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      US anti-vax stance to blame for continent-wide surge in measles, say experts

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      Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.“The US’s political position in relation to health and vaccination is an outrage,” said Rosana Richtmann, an infectious disease doctor and coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Disease’s immunisation committee. “It’s a problem for us.”View image in fullscreenMeasles was successfully eliminated from the Americas in 2016, and then again in 2024, but the continent is now at risk of losing its measles-free status. There have been 11,668 cases reported across 10 countries in North and Latin America, according to the latest data from the Pan-American Health Organization (Paho).More than half of these cases are in the US and Canada, with three deaths in the US and two in Canada so far.Mexico is the hardest-hit country in Latin America, with more than 4,800 cases and 22 deaths, followed by Bolivia with 354 cases. Other countries, including Brazil, Belize and Paraguay, are dealing with a few dozen infections linked to imported cases.Concern over high numbers of cases in North America has led the Brazilian health ministry to focus more on the highly contagious disease with a nationwide vaccination campaign launched for children and teenagers in October. Adults who did not have the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as children are also being offered the jab.View image in fullscreenBrazil also has protocols in place to respond swiftly to individual cases. When a nine-year-old tested positive for measles on 7 October in Várzea Grande, health authorities were swift to act. Nurses kitted out in protective gear visited the child’s school and worked quickly to implement “ring vaccination”, inoculating everyone who had been in contact with her.The city’s health teams have also been going from door to door to identify unvaccinated people and holding vaccination drives in a shopping centre and the international airport.Richtmann said the biggest fear was imported cases. “We are much more worried about Brazilians travelling to Europe, to the US or Canada [catching measles and bringing it back], than about those who live here,” she said.Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at Virginia’s George Mason University, agreed that the outbreaks in the US posed a threat to neighbouring countries.“Now suddenly, you’re more likely to run into someone who has some kind of infectious disease [in the US]. You visit the US, you go home with souvenirs – and you might also go home with measles,” she said.Mexico’s first measles case in February was imported from Texas by an unvaccinated Mennonite boy. Bolivia’s first cases also spread through pockets of unvaccinated people living in Mennonite settlements.Mennonites are Anabaptist Christian communities of European descent who reject many aspects of modern life, including vaccines.Daniel Salas, executive manager of Paho’s special programme for comprehensive immunisation, said: “Having close-knit communities that are often reluctant to receive vaccinations and having large flows [of people] from country to country through the region are aggravating factors.”View image in fullscreenHealth authorities should identify communities resistant to vaccination and target their efforts there, Salas said.There is no cure for measles, which can lead to serious complications and even death, but it is easily preventable with two doses of the MMR vaccine, which provides 97% protection.MMR vaccination rates in Latin America fell during the Covid pandemic and the years leading up to it but have recovered since 2022, reaching 86% last year, according to the World Bank. However, this remains below the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity, with a lag in uptake of second doses and significant disparities between countries and within them.View image in fullscreenLack of information and access to heathcare has contributed to lower vaccination rates, but doctors also blame the influence of the growing anti-vaxxer movement in the US.“A lot of South American countries look to the US,” said Carlos Paz, head of infectious diseases at the Mario Ortiz Suárez paediatric hospital in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where 80% of the country’s cases have been reported.“The population sees what a US minister says about vaccines, and some people start to say, ‘well, we shouldn’t get vaccinated here either’,” he said.While the US health secretary did endorse the MMR vaccine after an outbreak in Texas in April, Kennedy has also spread misleading information about it and misinformation about measles treatment.This month the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now led by a biotech investor, suggested the MMR vaccine should be given as three separate jabs, even though the safety and efficacy of combined shots have been demonstrated by decades of research and going against the CDC’s own longstanding advice.Bolivia declared a national health emergency in June, extended school holidays to avoid contact between children, and launched a widespread vaccination drive, relying partly on donations from Brazil, India and Chile. But coverage in October had still only reached 45%, while the government still has 1.6m doses available.“We’ve been campaigning to increase the vaccination rate. Each doctor, each paediatrician, is a soldier advocating for vaccination,” said Paz. More

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      John Bolton says he hopes to expose Trump’s ‘abuse of power’ after being indicted – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with the news that the justice department has filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who turned into one of his biggest critics, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.The indictment marked the third time in recent weeks the justice department has secured criminal charges against one of Trump’s critics. In response to a question about the charges, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of them but that Bolton was a “bad guy”.While Bolton parted on sour terms from the White House, the criminal investigation gained momentum during the Biden administration over disclosures that troubled the US intelligence community.The justice department pursues Espionage Act cases in the event of so-called “aggregating factors”: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction.“BOLTON took detailed notes documenting his day-to-day meetings, activities, and briefings. Frequently, BOLTON handwrote these notes on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex or in other secure locations, and then later re-wrote his notes in a word processing document,” the indictment said.“The notes that BOLTON sent to Individuals 1 and 2 using his non-governmental personal email accounts and messaging account described in detail BOLTON’s daily activities as the National Security Advisor. Often, BOLTON’s notes described the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defense and classified information that he was memorializing in his notes.”In a statement, Bolton said, “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.” Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said his client had not engaged in wrongdoing.Read our full story here:In other developments:

      Volodymyr Zelenskyy will head to the White House on Friday for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump, hours after the US president said he had agreed to another summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest after a “very productive” call. The possible supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the Ukrainian president’s visit.

      New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls. On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.

      After a federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday. US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September.

      Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media. Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

      The US Senate failed on Thursday to reopen the government and to vote to fund the military during the federal government shutdown, ensuring that the standoff will stretch into next week. The Senate vote on a short-term Republican funding bill failed for the 10th time with just 51 votes.

      More than two centuries have passed since France celebrated the emperor Napoleon’s birthday by laying the foundation stone of the Arc de Triomphe. Now Donald Trump has imperial ambitions of his own. On Wednesday, the US president unveiled plans for a grand arch in Washington that has already been dubbed the “Arc de Trump”. More

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      Trump moves to push employers on IVF coverage and lower fertility drug costs

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      The Trump administration announced Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments.In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.These moves, Trump said, would lead to “many more beautiful American children”.“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couple to have babies, raise children and have the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said.Employers are encouraged to offer the fertility benefit option separately from their medical coverage, similar to how dental and vision coverage is usually offered to employees. The labor department, the treasury and the health department will on Thursday also release guidance on how employers can legally create the option.However, Republicans who spoke at Trump’s announcement framed the benefit as a “recommendation”, indicating that employers will not be required to offer the coverage nor receive government subsidies for doing so. They also stressed that the benefit will be structured to give employers immense flexibility to determine what will or will not be covered.Without new incentives to offer IVF coverage, it is unclear how many employers will ultimately support it.Trump, who has called himself the “fertilization president”, made support for infertility treatments a major part of his re-election campaign, especially after the nation erupted in outrage when the Alabama supreme court deemed embryos “extrauterine children”. Because IVF can lead to the creation of unused or discarded embryos, that decision temporarily forced many Alabama IVF providers to stop working.Yet in the months since taking office, the Trump administration has remained quiet on the issue. In February, he signed an executive order directing the administration’s domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the price tag of IVF, which often costs tens of thousands of dollars and is frequently not covered by insurance.A detailed report on the recommendations was supposed to be made public by May. No report ever emerged.While IVF is extremely popular among Americans, the GOP’s deep ties to the anti-abortion movement have made it something of a political landmine among elected Republicans. The movement has long opposed IVF, as advocates believe that embryos are people.White House officials have in recent months discussed the possibility of supporting restorative reproductive medicine (RRM), a constellation of therapies that purport to restore people’s “natural” fertility.Although RRM is popular among anti-abortion advocates and adherents of the “make America healthy again” movement, several major medical organizations say there is little quality evidence that RRM is more effective at helping people have babies than mainstream fertility medicine.Trump did not mention RRM in his Thursday address. When a reporter asked if he had any thoughts on anti-abortion activists’ opposition to IVF, Trump said: “I think this is very pro-life.”Pronatalist rhetoric, which holds that having children is important to a county’s wellbeing and that the state should incentivize people to procreate, dominated the press conference that followed Trump’s address. Robert F Kennedy, the health and human services secretary, highlighted the falling US birthrate, while Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, claimed that Kennedy and Trump are “great leaders” because they have big families.People who want more children but can’t have them, Oz added, are “under-babied”.“There’s gonna be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz said. “It turns out the fundamental creative force in society is about making babies.” More

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      Proposed UK cuts to global aid fund could lead to 300,000 preventable deaths, say charities

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      The UK is expected to slash its contribution to a leading aid fund combating preventable diseases, with charities warning this could lead to more than 300,000 otherwise preventable deaths.If confirmed, the anticipated 20% cut in the UK contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, would be announced on the sidelines of next month’s G20 summit in South Africa, which Keir Starmer is due to attend.Aid groups said such a reduction, on top of a 30% cut to the UK contribution at the previous funding round for the group three years ago, would further risk years of progress in combating the disease after Donald Trump slashed US aid.No decision has been publicly announced before the Global Fund’s “replenishment” summit, covering 2027-29, and one government official said this did not recognise the extent of the cut predicted.However, aid groups say a proposed reduction in UK funding from £1bn to £800m is being widely discussed by senior government officials.If confirmed, it would follow a 25% reduction in UK money towards another aid organisation seen as being highly efficient in saving lives, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi). The eventual £1.25bn commitment over five years to Gavi was nonetheless higher than many aid agencies had feared.The Switzerland-based Global Fund is credited with helping to save tens of million of lives in combating the three diseases. One aid agency estimated a £200m cut could lead to up to 340,000 avoidable deaths and nearly 5.9 million avoidable infections over the three-year funding period.Gareth Jenkins, an executive director at Malaria No More UK, said: “The world stands on the brink of a malaria resurgence, which will be so much more likely triggered if the UK makes a cut to its contribution to the Global Fund.“In this scenario many more children will lose their lives, health systems will be overwhelmed and economies dragged down – with huge knock-on effects for UK trade and health security.”Mike Podmore, the chief executive of StopAids, said the cut “would send a terrible message”, particularly as the UK is officially co-hosting next month’s funding event.Podmore said: “Not only did the UK already make a 30% cut three years ago, but to date no host has ever reduced their commitment from their previous pledge. This would represent a serious lack of leadership and undermine the UK’s reputation and soft power.”Adrian Lovett, the UK head of the development campaign One, said the cut would “put at risk decades of progress in the fight against Aids, TB and malaria – and as diseases do not stop at borders, it would jeopardise our own health security here at home too”.Monica Harding, the Liberal Democrats’ international development spokesperson, said cutting funding as co-host would be “an indictment of our global leadership in diplomacy and development”.She said: “Stepping back now and reducing our contribution to the fund at a time when the United States is abandoning vaccination programmes wholesale would be devastating to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. It would risk undoing much of the progress we have made in the global fight against disease.”A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK has not yet decided what its pledge to the Global Fund will be. We will announce this in due course.” More

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      Trump confirms that he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela

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      Donald Trump confirmed reports on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing US officials familiar with the decision.The US president said he authorized the action for two main reasons.First, he claimed Venezuela had been releasing large numbers of prisoners, including individuals from mental health facilities, into the United States, often crossing the border due to what he described as an open border policy. Trump did not specify which border they were crossing.The second reason, he said, was the large amount of drugs entering the US from Venezuela, much of it trafficked by sea.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” Trump added, but declined to answer when asked if the CIA had the authority to execute Maduro. More

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      Trump says US looking at land attacks in Venezuela after lethal strikes on boats – live

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      Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, on Wednesday urged the Republican-led House oversight committee to launch an investigation into the “vile and offensive” text messages exchanged between leaders of Young Republican groups.The request follows a report in Politico that revealed more than 28,000 Telegram messages sent between Young Republican leaders over the course of seven months, in which they refer to Black people as monkeys, praise Hitler, and repeatedly make glib remarks about gas chambers, slavery and rape.“Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke’, and it is not fringe,” Newsom said in a statement. “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.”With Republicans in control of the House, the oversight committee is unlikely to act.In the letter addressed to James Comer, the Republican committee chair and an ally of the president, Newsom notes that while House Republicans have made combating antisemitism a priority, few party leaders have publicly condemned the messages revealed in the report.Democrats such as the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, expressed outrage over the messages, and some GOP groups, like the Young Republican National Federation, have called for resignations.But the vice-president, JD Vance, said that he refused to “join the pearl clutching” over what he inaccurately described as “a college group chat”.Vance recently expressed support for the effort to track down, intimidate and harass people who voiced criticism of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he might go to the supreme court next month when it hears his administration’s appeal of two prior court rulings against his imposition of sweeping tariffs under an economic emergency that appears to exist only in his mind.A trade court and an appeals court have both found that Trump exceeded his authority by imposing global tariffs citing provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.On Wednesday, Trump also claimed that he had used the threat of tariffs to stop the escalation of fighting this year between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed nations.Indian officials have said that Trump’s intervention had nothing to do with the end of hostilities.Donald Trump has finished speaking in the Oval Office. After he recited a long series of previously aired grievances, he confirmed, for the first time, that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in the administration’s apparent effort to drive the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Donald Trump just claimed that the number of Hamas fighters killed by Israel, with US support, exceeds the entire estimated death toll in the Gaza Strip in the past two years.“We, meaning Israel, but I knew everything they were doing, pretty much, I knew most of the things they were doing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “they’ve killed probably 70,000 of these people, Hamas.”As the United Nations reported last week, there have been 67,183 fatalities and 169,841 injuries reported to the Gaza ministry of health since 7 October 2023.The dead included 20,179 children, 10,427 women, 4,813 elderly people and 31,754 adult men.In May of this year, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found that Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed or probably killed.Trump went on to claim that Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons, but, while Hamas leaders said earlier this year that they would consider giving up the group’s heavy weapons, such as rockets and missiles, on Saturday a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that disarmament was “out of the question”, adding: “The demand that we hand over our weapons is not up for negotiation.”Nevertheless, Trump said on Wednesday: “We want the weapons to be given up, sacrificed, and they’ve agreed to do it. Now they have to do it, and if they don’t do it, we’ll do it.”Asked by a reporter if that meant the US military might be directly involved in disarming the Palestinian militants, Trump replied, again apparently referring to US support for Israel’s military: “We won’t need the US military … because we’re very much involved.”To defend lethal US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers, Donald Trump just repeated his familiar but baseless claim that Venezuela “emptied” its prisons and “insane asylums” by sending incarcerated people into the United States as undocumented immigrants during the Biden administration.“Many countries have done it,” Trump claimed.As the Marshall Project reported a year ago, before the 2024 election, Trump had already made this claim more than 500 times without a shred of evidence.Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Kash Patel, the FBI director, is speaking to members of the press now.“In just a three-month span, you had 8,700 arrests of violent criminals. You had 2,200 firearms seized off the streets permanently, to safeguard our communities. You had 421kg of fentanyl seized. Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough to kill 55 million Americans alone,” Patel said.He then compared the number of arrests since Trump returned to the White House with the yearly arrests of violent criminals during the Biden administration.“You have 28,600 arrests of violent criminals in just seven months alone, because of your leadership,” Patel said, praising the president in the process.“It’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco,” Trump said of the city and California governor Gavin Newsom’s home town.“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver.”Trump touted the success of federal law enforcement in Washington DC.“It’s been so nice because so many people, they’re going out to dinner, and they’re having dinners they wouldn’t, they didn’t go out for four years, and now they’re going out three times a week,” he said.He went on to complain that the only thing in his way in other major cities is “radical left governors”.The president begins his press conference saying that he’s here to talk about “Operation Summer Heat”. He’s flanked by the FBI director, Kash Patel.“Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority. That’s what they did, rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” Trump said.Brown University is the latest institution to reject the White House’s offer to join a “Compact of Academic Excellence” – the controversial agreement which would provide preferential treatment to colleges that carry out several of the administration’s education policies, including ending diversity initiatives and capping international student enrollment.In a letter to the education secretary, Linda McMahon, Brown’s president. Christina H Paxson, said she’s concerned the compact would “restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance”.She added:
      A fundamental part of academic excellence is awarding research funding on the merits of the research being proposed. The cover letter describing the compact contemplates funding research on criteria other than the soundness and likely impact of research, which would ultimately damage the health and prosperity of Americans.
      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university to reject the invitation to join the compact, before the White House extended the option to all higher education institutes across the country.The Senate has rejected a House-passed funding bill to reopen the federal government, as the shutdown enters its 15th day.With a vote of 51-44, this is the ninth time that the funding extension has failed to meet the 60-member threshold needed to advance in the upper chamber.According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, the plane carrying the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, back from a meeting of Nato ministers in the UK had to make an unscheduled landing “due to a crack in the aircraft windshield”.Parnell added: “The plane landed based on standard procedures and everyone onboard, including Secretary Hegseth, is safe.”

      A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs during the ongoing government shutdown. In a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) challenging the reductions in force that the Trump administration enacted last week, Judge Susan Illston said that the mass firings across agencies, which amounted to more than 4,000 layoffs, are an example of the administration taking “advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them any more”. Illston blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of, or during, the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.

      While that hearing was under way, the White House budget director maintained that the firings are far from over. Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget – has said that the current reductions in force are just a “snapshot”. He added that the total amount could end up being about 10,000.

      The supreme court heard two and a half hours of oral arguments today in a case that could thwart a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The conservative majority on the bench seemed sympathetic to the case, made by lawyers for Louisiana, a group of “non-African American voters” and the Trump administration. They all argue that a 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, violates the constitution. If the court rules in their favor, it could ultimately diminish section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits electoral practices that dilute the voting power of minority groups. It would also limit the ability of legislatures from drawing maps with racial demographics in mind, and could cost Democrats several House seats in Republican-led states.

      Also in Washington, the government shutdown enters day 15, with no end in sight. Republicans and Democrats in Congress held press conferences at the US Capitol, and continued to exchange barbs – blaming the other party for the lapse in funding. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he spoke with Donald Trump on Tuesday, adding that Republicans are “forlorn” and not taking “any pleasure” in the length of the shutdown and the mass layoffs implemented by the White House budget office. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries slammed the administration for offering a $20bn cash bailout to Argentina, but not “spending a dime on affordable healthcare for Americans”. CSPAN also reported that Johnson and Jeffries have both accepted an invitation to debate on the network. The date has yet to be announced.

      Today, Johnson also accused a group of Democrats of “storming” his office, showing “disdain for law enforcement” and playing “political games”. On Tuesday evening, a group of Democrats including Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic representative-elect for Arizona, marched to Johnson’s office, chanting “swear her in” and demanding that she be seated after she won a special election in her state over three weeks ago. Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has threatened legal action against Johnson for failing to seat Grijalva, and Grijalva said she has also been exploring her legal options for officially claiming her seat.
      In her order, Judge Illston has temporarily blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of or during the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.She’ll lay out further details in her written ruling later today, but said that the administration will need to provide a plan outlining how they have complied with her order within two business days. Illston said that she will schedule a preliminary injunction hearing in roughly two weeks’ time. “It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case,” Illston added. “My breath is bated until we find that.”Judge Susan Illston has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the firing of federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown. More

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      ‘He may be watching’: Mamdani on Fox News speaks directly to Trump

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      Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York, stepped into the lion’s den on Wednesday when he sat for an interview with Fox News, the rightwing news organization that has spent weeks demonizing him and his democratic socialist goals.Speaking to host Martha MacCallum, Mamdani was asked about funding for his proposals, which include freezing increases on rent-stabilized apartments, providing free buses and offering free childcare – and whether other services would be cut to achieve those goals.“I don’t think we have to cut,” Mamdani said. “I’ve spoken about raising taxes on the wealthiest. And, frankly, this is an issue that we have here in New York City, and, frankly, even across this country.”Mamdani said he had spoken to people who voted for Donald Trump in New York who told him it was the “cost of living” that “drove them to vote” for the president.Mamdani said that, despite that, “what we’re seeing time and time again is we’re more focused on the question of billionaires and the most profitable corporations than we are on people who can’t even afford to make ends meet in the city”.Following his surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, Mamdani has for months led the polls to be New York’s next mayor. A survey released by Quinnipiac last week showed Mamdani winning 46% of the vote to the former New York governor’s 33%. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, was at 22%.That rise has brought attention from outlets such as Fox News, which has closely covered Mamdani, sometimes publishing multiple news stories on him a day. Jesse Watters, the network’s primetime host, has been a frequent critic, describing Mamdani as a “communist”, which he is not, and calling him “Kamala Harris with a beard”, while Sean Hannity suggested that the rise of Mamdani, who is Muslim, is evidence that “an extremism is taking root right before your very eyes”.In an interview that rehashed several rightwing critiques of Mamdani, MacCallum suggested he may lack the qualifications for the role. “President Trump said that you never worked a day in your life,” MacCallum told Mamdani, before asking what qualifies him to run the city.In response, Mamdani spoke directly into the camera, alluding to how the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, bowed to pressure from the Trump administration to cooperate on immigration crackdowns – before the Trump-led justice department dropped a federal corruption case against him.“I want to take this moment, because you spoke about President Trump, and he may be watching right now, and I just want to speak directly to the president,” Mamdani said.“I will not be a mayor like Mayor [Eric] Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail. I won’t be a disgraced governor like Andrew Cuomo, who will call you to ask how to win this election. I can do those things on my own. I will, however, be a mayor who is ready to speak at any time to lower the cost of living.“That’s the way that I’m going to lead this city. That’s the partnership I want to build, not only with Washington DC, but [with] anyone across this country.”The interview came as Mamdani prepared for a debate with Cuomo and Sliwa on Thursday night. Adams suspended his re-election campaign in late September.Cuomo, who has centered his campaign on reducing crime, will likely seek to contrast his decades of experience in politics with Mamdani’s newcomer status. The former governor, who resigned in 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, has run numerous ads attacking Mamdani.The issue of the Israel-Hamas peace deal is likely to come up, given Cuomo’s strong support for Israel and Mamdani’s opposing stance. Mamdani has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza and called the bombing of the territory a “genocide”. Mamdani was asked questions about the region on Wednesday, including whether he would give credit to Trump for the fledgling deal.Mamdani, stressing that his focus would be on New York rather than international politics, said he was thankful for the ceasefire, adding: “I have hope that it will actually endure and that it will be lasting.”“I think it’s too early to [give credit],” Mamdani said. “But if it proves to be something that is lasting, something that is durable, then I think that that’s where you give credit.” More

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      ‘My vote is my voice’: protesters fight for democracy as Trump casts shadow

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      Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “We won’t Black down”, Wanda Mosley had made the trip from Atlanta. “I had to be here because the Voting Rights Act is on life support,” the 55-year-old explained. “Today the court will synthesise the arguments and decide if they’re going to kill it – or allow it to live.”Mosley was among a few hundred protesters who gathered in warm October sunshine outside the supreme court on Wednesday. Inside the building, whose facade was obscured by scaffolding, justices were weighing arguments in a case involving Louisiana electoral districts and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.From afar, it might seem like a dry debate over an arcane law enacted by Congress half a century ago. But to those gathered at the court steps, most of whom were Black, there was a palpable consciousness that the legacy of civil rights giants such as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King and John Lewis was on the line.Speakers noted that the Voting Rights Act had been a landmark law intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting. Undercutting it would reverse decades of progress.People held aloft signs that said “Black voters matter”, “Build Black political power”, “Fight for fair maps”, “Fight like hell!”, “It’s about us”, “My vote is my voice”, “Protect people, not power”. One said, “Protect our vote” around a photo of Lewis, the Georgia congressman who died five years ago.Donald Trump cast a shadow. An African American man waved a black-and-white flag that declared: “Fuck Trump and fuck you for voting for him.” A white woman carried a sign with a mocking cartoon image of the president and the slogan: “Trump’s afraid of free and fair elections.”Another held a sign that referenced Marshall, the first African American supreme court justice, and current justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative who is also African American. “Thurgood is watching you, Clarence,” it said. The back of the sign added: “Stop legalizing Trump’s race war.”There were chants of “Power to the people” and “We shall not be moved”. Songs including Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, Common and John Legend’s Glory and Jill Scott’s Golden boomed from loudspeakers.Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, admitted mixed feelings to the crowd: “There’s a part of me that gets sad at the impending death of this thing that has meant so much. I feel that sadness. There’s a part of me that feels weak, that feels small as I stand outside this huge building with so much history.”But Albright also insisted on hope, referencing Lewis’s role in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, where he led peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “When we believe, we got the power to move mountains, we got the power to cross the bridge in a city called Selma and changed the course of history.“We got the power to make good trouble and we’ve got the power to move this court. This court ain’t nothing but another mountain for us to move. We’ve got that kind of power but we’ve got to believe, y’all.”A great cheer went up when Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who had been arguing on behalf of a group of Black voters, emerged from the court building and descended the steps that have witnessed many past triumphs. Two white women in police uniform and sunglasses looked on.Nelson struck an optimistic tone, telling the gathering: “We believe in the future of this multiracial democracy. We believe that, no matter what assaults and attacks we are currently facing, the right to vote is still the lifeblood of our democracy and that it must be protected at all costs.“And we know that the law is on our side. We know that if these justices follow their own words, we will prevail in this case and so that is the argument that we made today.”Speakers framed the legal fight as the latest chapter in a long, generational struggle for civil rights, frequently invoking the movement’s heroes.Terri Sewell, a Democratic congresswoman who represents Alabama’s seventh congressional district, which includes her home town of Selma, said: “I want to remind all of you of what John Lewis said on his very last time on that bridge in Selma.“John’s body was riddled with cancer but he stood up tall and strong at the apex of that bridge and he said with a very strong voice: ‘Never give up. Never give in. Keep the faith and let’s keep our eyes on the prize.’”Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, cited King’s “promissory note” analogy from the March on Washington, stating that “America had defaulted on that promise” and that generations later the question remains: “When will this country make good on what it put down on paper?”As the crowd dispersed, Mosley, the activist from Atlanta, lingered a while and reflected on why she had come. “It’s frustrating because I’m as American as anybody else,” she said. “I’m a descendant of enslaved Africans that literally built this country.“I deserve to have unfettered rights to vote, and I deserve to have representation that lives in my neighborhood, that comes from my community and knows what our community needs. And we’ll fight for those things.” More