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      FBI fires top official amid Kash Patel’s outrage over reports of agency jet use

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      A top FBI official with 27 years standing has reportedly been fired by the bureau after its director, Kash Patel, became enraged by press stories revealing he had used a government jet to travel to see his girlfriend sing the national anthem at a wrestling match.Steven Palmer, who had worked at the bureau since 1998, was fired as head of the FBI’s critical incident response group which is responsible for handling major security threats as well as overseeing the agency’s fleet of jets. He was the third head of the unit to be dismissed since Patel became the second Trump administration’s FBI director in February.Bloomberg Law, which broke the story, said that three unnamed sources had expressed astonishment at the sacking given that Patel’s flight schedules were fully public and trackable on websites. A day after her performance, Patel himself had reposted photos showing him together with his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, on his X account.According to Bloomberg, Patel had become furious over stories published after the event about his use of the FBI jet to go on the date with Wilkins. Soon after, Palmer had been told he could resign instantly or be fired.The dismissal was made official on Friday.Flight logs publicly trackable on Flight Aware for Patel’s plane, N708JH, show that the jet landed at an airport near Penn State on 25 October. That evening Wilkins performed at a Real American Freestyle wrestling event, and the flight logs show Patel’s FBI plane later flying to Nashville.Records for the movements of the jet N708JH were blocked on Flight Aware as of Sunday. A search for the government jet generates a message saying that it is “not available for public tracking per request from the owner/operator”.On Sunday, Patel posted a lengthy statement on his X account in which he said he refused to be “distracted by baseless rumors or the noise from uninformed internet anarchists and the fake news”. He said it was a “disgrace” to go after “people doing great work, my personal life, or those around me”, reserving his harshest words for what he called the “disgustingly baseless attacks against Alexis – a true patriot and the woman I’m proud to call my partner in life”.He also fueled further speculation by attacking “our supposed allies” whom he lambasted for “staying silent”, though he did not name names. “Your silence is louder than the clickbait haters,” he said.In an earlier statement his spokesperson, Ben Williamson, pointed out that the FBI director is required under government rules to pay some reimbursement for his private jet travel and claimed Patel had “significantly limited” personal trips compared with his predecessors Chris Wray and James Comey. “He’s allowed to take personal time on occasion to see family, friends or his longtime girlfriend,” the spokesman said.As the Daily Beast has noted, Patel was highly critical of Wray’s use of government jets for personal use when Wray was director of the bureau. In 2023, Patel scathingly dubbed Wray “#GovernmentGangster” and accused him of “jetting off on out (sic) tax payer dollars while dodging accountability for the implosion of the FBI on his watch”.Palmer’s dismissal makes him the third head of the FBI critical incident response group to be ditched under Patel. Wes Wheeler was fired in March, and Brian Driscoll in August.Driscoll is now suing the Trump administration for unfair dismissal claiming he was targeted for showing lack of loyalty to the president.Patel’s travel on a government jet for a date night was first spotted by Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who has become a thorn in the side of the Trump administration. His podcast is caustically critical of the current leadership of the FBI.“We’re in the middle of government shutdown … and this guy is jetting off to hang out with his girlfriend in Nashville on our dime?” Seraphin said in a recent podcast.The government shutdown to which Seraphin alluded had entered its 32nd day.In a separate unflattering development for him, Patel is facing heat from a defense lawyer in Michigan who is objecting to the FBI director’s allegations Friday that five young men had been arrested as they planned a Halloween terror attack. The lawyer, Amir Makled, who represents one of the five individuals, said that having reviewed the case he was convinced no such terror event had been in the pipeline.Makled told Associated Press that the FBI director’s claims were “hysteria and fearmongering”. The five men were aged 16 to 20 – and were US citizens and gamers.“I don’t believe that there’s anything illegal about any of the activity they were doing,” he said. More

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      Republicans argue ‘big-hearted president’ Trump is keen to end shutdown

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      Top Republicans are portraying Donald Trump as a “big-hearted president” who is desperate to reopen the US government, even as he delays food assistance funding for millions of low-income Americans but steams ahead with construction of his $300m gilded White House ballroom.As the government shutdown entered its 33rd day, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, presented Trump as a man angry and desperate to break the impasse so as to ease mounting pain for ordinary Americans. “He’s just desperate for the government to open, he’s tried everything he can,” Johnson said, adding that Trump was a “big-hearted president, he wants everybody to get their services”.The speaker’s claims, made in an interview with Fox News Sunday two days after Trump hosted a lavish, Great Gatsby-themed soiree at Mar-a-Lago, gave a slanted take on the president’s position. Trump continues to exert an iron grip on the shutdown, resisting political and even federal court pressure to ease the burden on vulnerable Americans while protesting he has no power to end the impasse.Two federal court judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must use $5bn in contingency funds to keep paying food assistance Snap benefits for up to 42 million low-income Americans. The payments stopped Saturday under the shutdown, posing the risk of hunger for millions of people.Despite the two court orders, it remains unclear when or whether the administration will restart the payments. Trump has said he is waiting for clarification from the federal judges on where the money should come from.The federal court orders require that partial payments of Snap start as early as Wednesday. Asked by CNN’s State of the Union whether that deadline could be met, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said: “Could be”. He said that the administration would not be appealing Friday’s rulings.Instead of authorising use of the contingency funds, Trump has instead exhorted fellow Republican senators to break the impasse by ending the Senate filibuster. The mechanism requires 60 votes in the 100-vote chamber for most kinds of legislation – including an end to the shutdown – to pass.The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Trump on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday of “weaponising hunger”. He said that the funds exist to continue food assistance benefits through November.Without mentioning by name the president’s $300m ballroom construction project, Jeffries added that Trump and his administration can find funding “for other projects, but somehow they can’t find money to make sure that Americans don’t go hungry”.As the impact of the shutdown begins to bite across the country, threatening poorer Americans and generating mounting delays at US airports, opinion polls suggest that Trump’s Republican party is facing most of the blame from citizens. An NBC News poll carried out at the end of October found that 52% of voters blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the stalemate, with 42% blaming Democrats.The split fell along familiar partisan divisions, with those identifying as liberal, young people, Black and higher-educated voters blaming Trump – and Democrats being blamed by self-identified supporters of the president’s Make American great again (Maga) movement, white men and rural voters.So far Democrats in the Senate are holding firm with their refusal to support Republicans in reopening the government. Only three Democratic senators have broken ranks so far, with the majority insisting that any deal on the shutdown must be tied to extending healthcare tax credits to avoid steep rises in premiums in 2026 under Affordable Care Act health plans.One of the three Democrats who have joined Republican senators to vote for ending the shutdown, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, turned on his own party on Sunday. He told CNN’s State of the Union that “Democrats really need to own the shutdown, I mean, we’re shutting it down … This is wrong, we are hurting the very people that we fight for.”Airports are starting to experience delays amid shortages of air traffic controllers who are deemed to be essential federal employees and are obliged to work – yet have ceased being paid. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said 80% of controllers did not show up for shifts in the busy New York region on Friday.At least 35 FAA facilities, including some of the largest airports in the country, are reporting staffing issues.The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, told CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday that safety would not be compromised, adding: “The real consequence is, what kind of rolling delays do you have throughout the system? I think it’s only going to get worse.”He said that as the shutdown continued, more air traffic controllers would “make the decisions of funding their families, putting food on their table, gas in their cars, versus coming into work. That’s not what I want, but I’m a realist.” More

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      Obama calls Mamdani and offers to be ‘sounding board’ if he wins mayoral race

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      Zohran Mamdani, who holds a lead in polling ahead of New York City’s mayoral election on Tuesday, reportedly received a call Saturday from his fellow Democrat Barack Obama – and the former president offered to be a “sounding board” if his advantage turns into victory.Obama also praised the campaign Mamdani had run against his main independent rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.The call was first reported by the New York Times and then confirmed to Reuters by Mamdani’s spokesperson.“Zohran Mamdani appreciated President Obama’s words of support and their conversation on the importance of bringing a new kind of politics to our city,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said.Mamdani, a Uganda-born state assembly member, has polled well ahead of Cuomo and Sliwa prior to Tuesday’s general election. A recent Atlas poll estimated Mamdani (40%) had about a six-point edge over Cuomo (34%) and a 16-point advantage over Sliwa (24%).Cuomo, who resigned as governor amid sexual harassment allegations, is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Sliwa is the founder of the Guardian Angels, a non-profit organization dedicated to unarmed crime prevention.Mamdani, a democratic socialist, shocked political observers on 24 June with a convincing victory in the primary. Since then, his candidacy has won endorsements from party holdouts such as former vice-president Kamala Harris and New York governor Kathy Hochul, and he has received a steady stream of financial backing from small donors.Mamdani’s policies range from hiking taxes on New York City’s wealthiest, raising the corporation tax, freezing stabilized apartment rental rates and increasing publicly subsidized housing. The finance community has expressed concerns that the city’s competitiveness will suffer if Mamdani wins the mayoral election.Meanwhile, his rise is two-sided coins for Democrats on the national stage, who know they need to appeal to young voters but could become more vulnerable to Republican attacks due to Mamdani’s criticism of Israel and his democratic socialism.Mamdani was out late into the night Saturday dropping in on bars and night clubs campaigning, with Sunday marking the last day of early voting, as the New York Times reported. One video reported on by the Times showed him standing behind a DJ booth and saying into a microphone, “Are we ready to beat Andrew Cuomo?” He was met with cheers, the video showed.For his part, Obama on Saturday rallied alongside New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill, who is competing in a closely contested race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli. He also attended a rally for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

      Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Pall of ICE spoils weekend celebrations in Chicago: ‘I think people are just scared’

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      For 40-year-old Cecilia Romero, the days before and after Halloween are not just any other holiday. It’s the time of year when she can take her kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood she’s from – and a connection to her own past when she would go celebrate as a little girl.She remembers years of streets brimming with families and children, with street vendors selling food and cempasúchil, the marigolds that loved ones place on altars for Day of the Dead – or Día de los Muertos – from 1 to 2 November.But this year, things are much, much different – because of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that have been happening in and around Chicago since early September.“Clearly, it’s because of ICE,” Romero said. Referring to how JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, had unsuccessfully requested that the Trump administration pause immigration enforcement operations for the Halloween weekend which began Friday, she added: “I think people are just scared. It’s just kind of sad that kids are not allowed to have fun on a day where they should be [kids].”In the Chicago neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village, Halloween, All Saints Day on 1 November, and Día de los Muertos collectively play an important part in bringing the community together to celebrate, mourn and pray as a whole. This year, amid ICE enforcement and raids, the celebrations were a lot more muted. At any point throughout years past, the corridors of 18th Street in Pilsen and 26th Street in Little Village would be packed with people. Those same corridors were much more empty for hours at a time when the Halloween weekend began Friday on this occasion.Prior to Pritzker’s plea to let families celebrate Halloween, federal agents released pepper spray on 25 October in Old Irving Park in an incident that led to the cancellation of a Halloween parade. On Friday, ICE operations in Evanston got out of control, according to neighbors, close to Chute middle school. Federal agents used pepper spray and arrested three US citizens, according to NBC 5 Chicago, on allegations of “violence against law enforcement”.Marco DeSantiago, 49, grew up on Chicago’s South Side, but has been taking his kids to Pilsen for the Halloween festivities for the last 12 years. And he said the changed tone for the revelry this time was striking.“I guess the big difference this year is you could just feel [the] sadness,” DeSantiago said. “It’s a somberness, we feel personally, I could just see [it] in people’s faces. It’s not a joyous occasion.“You’re kind of doing it to keep it going for the kids but everybody, I think, is feeling pretty sad and upset.”He said that in years past more businesses and people had their doors open to trick-or-treaters – more street vendors were on the street, and the vibe was happier and more celebratory.Instead, it felt more like a solemn occasion, he said, adding: “It’s definitely a different feeling.”View image in fullscreenAt nearby soccer fields owned by the Catholic church and school St Procopius, an annual Día de los Muertos celebration featured the usual elaborately decorated altars with photos of deceased loved ones. The tributes had their favorite snacks and items they owned – rosaries or bags, or even Pond’s face cream, and the iconic orange marigolds, in some cases substituted for a plastic alternative, along with votive candles, decorated skulls, as well as many depictions of the Virgin Mary.Yet a lower attendance than usual was obvious to those who went.“It would be packed from the afternoon till the end, like there will be people coming in and out and so you can definitely see a change or a shift – but I don’t think that has to do with the [lack of] motivation or the love for the holiday,” said Isabel Hernández, 27, who was sitting next to an intricate altar for her grandmother, Lorenza Hernández. “I think it’s more so part of the fear right now of … what’s going on in the city, in the country.”Hernández feels particularly sad for people who might be mourning a recent loss – but, due to the ICE raids, might not feel comfortable or safe enough to be able to celebrate with others or partake in the traditions.“I don’t think the grieving is going to ever just go away, but I think you just have to heal with time … or be able to control it some more,” she said. “I can’t even imagine, for those that just recently lost someone … what they’re experiencing seeing people celebrating and then not being able to celebrate with others. I think that’s really hard.”Hernández’s mom, Cecilia, said that it was important for her and her loved ones to keep going with their traditional celebrations despite the pervading sadness.“One of the questions was like, ‘Should we have this event take place?’” Cecilia, 52, said. “For me personally, I was like, ‘Yes, let’s have it,’ because we don’t want what’s happening out there with ICE [to] take that away from us.”For Romero, she just wants to continue celebrating like she used to. “Hopefully, ICE will leave,” she said. “We don’t want them here. We don’t need them here. You know, our city – and I think our country – has been doing fairly well without them coming in.” More

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      John F Kennedy grandson says Julia Fox’s bloody Jackie Halloween costume ‘disgusting’

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      Political writer and commentator Jack Schlossberg has said it was “disgusting, desperate and dangerous” for actor Julia Fox to wear a Halloween costume evoking the assassination of president John F Kennedy, his grandfather.Fox, however, has defended her controversial decision to wear a replica of the blood-stained, pink suit that former first lady Jackie Kennedy was seen wearing when her husband was shot dead by a sniper while the couple rode in a motorcade in Dallas in 1963. The Uncut Gems star has said she dressed as Jackie Kennedy as “a statement” about the poise and “extraordinary bravery” she showed when subjected to unimaginable “brutality”.Fox wore the ensemble in question to a 30 October Halloween party in New York City. Many online met an image of Fox in the outfit with negative reactions, with TikTok users dismissing the look as “a terrible idea” and “disrespectful”.One particularly notable reaction came from Schlossberg, the son of the Kennedys’ daughter Caroline, who wrote in part on X: “Julia Fox glorifying political violence is disgusting, desperate and dangerous.”View image in fullscreenFox was unbowed by the commentary from Schlossberg and others, with the 35-year-old actor and model saying in an Instagram post that she dressed as Jackie Kennedy “not as a costume but as a statement”.“When her husband was assassinated, she refused to change out of her blood-stained clothes, saying, ‘I want them to see what they’ve done,’” the post read. “The image of the delicate pink suit splattered with blood is one of the most haunting juxtapositions in modern history.“Beauty and horror. Poise and devastation. Her decision not to change clothes, even after being encouraged to, was an act of extraordinary bravery. It was a performance, protest, and mourning all at once. A woman weaponizing image and grace to expose brutality. It’s about trauma, power, and how femininity itself is a form of resistance. Long live Jackie O ♥️”.After JFK’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy indeed refused to take the suit off at Dallas’ Parkland hospital where her husband was pronounced dead and as she flew with his body on Air Force One to Washington DC.“Let them see what they have done,” she is reported to have said before exiting the plane in the US capital.The pink suit then became fashion history’s most iconic piece of first lady clothing despite its dark past. The day of the assassination, the former first lady also wore blue shoes, a pair of bloodied stockings and a blue blouse that were folded and stored without cleaning.The suit is often claimed to be made by Chanel. But it was actually an authorized copy of a Chanel design. It is said that this was a strategy employed by Jackie Kennedy, who died in 1994, to circumvent public disapproval of her taste for European style.All of these items are preserved in a climate-controlled vault at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, as materials of historical importance. Documents have shown that the Kennedy family wanted to keep the suit from public viewing until 2103.The controversy surrounding Fox’s Halloween garb surfaced as political violence has become one of the most prominent topics of public discussion in the US.It attained that status in part after Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts while successfully running for a second presidency in 2024. Other such cases were the firebombing in April of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home, the murders in June of Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the killing in September of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. More

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      California set to approve Prop 50 as voters signal displeasure with Trump

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      California’s Proposition 50 began as a warning from the nation’s largest blue state to its largest red one: don’t poke the bear. But when Texas moved ahead with a rare, mid-decade gerrymander, pushed by Donald Trump as Republicans seek to shore up their fragile House majority in the midterm elections, California made good on its threat.Now, California voters appear poised to approve a redistricting measure placed on the ballot in August by Democrats and the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who have cast it as a chance to check Trump’s power.“California will not sit idle as Trump and his Republican lapdogs shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” Newsom said at a rally, formally announcing the initiative, known as the Election Rigging Response Act.Proposition 50 asks voters to temporarily scrap the state’s independently-drawn congressional district lines in favor of new maps carved up to help Democrats win five additional safe seats – a tit-for-tat response to Texas, where Republicans secured five new, friendlier districts earlier this year.Voting has been underway for weeks in the Golden State. As of Saturday, nearly 6m ballots had been returned, about one in four of the total mailed out, according to Political Data Inc, a firm that tracks voter data. Voting ends on Tuesday, 4 November.Early returns and polling suggest the ballot measure is on track for a comfortable victory. Though it can be difficult to predict turnout in an off-year special election, several recent surveys showed it passing by more than 20 points.The focus on Trump has galavanized Democrats in the deep-blue state, averting what some initially feared: an esoteric debate about the political minutiae of redistricting, a process that until just a few months ago typically took place at the start of each decade.National Democrats lined up behind California’s retaliatory plan. Their closing ad features Barack Obama, Newsom, and prominent congressional Democrats – including New York House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – telling voters they have the power to “stand up to Donald Trump”.“Democrats have won the messaging war in California because they’ve successfully framed it as an anti-Trump campaign,” said Dave Wasserman, the senior elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Republicans just did not cobble together the resources or the momentum to stop it.”Opponents of the effort initially promised a formidable fight, but their campaigns were vastly outraised and support from national Republicans never materialized. In the final weeks, Republicans had largely retreated from the airwaves.California Republicans focused part of their attack on Newsom, denouncing the plan as a “Gavinmander” designed to help the term-limited governor build a national profile and donor base ahead of a likely 2028 presidential run. Millions of conservative voters in the state will be disenfranchised, they’ve warned, appealing to the fairness of the independent redistricting commission’s current work.California representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose district would be redrawn under the new maps, has called for a nationwide ban on mid-decade redistricting. The proposal has not gained traction.“What Newsom is trying to do here is to entrench even more power in the hands of a corrupt political class that has caused California to go from being the most beautiful state in the country to being the most popular state to leave,” Kiley said in an interview this week on Fox Business Network.Republicans hold just nine of the state’s 52 House seats. If successful, the gerrymander could slash the number of Republicans California sends to Washington by more than half.Former California Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Trump critic who championed the commission’s creation, harshly criticized Proposition 50. And Charles Munger, the wealthy Republican donor and longtime supporter of independent redistricting, poured more than $30m into the effort to stop California from “returning to the evils of partisan gerrymandering”.Amid the immigration raids and the federal takeover of US cities, California voters were more concerned with the stopping the Trump administration than saving their fair maps, said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist advising Munger’s opposition group, the Protect Voters First committee. Madrid suspected that most people who voted for Proposition 50 hadn’t even bothered to study the new districts.“It has nothing to do with redistricting,” he said. “This is about sending a message to Donald Trump.”National good governance groups such as Common Cause, which has historically fought partisan redistricting, opted to stay neutral on California’s gerrymander.“The question was, are we going to unilaterally disarm one side?” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the CEO and president of Common Cause. Instead, the group developed a six-point “fairness” criteria, an effort to put “guardrails” on the process, which she said were reflected in the California measure.The view that politicians should not draw their own districts remains popular in California. Trump, however, is not. Nearly two in three voters agree that the president treats California “worse” than other states, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey. Among those voting for the measure, 75% said opposition to Trump was a factor in their decision.“It brings me no joy to see the maps that the commission drew being pushed aside,” said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College who served as one of the mapmaking panel’s Democratic members in 2020. “However, I do believe that in this moment, there is a greater fight that we have to wage in order to ensure a level playing field across the nation for the 2026 election.”Sadhwani appeared in one of the yes campaign’s first ads, in which she warned: “Donald Trump’s scheme to rig the next election is an emergency for our democracy”.View image in fullscreenThough Trump is at the center of the yes campaign, he was unusually muted on the ballot measure itself. Last month, he weighed in on Truth Social to preemptively discredit, without evidence, the “totally dishonest” results of Tuesday’s election.The Trump administration announced that it was deploying federal election monitors to New Jersey and California to watch the vote. In response, Newsom accused Trump of attempting to “suppress the vote” while the Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the state would dispatch its own observers to watch the federal monitors.Heading into election day, Democrats’ confidence has given the campaign an air of inevitability – so much so that Newsom, to the surprise and delight of supporters, took the unconventional step of telling them last week: “You can stop donating now.”But the yes campaign say it is taking nothing for granted. Newsom spent the final weekend before Tuesday’s special election traveling “up and down” the state, his team said, as tens of thousands of volunteers knocked doors and sent text messages reminding voters to return their ballots. “This election is not over,” the governor cautioned.Meanwhile, in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Newsom made it a point to say he was “deeply confident” that California voters would approve Proposition 50 – and said Trump was “changing the rules” and Democrats had to adapt.“We want to go back to some semblance of normalcy, but you have to deal with the crisis at hand,” he said.In the national redistricting arms race, California remains the farthest along of any Democrat-led state to retaliate. Wasserman estimates that passage of the California ballot initiative would probably improve Democrats’ chances of winning the House majority next year by between 10% and 15%. But, with Trump having pushed Republican-led states such as Missouri and North Carolina to approve new maps and others poised to follow suit, he noted: “The problem for Democrats nationally is that they don’t have enough Californias.”As the gerrymander war escalates, supporters outside the Golden State are pleading with Californians to, in the words of their governor, “fight fire with fire”.“We’re depending on California to help a friend out, to help us out as a country,” said Texas state representative Nicole Collier, who fled the state with roughly two dozen of her Democratic colleagues to prevent a vote on the Republican gerrymander there. “The future direction of this country hangs in the balance.” More

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      Abigail Spanberger presents herself as bulwark against chaos and cruelty

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      She spoke of political turmoil coming out of Washington. Recklessness and heartlessness coming out of Washington. A careless, chaotic, reckless economic policy coming out of Washington. She did not mention Donald Trump.The Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, pitched her closing argument on Saturday to more than 7,000 supporters at a campaign rally in Norfolk, home to the world’s biggest naval base.To the joy of the crowd she was joined on stage by former president Barack Obama, who eviscerated the Trump presidency with barbs, sarcasm and biting critiques. Spanberger, by contrast, is betting that the antidote to Trumpism is unflashy competence and a focus on the cost of living.The former CIA officer and three-term congresswoman has not attended any of the “No Kings” protests that featured millions of anti-Trump voters and seldom mentions him by name. “I feel like if I say it too much, it’s like Beetlejuice,” the 46-year-old joked recently to the Associated Press. “He’s gonna show up.”It is a different approach a year after Kamala Harris hammered a warning about stopping Trump to save democracy only for him to sweep back into power. On Tuesday Democrats hope to start hauling themselves up off the canvas by winning gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.History will be made in Virginia where Spanberger and the Republican lieutenant-governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, are vying to become the state’s first female governor. The commonwealth, as it is known, is also seeking to reassert its claim to be the most progressive state in the south after four years under Republican Glenn Youngkin.Virginia is second only to California in the size of its federal workforce. Spanberger has vowed in stump speeches to stand up for the thousands of employees laid off by Trump’s department of government efficiency, or Doge.View image in fullscreen“We need a governor who will support the thousands upon thousands of Virginia families whose livelihoods have been disrupted or destroyed because of Doge and now this government shutdown,” she said in Norfolk, against a backdrop of a giant Stars and Stripes and supporters waving mini-US flags and campaign signs.“We do not need someone who has said that losing a job isn’t a ‘real issue’ when we have Virginians who have dedicated themselves to service to our country who have lost their jobs because of bad policies and a reckless administration.”The “someone” in question was Earle-Sears, 61, who has been criticised for not taking the government shutdown seriously. The Marine veteran has vowed to cut taxes, root out wasteful government spending and be tough on crime. A Jamaican-born immigrant, she has accused Democrats of playing “the race card”.Her campaign was boosted by an endorsement from Trump and a down-ticket scandal involving Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones, who reportedly sent violent text messages about a political rival in 2022.But polls show Earle-Sears trailing by about seven percentage points in a state that Obama won in 2008 – the first Democrat in 44 years to do so – and that Trump has lost three times. Indeed, Virginia had been moving left for years on issues such as reproductive rights, gun safety and the death penalty until Youngkin’s 2021 victory put a Republican back in the governor’s mansion.Earle-Sears has sought to emulate the Youngkin playbook with a focus on culture war issues such as abortion, parents’ rights and transgender athletes. She ran an ad that attacks Spanberger for voting “to let boys share locker rooms with little girls” and “let children change genders without telling their parents”.Echoing a spot from Trump’s campaign last year, a narrator says: “Spanberger is for they/them, not us.” But this time the messages appear to be falling flat.Brian Jones, a partner at Black Rock Group, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington that Republicans “jumped right to where they thought they could replicate some of the success of President Trump on the trans issue. It’s my sense that it hasn’t broken through. I don’t know if people are tired of the message or it’s just not as effective.“My sense is that Winsome Sears has not been effective in driving a credible message on Spanberger, [who has] done a nice job on the bio front presenting herself as somebody who is this committed centrist.”Spanberger’s brand was reinforced on Saturday when Obama extolled her ability to reach across the aisle despite Washington’s deepening polarisation. He told the crowd: “Abigail is ranked as the most bipartisan member of Congress from the Commonwealth. She has had bills signed into law by both President Trump and President Biden. That is not easy to do.”View image in fullscreenAs Democrats continue to debate how to fight back, Spanberger has not been drawing the huge crowds that follow progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. But those who did the rally in Norfolk took a pragmatic view of her candidacy in a purple state such as Virginia.Kacie Schappert, 46, a doctor’s assistant attending with her 14-year-old daughter, said: “Some things I agree with, some things I don’t but at this point regardless Democrats need to come together and fight the craziness that’s going on. We have to vote for the people that are most going to do that for us. She’s a woman; she’s in a state that can go either way; she has to be moderate.”The party that lost the White House is often the more energised in off-year elections and 2025 promises to be no different. A vendor outside the rally was selling merchandise with slogans such as “Anti Trump Grandmas Club”, “Are we great yet?”, “Cats against Trump”, “Elect a clown, expect a circus”, “Gulf of Mexico: est 1550”, “No Kings in America”, “No kings since 1776” and a silhouette of dog defecating on the word “Trump”.Standing in a queue outside the sports arena, June Ameika, 61, a pilates and yoga teacher whose husband served in the navy for 30 years, said: “What’s going on in our country at the moment is absolutely frightening and so it takes all of us to come out and show support and be visible.“Every election is about sending a message. We have to let Trump know that his behaviour is despicable, breaking the law is despicable, and we’re not going to stand for it. Donald Trump has basically no regard for the democracy of this country and that’s fundamental going forward.”Spanberger is currently embarked on her second statewide bus tour of the campaign. On Thursday, she spoke at a “Latinos for Spanberger” event at a Mexican restaurant in Alexandria, delivering her stump speech in both English and Spanish – a language she used to conduct arrests during her days as a federal agent working narcotics cases.She accused the Trump administration of terrorising communities with its hardline approach to immigration. “I am a law and order Democrat – I’m a former intel officer and a former federal agent – but it is not law and in order to have your citizens, your community members, live in fear,” she said.Some attendees were government workers who have been furloughed since the shutdown began a month ago. Anna, 45, a Latino single mother who did not wish to give her last name, said: “I try to save, but it’s not going to last long. Instead of going out and contributing to the global economy, now it’s more restricted. I cannot spend a lot of money on certain things. It’s hard.”Anna said she would vote for Spanberger because of immigration, abortion and LGBTQ rights and urged Latino voters, who swung towards the Republicans last year, to return to the Democratic fold. “I hope people are opening their eyes. Latinos have to unify. I hope those who were in the middle and went towards Trump will now switch.”Spanberger presented herself as a bulwark against the chaos and cruelty emanating from Washington. She promised to work tirelessly to lower costs in housing, energy and healthcare and to improve public schools. She did not dwell on Trump and his attacks on institutions.Lauren Spears, 55, who works part-time at a school, said: “I love her background: CIA, law enforcement, congresswoman. I love that she is reasonable, moderate, very smart. She is a wonky policy kind of person and is good at compromise, which is what our government desperately needs.”Republicans have poured late money into the race but Trump has given only tepid support for Earle-Sears and has not campaigned with her in person – a clue that he suspects she cannot win. She has struggled to pull off the Trump-lite approach that Youngkin mastered four years ago by nodding to Maga without fully embracing it.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “The Republican candidate is a pleasant enough person but she’s far right. She is extreme. What worries me about Spanberger is she’s going to try and be bipartisan the way she’s advertising. She’s going to find the Democrats won’t put up with that either. This is not the time to be bipartisan.” More

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      The ghost of Ronald Reagan has spooked Trump over tariffs | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Halloween came early for Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan spooked him. Trump had a startled reaction to the TV ad that appeared during the first game of the World Series, placed by the provincial government of Ontario, featuring excerpts from President Reagan’s radio talk in April 1987 in which he explained the danger of trade wars. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted. It was, he falsely claimed, a “serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act”. In retaliation, he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canada.Trump was apparently horrified at the sudden presence of the ghost of conservatism past, who had kept the outlandish bounder at arm’s length and whom Trump regarded warily if not nervously. Reagan was the original, bigger and more successful performer, whose appeal was as the harbinger of morning in America, not the grim reaper of a zombie nightfall. Canada is being punished for Trump’s fright.Trump seemingly fears Reagan’s image might be taken as a warning to the supreme court to rule against him in the impending case of Trump v VOS, in which the basis of his tariff regime is at stake. “Canada is trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country,” Trump claimed.Two courts have already ruled against Trump for his invocation of national security under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on whomever he wishes without the approval of the Congress. In late May, the US court of international trade held that most of Trump’s tariffs were “contrary to law”. He appealed to the US court of appeals for the federal circuit, which on 29 August affirmed the CIT ruling. The appeals court observed that “tariffs are a core Congressional power”. The IEEPA does not explicitly grant the president the authority to impose tariffs. Even if the IEEPA were interpreted to allow tariffs, it would represent an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’s power to the president.Twice rebuffed, Trump has appealed to the supreme court. The argument is scheduled for 5 November. Trump’s hair-trigger response to the sudden appearance of Reagan’s shade revealed his deep unease with how the court might rule. Even though the court has permitted many of his policies to proceed temporarily without legal justification through the “shadow docket”, he seems to know he might be on shaky ground here. In the tariff case, the amicus briefs against Trump were filed by some of the leading lights of the conservative legal world. Trump accused the appeals court judges of “hatred” and called Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society, which provided Trump with the lists of nominees for judgeships, a “sleazebag”. Trump is clearly afraid.On 15 October Trump announced that he might attend the oral arguments in person, to become the first sitting president ever to witness a supreme court case. Trump apparently has no concern about tainting the perception of the court’s objectivity or legitimacy. Either the court works for him or it does not; the justices fall in line or they are among the enemies within. To Trump, the Republican court should be no different from the Department of Justice under his thumb. He evidently views the separation of powers as a personal affront, unfairly stealing from him. Everything is a zero-sum game, not just international trade. “I’m the speaker and the president,” Trump has joked, according to the New York Times.Trump’s appearance in the sanctum of the court would let them know who’s the real chief. Just as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche, sat behind Emil Bove, Trump’s henchman and nominee for the federal appeals bench, as Bove faced the senators at his confirmation hearing, Trump could sit behind his solicitor general, D John Sauer, to glower at the black-robed justices. His presence would threaten to strip away the veneer of the court’s independence as well as show his distrust for his own lawyer’s ability to prevail on the merits. Whether he wins or loses the case, he has personalized it. Winning would be interpreted as a victory for intimidation; losing would be flouting him rather than ruling on the merits. Either way, he would be poison and the decision would be, as it is said in the law, the fruit of the poisonous tree.Trump has been losing his case so far because of his transparently weak and sham argument, part economic illiteracy and part glaring cynicism, though there is a blurred line with Trump. Granting Trump his boneheaded economics, assuming he’s just a crude real estate operator who does not know the most basic things about international trade, may lend his primitivism a patina of dumb clumsy earnestness. Contrary to Trump’s stubborn ignorance, however, trade deficits are not a mercantilist zero-sum game and tariffs are not a tax on foreign countries. His complementary point that he must be able to impose universal tariffs by fiat whenever he likes without congressional authority, the only president ever to grab power for himself unilaterally under the statute in its 50-year history, because of the non sequitur of fentanyl trafficking, is so ridiculously phoney that it colors his whole case as typically dishonest.Trump’s snap imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazil for its supreme court’s judgment convicting his ally the former president Jair Bolsonaro of an attempted coup and Trump’s additional 10% tariff on Canada in his fit of pique at the Reagan TV ad may only serve to undermine his already tenuous argument that he is compelled to usurp sole power based on the IEEPA in the interest of national security. His tantrums are gifts to the opposing attorney, who may well hold them up as obvious refutations of his claims.In advance of Trump’s date with the court, he has raced around Asia tossing concessions which he hails as victories. Dropping the tariff rates for Japan, South Korea and China, while Beijing lifted its retaliatory threats to withhold rare earth minerals and stop purchasing American soybeans, he has to that extent reduced the harm he alone has been responsible for inflicting.The previously perfectly submissive Republican Congress has begun to crack up in reaction to the stress that Trump’s policies have placed on the rural Republican base. In symbolic votes, five GOP senators joined Democrats to oppose Trump’s tariffs on Brazil and four voted against his tariffs on Canada. The Republicans are in an uproar, following American ranchers, over his approval of importation of more Argentinian beef, apparently as a favor to his rightwing ally Javier Milei, to whom he has also authorized the payment of $20bn in support of the waning Argentinian currency. While Trump has grudgingly acknowledged that he cannot run for a third term, the Republican members of the Congress still have to face the music.The illegality of his tariffs aside, Trump’s retreat reveals the lasting damage he has already done to the US economy, his enhancement of Chinese power and his alienation of our allies, and it exposes his performance as a pantomime strongman on the world stage. Though some of his tariffs will be reduced, even those that remain stand at an unprecedented level in living memory.“Consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.9%, the highest since 1934,” the Yale Budget Lab reports. For small businesses, which account for one-third of US trade, 78% expect higher costs, and, unable to absorb them, 71% anticipate needing to pass them on as price increases. The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development projects that as a result of Trump’s tariffs the US Gross Domestic Product growth rate will fall from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.5% in 2026 – a decline of nearly half.Trump’s atavistic return to the Republican protectionism of the 1930s, which deepened the Great Depression, rejects the lessons that Ronald Reagan sought to teach. “The memory of all this occurring back in the 30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity,” Reagan, the former New Dealer, said in the speech that enraged Trump enough to punish Canada for reviving it.Reagan’s talk was a prophetic warning of the peril of Trump’s tariffs: “You see, at first, when someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time … High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars … Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s relationship with Reagan was always uneasy. Throughout the 1980s, he sought Reagan’s imprimatur. In 1983, Reagan was asked to send a congratulatory telegram on the opening of Trump Tower. A few years later, Trump invited the president to attend a LaToya Jackson concert at his Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino at Atlantic City. Several attempts to edge close to Reagan were rejected, according to the Washington Post. The White House counsel’s office wrote “NO” on the telegram request. Offering advice on calling Trump, Reagan’s political director advised, “He has a large ego” – “large” was underlined.Nancy and Ronald Reagan lavished attention on the wealthy, but Trump was apparently too vulgar. It seems not even Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, who was close to Nancy Reagan, could gain him access. Finally, Trump got himself invited to a social event at the White House, stood in the photo line and took a standard picture shaking hands with the president, and received the signed picture. Unfortunately, it was signed from “Reagan Reagan”. A corrected photo was sent, but Trump featured the original image as a token of his significance in The Art of the Deal.In that book, published in 1987, Trump suggested that Reagan was a hollow construct, “so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile”. That year Trump briefly considered his first run for the presidency. He made a foray into New Hampshire and bought full-page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe scathingly attacking Reagan for weakness. His “Open Letter” stated, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” He blamed the federal deficit on our alliances. “Make Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others pay for the protection we extend to allies,” he wrote. “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.” It was the complaint he would retail for decades regardless of the circumstances. At the bottom, the ads reproduced his squiggly signature, nearly identical to the one on the lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein that he denies he ever wrote. Now, “Reagan Reagan” has returned to haunt him.There’s a twist characteristic of the Trump era. If Trump loses his tariff case, the duties collected from companies will have to be refunded. The Wall Street financial firm of Cantor Fitzgerald reportedly anticipates a market on the rights to the tariff refunds. Its former head Howard Lutnick is the secretary of commerce, and his sons now run the firm. A Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary is offering 20% to 30% in cash upfront rather than wait for litigation to resolve the claims, according to Wired magazine. In exchange, the company would eventually get the full refund. But if Trump prevails, the claims would be worthless. A spokesperson for Cantor Fitzgerald calls the report “absolutely false”, saying in a statement that it is “not in the business of positioning any risk, taking views or facilitating business in litigation claims involving the legality of US tariffs”.In August, however, the senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter on 13 August to Brandon Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald’s CEO, seeking information. “Given that one of the purported architects of President Trump’s tariff policy is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, your father and the former Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, LP, the firm’s actions raise obvious conflict-of-interest and insider dealing concerns.”The senators inquired: “Has anyone at Cantor or Cantor Fitzgerald, LP communicated with any individual representing the Administration’s interest or working on the court cases on these matters? If so, please provide a list of all such conversations, including the date, the individuals involved, and the nature of the conversation.”A spokesperson for the commerce department stated in an email to Wired, “Secretary Lutnick knows nothing about this decision because he has no insight or strategic control over Cantor Fitzgerald.” He remains busy working on Trump’s tariffs. This article was amended on 4 November 2025 to add a response from Cantor Fitzgerald to the Wired report.

      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