US politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares130 Views

      in Elections

      Trump pardons Giuliani, Meadows and others over plot to steal 2020 election

      by

      Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, both close former political allies of Donald Trump, are among scores of people pardoned by the president over the weekend for their roles in a plot to steal the 2020 election.The maneuver is in effect symbolic, given it only applies in the federal justice system and not in state courts where Giuliani, Meadows and the others continue facing legal peril. The acts of clemency were announced in a post late on Sunday to X by US pardon attorney Ed Martin, covers 77 people said to have been the architects and agents of the scheme to install fake Republican electors in several battleground states, which would have falsely declared Trump their winner instead of the actual victor: Joe Biden.Those pardoned include Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former lawyers to Trump, and Meadows, who acted as White House chief of staff during his first term of office. Other prominent names include Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, attorneys who advised Trump during and immediately after the election that Biden won to interrupt Trump’s two terms.“Let their healing begin,” Martin said in the post, in which he thanked Trump, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche, for “allowing me … to achieve your intent”.Martin is a staunchly conservative ally of the president said to be behind the “weaponization” of the justice department and a push to “bully, prosecute, punish and silence” Trump’s political foes and critics, including the recent indictments of the former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general, Leticia James, and former national security adviser John Bolton.The pardons extend Trump’s efforts to rewrite the aftermath of the 2020 election and failed efforts to deny Biden the White House. On his first day back in office in January, Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons for more than 1,500 people involved in the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress, in which five people died and many others, including law enforcement officers, were injured during a desperate attempt by his supporters to keep him in office.Many of those listed in Martin’s pardon document, which it specifically states “does not apply to the president of the United States”, were involved in legal cases and investigations in numerous states that Biden won, including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.The pardons, like those for the 6 January rioters, are “full, complete and unconditional” – and apply only in federal court, making them “largely symbolic”, according to the New York Times.Proceedings against some of the individuals are still active at state level, including in Georgia, where an election interference case against an initial 19 defendants, including Trump, has stalled due to the disqualification of the Fulton county prosecutor, Fani Willis.Ellis joined Powell and another Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, in taking a plea deal in the Georgia case in 2023. Addressing the court in tears, she admitted a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.Chesebro was disbarred in New York earlier this year for his involvement, Ellis’s Colorado law license was suspended for three years, and efforts to disbar Powell failed because a panel in Texas ruled her misdemeanor convictions in Georgia were neither serious nor intentional.Giuliani also received severe consequences as leader of the plot to keep Trump in office. He was banned from practicing law in New York and Washington DC. He was ordered to pay almost $150m to two Georgia election workers he defamed. And the former New York City mayor was also caught up in defamation trials involving two voting machine manufacturers, Dominion and Smartmatic.Meadows, meanwhile, failed to persuade the supreme court to move the Georgia election case to federal court and pleaded not guilty last year to criminal charges in Arizona, where he was among 18 indicted defendants.Trump’s proclamation, dated 7 November, described efforts to prosecute those accused of aiding his efforts to cling to power as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation”,The White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Monday.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Snap workers say Trump administration is ‘using country’s poorest as pawns’

      by

      When Stacy Smith, a government worker, showed up to work last Monday – the first working day after food benefits lapsed, amid the ongoing federal shutdown – she found a long line outside her office door. Elderly and disabled individuals desperately wanted answers.Some had gone to buy groceries, not realizing that their usual benefits were unavailable.They quickly discovered that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) payments had been paused, after the Trump administration said it would not pay benefits because of the shutdown – crushing the largest anti-hunger program in the US.“I had a client that came in and said they were afraid they were going to have to start eating cat food again, because without Snap benefits, that’s all they can afford, because they’re on a fixed income,” said Smith, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2882, who works as an eligibility technician for assistance programs including Snap in Providence, Rhode Island.“Those are the things that I leave my job, and I go home, and that’s what I’m thinking about,” she said.Nearly 42 million Americans rely on Snap. With benefits paused for the first time in the program’s history, workers who provide assistance to Snap recipients expressed stark fears over how the move will affect low-income families and individuals. Across the country, food banks have been scrambling to keep up with surges in demand.Following two court rulings, the Trump administration said it would only provide partial funding to Snap. Funding for the program lapsed on 1 November.Snap payments continue to be contested in the courts. On Friday, the Trump administration appealed to the supreme court against a lower court’s order compelling it to make the full aid payments. Its appeal was granted, temporarily, in an emergency ruling.A Boston-based federal appeals court late on Sunday then ruled the benefits must be paid for November. But the Trump administration was expected to appeal the ruling, which was not expected to have immediate effect after the supreme court ruling, leaving the current status of the Snap program itself uncertain.As the Trump administration fights against funding Snap, Smith said low-income families were scared. With the holidays approaching and schools due to close, breakfast and lunch meals provided during term time will not be available for their children.View image in fullscreen“Clients are coming in. They want to know when this is going to end. And we don’t have an answer for them,” said Smith. “It’s hard to look someone in the face who’s telling you they can’t feed their family, and be able to try to guide them to other avenues to try to get some food for their household. We have community food banks, and we have food pantries, and they’re they’re already maxed out.”Snap is funded by the federal government, but administered by state and local governments, already facing cuts by the Trump administration. “This is more chaos for states and their ability to manage all these other big program issues that they have, and they’re throwing all their resources in,” said a former USDA food and nutrition service employee, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, as they currently work for federal contractors. “There’s a real commitment by the states to get these benefits out there. This is a lifeline for the 42 million people that get the program. I see that commitment from them, but this really is unprecedented.”As the government shutdown drags on, Snap recipients have been reaching out to state offices in desperation for answers and relief.“At this point we have no more information, really, than they have in the news currently,” said Misha Dancing Waters, a member of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 720, who also works as an economic support specialist since the last nine years in Dane county, Wisconsin. “For Wisconsin, we haven’t even gotten partial Snap funding. We haven’t gotten anything so far.View image in fullscreen“We’re giving out a lot of resources, and they’re really just hitting all of those food pantries. Places where there’s anything to help are getting hit so hard that they just really can’t meet the need.”Pausing the scheme was “really punitive”, added Waters. “It’s another way to get people off of the benefit … It’s really scary times. There’s so many things up in the air. People really don’t have any way to plan or prepare.”Contacted for comment, the US Department of Agriculture – which oversees Snap benefits – pointed to a memo, which said that “maximum allotments” for households were being reduced to 50% during November “due to the limited availability of Federal funding” and “orders from two courts”.Should the shutdown persist, and Snap funding fail to be restored, Waters expressed fear things will get worse very quickly.“I think the next month we’re going to see things get drastically more dire if we don’t get this shutdown turned around and get our situation with health insurance and food care fixed. People need those basic things just to survive,” she said. “We are using our country’s poorest and most vulnerable as pawns in a political game, and that’s not acceptable on any level. It’s not OK for us to be denying people basic things like food and medical care.” More

    • 125 Shares91 Views

      in US Politics

      Resilience of Europe’s populist right carries warning for US Democrats

      by

      In the afterglow of electoral triumph, hope springs renewed for Democrats confined to the frustrating impotence of political opposition.Boosted by last week’s electoral wins in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere, as well as California’s affirmation of Proposition 50 allowing for congressional redistricting, party members suddenly feel able to dream that future elections may herald an escape route from the Donald Trump era.Yet the experiences of other countries that have grappled with the rise of rightwing authoritarian or populist movements provide a cautionary antidote to such optimism.It suggests that even the rosiest Democratic scenario – one that would see the party retake control of (at least) the House of Representatives in next year’s midterms, and win the White House in 2028 – might not be enough to permanently break the feverish intensity of Trump’s Maga movement.Defeated rightwing populists are capable of mounting electoral comebacks after suffering setbacks at the polls – as Trump himself proved by winning the 2024 presidential election after his defeat by Joe Biden four years had lulled many commentators into writing him off.Three recent elections in east-central Europe attest to the electoral resilience of populist forces, with politicians or parties that had previously been voted out following mass protests returning to office.In the Czech Republic, the populist ANO party, led by the wealthy oligarch Andrej Babiš, is on the verge of a return to government in a coalition with a far-right anti-immigrant party and a previously fringe anti-environmental grouping after it finished as the biggest bloc in last month’s parliamentary election.It will mean Babiš returning as prime minister four years after an electoral defeat propelled by conflict of interest scandals, and mass protests against his government that resembled the recent No Kings demonstrations in the US.His comeback matches that in neighboring Slovakia of Robert Fico, a former socialist who was a guest speaker at this year’s CPAC gathering in Maryland. Fico, an anti-immigration hardliner who has abandoned his country’s support for Ukraine in favour of ties with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, returned as prime minister in 2023 when his Smer party won an election five years after he resigned following popular street protests sparked by the murder of an investigative journalist.View image in fullscreenIn another striking resurgence, the candidate of Poland’s rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), Karol Nawrocki, narrowly won last June’s presidential election against a liberal centrist candidate of the governing Civic Platform, Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw.Nawrocki’s victory came less than two years after the nationalist and socially conservative PiS was ousted from power in parliamentary elections by a coalition headed by the Civic Platform.The PiS revival prompted Anne Applebaum to write in the Atlantic that “all elections are now existential”.“Small numbers of voters swinging one way or the next will decide the nature of the state, the future of democracy, the independence of the courts,” she added.Albin Sybera, a Czech commentator, said that although local conditions in all three countries differed, all demonstrated “the resilience of populism”.“The resilience feeds on similar ingredients and polarization is one common theme,” he said.“Another is the failure of liberal or centrist parties to find a lasting solution to economic discontent resulting from a rapidly changing economic landscape that has seen traditional manufacturing jobs disappear – a scenario familiar to many parts of the US, as well as former communist states in eastern Europe.“There is definitely something in common [with the US] in the Czech case and in the Slovak case, to some extent, in the dissatisfaction of the vulnerable parts of the society, in combination with the failure of the liberal political parties to address this,” said Sybera.Such parties are further energized by standing for an animating vision – usually a strident view of nationhood harking back to a supposed golden bygone, as exemplified by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, and often (though not always) bolstered by religious faith and socially conservative values.“If you look at all the major political forces in western democracies, the only one with any real ideology, any real passion, any real project, is the far right,” said Steven Levitsky, professor of politics at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die.“The far-left, center-left, liberal-center, Christian Democrats – none of them have a real project. They will unite in their opposition to the far right. But I can’t think of a social democratic party in the world that has people getting up out of bed early Saturday morning to work for the party.”The erosion of the traditional left versus right political axis in most western democracies provides a further boost to populists. Politics revolves less around traditional arguments about government spending and taxation – although these arguments still take place – than between urban cosmopolitan secularism and more rural traditional nationalism.“Politics in most western democracies is now primarily cleaved along what you can call cosmopolitan versus populist lines,” said Levitsky. “We call it left-right, but it’s urban-liberal, secular on the one hand, and more rural religious, ethno-nationalist on the other.”The tendency of centrist and leftist parties to prioritize defending democracy – a core theme of Biden’s presidency and adopted as a campaign issue by Kamala Harris – may also play into the hands of the far right.Populations the world over may be less motivated by democratic ideals and freedom than previously thought, believes Eric Rubin, a former US ambassador and ex-president of the American Foreign Service Association.“One of the things I’ve learned from 40 years as an American diplomat is that some of the basic assumptions we grew up with are not necessarily true. Some of them were ideological,” he said.View image in fullscreen“The assumption, that people, given a choice, will prefer democracy, they want to elect their own leaders, they want freedom of speech and all the other freedoms – as a default, that’s probably true but there are trade-offs.“If you ask most people in the world, would you give away some freedom for economic security or prosperity or national security, I think in most countries the answer is yes. But I think we convinced ourselves, à la Barack Obama, that the arc of history bends toward progress.”Such pragmatism fits with another factor explaining the populist bounce-back facility – the growth of anti-incumbency sentiment, particularly prevalent following the Covid pandemic.“The generalized unpopularity of incumbents hits everybody, not just the liberals,” said Levitsky. “It hits the far right. It affected Trump in 2020. It’s going to affect the Republicans in 2026 and 2028.”But that assumes that the continuation of an even electoral playing field in the next two election cycles that Democrats suspect Trump is scheming to tilt in Republicans’ favor.An exception to the trend has been Hungary’s strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán – who visited Trump at the White House on Friday – and who has won four consecutive elections aided, critics say, by ruthless gerrymandering. But he faces a tough re-election fight next spring as polls show his Fidesz party trailing the main opposition.Trump has repeatedly hailed Orbán’s illiberal philosophy – characterized by, according to opponents, a takeover of institutions such as the courts and universities, buying up independent media by the prime minister’s cronies, and unfair elections – as a model for his own governing style.Rubin believes the US’s current trajectory has close parallels to Hungary and warned that the combination of a 1929-style crash and a determined ideological project could pose a dire threat to democracy.“Don’t assume that this is about winning majorities over to whatever the cause or the plan is,” he said. “It’s about finding a way to keep and seize power regardless of what the majority wants.” More

    • 213 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      In New York, Zohran Mamdani showed how it’s done: ‘identity politics’ can win elections | Nesrine Malik

      by

      It is inevitable that too much will be laid on Zohran Mamdani’s head. So large is the vacuum on the left of politics that his victory will occupy an outsized space for progressives beyond New York City. And so, before I lay too much on his head myself, some caveats. New York is a specific place. It has a specific demographic and economic profile. And Mamdani is a man of a specific background, racial, political and religious. But with that out of the way, I think the successful practice of “identity politics” during his campaign offers some universal lessons.I put identity politics in quote marks because the term now means little that is universally agreed upon. Broadly, it has come to mean something derogatory, kind of in the same way that “wokeness” has. It increasingly has negative connotations: a political appeal to race or other markers of identity that is shallow, rooted in perpetual victimhood, focused only on representation and disconnected from material reality. Seen this way, identity politics is not about universal goals, such as lifting people out of poverty and so mobilising broad coalitions of voters, but simply about visibility.But identity politics as an organising political force has its origins in precisely the opposite idea. Coined by the Black feminist socialist organisation the Combahee River Collective in 1977, identity politics was defined as a path to a liberation that could only come about through the understanding that systems oppress many different people along the lines of their identity, and so could only be dismantled if all groups worked together. “We believe,” the collective declared, “that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity”, but that “we also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.”That “simultaneous experience” is what I am talking about here. Mamdani tapped into that. He rooted his campaign solidly in the experience of being a New Yorker, and how the city needed to be made more affordable, then expanded that to include all the ways in which different groups live that experience. He released campaigning videos in Urdu, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic, and consistently made all of them about a retail economic message: rent freezes, free buses, universal childcare, making New York a place to raise your children and build small businesses. Then he threw in a bespoke little twist. In his Arabic message he quipped that something more controversial than his political message is his belief that the knafeh, an Arab dessert, is better on Steinway Street in Queens than it is in New Jersey. Talk about hitting a sweet spot.Including the languages of underrepresented identities is an exercise in enfranchisement. He quoted the Arabic phrase ana minkum wa alaikum – “I am of you and for you” – in his victory speech, and named those “forgotten by the politics of our city”, the “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties”.He combined that with being in the places that working-class people, many of whom are people of colour, occupy. Visiting those on the taxi ranks and working the late-night shifts, he forged a powerful metaphor of a city that is kept going by those who labour in the dark. And he drew that all together by bringing his own identity, as he himself put it, “into the light”. A Muslim who grew up in the shadows of Islamophobia, he suffered an outrageously racist campaign against him, but resisted the pressure to play down his identity in order to fit in, to succeed. “No longer will I live in the shadows,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThose shadows are vast and, in this moment, encompass not only Mamdani, but huge swathes of people across all identities living under a regime of fear, economic struggle, deportations, suffocation of freedom of speech and an entire political establishment that has made bullying and cruelty its modus operandi. The coalition that Mamdani built, across all ethnicities, became about closing the yawning gap between people and power. In a revealing contrast to establishment Democrat politicians, when Mamdani was heckled last week over his position on Gaza, he did not say, as Kamala Harris did when she was heckled, “I’m speaking”. Mamdani smiled and said: “I want you to be able to afford this city too, my brother.”But there is something else about Mamdani’s approach that reveals how identity done right is generative. His is a politics that is forged and defined by being on the margins, but not as a single individual who wants to escape alone. Those who see their identity as a way to become part of an establishment that can then hold them up as exemplars of inclusive politics will always have limited appeal, and therefore limited success as changemakers. To see those margins, racial, economic and political, as spaces in which a majority can be mobilised, as spaces where people don’t want to hear about victimhood but justice, is to create coalitions and escape together. It is to reveal to the voting public that the problem is not particular racisms or prejudices, but an entire system that excludes all those who don’t have capital in all its forms.That message resonates with the college-educated white parents who are struggling with childcare costs, as well as the immigrant taxi driver struggling to pay rent. But above all, ironically, Mamdani exemplified the virtues of the American “melting pot”, a nation of immigrants at the sharp end of capitalism who together increasingly recognise all the ways in which the country is failing to live up to its ideals. All the ways in which Mamdani has been fought, not only by the right but by his own party, prove that American liberal politics has long lost its way in its service to capital and its preening approach to identity. What works in New York doesn’t necessarily map perfectly on to the rest of the US and beyond, but Mamdani’s win is a reminder that the people, whatever their identities, all want one thing – leaders who are of them, and for them.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

    • 163 Shares127 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares135 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares79 Views

      in US Politics

      US Senate vote marks step towards ending federal shutdown

      by

      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