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      Mamdani attends Israelis for Peace vigil after his 7 October statement draws ire from Israel

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      The New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday evening attended a vigil in Manhattan convened by Israelis for Peace, an anti-occupation group of Israelis in New York who have rallied weekly since 2023 to call for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages.Sitting in Union Square alongside New York City comptroller Brad Lander, his one-time rival for the Democratic nomination who has been campaigning for him, Mamdani listened as speakers at the event – which marked the two-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel – called for an end to the killing and to Israel’s occupation, and for equal rights for Palestinians.Earlier in the day, Mamdani drew ire from Israel over his statement on the anniversary in which he commemorated both the Israeli victims from that day and Palestinian victims from Israel’s ensuing war on Gaza.“Two years ago today, Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more. I mourn these lives and pray for the safe return of every hostage still held and for every family whose lives were torn apart by these atrocities,” Mamdani said in the statement on Tuesday.He denounced Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his government for launching a “genocidal war” in Gaza as well. He also accused the US government of being “complicit”.“A death toll that now far exceeds 67,000; with the Israeli military bombing homes, hospitals, and schools into rubble,” Mamdani wrote. “Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief itself has run out of language. I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered.”He said the last two years had “demonstrated the very worst of humanity” and called for an end to Israeli “occupation and apartheid”.Mamdani’s statement prompted a sharp rebuke from the Israeli foreign ministry on X, accusing him of “acting as a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda” and “spreading Hamas’s fake genocide campaign”.“By repeating Hamas’s lies, he excuses terror and normalizes antisemitism. He stands with Jews only when they are dead. Shameful,” the post said.Israel stands widely accused of committing genocide in Gaza, where its ongoing military assault has killed tens of thousands of civilians, some 20,000 of them children, caused famine and mass starvation, and razed much of the Palestinian territory. Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.Mamdani is no stranger to criticism for his views on the Israeli government and its war in Gaza, and the issue has proved a major flashpoint in the mayoral race.He has won significant support from certain segments of the Jewish community particularly among younger and more progressive voters, and faces stronger opposition from more conservative groups. A recent Marist poll found 35% of Jewish voters supported Mamdani, as does the same proportion supporting Cuomo. (The poll was taken before Eric Adams dropped out of the race.)The democratic socialist has faced criticism over his past refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”, which some view as a call to violence. He has since said he would discourage use of the phrase. He also recently reiterated his intention to order the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu should he travel to New York.His October 7 statement on Tuesday attracted pushback from other pro-Israel voices. David Frum, a writer at the Atlantic and former speechwriter for George W Bush, wrote on X: “The chilly formulaic language about the 10/7 atrocity … the intense angry passion of the denunciation of Israel’s self-defense … together they arrestingly reveal what the author cares about and what/who he does not care about.”Fox News anchor David Asman called the statement “obscene”. He wrote on X: “The ‘very worst of mankind’ is what Mamdani supporters are on the streets today celebrating…‘honoring’ the beasts responsible for Oct 7. He supports a ‘global intifada,’ responsible for 9/11 and Oct 7. He should not be mayor of a city hit so hard by Jihadists.”Noa Yachot contributed reporting More

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      Venezuela on edge over Trump regime change whispers: ‘If it does happen we are ready’

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      The mayor of Caracas had come to one of her city’s busiest tube stations wearing a camouflage T-shirt declaring herself a card-carrying combatant – and with a message to match.“They think they’re the owners of the world,” Carmen Meléndez complained of the Trump administration and its pressure campaign against Venezuela’s government. “But if they dare [to invade] we’ll be waiting for them here.”Meléndez said she hoped a US invasion was not on the horizon, even though they had shown themselves to be “a bunch of crazies, who are capable of anything”. “But if it does happen we are ready,” she added, “and we will use all of the weapons we have to defend the homeland.”Mayor Meléndez was at La Rinconada station to supervise an early morning drill: a practice response to fictitious cyberattack on the Caracas underground that had brought its trains to a halt.The rehearse evacuation, ordered by President Nicolás Maduro as part of a nationwide “civil protection and preparation of the people” exercise, came as Donald Trump turned the heat up on Venezuela’s leader to levels rarely seen before.Since early August, when Trump signed a secret directive authorizing military action against Latin America drug cartels, the US president has labelled Maduro a “narco-terrorist” fugitive and advertised a $50m reward for his arrest; deployed marines and warships off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast; and ordered at least four deadly strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats which have killed at least 21.Last week Trump again upped the ante, declaring a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels whose members were now considered “unlawful combatants”.View image in fullscreenWashington has justified its strikes as part of a crackdown on Venezuelan narco-traffickers who the US accuses of flooding its streets with drugs, supposedly at Maduro’s behest. “They’re the enemies of all humanity,” Trump told the UN last month, vowing to blow such “terrorist thugs … out of existence”.But many observers suspect Trump’s counter-narcotics crusade is really a pretext to depose Maduro, either by sparking an internal rebellion against Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian heir or perhaps through direct military intervention within Venezuela itself.Speaking to the New York Times last month, Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she was convinced one of Trump’s “strategic objectives” was “what they call ‘regime change’”. “We will never handover our homeland!” Rodríguez vowed as she announced that Maduro would declare a state of emergency in the event of a US attack.Rodríguez and Meléndez are not the only Maduro allies talking tough in the face of US pressure. One recent evening, the interior minister Diosdado Cabello, appeared on television clutching a heavily annotated copy of a book about the “military thinking” of the Vietnamese revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh. The message was clear: any attempt to topple Maduro’s regime would suck US troops into a bloody quagmire such as the one that unfolded in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and nearly 60,000 American soldiers.Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group, doubted Trump had immediate plans to target Fort Tiuna, the military base where Maduro is thought to live.But Gunson did think Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June had left Venezuela’s leaders genuinely alarmed. In a recent letter to Trump, Maduro tried to defuse the situation, writing: “I respectfully invite you, President, to promote peace through constructive dialogue and mutual understanding throughout the hemisphere.”View image in fullscreen“What Trump did to Iran was a wake up call to the people in government here,” said Gunson. “A lot of analysts thought that wasn’t going to happen … But they did it – and the Iranians had no response. And I think that that was quite sobering for the Chavistas.”The idea of a US intervention is music to the ears of some of Maduro’s political foes, who are desperate to end his 12-year rule during which Venezuela’s economy and democracy have crumbled and millions have fled abroad.In a recent interview, the prominent conservative politician María Corina Machado – whose ally, Edmundo González, is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in last year’s election – hailed Trump’s “visionary” stance. “I totally support his strategy … I’m in favour of the US dismantling this criminal structure,” Machado, who is in hiding in Venezuela, told the Sunday Times.The exiled opposition leader Leopoldo López has said their movement supports “any scenario that helps us transition to democracy”.Robert Evan Ellis, a Latin America specialist who advised the state department on Venezuela policy during Trump’s first administration, saw a “50-50” chance of the opposition’s wish coming true.Trump’s failure to unseat Maduro with a “maximum pressure” campaign during his first term, made it more likely the US president would try to finish the job now, Evan Ellis said. “I think there’s … a certain determination not to essentially feel that he loses this time around as well – so I think that creates incentive,” he said.After the Caribbean boat strikes, Evan Ellis anticipated a “graduated escalation” of US pressure – perhaps air strikes against “narco-planes” or “narco-leaders” on Venezuelan soil: “You don’t just unnecessarily jump from blowing up a couple of ships to pulling the trigger on a major air-land campaign.”View image in fullscreenBut Evan Ellis did not rule out a large-scale “multi-pronged attack”, involving F-35 fighter jets destroying Venezuela’s aerial defences before troops “grab[bed] Maduro wherever he is, based on probably good insider intelligence” and took him to the US. On Thursday, Venezuela’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, said five US “combat aircraft” had been detected flying off his country’s coast.Four days later, on Monday, another key Maduro ally, the national assembly president, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that he had informed US and European authorities of plans for an alleged “false flag operation” attack on the US embassy in Caracas. Rodríguez claimed right-wing extremists had been plotting to target the building with “lethal explosives”.The prospect of a US intervention fills many Venezuelans – even those opposed to Maduro – with dread. “If there’s a war, what will we do?” said Naide González, 58, a cleaner from 23 de Enero, a working class community in Caracas long considered a stronghold of Chavismo.In a recent Guardian interview, Juan González, the White House’s top Latin America official under Joe Biden, called Trump’s military buildup “political theatre” designed to convince Maga voters that he was taking a hard line on drugs and migrants coming from South America. But González feared that if Maduro was deposed, the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war, involving a variety of armed groups including government-linked paramilitaries, criminal organizations and Colombian rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN).“The conditions are ripe here for some kind of protracted low-intensity conflict, if the US gets it wrong – which they may well,” Gunson warned. “This country is absolutely packed from end to end with armed groups of various kinds, none of whom has any incentive to just surrender or stop doing what they’re doing.”David Smilde, a Tulane University Venezuela specialist, said neoconservative Trump officials and hard-line members of Venezuela’s opposition seemed convinced by the “absolutely absurd” idea that Maduro was “hanging on by threads” and that regime change could be achieved “with just a few limited strikes”.“This is the mentality that thought that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a house of cards and Iraq would be a cakewalk once you got rid of Saddam Hussein or took Baghdad,” Smilde added.At La Rinconada, government supporters vowed to resist any foreign intervention as commuters streamed out of the underground into a sunny Caracas morning.Amelia Contreras, a 68-year-old seamstress who is part of Maduro’s Bolivarian militia volunteer group, said she had been receiving first aid and firearms training in preparation for a possible attack. In the event of an incursion, Contreras had been tasked with defending Caracas’s electricity pylons. “We don’t want anyone coming along and interfering here – we won’t allow it,” she said.Kristian Laborín, a 48-year-old member of Maduro’s socialist party, had spent the last three Saturdays undergoing military training but still hoped the US would recoil. “President Trump, there’s still time for us to continue building friendly ties between our peoples,” Laborín said.But if the US president insisted on attacking, Laborín’s comrades would have no choice but to fight back. Parroting a government propaganda line, he said: “You’d be talking about a Hundred Years’ War!” More

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      Schumer rejects Trump’s claim that bipartisan government shutdown negotiations are under way – live

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      Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that negotiations with Democrats are underway.“Trump’s claim isn’t true — but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table,” Schumer said in a statement. “For months, Democrats have been calling on Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to come to the table and work with us to deliver lower costs and better healthcare for the American people.”He added: “If President Trump and Republicans are finally ready to sit down and get something done on healthcare for American families, Democrats will be there — ready to make it happen.”Earlier today, Trump told reporters that “we are speaking with Democrats” regarding the ongoing government shutdown and that “some good things could happen with health care.”“Just hang in there, because I think a lot of good things could happen, and that could also pertain to health care,” Trump said.Donald Trump signed an executive order to allow construction of an access road to the Ambler mining district in Alaska and unlock domestic supplies of copper and other minerals, reversing an order from former President Joe Biden.The Biden administration had rejected a 211-mile road intended to enable mine development in the north central Alaskan region. Biden’s Interior Department had cited risks to caribou and fish populations that dozens of native communities rely on for subsistence.“This is something that should have been long operating and making billions of dollars for our country and supplying a lot of energy and minerals and everything else that we are talking about,” Trump said earlier today.“On day one, he signed a very important executive order unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said on Monday. “And this is part of the continuation. There’s a number of things that have already happened with Alaska that are moving forward. There’s more to come. But big milestone today in reversing this Biden-era decision about the Ambler Road.”Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that negotiations with Democrats are underway.“Trump’s claim isn’t true — but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table,” Schumer said in a statement. “For months, Democrats have been calling on Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to come to the table and work with us to deliver lower costs and better healthcare for the American people.”He added: “If President Trump and Republicans are finally ready to sit down and get something done on healthcare for American families, Democrats will be there — ready to make it happen.”Earlier today, Trump told reporters that “we are speaking with Democrats” regarding the ongoing government shutdown and that “some good things could happen with health care.”“Just hang in there, because I think a lot of good things could happen, and that could also pertain to health care,” Trump said.While speaking to reporters on Monday, President Donald Trump said that “Puff Daddy” has contacted him about a pardon.He’s referring to Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was sentenced on Friday to more than four years in prison on federal prostitution-related charges. Trump made these remarks while answering questions about the possibility of pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted on sex trafficking charges, after the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal.“I have a lot of people who have asked me for pardons,” President Trump said. “Puff Daddy has asked me for a pardon.”Regarding Maxwell’s appeal, Trump said: “I’m gonna have to take a look at it. I have to ask DOJ. I didn’t know they rejected it. I didn’t know she was even asking for it.”Voting is officially underway in California, the final step of lightning speed campaign to temporarily redraw the state’s Congressional districts.Proposition 50, known as the Election Rigging Response Act, was brought by Governor Gavin Newsom and California Democrats to offset Texas’s gerrymander, drawn at Donald Trump’s behest, that aims to safeguard Republicans’ fragile House majority next year.Unlike Texas and Missouri, where the Republican legislature approved a new map carved up in their favor, the effort in California will be decided by voters.Ballots have been mailed and the “yes” and “no” campaigns are in full swing. Polling suggests the yes campaign has the edge in the blue state that has been tormented by Trump since his return to office.Proponents have put the president at the center of their campaign, arguing that it is the best chance Democrats – and the country – has to put a check on Trump’s second term. Opponents argue that the new maps – designed to help elect five more Democrats to Congress – disenfranchise the millions of Republican voters in the state, while dismantling the work of the state’s independent commission, long considered a gold standard in fair map-drawing.While surveys consistently find that voters prefer independent redistricting and do not trust politicians to control the process, Newsom and Democrats have argued that their plan is both temporary and necessary to respond to Trump’s “powergrabs” in red states.The measure asks voters to amend the state constitution to adopt a new congressional map for 2026 through 2030. Election Day is 4 November.Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the CIA, unexpectedly removed a career lawyer who had been serving as the agency’s acting general counsel since January and appointed himself to the position, The New York Times reports.Ellis, who was involved in a number of controversies during President Trump’s first term, is keeping his role as the agency’s second-highest official while assuming responsibility for the agency’s top legal decisions.The reason behind his move remains unclear, but it has raised concern among current and former intelligence officials, according to the Times.President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would be open to striking a deal on Affordable Care Act subsidies that are at the heart of the government shutdown fight.But he also noted that “billions and billions” of dollars are being wasted, nodding to arguments from conservatives who do not want the health subsidies extended.“We are speaking with the Democrats,” Trump said, adding: “some very good things” could happen.Trump, who had been teasing layoffs for the last several days, said that if a Senate vote later Monday to reopen the government fails, “it could” trigger mass firings.“It could,” he said. “At some point it will.”A CBS News/YouGov survey shows that more Americans blame President Trump and congressional Republicans for the government shutdown than congressional Democrats.According to the poll, 39% of US adults say Trump and the GOP deserve most of the blame, compared to 30% who fault Democrats and 31% who place equal blame on both sides.A majority (52%) disapprove of how Trump and Republicans are handling the shutdown, while 49% disapprove of Democrats.Social Security Administration commissioner Frank Bisignano was named to the newly created position of CEO of the IRS today, making him the latest member of the Trump administration to be put in charge of multiple federal agencies.As IRS CEO, Bisignano will report to Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who currently serves as acting commissioner of the IRS, the Treasury Department says. It is unclear whether Bisignano’s newly created role at the IRS will require Senate confirmation.The Treasury Department said in a statement that Bisignano will be responsible for overseeing all day-to-day IRS operations while also continuing to serve in his role as commissioner of the Social Security Administration.JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, said today that the federal immigration agents have “terrorized” people in his state in recent months.“They aren’t receiving any orders from Trump to cease and desist their aggressive behavior. Remember, they answer only to Trump, not to the people of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “Their plan all along has been to cause chaos that and then they can use that chaos to consolidate Donald Trump’s power. They think they can fool us all into thinking that the way to get out of this crisis that they created is to give them free rein.”Addressing reporters today, Illinois governor JB Pritzker said today that he plans to use “every lever” to resist the “power grab” from the Trump administration to quell protests in Chicago by deploying national guard troops.The state has now filed a lawsuit to block the president’s move to federalize troops. Earlier, a federal judge did not block the deployment immediately, but has given the justice department two days to respond in writing to the state’s temporary restraining order motion. The next hearing is set for Thursday.Per my earlier post, noting that the Chicago mayor has signed an executive order which prevents federal immigration agents from using city property for immigration staging, the White House has responded, calling the move “a sick policy” that “coddles criminal illegal alien killers, rapists, and gangbangers who prey on innocent Americans”. Donald Trump has announced that all “Medium and Heavy Duty Trucks” coming to the US from other countries will be subject to a 25% tariff starting 1 November.

      The White House criticized a Trump-appointed judge’s ruling, which temporarily blocked the deployment of national guard troops from Oregon and California. At a press briefing today, Karoline Leavitt said Judge Karin Immergut’s decision was “untethered in reality”, and said the administration was hopeful that the ninth US circuit court of appeals would rule in the president’s favor. Immergut said there was no evidence that persistent protests outside the immigration facility in Portland constituted an “invasion” – which could allow Trump to federalize guardsmen. The White House said that the facility is “under siege” by “anarchists”.

      In the midwest, Illinois has sued the Trump administration to block the deployment of hundreds of national guard troops to the streets of Chicago. In the lawsuit, leaders in the state say that Trump is using a “flimsy pretext”, which alleges an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in a Chicago suburb needs protecting as protests outside the building over Trump’s immigration crackdown continue. A reminder that over the weekend, the president sought to federalize up to 300 members of the Illinois national guard, despite the objections of the Democratic governor JB Pritzker. Trump sent another 400 from Texas, which Republican governor Greg Abbott has said he authorized.

      It is the sixth day of the government shutdown, and both parties continue to trade barbs over who is to blame. Congressional republicans say and the White House say that the ball is in the Democrats’ court, to pass a “clean” funding bill, and tackle healthcare negotiations once the government reopens. Meanwhile, Democrats say that their colleagues across the aisle have stonewalled any attempts at compromise. Earlier today, Karoline Leavitt said that any layoffs would be an “unfortunate consequence” of the shutdown, again laying blame at Democrats’ feet.

      The Senate will hold votes later today on the dueling stopgap funding bills, which are set to fail … yet again. The House of Representatives remains out of session, after Republican speaker Mike Johnson said that he wouldn’t be calling lawmakers back to Capitol Hill until the Senate advances the House-passed extension, known as a continuing resolution.

      The supreme court rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s challenge of her criminal conviction for recruiting and grooming minors who were sexually abused by her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking crimes. Two lower federal courts have ruled that a plea deal Epstein struck in 2007, which protected his co-conspirators, didn’t extend to Maxwell’s federal conviction.

      Beyond the beltway, delegations from Israel, Hamas and the US began negotiations in Egypt today. The White House said that it hopes for a swift release of all remaining Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners so that a lasting peace deal can be reached in the region.
      The cause of a huge fire at the beachfront home of a South Carolina judge who had reportedly been subjected to death threats is being investigated by state law enforcement investigators.The blaze at the home of Diane Goodstein – a Democrat-appointed circuit court judge – erupted on Saturday, sending three members of her family to the hospital, including her husband, a former state senator.However, Goodstein, 69, was walking her dogs at the time the blaze erupted at the three-story home in the luxury gated community on Edisto Beach in Colleton county.A spokesperson for the South Carolina state law enforcement division (Sled) confirmed it was investigating a fire in the county. “The investigation is active and ongoing. More information may be available as the investigation continues,” a Sled spokesperson told FITSNews.For his part, John Kittredge, the South Carolina chief justice, told the outlet: “At this time, we do not know whether the fire was accidental or arson. Until that determination is made, Sled chief Mark Keel has alerted local law enforcement to provide extra patrols and security.”Goodstein, who has served on the state judicial bench since 1989, in September issued a temporary injunction on the release of the state’s voter files to the Trump administration-led US justice department.Goodstein’s ruling was later publicly criticized by an assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon. The division has been at the forefront of efforts to acquire information, including names, addresses, driver’s license numbers and social security numbers, of more than 3 million registered voters under an executive order targeting “non-citizen voter registration”. More

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      Boom time for US billionaires: why the system perpetuates wealth inequality

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      To many Americans, the economy of the past five years has been rough. Prices have soared yet pay remains stagnant. High mortgage rates have made buying a home a dismal prospect. The unemployment rate has been creeping up.Most people have indicated they are delaying major life decisions, including having kids or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a very small group of people, the last five years couldn’t have been any better.The wealth of the world’s billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the economic instability, the stock market has only continued to grow. This growth has largely benefited just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.As uneven as this distribution seems, it’s the system working as it is currently designed.In his new book Burned by Billionaires, inequality researcher Chuck Collins argues that the system that perpetuates wealth inequality is purposely opaque to most Americans.“[The wealthy] have bought their jets, they’ve bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they’re buying senators and media outlets,” Collins told the Guardian in an interview. “We’re now entering this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality.”Collins, a director at the Institute for Policy Studies, is no stranger to wealth. A great-grandson to Oscar F Mayer, the founder of the meat processing brand, he is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a non-partisan group of wealthy Americans who advocate for higher taxes for the rich and higher wages.To help others understand what exactly it means to be “wealthy” in the US, Collins borrows a concept from journalist Robert Frank who, in a 2007 book on the rich, imagined the different levels of wealth as “Richistan” villages: Affluent Town, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.To modernize the concept, Collins categorizes these “wealth villages” based on income levels. At the lowest tier, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a household income of at least $110,000 and an overall wealth of over $1.5m. The villages get more exclusive as wealth goes up: Lower Richistan has 2.6 million households who have wealth between $6m and $13m; Middle Richistan has 1.3 million households who have assets worth an average of $37m; while Upper Richistan, made up of 130,000 Americans (roughly the size of a small city) has between $60m to $1bn in wealth.Altogether, the residents of these villages make up the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their experiences vary dramatically.“You could be in Lower Richistan, and you’re still sitting in the coach section of a commercial plane,” Collins said. “Whereas in Upper Richistan, you’re flying in a private jet. That’s a really different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no stakes in the commercial aviation system. You don’t care if the whole system shuts down – you’re set.”The highest hill in “Richistan” is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world’s wealthiest. The power that this group has far surpasses those who are simply affluent, let alone the average American who doesn’t reside in “Richistan” at all.But Collins thinks the progressive slogan “billionaires shouldn’t exist” or “abolish billionaires” misses the point and has a “whiff of exterminism” to it.“It’s the distinction between individual behaviors and a system of rules and policies,” Collins said. “We should be concerned about an economic system that funnels so much wealth upward to the billionaires.”In other words, it’s not about the billionaires themselves, but about the system that allows them to have an enormous amount of influence and control over society today.To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins breaks it down into four parts: getting the wealth, defending the wealth, political capture and hyper-extraction.When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think solely about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount of wealth through starting or running a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.But getting to Billionaireville requires serious investment and strategy in those next three steps. Collins describes what he calls the “wealth defense industry”: the tax layers, accountants and wealth managers who use their expertise to ensure that the super rich are being strategic about their taxes.“Wealth defense professionals use a wide variety of tools such as trusts, offshore bank accounts, anonymous shell companies, charitable foundations and other vehicles to hold assets,” he writes.To further a wealth defense strategy, a family needs political support. Wealth of over $40m translates to political power, Collins says, and can be used to defend wealth and protect its accumulation. He notes that the 2010 landmark supreme court decision Citizens United v Federal Election Commission allowed the wealthy to pump a seemingly unlimited amount of money into elections, which has dramatically increased the power the ultra-wealthy have on politics.The last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls “hyper extraction”, to describe how the wealthy have come to touch nearly every single part of an Americans’ everyday life largely through private equity, which allows wealthy individuals to invest in private companies.“Private equity is looking for those corners of the economy where they can squeeze things a little bit harder,” Collins said. “One thing I don’t think people understand is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is parked in so few hands, and they can kind of turn around and say, ‘Where else can we squeeze money out of the economy?’ Healthcare? Great. Mobile home parks? These people can’t go anywhere, [so] you can raise their rents.”Collins writes about the Mars family, best known for their dominance in the confectionary market, with M&Ms, Snickers and Skittles, but who have also cornered the pet industry. Along with being the biggest owner of pet care products in the US, the Mars family owns more than 2,500 pet care facilities across the US.The effects of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It’s about people paying more for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.“The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being left behind [and] are economically suffering,” Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at tapping into a potent “phony populism”.“They can basically project this message that actually, Democrats are elitists. They just care about rich Hollywood executives and woke politics, and the people who care about you are over here. They’re the Donald Trumps of the world. They hear your pain, they feel your pain,” he said.The irony, Collins points out in his book, is that Trump has appointed a string of billionaires to his cabinet. Along with Elon Musk, who had a brief but powerful role as head of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, which oversaw massive cuts to the federal workforce, Trump’s secretaries for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.His cabinet, along with help from Republicans in Congress, helped him pass his huge tax bill, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.While Republican continue to argue that immigration and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone’s economic problems, “the question becomes: Will the Democratic party, which has also been captured by the billionaires and big money, be able to meaningfully address the underlying harms?” Collins said.Democrats, he argues, know what policies are needed to “reverse the updraft of wealth”, including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and strengthening unions.Collins recalled four years ago, when the Democrats were in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The Democrats introduced the $4.3bn Build Back Better bill, which would have seen deep investments in the climate crisis, Medicaid, housing and childcare, among other things. The bill was going to be partially funded through changes in the tax system, including higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy and closing out tax loopholes.But while the bill passed the House in November 2021, it ultimately died in the Senate because two centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, blocked it. Both Manchin and Sinema have since both left their Senate seats.“It was so, so close, and the bill really did reflect the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to solve some of these urgent problems,” Collins said. “Oligarchic power is not about creating so much as blocking. It’s easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the muscle memory is there. We know what that looks like.”Collins is optimistic that there can be change, but said it would require sustained political momentum.“It may be before we know it that the pendulum swings back, and then it really is about maintaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this extreme inequality we’re living in,” he said. “We can fix this. It is fixable.” More

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      US struck another boat illegally carrying drugs off Venezuela coast, Trump says

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      US forces on Saturday evening struck another vessel illegally carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump said on Sunday to thousands of sailors at a ceremony celebrating the US navy’s 250th anniversary. He added that the US would also start looking at drug trafficking happening on land.Trump made the comment during a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, next to the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. It was not immediately clear if he was referencing a strike announced on Friday by defense secretary Pete Hegseth.During his speech, Trump said the navy had supported the mission “to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water. There are no boats in the water anymore. You can’t find them.”The navy has also been utilized to join an armed conflict with drug cartels, leading to four strikes in the Caribbean on what the administration says are fast-boats engaged in drug trafficking.Trump added that if drug smugglers were not coming in by sea, “we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land. And let me tell you that’s not going to work out out well for them either.”The United Nations has condemned the US strikes – which the US defends as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, designated a foreign terrorist organization, in international waters – as extrajudicial executions.“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the UN said last month. “Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”The navy celebrations come amid a shutdown of the federal government that has left some military personnel working without pay. Trump has accused Democrats of enabling the shutdown and attempting “to destroy this wonderful celebration of the US Navy’s Birthday”.“I believe, ‘THE SHOW MUST GO ON!’” Trump posted on Friday night on his social media site. “This will be the largest Celebration in the History of the Navy. Thousands of our brave Active Duty Servicemembers and Military Families will be in attendance, and I look forward to this special day with all of them.”Trump has pledged to rebuild the navy’s shipbuilding capacity after warnings that the service is in danger of losing its status as the world’s dominant naval power.The US fleet is at its smallest size since before the second world war, while state-subsidized Chinese shipyards have surpassed the productivity of US shipyards.Navy secretary John Phelan, who was confirmed in March, has identified “urgency” as a missing element in naval shipbuilding and ordered an accelerated production schedule for the Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine programs.The navy celebrations come after months of turmoil at the Pentagon as Hegseth rearranges the military’s top leadership of the army, navy, air force and coast guard.In a controversial speech to military leaders last week, Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.Hegseth said: “The only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace.”At the meeting, Trump proposed using US cities as training grounds for the armed forces and he spoke of needing military might to combat what he called the “invasion from within”. More

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      Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here’s how | Thomas Geoghegan

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      Trump is all about political theatre, or circus, and it often seems that even in resisting him, as decent citizens must do, we become part of the circus too. We are like the extras who splutter while he thrills the base by violating some heretofore inviolate human norm. So the show goes on. But why not put on our own show, our own form of political theatre, that leaves Trump out – or at least has a different focus?We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead of employing their creaky legislative bodies, they opted for new forms of resistance, non-importation committees, even a first continental congress with no apparent legitimacy or precedent.However weak, those acts of political theater led to formal independence. After the war, American leaders held a convention – nominally to amend the Articles of Confederation with a unanimous vote by every state. Instead, the framers worked in secret, replaced the articles altogether, and changed the process for amending the new constitution to a three quarters vote.The Trump presidency is a colossal setback to that constitution and its norms, but it is also an opportunity to change those norms for the better. Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control.The constitution already provides some authority for doing so.These selected states are meeting to propose an interstate compact by and between themselves, in the spirit if not the letter of the compacts that the constitution’s article I, section 10, clause 3 describes, and for them to submit formally to Congress to adopt as federal law. Of course this will never happen in this case, as Congress, in its current broken form, is incapable of anything like a new constitution, embryonic or not.But the point is to put forward a prototype for a new type of American government, for a post-Trump country, that carries forward part of the existing institutional framework that is worth preserving, alongside radical change in response to Trump.So for example, let us say that New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois declare a national emergency. The governors invite a select number of similar-minded anti-Trump states to send delegates selected either by the people or the legislature. The delegates’ job would be to draw up an inter-state compact, a declaration of rights of citizens and obligations of the participating governments. The compact would divide the funding of those obligations between the states and the federal government, if it were somehow adopted by Congress. It would create mandates that the federal government would fund – just for those states and any other that thereafter decide to join the compact.That compact might begin with a preamble in which We the People of these several states recognize not just our rights but our obligations to treat each other with dignity. The preamble would recognize our obligations to ensure all have adequate food, social security, access to healthcare, and meaningful work for protection in a time of technological change. It should be explicit about the dangers of AI and a warming planet. It should insist on the federal role in medical research and scientifically based public health to ensure that we live better and longer lives.And then there should follow a specific list of abuses by the Trump administration, acts of cruelty, that should be punished and redressed, and abuses by the supreme court, such as Citizens United, that should be voided by states adopting the compact.At the outset, the states should also invite DC and Puerto Rico to participate as states on the same footing and sign on to the compact.Then comes the hardest part – money. The compact would set out the specific programs that the state should fund and those that the federal government should fund – at least for the states that enter the compact. The document would not only be a constitution for the ages, but a budget document for the next fiscal year. It should include a restoration of funding for Medicaid, and reduction of premiums for other forms of healthcare.Finally, the compact should include a call to Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, and every other non-signatory state to join as well, even if they were not originally invited.Whatever may be said against such a compact, it would push Trump off stage and show a certain norm-breaking nerve from a status-quo left. It would give the blue states credit for their own little smashing of the pottery. All the better if the other states do not show. In the early American acts of resistance, only some colonies showed up, and the constitution took effect despite some states staying out altogether. In creating a new constitutional prototype, we may think more clearly, or at least draw it up more freely, if other states were not around.The colonists in the period from 1768 to 1776, and the Framers in 1787, acted outside the law, with no clear process as to how the documents should be adopted or amended. It is time for We the People to declare abuses as serious as those set out by Thomas Jefferson and others in the Declaration of Independence. The idea of a compact may be dismissed as political theatre, but acts of political theater can turn into the real thing.What’s giving me hope nowMy hope is all the talent coming off the bench right now – all those who were once political bystanders and are now tracking Ice agents. Long ago, one of my teachers, the late Sam Beer, urged us to be brave. He said: “You have more friends than you know.”

      Thomas Geoghegan is a lawyer and author of Which Side Are You On? (1991) and The History of Democracy Has Yet to be Written (2022) More

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      Trump says Gaza peace deal ‘very close’ as Israel continues airstrikes

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      Donald Trump said in an interview on Saturday that “we are very close” to a peace deal in Gaza, even as Israel continued bombing the territory.Speaking to Axios, Trump said he would push to finalize a deal between Israel and Hamas in the coming days. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a 20-point plan this week. Hamas has accepted part of the deal but is pushing to negotiate other aspects.The US president recounted a conversation he had with the Israeli prime minister as the proposal took place.“I said: ‘Bibi, this is your chance for victory.’ He was fine with it,” Trump told Axios. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”On Friday, Trump ordered Israel to “immediately” stop bombing Gaza after Hamas agreed to release all hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. On Saturday, Israeli army radio reported that the Israeli military had been ordered to halt its campaign in Gaza City. However, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel had continued to carry out dozens of airstrikes and artillery shelling on the area.Trump told Axios: “We had great receptivity for our plan – every country of the world in favor. Bibi is in favor. Hamas went a long way – they want to do it. Now we will need to close it.”He said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had been “very helpful” in pressing Hamas to agree to release hostages.“Erdoğan helped a lot. He is a tough guy, but he is a friend of mine and he was great,” Trump said.The White House plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas disarmament and a transitional government led by an international body.Trump said he intended to help rehabilitate Israel’s global image, which has suffered as its military intervention has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza.“Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world. Now I am gonna get all that support back,” Trump said. More

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      US treasury considers special $1 Trump coin reading ‘fight, fight, fight’

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      To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the US’s independence, the treasury department is mulling production of a $1 coin displaying Donald Trump with a clenched first under an American flag and the words “fight, fight, fight”.The words overtly reference what Trump said immediately after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt four months before he won a second presidency.US treasurer Brandon Beach effectively announced a draft design of the coin Friday on X, saying: “No fake news here. These drafts honoring America’s 250th birthday and [Trump] are real.”The X post – which boosted another account commenting on the draft design – said Beach looked “forward to sharing more” after the end of the partial government shutdown that began after midnight Wednesday when Senate Democrats demanding concessions on healthcare and other spending priorities refused to provide the votes necessary to pass a Republican-backed funding bill.As Politico pointed out, in 2020, at the end of his first presidency, Trump signed bipartisan legislation authorizing the treasury secretary to issue $1 coins during the calendar year 2026 that are “emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial”.One side of the coin on whose draft design Beach commented Friday showed Trump’s profile alongside “Liberty”, “In God we Trust”, and “1776-2026”.The other side referenced the attempt on Trump’s life at a political rally in Pennsylvania last year, when authorities said a sniper injured Trump’s right ear and wounded two others before being shot to death by the US Secret Service.Trump raised his fist after the attack – one of two attempted assassinations for him as he successfully ran for a second Oval Office term in 2024 – and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” with an American flag looming nearby.A statement from a treasury department spokesperson to Politico said the draft which Beach’s X post discussed was not the “final $1 coin design”. But the statement maintained that “this draft reflects well the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, even in the face of immense obstacles”.Trump’s approval rating on average has plummeted to -9.5%, as his second administration has cut healthcare protections and nutrition assistance that benefits the poor – while also implementing tariffs that preceded a reported rise in consumer prices.A poll of 3,445 US adults taken by Pew Research between 22 and 28 September showed 53% believed Trump had made the national economy worse. Only 24% believed that he’s improved the economy, according to the poll’s finding.Among other things, the Trump administration has also deployed US military troops into the streets of multiple cities, axed roughly half a billion dollars in funding for vaccines such as the ones that helped end the Covid pandemic, and struggled to contain a scandal over his past friendship with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. More