summer. What accounts for this profound change?The practically unstoppable rise of the man with a smile as wide as the West Side Highway can certainly be explained by his oratorical gifts and political skills. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, has described him as a “once-in-a-generation leader”. But Mamdani’s success is also part of a larger story of how young Muslim New Yorkers have been organizing themselves after the dangerous situations they were in after 9/11.Spurred by the necessity to counter a rising tide of Islamophobia, young Muslim New Yorkers have spent years developing political power in the city, building local political institutions, and leaning into a different kind of politics, one that embraces identity yet also moves beyond its sometimes shallow appeal. That movement has been growing quietly and steadily for years. Mamdani is now its best and most accomplished expression.View image in fullscreenAs the Muslims of New York have been organizing, their numbers have also been steadily growing, making it impossible to ignore Muslim voters for anyone who wants to run for office and win. The city probably has about 1 million Muslims (there are no official numbers tallied for religious groups), which is about the same number as Jews in New York City.The Council on American-Islamic Relations estimates more than 350,000 Muslim New Yorkers of that million are registered to vote, though only about 12% voted in the 2021 mayoral election. That is also now changing. Muslim and south Asian voter turnout in the mayoral primary this summer was up 60% compared with the 2021 primary, according to the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. And despite what rival Andrew Cuomo claims when he stated last month that “the Muslim community are not socialists,” it is clear that Muslims are a growing political force pushing the Democratic party to the left on fundamental issues.“People are looking at Zohran as being a very unique candidate, and he is,” said Saman Waquad, president of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. “But his prominence in this election is built on the work of Muslims over the past decades, in the post-9/11 era.”That work began immediately after the 2001 attacks. Within days, the government began using federal immigration law to arrest anyone it suspected of having a connection with terrorism, which often meant little more than being an immigrant and having a Muslim name. Hundreds of people were detained, and the justice department refused to release their names, leaving families scrambling to look for those who had in effect been disappeared into jails around the country.Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum), a community-based social justice organization of working-class south Asians and Indian Caribbeans, recalled the moment. His organization, he said, was doing “the work of finding people in jails, organizing them on the inside, organizing their families on the outside, and warning community leaders about working with the FBI and the NYPD”.View image in fullscreenMost efforts in the years after 2001 were often reacting to crises rather than building alternatives. And the crises were many. The Bush administration began requiring all adult males from two dozen Muslim-majority countries to register with the government. The FBI interviewed Muslim community members as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Spies and informants infiltrated mosques and community organizations across the city and around the nation. The Obama administration’s Terrorism Screening Database ballooned to more than 680,000 names. Through the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA was revealed to by spying on ordinary Americans, including Muslim Americans. Working with a CIA officer, the NYPD engaged in a years-long campaign of warrantless surveillance of Muslims Americans across the city.Muslim New Yorkers had little influence in city politics during those years. The only Muslim elected to city council was Robert Jackson, who won his seat in 2001 and who subsequently became a trailblazer for politically minded young Muslims. (In 2018, Jackson became the first Muslim elected to the state senate.)But Jackson’s victory was unique at the time, and by the time the 2013 mayoral election season rolled around, Muslim New Yorkers were still searching for more structural solutions to battle government repression targeted at them and fight for political recognition.The Muslim Democratic Club of New York was formed that year, and the club co-sponsored its first mayoral forum, where all the major Democratic candidates, including Bill de Blasio and Christine Quinn, showed up. Each candidate was asked about incorporating Muslim holidays into the public school calendar (a campaign some Muslim New Yorkers began in 2006, when a state regents exam was held on the same day as a major Muslim holiday) and if they believed warrantless surveillance of Muslims was unconstitutional. Only two of the seven candidates found the spying unconstitutional.Mamdani’s rise to the top of New York city politics began with the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. Ali Najmi, its co-founder, is a lawyer who specializes in election law. In 2015, he attempted a run for city council. Najmi’s childhood friend, the rapper Heems, had endorsed him in the race, which was enough to inspire Heems fan Mamdani to trek to Queens to volunteer for Najmi’s campaign. In 2017, the Palestinian American Lutheran pastor (and Democratic Socialists of America member) Khader El-Yateem ran for a seat on the council. Mamdani, who joined the DSA around this time, was his canvassing director. And in 2018, Mamdani managed the left-leaning political journalist Ross Barkan’s run for state senate.Najmi, El-Yateem and Barkan all lost their races, but as Najmi told the newspaper amNewYork: “Zohran’s ascension is the culmination of a bunch of people losing, myself included. And you learn lessons, you learn as you go. There’s institutional knowledge that was passed.” In 2021, Shahana Hanif became the first Muslim woman elected to city council.Mamdani served on the board of the Muslim Democratic Club between 2018 and 2019, shortly before winning his own seat as a state assembly member in 2020. Soon after assuming office, he joined a 15-day hunger strike organized by the Taxi Workers Alliance to win debt relief for taxi drivers who, out of an exploitative system, owed enormous amounts of money on the medallions which authorized them to drive their cabs.View image in fullscreen“In a city where a large number of taxi drivers are south Asian, there’s a natural affinity between Zohran and taxi drivers,” said Fahd Ahmed of Drum. “And Zohran used that to cultivate a relationship with the Taxi Workers Alliance. Similarly, with us. After he was elected to the state assembly, he reached out to us to say: ‘I know you all have historically worked on [the issue] of [warrantless] surveillance of Muslim communities. What can my office do?’”It would be a mistake, however, to assume Mamdani bases his politics on identity over values. “Other candidates have been south Asian or Muslim, but they’ve not succeeded in capturing the community’s vote the way that Zohran has,” Ahmed said. “He instead uses identity as a way to get to people’s issues.”Asad Dandia, a community organizer and friend of Mamdani’s, echoed Ahmed. “Zohran and I both came of age when 9/11, the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, the Arab spring, Occupy Wall Street and NYPD surveillance of Muslims all occurred before we turned 20,” Dandia wrote in an email. “We were only a year or two out of college when Trump won the 2016 election. These are the events that shaped us.”View image in fullscreenDandia has personal experience with the NYPD spying on his life. When he was 19 – years – old, Dandia co-founded a charity in New York, Muslims Giving Back, to aid poor families throughout the city. The charity was soon infiltrated by a paid informer for the NYPD, Shamiur Rahman, who later admitted that he had been recruited by the police to spy on Muslims, for which he was cleared of a drug arrest and paid first $1,000 a month and then $1,500 a month. He was to “create and capture” opportunities for Muslims to say suspicious things about terrorism and report them to the police. He never saw anyone he “spied on do anything illegal, not even littering”, he later wrote.In retrospect, Dandia said, he should have seen this coming. Rahman’s behavior was odd. He would arrive late to meetings and photograph the sign-on sheet. He would take pictures of food being placed in cars to get license plates in the photos. He began posing strange questions, asking if killing innocent people is justified. Dandia eventually joined and won a lawsuit against the NYPD, which in 2017 established a new office of civilian oversight over the police force. He began thinking of the connections between surveillance capitalism and Islamophobia and, in 2020, he co-founded a Muslim caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America.“We could not hide the fact [from the world] that we are Muslim,” Dandia said, referring to himself and Mamdani. “Yet we do not anchor our politics strictly on these identitarian terms. Adequate housing is a ‘Muslim issue’, public transit is a ‘Muslim issue’, and universal childcare is a ‘Muslim issue’. Zohran fights for these issues because they advance the common good for all of us, Muslim or not, and align with both democratic socialist principles and Islamic values.”Campaign fundraising statistics bear out how Mamdani’s affordability message is resonating beyond the confines of the Muslim community. According to Open Secrets, a non-partisan group tracking money in US politics, the Mamdani campaign has raised $16.8m, with about 90% of Mamdani’s donors contributing less than $250. The average contribution is $98. By contrast, the average contribution to the Cuomo campaign is $615, yet Cuomo has raised only $12.6m. Cuomo-supporting Super Pacs, on the other hand, have received 11 times as much money – including millions from Airbnb ($10m), former mayor Michael Bloomberg ($8.3m) and DoorDash ($1.8m) – than the Super Pacs that support Mamdani or oppose Cuomo.But the most powerful political action committee of the season is arguably the city of 87,000 volunteers for Mamdani who are knocking on voter doors across the five boroughs talking about building an affordable New York City with the Muslim democratic socialist nominee.View image in fullscreenOver the last decade, there has been a rising number of Muslim American politicians who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America or lean very deliberately left: Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib, Omar Fateh, Zaynab Mohamed, Shahana Hanif, Ilhan Omar, Abdul El-Sayed. It is not the first time a religious minority in the US played an outsized role in the left. For decades, the American Communist party was made up of a disproportionate number of Jewish Americans.“The left has been one of the only places that has been generally open, receptive and supportive of Muslim communities since 9/11,” said Ahmed. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and then in the anti-war movement around Iraq and Afghanistan, there was nobody else standing with us against our repression. Many of us grew into our organizing at that nexus.”Waquad is a member of the DSA and president of the Muslim Democratic Club. For Muslims, she explained, the DSA is “an alternative to the mainstream Democratic party”. The general election “showed how disenfranchised a lot of voters felt. Muslim voters felt pretty much ignored.“The feeling that I had submitting my ballot for the general election was one of sadness. There [wasn’t] much of a choice in what we could vote for,” said Waquad.“Whereas when I submitted my ballot for the primary for the mayoral race, I cried,” she said. “I’m not just voting for somebody who is Muslim. I’m voting for somebody that I truly believe is the best candidate right now for the city and its people.” More

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      Trump says all trade negotiations with Canada ‘terminated’ over an anti-tariff advertising campaign – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with the news that president Donald Trump said on Thursday all trade talks with Canada were terminated following what he called a fraudulent advertisement from Canada in which former and late US president Ronald Reagan spoke negatively about tariffs.“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The Thursday night post on Trump’s social media site came after Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country’s exports to countries outside the US because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs.Trump posted: “The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is fake, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.”The president wrote: “They only did this to interfere with the decision of the US supreme court, and other courts”. He added: “Tariffs are very important to the national security, and economy, of the USA. Based on their egregious behaviour, all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated.”Carney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night. The prime minister was set to leave on Friday morning for a summit in Asia, while Trump is set to do the same on Friday evening.Earlier on Thursday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation + Institute posted on X that the ad created by the government of Ontario “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.” It added that Ontario did not receive foundation permission “to use and edit the remarks”.The foundation said it is “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address.Read our full story here:In other developments:

      The federal government remains shut down.

      Donald Trump canceled plans for a federal deployment to San Francisco at the request of two billionaire supporters, but he reiterated threats to Chicago.

      Trump said that he does not plan to ask Congress to declare war on Venezuela, ahead of possible strikes targeting suspected drug cartels as “we’re just gonna kill people”.

      Trump said an unnamed “friend” had just sent him “a check for $130m” to be used to pay military salaries during the government shutdown.

      A federal judge in Texas on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Republican congressman who argued that California’s redistricting proposal would cause him personal injury and should be blocked.

      Trump claimed his militarized war on drugs was a huge improvement over the Biden administration’s effort, but a government database shows drug seizures are down from 2022.

      The White House has revealed that major companies in the tech, defense and crypto industries are helping Trump fund his $300m ballroom at the White House, where work is under way to demolish the entire East Wing.

      Top House Democrats have accused Donald Trump of orchestrating an illegal scheme to pay himself $230m in taxpayer money, demanding he immediately abandon claims they say violate the constitution.
      Donald Trump canceled plans for a deployment of federal troops to San Francisco that had sparked widespread condemnation from California leaders and sent protesters flooding into the streets.The Bay Area region had been on edge after reports emerged on Wednesday that the Trump administration was poised to send more than 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agents to the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city in the East Bay, as part of a large-scale immigration-enforcement plan. By early Thursday morning, hundreds of protesters had gathered outside the Coast Guard base, holding signs with slogans such as “No ICE or Troops in the Bay!”.But just hours later, the president said he would not move forward with a “surge” of federal forces in the area after speaking with the mayor, Daniel Lurie, and Silicon Valley leaders including Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO who recently apologized for saying Trump should send national guard troops, and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia.Lurie said he spoke with the president on Wednesday night, and that Trump told him he would call off the deployment.“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning,” Lurie said in a statement.Trump confirmed the conversation on his Truth Social platform, saying: “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with the news that president Donald Trump said on Thursday all trade talks with Canada were terminated following what he called a fraudulent advertisement from Canada in which former and late US president Ronald Reagan spoke negatively about tariffs.“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The Thursday night post on Trump’s social media site came after Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country’s exports to countries outside the US because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs.Trump posted: “The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is fake, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.”The president wrote: “They only did this to interfere with the decision of the US supreme court, and other courts”. He added: “Tariffs are very important to the national security, and economy, of the USA. Based on their egregious behaviour, all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated.”Carney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night. The prime minister was set to leave on Friday morning for a summit in Asia, while Trump is set to do the same on Friday evening.Earlier on Thursday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation + Institute posted on X that the ad created by the government of Ontario “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.” It added that Ontario did not receive foundation permission “to use and edit the remarks”.The foundation said it is “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address.Read our full story here:In other developments:

      The federal government remains shut down.

      Donald Trump canceled plans for a federal deployment to San Francisco at the request of two billionaire supporters, but he reiterated threats to Chicago.

      Trump said that he does not plan to ask Congress to declare war on Venezuela, ahead of possible strikes targeting suspected drug cartels as “we’re just gonna kill people”.

      Trump said an unnamed “friend” had just sent him “a check for $130m” to be used to pay military salaries during the government shutdown.

      A federal judge in Texas on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Republican congressman who argued that California’s redistricting proposal would cause him personal injury and should be blocked.

      Trump claimed his militarized war on drugs was a huge improvement over the Biden administration’s effort, but a government database shows drug seizures are down from 2022.

      The White House has revealed that major companies in the tech, defense and crypto industries are helping Trump fund his $300m ballroom at the White House, where work is under way to demolish the entire East Wing.

      Top House Democrats have accused Donald Trump of orchestrating an illegal scheme to pay himself $230m in taxpayer money, demanding he immediately abandon claims they say violate the constitution. More

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      Is Trump preparing for civil war? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS News, CBS News Chicago, PBS Newshour, CNN, WHAS11, Global News, KREM 2 News, Inside Edition, Today
      Read David Smith’s piece on why Donald Trump is demolishing the East Wing of the White House
      Read Rachel Leingang’s piece on the future for No Kings rallies
      Buy Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More