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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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      Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

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      For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.Two miles south of Jeffersonville, Korean and Japanese companies LG Energy Solution and Honda are in the midst of sinking $3.5bn into a facility that is expected to begin production in the coming months.Hundreds of people have been employed in the construction of the plant, and more than 525 people have been hired to work in engineering and other manufacturing roles at the facility. In total, about 2,200 people are expected to be employed on a site that, until several years ago, was open farmland.But some locals are concerned.A host of Trump administration policies – tariff measures and the end of clean vehicle tax credits worth thousands of dollars to car buyers – are causing multinational manufacturing companies to consider pausing hundreds of millions of dollars in future investments, a move that would hit small, majority-Republican towns such as Jeffersonville especially hard.Moreover, a raid by ICE immigration officers on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, a small town in south-east Georgia in September that saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and sent home has sent shock waves through places like Jeffersonville and the C-suites of international companies alike.View image in fullscreen“The construction process has been slowing down. My fear is that the whole thing is going to stop, and we’re left with just unfinished concrete out there,” says Amy Wright, a Fayette county resident, of the under-construction battery plant.“What’s more, a lot of the people hired to do the construction of the plant are not locals. They are from out-of-state; I’ve met them at the gym.”While in last year’s presidential election, 77% of voters in Fayette county backed Trump, recent polls suggest his popularity in rural America has taken a nosedive.One poll suggests that his approval rating among rural Americans has slipped from 59% in August to 47% in October. Others chart his net approval rating in states he won in last year’s presidential election – Ohio, Michigan and Indiana – in negative territory by as much as 18.9 points.Wright says her son, who works for a local company that supplies Honda with parts, recently received notice that a prior promise of overtime work was being rescinded. She says she believes Honda is reeling in spending due to US government policies.“Tariffs are affecting everything,” says Wright.What’s happening in Jeffersonville is being mirrored across the midwest.In Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, global giants Toyota and Stellantis have spent billions of dollars in small communities, much of which came in the form of clean energy tax breaks from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Toyota’s biggest production facility on the planet is in a small Kentucky town called Georgetown, where the company employs more than 10,000 people and has invested $11bn in the local economy since the late 1980s. These workers churn out nearly half a million vehicles and hundreds of thousands of engines every year.However, in August Toyota warned that it faced a $9.5bn financial hit to it and its suppliers due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the largest estimate of any automotive manufacturer. In July, Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said Trump’s tariffs were undermining investments in the state such as Toyota’s, calling them “chaos”.View image in fullscreenSixty-three per cent of voters in Georgetown’s Scott county backed Trump in last year’s presidential election.Last April, Stellantis laid off 900 workers at locations across the midwest due to Trump’s tariffs.In Indiana, one of the largest employers in the state, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is reportedly considering pulling out of $50bn worth of investment in the coming years if Trump follows through on his executive order to target companies that don’t reduce drug prices.“No [manufacturer] wanted to alienate customers, but those days are past. So, the bulk of tariff price increases will hit in the coming months. This matters, because factory employment is a major share of rural counties in the midwest – about 30% in Indiana, and similar in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Michael Hicks, an economist and professor at Ball State University in Indiana.“These things will clearly have a political effect, but my hunch is not fully for several months. Overlaying all this is the risk of a significant [economic] downturn, where tariffs combine with a financial bubble that would surely hit rural – red – communities very hard.”Still, others believe that the tariffs will benefit small American towns in the long run.“Toyota is doing fine and I don’t see [tariffs] as being a big hurt for us here in Georgetown,” says Robert Linder, co-owner of the Porch restaurant that’s situated a mile north of the huge facility, and who worked at the plant for 29 years.In April, Toyota suggested it might move more vehicle production to Georgetown to beat the tariffs, though that move could be years in the making. Sales of Toyota brands in the US have been growing this year, with the company thus far eating the cost of tariffs rather than passing it on to consumers.“They just announced a $10bn investment in the United States for more Toyota plants. If Toyota was worried about [tariffs] they wouldn’t be expanding,” says Linder. Recent reports, however, suggest the $10bn figure referred to previously announced investments.However, large multinationals have a track record of announcing major projects only for reality to play out in a very different way.In Wisconsin, the Taiwanese tech company Foxconn claimed it would spend $10bn on a facility outside the town of Mount Pleasant. Instead, local taxpayers today find themselves on the hook for $1.2bn spent on highways, attorneys and other infrastructure for a facility that has never transpired.In Arizona, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), backed directly by Trump, has been plagued with lawsuits related to safety and other issues, and missed project deadlines following promises to become a major employer of local talent.Despite Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, recently claiming there was no need to worry about the future of the LG-Honda battery plant, on 28 October, Honda announced it was reducing production at plants across Ohio due to a semiconductor chip shortage.While more than two dozen jobs are available at the Jeffersonville site, according to the LG-Honda plant’s hiring website, it’s a far cry from the more than 2,000 positions cited by officials previously.For Amy Wright, policies coming out of the White House are having a clear effect on residents of rural Ohio. As an organizer of four local No Kings protests against Trump’s policies she’s noticed a change in the people who are coming to the rallies.“We’ve had more and more people who have voted for [Trump] show up and say: ‘This is not good, this is not what we voted for,’” she says. More

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      The luxury gap: Trump builds his palace as Americans face going hungry

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      It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.Images of wealthy monarchs or autocrats revelling in excess even as the masses struggle for bread are more commonly associated with the likes of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France, who spent lavishly at the court of Versailles, or Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, who siphoned off billions while citizens endured deepening poverty.But now America has a jarring split-screen of its own, between an oligarch president bringing a Midas touch to the White House and families going hungry, workers losing pay and government services on the brink of collapse.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“Are you fucking kidding me?” exclaimed Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, during an interview on Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central podcast The Weekly Show. “This guy wants to create a ballroom for his rich friends while completely turning a blind eye to the fact that babies are going to starve when the Snap benefits end in just hours from now.”For years Trump has cultivated the image of a “blue-collar billionaire” and, in last year’s presidential election, he beat Harris by 14 percentage points among non-college-educated voters – double his margin in 2016.Yet he grew up in an affluent neighbourhood of Queens, New York, and joined the family business as a property developer, receiving a $1m loan from his father for projects in Manhattan. He attached his name to luxury hotels and golf clubs and achieved celebrity through the New York tabloids and as host of the reality TV show The Apprentice.View image in fullscreenAs a politician, however, Trump has successfully branded himself as the voice of the left-behinds in towns hollowed out by industrialisation. His formula includes tapping into grievance, particularly white grievance, and into “Make America Great Again” nostalgia . His speeches are peppered with aspirational promises that his policies will guarantee his supporters a share of the nation’s wealth.This has apparently given him leeway with Trump voters who, despite their own struggles, turned a blind eye to the largesse of his first term and how it might benefit his family. But it was clear from his inauguration in January – when he was surrounded by the tech titans Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg – that part two would be different.Trump has made a personal profit of more than $1.8bn over the past year, according to a new financial tracker run by the Center for American Progress thinktank, which says the lion’s share came from launching his own crypto ventures while aggressively deregulating the industry. Other sources of income include gifts, legal settlements and income from a $40m Amazon documentary about the first lady, Melania Trump.There have been brazen “let them eat cake” moments. In May, Trump said he would accept a $400m luxury plane from Qatar and use it as Air Force One despite concerns that it could violate the US constitution’s emoluments clause. In October, it was reported he was demanding the justice department pay him about $230m in compensation over federal investigations he faced that he claims were politically motivated.View image in fullscreenLarry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There is a glaring gap between the life of Donald Trump, which is gold-plated and luxurious, and the life of so many Americans who are now being hit by the government shutdown.“You have to go back in history to examples in the 1920s or the Gilded Age in the late 19th century to find this kind of opulence that’s not just going on but being advertised. That goes along with all the other efforts to enrich Donald Trump and his family and his friends. It’s a shocking display of the use of public power for private gain.”It is hard to imagine a more resonant symbol than the ballroom. Last month, Trump left presidential historians and former White House staff aghast by demolishing the East Wing without seeking approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which vets the construction of federal buildings. He also fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent agency that had expected to review the project.He claimed the destruction was a necessary step towards building a long-needed ballroom which, at 90,000 sq ft, would be big enough to hold an inauguration and dwarf the executive mansion itself. It will be funded not by the taxpayer but the new masters of the universe.Among the companies represented at the 15 October dinner were Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen Hamilton, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms and T-Mobile. The Adelson Family Foundation, founded by the Republican mega-donors Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, also had a presence.The oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, and crypto entrepreneur twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss – who were portrayed by the actor Armie Hammer in the film The Social Network – were all on the guest list.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEthics watchdogs condemned the dinner as a blatant case of selling access to the president with the potential for influence peddling and other forms of corruption. Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s par for the course for Donald Trump. Millionaires and billionaires wine with him and dine with him and everything is fine with him. There’s a cost and there’s consequences.“They’re not donating this money because it’s a nice thing to do. Certainly there’s some sort of benefit to them and it could be the largest wealth transfer in American history with the big ugly bill [the Working Families Tax Cut Act] just a few months ago.”View image in fullscreenThat legislation delivers tax cuts for the rich while reducing food assistance and making health insurance more expensive for working families. The mood is only likely to darken as the second-longest government shutdown in history threatens to rip the social safety net away from millions of people. John Thune, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, warned on Wednesday: “It’s going to get ugly fast.”A number of essential public services are approaching the end of their available funds, a situation likely to be felt directly in households, schools and airports from this weekend.The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), also known as food stamps, is set to lapse for 42 million people, raising the spectre of long queues at food banks. On Friday, two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration must continue to fund the programme with contingency funds. But the decisions are likely to face appeals. It was also unclear how soon the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded.Schemes that provide early years’ education for low-income families and subsidised air travel to remote communities are also set to run aground. At the same time, thousands of federal employees will soon miss their first full paychecks since the shutdown began, raising the prospect of staffing shortages in areas such as airport security and air traffic control.The timing is awkward because Saturday also marks the start of open enrolment for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. Premiums are expected to soar, reflecting insurers’ doubts that Congress will renew enhanced tax credits before they lapse at year’s end – one of the key points of contention in the current standoff.Trump can often appear immune to political crises. But in a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday, only 28% of Americans say they support the ballroom project, compared with 56% who oppose it. The same survey found that 45% blame Trump and Republicans for the government shutdown while 33% hold Democrats responsible. Notably, independents blame Trump and Republicans by a 2-1 margin – handing Democrats an opportunity.View image in fullscreenJohn Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “For the first time in a while, they have an opening with rural voters. Medicaid and Snap are infrastructural necessities in the poorest counties. Without programmes like this being funded, you’re not just talking about hurting poor people or rural people who are invisible; you’re talking about shutting down hospitals and clinics, and that matters to people. Democrats should be fanning out in rural areas and people should be telling their stories.”It is safe to assume that, had Barack Obama or Joe Biden built a ballroom during the crippling austerity of a government shutdown, Republicans and rightwing media would have gone scorched-earth against them. Trump’s ostentatious display of wealth and cronyism comes against a backdrop of widening social and economic inequality. Democrats, however, are often accused of lacking a killer instinct.Joe Walsh, a former Republican representative aligned with the conservative Tea Party who four months ago became a Democrat, said: “Democrats don’t know how to fight and I can see they’re already squirming on this ballroom issue. We’ve got a guy in the White House who every day is taking a blowtorch to this country and most Democrats don’t understand the moment. He ploughs ahead and tears down the East Wing because he knows he can get away with it.”Walsh believes that the next Democratic president should commit to demolishing Trump’s ballroom. “This is somebody who’s a tyrant who believes he can ignore all laws, rules, norms and processes,” he added. “You have to draw the line on that. No, he cannot unilaterally demolish the East Wing and build a big old ballroom. This guy has no clue what America is. We don’t have palaces in America.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene tells Bill Maher she believes extraterrestrials are demons

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      Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her – yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.Greene’s appearance on Maher’s show perhaps made evident the ideological distance between the congresswoman – who has conspicuously avoided directly criticizing Trump himself – and some of her newer, cross-aisle admirers.Maher on Friday asked another of his on-air guests, film-maker Dan Farah, to discuss his new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, and how it explores the way some senior US military officials apparently theorize earnestly that “demons” may be responsible for what some colloquially refer to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.The Real Time host, who is generally considered to be left-leaning, subsequently asked those on the show: “Do you think demons and the devil are real?”Greene, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, confidently answered: “Absolutely. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. And I believe those could be fallen angels.”As Maher replied: “Fallen angels? The aliens are fallen angels?” Greene continued: “That’s possible – I think that’s what they could be. That’s what makes sense in my worldview.”The Fifth Column podcast host Michael Moynihan was also participating in the discussion, and Maher called on him to say whether he agreed with Greene. “No,” Moynihan said. “I’m sorry.”At another point in the show, Maher invited Greene to revisit her infamous 2018 social media screed positing that wildfires that had devastated California were ignited by a laser beam from space under the control of the Rothschild banking dynasty.The progressive watchdog Media Matters uncovered that post weeks into Greene’s first congressional term. And her colleagues at the time voted to remove her from her House committee assignments, with the Rothschild family having repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic conspiracy theories.Greene on Friday declared to Maher that she initially “didn’t even know the Rothschilds were Jewish”.“Before politics … I [did] not know much of any of this stuff,” Greene said. “I never even said the word ‘Jewish’ in the … post.”Maher pointed out that “‘Rothschild’, to a lot of people, is almost synonymous with the word ‘Jewish’”.Greene replied: “I had no idea … Now I know it’s Jewish.”Amid laughter and applause, Maher retorted: “Right. Well, now we know … That’s what I’m here for – to make sure that people in Congress know what the fuck you’re talking about.” More

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      Three killed in US military strike on alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean

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      The US military has carried out another lethal strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said.Hegseth said on Saturday the vessel was operated by a US-designated terrorist organization but did not name which group was targeted. He said three people were killed in the strike.It’s at least the 15th such strike carried out by the US military in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific since early September.In a posting on X, Hegseth said the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”The US military has now killed at least 64 people in the strikes.Trump has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. He has asserted the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration when it declared a war on terrorism after the 11 September 2001 attacks.US lawmakers have been repeatedly rebuffed by the White House in their demand that the administration release more information about the legal justification for the strikes as well as greater details about which cartels have been targeted and the individuals killed.Hegseth said in the posting that “narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home” and the Defense Department “will treat them EXACTLY how we treated Al-Qaeda.”Senate Democrats renewed their request for more information about the strikes in a letter on Friday to secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Hegseth.“We also request that you provide all legal opinions related to these strikes and a list of the groups or other entities the President has deemed targetable,” the senators wrote.Among those signing the letter were senate minority leader Chuck Schumer as well as senators Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Patty Murray and Brian Schatz.The letter says that thus far the administration “has selectively shared what has at times been contradictory information” with some members, “while excluding others”.Earlier Friday, the Republican chair and ranking Democrat on the senate armed services committee released a pair of letters sent to Hegseth written in late September and early October requesting the department’s legal rationale for the strikes and the list of drug cartels that the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations in its justification for the use of military force. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president threatens military action in Nigeria over alleged killings of Christians

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      In describing his foreign policy agenda, Donald Trump has proclaimed an “America First” policy.But on Saturday the US president threatened to launch attacks in Nigeria in response to alleged violence against Christians, saying he had instructed his newly named department of war to “prepare for possible action”.“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump posted on social media.The warning of possible military action came after Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, earlier on Saturday pushed back on Trump announcing the day before that he was designating the west African country “a country of particular concern” for allegedly failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.Here are the key storiesTrump threatens to go into Nigeria ‘guns-a-blazing’ over attacks on ChristiansDonald Trump on Saturday said he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government was failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the west African country.“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he wrote on social media. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”Read the full storyJD Vance repeats comments he wants wife Usha to convert to ChristianityJD Vance is doubling down on comments he made about wanting his wife, Usha Vance, who is Hindu, to convert to Christianity – remarks that drew political backlash from some quarters.At an event with Turning Point USA at the University of Mississippi to honor the conservative group’s slain founder Charlie Kirk, an audience member questioned the US vice-president about how he sees the links between American patriotism and Christianity.Read the full storyTrump’s immigration raids continue through Halloween in Chicago and Los AngelesDonald Trump’s immigration crackdown continued on Halloween night as federal agents were seen in Chicago and Los Angeles on the holiday, according to multiple reports.In Chicago, where the president has unleashed military troops to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as agents carry out arrests and push back against protesters, several people were arrested on Friday. ICE agents descended on the city and its suburbs as part of their operations, and protesters were also detained during clashes with law enforcement.Read the full storyObama criticizes Trump and Republican policy in stump speech for Abigail SpanbergerBarack Obama headlined a rally Saturday in Virginia to try to secure a victory for the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who leads in polls days before the election.Obama moved between criticizing Donald Trump and Republican policy and rhetoric – with a bit of humor – while also explaining how Abigail Spanberger could help counter what Democrats see as the country’s downward trajectory.Read the full storyFlights delayed across US amid air traffic controller shortages as shutdown drags onNearly 50% of the 30 busiest US airports faced shortages of air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday, leading to flight delays nationwide as a federal government shutdown hit its 31st day.The absence of controllers on Friday is by far the most widespread since the shutdown began, with one of the worst-hit regions being New York, where 80% of air traffic controllers were out, the agency said.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      As Barack Obama stumps for other Democrats, the party gets to see what it lost, writes David Smith in this politics sketch about the former president.

      Trump policies loom large over New Jersey’s unpredictable governor’s race, writes Anna Betts in New Jersey.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 31 October, 2025. More

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      As Barack Obama stumps for other Democrats, the party gets to see what it lost

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      “It’s not as if we didn’t see some of this coming,” said Barack Obama, a note of bleak humour in his voice. “I will admit it’s worse than even I expected, but I did warn y’all!”The crowd at a sports arena in Norfolk, Virginia, half-laughed and half-groaned. “I did,” Obama added. “You can run the tape.”He did. The former US president spent 2024 sounding the alarm about the horror show that awaited if Donald Trump ever got back to the Oval Office. Trump won the election anyway a year ago on Wednesday.Among the many unintended consequences is the return of Obama to the political stage. Former presidents used to slink away to running foundations or writing memoirs and avoid criticising their successors but that is one more norm that has bitten the dust.Obama has had 25 public engagements or remarks in the past six months, according to a list released by his office. He has tackled everything from USAID to redistricting to Tylenol. He is filling the vacuum left by Trump’s most immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, who turns 83 this month.Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, for Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. It gives him a platform to deliver an alternative State of the Union address. And the gloves are off.To hear the expectant buzz of the 7,000-plus crowd in Norfolk as candidate Abigail Spanberger promised that Obama’s entrance was just moments away was to be reminded that Democrats did once have a president who could match Trump’s superstar charisma.“We love you!” someone shouted from the stands, just as they do at Trump rallies. “We miss you!”The backdrop was a giant stars and stripes and supporters waving mini-flags and signs. But whereas Trump is all big orange hair, dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Obama’s hair was short and grey and he wore a blue shirt open at the collar with sleeves rolled up. Trump often gets compared to a stand-up comedian but Obama has the sharper act.View image in fullscreenLiberated from the burden of seeking elected office for himself again, he clearly revelled in skewering the president with scathing and scorching lines, as if auditioning for late-night TV.“It’s hard to know where to start, because every day this White House offers up a fresh batch of lawlessness and recklessness and mean-spiritedness and just plain craziness,” Obama said, with the crowd cheering each word, wondering perhaps why Chuck Schumer and the rest of them can’t do plain talk like this.The former president ran through an exhausting but not exhaustive list of Trump’s offences: turning the justice department against his political opponents; replacing career prosecutors with loyalists; firing decorated officers because they might be more loyal to the constitution than to him; deploying the national guard to US cities to stop crime waves that don’t exist; ICE agents pulling up in unmarked vans and grabbing people, including US citizens; a health secretary who rejects proven science and promotes quack medicine; a top White House aide who calls Democrats domestic extremists; and a poor labour economist who got fired for reporting bad jobs numbers.“I mean, it’s like every day is Halloween,” Obama said, “except it’s all tricks and no treats.”He acknowledged that plenty of people voted for Trump because they were “understandably frustrated” with inflation and gas prices and the difficulty of affording a home and worried about their children’s children, saying: “So they were willing to take a chance.”It certainly worked out well for Trump and his family, with crypto ventures with hundreds of millions of dollars and for wealthy allies and corporations whose tax bills went down. But for ordinary people, Obama continued, life is harder than ever, with healthcare premiums set to double or triple and the government shut down.“As for the president,” Obama said, “he has been focused on critical issues like paving over the Rose Garden so folks don’t get mud on their shoes, and gold-plating the Oval Office, and building a $300m ballroom.“Virginia, here’s the good news. If you can’t visit a doctor, don’t worry, he will save you a dance. And if you don’t get an invitation to the next White House shindig, you can always watch the festivities and all the beautiful people on Truth Social.”The crowd lapped it up. Obama was on a roll. He lambasted Republicans for putting on “a big show of deporting people and targeting transgender folks. They never miss a chance to scapegoat minorities and DEI for every problem under the sun.“You got a flat tire? DEI.“Wife mad at you?”The audience rejoined: “DEI!”It was a reminder that humour is a potent political weapon. That is why Trump’s allies tried to oust TV host Jimmy Kimmel and why California governor Gavin Newsom gets under their skin.Obama turned to the artificial intelligence videos that Trump posts on his Truth Social account, including one showing himself wearing a crown, flying a fighter jet and dumping brown liquid on No Kings protesters.“All the nonsense we see on the news every day, the over-the-top rhetoric, the fabricated conspiracies, the weird videos of a US president with a crown on his head flying a fighter jet and dumping poop on protesting citizens, all of that is designed to distract you from the fact that your situation has not gotten better,” he said.There it was: the man who had inspired with his words – yes, we can; hope and change; there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America – had been reduced to uttering the word “poop” from the stage. When they go low …Obama dutifully heaped praise on Spanberger and urged Virginians to vote for her. It was a performance of wit and wisdom that reminded America what it has lost – and Democrats what they have never been able to recreate. The party needs someone who will take the fight to Trump. But its best candidate for 2028 is the one who cannot run. More

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      Obama criticizes Trump and Republican policy in stump speech for Abigail Spanberger

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      Barack Obama headlined a rally Saturday in Virginia to try to secure a victory for the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who leads in polls days before the election.Obama moved between criticizing Donald Trump and Republican policy and rhetoric – with a bit of humor – while also explaining how Abigail Spanberger could help counter what Democrats see as the country’s downward trajectory.“As for the president, he has been focused on critical issues like paving over the Rose Garden so folks don’t get mud on their shoes, and gold-plating the Oval Office and building a $300m ballroom,” Obama said. “So Virginia, here’s the good news. If you can’t visit a doctor, don’t worry, he will save you a dance.”The former US president stopped in the afternoon in Norfolk, Virginia, to stump for the former representative who at 55% support among voters leads the Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, by 14 points, according to a YouGov survey conducted from 17 to 28 October.Obama later spoke in Newark, New Jersey, on behalf of the US representative Mikie Sherrill, whom 51% of voters favor, as compared with Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican state assembly member, who has 42% support, according to the same report.Obama spoke after Sherrill, continuing his criticism of Trump and his policies. “We’ve got a president who deployed the national guard in American cities and claimed to be stopping crime waves that don’t actually exist,” Obama said. “We’ve got masked ICE agents in unmarked vans pulling people in off the streets, including US citizens, on the suspicion that they don’t look like real Americans.“It’s like every day is Halloween except it’s all tricks and no treats,” Obama said amid reports of immigration raids taking place in Chicago and Los Angeles even on Halloween night.He highlighted Sherrill’s experience as a navy helicopter pilot, federal prosecutor and mother of four, saying it made her “the kind of leader who understands the mission”. “She knows who she’s supposed to serve,” Obama said.Earlier Saturday, Obama called New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and offered to be a “sounding board” if the 34-year-old Democratic frontrunner wins the election. He also praised Mamdani’s campaign, a spokesperson confirmed to Reuters.“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,” said Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec.Mamdani, a Uganda-born state assembly member, has polled well ahead of his main rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, before the 4 November general election.The 4 November elections, in states that have flipped back and forth between Republican and Democratic governors, are seen as indicators of how the country feels about Trump and the two parties in the off-year race.“There is absolutely no evidence Republicans’ policies have made life better for you, the people of Virginia,” Obama said at the rally. “They have devoted enormous energy trying to entrench themselves in power and punishing their enemies and enriching their friends and silencing their critics.”“It’s time to point America in a better direction by electing Abigail Spanberger as your next governor,” Obama added.Virginia voters will be electing a female governor for the first time. Spanberger is a former CIA analyst who served three terms in Congress; Earle-Sears became lieutenant governor in 2022, making her the first woman of color to hold a statewide office in Virginia.In an October debate, Earle-Sears, a US Marine Corps veteran, focused on culture-war issues like transgender women in sports.“Are you going to change in a gym where men are nude in the locker rooms?” Earle-Sears asked Spanberger. “Are you going to do that, Abigail? I don’t think you will. What about your girl children?”Spanberger responded that there should never be nude men in women’s locker rooms and that decisions on transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports “should be made between parents and educators and teachers in each community. It should not be dictated by politicians.”At the rally Saturday, Spanberger said her opponent was “focused on the wrong things”.“We need a governor who will recognize that Virginians are struggling to afford the rising costs in healthcare, housing and energy,” said Spanberger, who was the first Democrat to win her district in almost 50 years.The former president touted Spanberger’s rank as one of the most bipartisan members of the House.“Abigail has real, practical plans to grow the economy and strengthen Virginia schools and lower the cost of everything from housing to healthcare to energy, and she is willing to reach across the aisle to make it happen,” Obama said.He referenced the thousands of federal workers who have lost their jobs because of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut federal spending. An estimated 750,000 workers have also been furloughed amid the government shutdown.Virginia, right next to Washington DC, has a large federal workforce and has been especially hurt by those job cuts.One rally attendee, Tanya Keller, a 60-year-old Norfolk resident, said she supports Spanberger because she thinks Spanberger is rational and concerned about people losing federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid coverage.Obama “reminded us what is at stake, what is important and how we have to fight being divided”, said Keller, who has volunteered for Spanberger’s campaign.Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the race has centered on Trump’s policies. Sherrill, a former navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, focused in a debate last month on the impact of tariffs on grocery prices and of the “big, beautiful bill” on healthcare and utility costs. She said that Ciattarelli refused to stand up to Trump.“He’ll do whatever Trump tells him to do,” she said. “All he says is: ‘Trump’s right.’” More