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      Trump news at a glance: eight Democrats join Republicans to advance funding bill

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      The first step toward ending the US government shutdown has been made after a handful of Democrats and dozens of Republicans voted to advance legislation in the Senate.The funding bill will still need to be deliberated and passed by the Senate and approved by the House to end what has been the longest government shutdown in US history.The compromise bill received exactly the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate, with almost all Republicans voting in favor along with eight Democrats, many of whom are moderates or serving their final terms.But the measure leaves out the healthcare subsidies that Democrats had demanded for weeks, leading most Democrats to reject it.Here are the key stories at a glance:Senate advances funding bill to end longest US government shutdown in historyThe Senate on Sunday made significant progress towards ending the longest US government shutdown in history, narrowly advancing a compromise bill to reauthorize funding and undo the layoffs of some employees.But most Democratic senators rejected it, as did many of the party’s lawmakers in the House of Representatives, which will have to vote to approve it before the government can reopen.Read the full storyUS flight cancellations riseFlight cancellations and delays are set to grow as airline passengers across the US spent the weekend grappling with those issues at major airports nationwide after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated a 4% reduction in air traffic in response to the ongoing federal government shutdown.If the shutdown continues, the FAA has instructed airlines to cut 6% of flights on Tuesday – and to do the same to 10% by 14 November.Read the full storyTrump weighs giving Americans $2,000 from tariff revenuesDonald Trump on Sunday mused about giving most Americans $2,000 funded by tariff revenues collected by the president’s administration – an evident bid to rally public support on the issue.“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday. For such a plan to take effect, congressional approval would likely be required.Read the full storyTrump shares false claim about Obama Donald Trump promoted the false claim that Barack Obama has earned $40m in “royalties linked to Obamacare” in a post to his 11 million followers on Truth Social on Sunday.The fictional claim that the former US president receives royalty payments for the use of his name to refer to the Affordable Care Act, which he signed into law in 2010, has been repeatedly debunked since at least 2017.Read the full storyTrump attacks BBC after Tim Davie resignationDonald Trump on Sunday attacked the BBC after its chief resigned in a scandal over the editing of a documentary about the US president.Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and the head of BBC News resigned after a former adviser to the corporation accused it of “serious and systemic” bias in its coverage of issues including Trump, Gaza and trans rights.Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that “very dishonest people” had “tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, has reportedly said that she is “much, much happier” after the Trump administration transferred her to a minimum-security federal prison in Texas, according to emails obtained by NBC News.

      Donald Trump became the first sitting president in nearly a half-century at a regular-season NFL game, attending the Washington Commanders’ contest against the Detroit Lions on Sunday. There were boos from large sections of fans in the stands – as well as scattered cheers.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 8 November. More

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      Senate advances funding bill to end longest US government shutdown in history

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      The Senate on Sunday made significant progress towards ending the longest US government shutdown in history, narrowly advancing a compromise bill to reauthorize funding and undo the layoffs of some employees.But the measure, which resulted from days of talks between a handful of Democratic and Republican senators, leaves out the healthcare subsidies that Democrats had demanded for weeks. Most Democratic senators rejected it, as did many of the party’s lawmakers in the House of Representatives, which will have to vote to approve it before the government can reopen.“This healthcare crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home, that I cannot in good faith support this [resolution] that fails to address the healthcare crisis,” said Democratic Senator majority leader Chuck Schumer.The bill received exactly the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate, with almost all Republicans voting in favor along with eight Democrats, many of whom are moderates or serving their final terms.“Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House, and they made clear over a period of weeks, including just this week, that this was as far as they would go as part of the shutdown talks,” said New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the group who is retiring after next year.“This was the only deal on the table.”In the 40 days since the shutdown began when the government’s funding authorization expired on 1 October, the Senate’s Republican leader John Thune held 14 votes on a bill approved on a near party line vote by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which would have extended funding through most of November.But no more than three Democrats ever voted in the affirmative, denying it the support it needed to proceed. The minority party demanded that any funding legislation also extend tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act health plans, which were created under Joe Biden and expire at the end of the year.Thune maintained that he would be willing to negotiate over those subsidies, but only once the government was reopened.“After 40 long days, I’m hopeful we can bring this shutdown to the end,” he said shortly before the vote was held on Sunday evening.“From the precarious situation we’re in with air travel to the fact that our staff have been working without pay for a full 40 days now, all of us, Republicans and Democrats who support this bill know that the time to act is now.”The compromise legislation authorizes government funding through 30 January 2026 and undoes the firings of federal workers that the White House carried out after the shutdown began. It also guarantees retroactive pay for furloughed federal workers and those who stayed on the job during the shutdown, and prevents further layoffs through January. Included in the compromise are three appropriations bill that will authorize spending through the 2026 fiscal year for the departments of agriculture and veterans affairs, among others.The compromise does not resolved the issue of the Affordable Care Act premiums, which one study forecast would jump by an average of 26% if the tax credits were allowed to expire.As part of the deal, Thune said he would allow a vote on a bill to deal with the credits by the second week of December. But even if it succeeds, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has said he will not put such a measure on the floor.The compromise bill will now need to be approved by the House and signed by Donald Trump, which may take days. After advancing the legislation, the Senate adjourned until Monday morning, leaving the timing of further voting on the matter up in the air.Johnson has kept the House out of session since 19 September, in a bid to force Senate Democrats to vote for the GOP spending bill. Shortly after the Senate’s procedural vote on the compromise succeeded, the House told lawmakers to expect votes this week.But all signs point to a stormy reception for the bill in the chamber, particularly among Democrats.“America is far too expensive. We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven-week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation.”Greg Casar, chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus, said: “A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them. Republicans want health care cuts. Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise – it’s capitulation.”Just before the Senate voted, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna called for Schumer to “be replaced”, saying he was “no longer effective”. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”Relegated to the minority in both chambers of Congress by voters after last year’s elections, Democrats seized on the lapse in government funding to make a stand on healthcare, long a signature issue of the party.In the more than five weeks that followed, polls showed the public believe the GOP was more to blame for the shutdown than the Democrats, and last Tuesday, the party swept off-year elections, in what Democratic leaders called a validation of their strategy in the funding fight.The weeks of unfunded government have taken a toll across the United States. More than 700,000 federal workers were furloughed, and hundreds of thousands more made to work without pay, leading to increasingly long lines at food banks and other social services nationwide as the missed paychecks piled up.At the start of November, the Trump administration moved to pause payments from the federal government’s largest food aid program for the first time ever, prompting an ongoing court fight.Transportation secretary Sean Duffy last week ordered a nationwide reduction in commercial air travel, saying air traffic controllers were facing unprecedented strain. More than 2,500 flights were canceled on Sunday, and Duffy said capacity would be slashed further on Tuesday if funding was not restored. More

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      US Senate vote marks step towards ending federal shutdown

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

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      Growth in global demand for ‘green’ office buildings slows amid Trump policies

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      The growth in global demand for “green” office buildings has slowed after Donald Trump’s assault on environmental protection policies caused a slump in interest in the US, according to a survey of construction industry professionals.Building occupiers and investors across North America and South America expressed significantly lower growth in demand for green commercial buildings, a shift that “seems to be in response to a change in US policy focus”, according to a survey of members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Reported demand across the rest of the world also fell, albeit not as sharply.Residential and commercial buildings together accounted for 34% of global carbon emissions in 2023, according to the UN Environment Programme. The majority of those emissions came from heating, cooling and powering buildings, although about a fifth came from construction.The UN said there was a “critical need for accelerated action in the buildings sector to meet global climate goals”. However, the Rics survey suggested global construction industry professionals were experiencing slower growth in demand.Green buildings can use a range of techniques to cut their environmental impact, ranging from using materials that reduce high-carbon concrete, to cutting water use, cutting heat lost through windows, and using renewable energy. Energy efficiency improvements in particular also help to cut operating costs.Nicholas Maclean, Rics’s acting president, said: “It seems to me that what we’re seeing at the moment might be a blip.“The people who are going to end up using these buildings want them to be sustainable. Everybody, frankly, knows this is the right thing to do.”He added that green office buildings tend to have a “competitive advantage” in attracting higher rents, because of demand from large-scale corporate tenants, in particular.There were still more US respondents to the survey who reported growth in interest in sustainable commercial buildings. However, the balance of building professionals across the continent reporting higher demand fell sharply, from 25% to 11%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOutside North and South America, the balance reporting growth in demand was 40%, still down from 48% in 2021, the first year of the survey, but far above the US.Kisa Zehra, Rics’s sustainability analyst, said government policy and regulations have a “huge impact on the confidence of the market”. The Trump administration has made a concerted effort to dismantle a huge range of environmental protections put in place by Republican and Democratic predecessors, undermining confidence in green standards.Rics also highlighted a decline in the number of construction industry professionals who measured their projects’ embodied carbon, such as that emitted in making materials such as steel, glass and concrete, or in the construction process itself. Forty-six percent of construction professionals reported not measuring embodied carbon, up from 34% the year before. Only 16% of respondents said carbon measurement meaningfully informed material choices in project design. More

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      Trump booed at Commanders NFL game before calling plays from Fox broadcast booth

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      Donald Trump became the first sitting US president in nearly 50 years to attend a regular-season NFL game when he dropped in on the Detroit Lions’ win over the Washington Commanders on Sunday.There were boos from large sections of fans, as well as scattered cheers, at the Commanders’ Northwest Stadium when Trump was shown on the screens late in the first half – and again when the president was introduced by the stadium announcer at halftime. The Washington DC area has strong Democratic support, while Trump’s cuts to the government have affected many workers in the vicinity of the Commanders’ stadium. Sunday was not the first time Trump has received a hostile reception from a Washington sports crowd: he was greeted with ‘lock him up’ chants at the Washington Nationals’ home stadium during the 2019 World Series.The jeering continued while Trump read an oath for members of the military to recite as part of an on-field ceremony during a break in the game.The president arrived at the stadium after the game had started. “I’m a little bit late,” Trump told reporters when he got off Air Force One. The plane had earlier completed a flyover of Northwest Stadium before landing.“We’re gonna have a good game. Things are going along very well. The country’s doing well. The Democrats have to open it up,” he said, a reference to the government shutdown.In the first quarter Lions receiver Amon-Ra St Brown celebrated a touchdown catch by doing the “Trump dance”, which athletes started performing last year.“I heard Trump was going to be [here],” St Brown said. “I don’t know how many times the president’s going to be at the game, so just decided to have some fun.”Lions quarterback Jared Goff said he had enjoyed seeing Air Force One’s flyover. “Awesome that he was here,” Goff said.Fox then gave the president nearly 10 minutes of airtime as he joined the broadcast booth, spoke about his high school football career and called some of the action in the third quarter. Asked how he thought the country was doing, the president answered somewhat dubiously that prices are going down for Americans. He also admitted he had not scored any touchdowns in high school, saying: “At least you realize I never tell a lie.”Trump is just the third sitting president to attend an NFL game during the regular season, according to the league, after Richard Nixon in 1969 and Jimmy Carter in 1978.According to a report by ESPN on Saturday, the White House has told the Commanders’ ownership group that Trump wants the team’s new stadium to bear his name.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’re going to build a beautiful stadium. That’s what I’m involved in, we’re getting all the approvals and everything else,” Trump said during his Fox appearance. “And you have a wonderful owner, Josh [Harris] and his group. And you’re going to see some very good things.”Sunday’s visit was the latest in a series of high-profile appearances at sporting events by Trump, including the Ryder Cup, the Daytona 500 and the men’s final at tennis’s US Open.“We are honored to welcome President Trump to the game as we celebrate those who have served and continue to serve our country,” Commanders president Mark Clouse said. “The entire Commanders organization is proud to participate in the NFL’s league-wide Salute to Service initiative, recognizing the dedication and sacrifice of our nation’s veterans, active-duty service members, and their families this Sunday.”Trump was presumably unimpressed with the Commanders’ performance as they went down to a 44-22 defeat – he left the game early. More

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      US agriculture department tells states to ‘undo’ Snap benefits for families in need

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      The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is directing states to “immediately undo” any steps that have been taken to send out full food aid benefits to low-income Americans, following a supreme court order on Friday that temporarily halted a lower court order requiring those payments.The USDA’s directive, issued in a memo on Saturday, followed a supreme court order granting the Trump administration’s emergency request to pause an order for the USDA to provide full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits during the ongoing federal government shutdown, which is now in its 40th day.That lower court ruling, issued on Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the Snap program for November by Friday, rather than issuing only partial benefits. The ruling led to some of the roughly 42 million Americans enrolled in Snap – commonly known as food stamps – to begin receiving their full benefits on Friday from the states, which issue the payments of federal dollars.But on Friday night, the program was thrown into chaos again when the supreme courtagreed to temporarily pause the order to allow an appeals court to review the Trump administration’s appeal.In response to the supreme court’s decision, the USDA, which delivers the money to the states, issued its directive that any payments that had been made under the prior orders are considered “unauthorized”.“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of agriculture, wrote to state Snap directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”The memo warned: “Failure to comply with this memorandum may results in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administration costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”As the Associated Press reports, it remains unclear if the directive applies to states using their some of their own funds to sustain the program, or just to ones relying entirely on federal money. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for clarification from the AP.Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator for Alaska, said it would be “shocking” if the order applied to states using their own money to support the program.“It’s one thing if the federal government is going to continue its level of appeal through the courts to say, ‘No, this can’t be done,’” Murkowski told the AP. “But when you are telling the states that have said this is a significant enough issue in our state, we’re going to find resources, backfill or front load, whatever term you want, to help our people, those states should not be penalized.”On Sunday several state leaders criticized the memo.Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, refused to abide by the directive.“No,” Evers said in a statement responding to the memo. “Pursuant to and consistent with an active court order, Wisconsin legally loaded benefits to cards, ensuring nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, including nearly 270,000 kids, had access to basic food and groceries.”He added that the Trump administration had “assured Wisconsin and other states that they were actively working to implement full SNAP benefits for November and would ‘complete the processes necessary to make funds available”, adding that “they have failed to do so to date.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our administration is actively in court fighting against the Trump administration’s efforts to yank food assistance away from Wisconsin’s kids, families and seniors and we are eager for the court to resolve this issue by directing the Trump administration to comply with court orders and provide the certainty to the many Wisconsin families and businesses who rely on FoodShare,” Evers said.Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, also condemned the directive in a statement on Sunday, saying: “If President Trump wants to penalize states for preventing Americans from going hungry, we will see him in court.”“Massachusetts residents with funds on their cards should continue to spend it on food” she said. “These funds were processed in accordance with guidance we received from the Trump Administration and a lower court order, and they were processed before the Supreme Court order on Friday night.”“President Trump should be focusing on reopening the government that he controls instead of repeatedly fighting to take away food from American families,” she added.Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota, also criticized the memo, saying that “cruelty is the point”, adding: “It is their choice to do this.”Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump weighs giving Americans $2,000 from tariff revenues in bid for support

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      Donald Trump on Sunday mused about giving most Americans $2,000 funded by tariff revenues collected by the president’s administration – an evident bid to rally public support on the issue.“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.The post also made it a point to call people against tariffs “FOOLS!”For such a plan to take effect, congressional approval would likely be required. Earlier this year, Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill proposing $600 in tariff rebates for nearly all Americans and their dependent children.“Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of [Joe] Biden [White House] policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said at the time. He said the legislation would “allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country”.However, US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in August that the administration’s main focus remains reducing the national debt, which stands at $38.12tn, using funds from tariff collections. He said the money would be used first to start paying down the federal debt – not to give rebate checks to Americans.According to the treasury department’s September report, $195bn in customs duties were collected during the first three quarters of the year.Though, it appears that the cost of giving out $2,000 checks could easily surpass the amount actually collected from the tariffs. According to calculations, these payments would cost close to if not more than double the amount that has reportedly been generated so far.“If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion,” wrote Erica York, vice-president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, on social media. “If kids qualify, that grows.”“The math gets worse accounting for the full budgetary impact of tariffs”, York added. “Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”John Arnold, co-chair of Arnold Ventures, estimated that the dividend payments could cost as much as $513bn.As of October, consumers were paying an average effective tariff rate of nearly 18%, the highest since 1934, according to data from the Yale Budget Lab. Since the president introduced widespread tariffs on global trading partners in April, companies have passed part of those costs on to consumers.This isn’t the first time Trump has floated the idea of giving Americans stimulus checks based on revenue from his tariffs. In October, he said that he was considering offering Americans checks from the revenue, worth somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000. In July, the president again suggested that the government might consider tariff rebate checks.In February, he and tech mogul Elon Musk, who at the time was still advising the White House, said they were considering the idea of a $5,000 “dividend” check based on savings generated by the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge). These payments never came to be as the national deficit actually increased under Doge, and the amount cut from federal spending was significantly exaggerated.The US supreme court heard arguments on Wednesday on Trump’s sweeping global tariffs and appeared skeptical of their legality. More

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      They flew to New York to help Mamdani – now they want to bring the hope to LA

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      While the excitement for mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has radiated through New York, his win has also energized young activists across the country – particularly some in Los Angeles, who flew to the east coast to canvass for Mamdani and now want to bring their experiences westward.Standing near the poll site at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neda Davarpanah – a screenwriter and actor based in Los Angeles – was inspired by Mamdani’s campaign for mayor so she flew out to New York in late October to canvass on the Upper East Side.Davarpanah had walked alongside the picket lines in Hollywood in 2023 as a newly minted Writers Guild of America member. Despite initial momentum, she felt the energy from the frontlines of the strikes had dissipated in the last year. That energy reignited when Mamdani entered the picture.“We felt so motivated and energized to help people in a city we don’t even live in because of the broader impact on the country,” she said.Many of the people interviewed are part of the 4,000 young members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles chapter who felt inspired by Mamdani’s campaign and its national implications. Looking ahead, they want to bring the hope and lessons from field organizing back to Los Angeles.New York and Los Angeles have very different geographies and spreads of power. In Los Angeles, city council members’ elections tend to have more weight compared to a mayoral race. And given the DSA-LA chapter has endorsed five candidates so far in the city council and local school board elections, there are plenty of volunteer efforts for these hopefuls to work on in the coming year.View image in fullscreenLeslie Chang, who serves as the East San Gabriel Valley coordinator for Democratic Socialists of America, flew out during the primaries to canvass for Mamdani. She volunteered to canvass in Chinatown, where she spoke the language, and the Red Hook public housing projects.“These were tough conversations,” Chang said, noting residents felt left out in the city’s development. “They would say: look at the condition of this place that I live in. We are still waiting for repairs from the hurricane. Why should I give a shit who is running for office if my life hasn’t gotten better?”During her volunteer field training, Chang met two New York City council members who were vouching for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. They told Chang to give out their phone numbers to start conversations with constituents.“I thought that was really powerful, because in almost all of the canvases that I do here [in Los Angeles], there isn’t that level of engagement,” she said. After canvassing, there was even a social event for volunteers to get to know one another and discuss what strategies worked best.Paul Zappia, an animator and illustrator who also serves in DSA-LA leadership, first met the mayor-elect in 2023 at the DSA national conference in Chicago, where Mamdani served as a keynote speaker. He flew out in late October to canvass with friends in Bushwick. At the beginning of his shift, the field lead asked why each volunteer had come out.“I shared with everybody that I was here from Los Angeles because the victory of Zohran Mamdani is bigger than New York City,” said Zappia, who attributes his involvement in politics to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign.View image in fullscreenEven walking to lunch a few blocks away, he encountered another canvassing group. “It’s just a bunch of people who are there on their free time and want to spend a couple hours on their Saturday together with other people that also care about their fellow working class people. And it was just such a blast,” he said.The geography and public transportation layout of New York’s five boroughs makes it easier to canvas in groups. Zappia said he could feasibly knock on hundreds of doors in a one-block radius there. In Los Angeles, a street could be filled with mostly single-family homes. And with the abundance of Ring doorbell cameras, people can easily decline a visitor from the comfort of their couch.Clayton Ryles, 31, only canvassed for one afternoon in Manhattan’s Chinatown in late October and felt the contrast between Mamdani’s campaign and others. In September last year, Ryles canvassed for Kamala Harris with his fellow United Auto Worker labor organizers in Las Vegas. Knocks on doors yielded intrepid voters who were “upset and suspicious”. Despite many people being pro-union, they felt that their cost of living was too high under Joe Biden.“Nobody was excited about the election. Everybody was like this is being inflicted upon us. We have to decide one way or another. For Zohran, most of the people were enthusiastic about what could happen with his mayoral tenure,” Ryles said.Davarpanah agreed, pointing to the call and response levels of Mamdani’s speech when crowds could clearly repeat phrases such as “fast and free buses” and “universal childcare”.“You can name them. Harris 2024 was not successful in articulating a vision,” she said. “A policy vision that materially impacts your constituents is something every candidate should take to heart. This is what actually inspires people to get involved when they actually see what you’re going to deliver.”View image in fullscreenAcross social media, users have been making posts about how California, and Los Angeles specifically, needs a Mamdani.For Zappia, that means bringing back hope after a tough year that started with the Altadena wildfires and has continued with ICE raids, cutbacks to Snap benefits, and rising inflation, among many other difficulties.“People are just really looking for a sort of sign that things can turn around. In order to actually affect the change that we want to see, we have to first believe that we can actually do it,” he said.“And what happened in New York City is proof that it can be done, it’s proof that organized people can beat organized money.” More