fights

In the last few days, in marked contrast to an election campaign defined by its bitterness and the closeness of its personal attacks, Israel’s current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of national unity and coming together with the opposition bloc that edged out his ruling coalition in October’s election.

On Saturday, the same day that Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot with forming a government capable of commanding the Knesset, Netanyahu published a video on his social media account claiming Israel to be facing the genuine risk of civil war if a government were established with the support of Arab parties which he accused of wanting to “eliminate the State of Israel”.

Two days later, Netanyahu returned to the theme of existential threat in a further video, calling upon the leaders of the more successful bloc to recognise the “needs of the hour” and join, under his leadership, a single unified government that would also include the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is understood to be in talks with Eisenkot, as well as the prime minister’s controversial allies on the far right, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“It’s all a game at the moment. It’s leverage, it’s one-upmanship, it’s psyops, it’s spin, it’s counter-spin,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy said of the invariably long and complex negotiations that take place ahead of establishing a government,

Currently, with the new Knesset being sworn in on Tuesday, speculation is focussing on the role of the Ultra Orthodox, or haredim, parties, which have traditionally offered support to Netanyahu in return for measures shielding their young male yeshiva students from the military draft in defiance off a Super Court ruling of June 2024.

Strategy

Nevertheless, irrespective of the past political cover offered to their members by Netanyahu, there are suggestions that one of the Ultra Orthodox parties United Torah Judaism (UTJ) – which refused to endorse Netanyahu’s selection to build a government by the President – is preparing to throw in behind Eisenkot, with the objections of one of the opposition’s principal figures Avigdor Lieberman said to be quieted in the face of either partnering with one of the Arab parties or the continued rule of Lieberman’s nemesis, Netanyahu and the prospect of further elections.

“‘It’s political strategy, that’s all,” Netanyahu’s former aide, Israeli pollster Mitchell Barak said from Jerusalem. ‘But he’s negotiating from a weakened position. With the UTJ, Eisenkot’s got 67 seats,’ he said of the numbers needed to gain a working majority in the 120 seat Knesset, “so, of course, Netanyahu’s going to do all he can to reinforce his bloc; Barak said of negotiations regarded by many as critical to Netanyahu’s personal future.

Netanyahu faces a number of challenges that speak directly to both his political legacy and personal freedom that he will lose all influence over should Eisenkot succeed him.

Foremost are like to be the multiple corruption charges that is is presently on trial for and, despite his claims of innocence that he has already preemptively petitioned the country’s President and his former political rival, Isaac Herzog for. Secondly, and more pressingly is the question of his and his government’s culpability for the alleged failings ahead of the October 7 Hamas led attack that triggered the genocide unleashed upon Gaza by Israel and the multiple strikes and attacks launched by Israel non regional neighbors in the years since.

New Knesset, new danger

Many of the new MKs being sworn in on Tuesday, including bereaved family members, reservists, advocates for the 250 or so Israelis taken captive that day and Eisenkot himself, who lost a son and two nephews in the genocide that followed, are all tied directly to October 7 and the wars that followed together creating a chamber where feelings over the October 7 attack and where culpability for its lies are said to run close to the surface.

In particular, attention is likely to focus sharply on Netanyahu himself, whose supposed miscalculations ahead of the attack, stories of numerous missed warnings and who was subsequently accused of dragging out the war, or sacrificing the welfare off the captives for his own political ends. Key among the opposition’s aims for the first day of parliamentary business is set to be the installation of Matan Kahana, a member of Eisenkot’s Yashar (“straight”) party and a keen advocate of a state inquiry into Netanyahu and the government’s failings ahead of the Hamas led attack.

“Having so many people connected so directly to October 7 is going to increase the temperature, but it’s become so politicized that a win for one side automatically becomes a loss for the other, so the bereaved family on the right can say we need to increase our militarism in honor of my son, and the bereaved family in the center says we need to enlist more people.

“Netanyahu can try to influence that but for the first time in a long time, he seems a bit lost,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said.

However, how lost Netanyahu may be, or how grounded his claims of pending civil war or destruction at the hands of regional adversaries may be, ultimately, his political and potentially personal fate now lies with an opposition that outstrips his own numerically and a volatile Knesset eager to comb over the mistakes of the past.

“There’s no appetite on the other side to go in with Netanyahu for a unity government,” Levy said,

“The only real circumstances under which that happen is if he can create a security emergency,” he said following a weekend where the UK press had reported daily phone calls from Netanyahu to the Trump administration urging renewed war on Iran.

Voters have sent a strong election-year message to the new Democratic congressional majority and President Trump: Repair the damage inflation has done to the economy.

Trump, who campaigned on the idea that a Democratic victory in the midterms would trigger a 1929-style economic depression, has maintained that the economy is booming. Since his party lost in Tuesday’s voting, he has claimed he is willing to work with Democrats in the House and Senate, though that’s not something he has done much of in the past.

“I’ll get along, probably, with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive,” Trump told reporters last week.

After Friday’s strong jobs report showed employers adding 165,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dipping to 4.1%, Trump was defiant. “Democrats may control Congress, but I will NEVER stop fighting for you, and I will VETO anything that hurts America,” he said in a text message to his supporters.

Democrats are seeking to check Trump’s power and are preparing for early fights on government spending. Other challenges include chronic budget deficits, tariffs, artificial intelligence and difficult choices about a Social Security system that could run short of money in as little as six years.

But as long as rising prices keep making middle-class lives less affordable, Democrats and Republicans alike face the risk of angering and alienating voters in the next election cycle.

“Until inflation and interest rates are under control, the likelihood of change elections is going to be high on an ongoing basis,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Americans want lower prices

Trump’s tariffs and the war against Iran that he launched in February contributed to the consumer price index climbing to 3.7% annually. The president also tried to bully the Federal Reserve, an independent body tasked with keeping inflation low, to slash its benchmark interest rate in ways that could have worsened inflation.

The gridlock of a Republican White House and Democratic Congress gives the Fed more room to maneuver, possibly smoothing the central bank’s ability to return inflation to the 2% target it has failed to reach for nearly six years.

“I think that one of the surprise winners Tuesday was the Fed,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and president of the center-right American Action Forum.

The Democratic Senate could block Trump’s ability to fill potentially open spots on the Fed board, Holtz-Eakin said, removing “Trump’s incentives to meddle with the Fed” and clearing a path for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh “to follow his instincts and aggressively reduce inflation.”

Trump has maintained that the costs of oil, gasoline and diesel will all plummet once the Iran war ends. The problem is he refuses to say when or how the war will come to a conclusion.

John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, stressed that the Fed’s efforts to combat inflation would be helped if the federal government reduced budget deficits.

“It takes monetary and fiscal restraint,” he said.

Federal government keeps borrowing

The U.S. government keeps amassing debt as tax revenues fall short of burgeoning spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other programs. Paying the interest on the national debt now tops $1 trillion annually and exceeds spending on the military. The problem could spiral because investors have pushed up the interest rates charged on government debt over the past year.

Neither the White House nor Democrats ran on spending cuts. The president wants an additional $500 billion a year for the military, while some Democratic candidates have pushed for restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed under Trump.

Since August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly said the administration would put forward a plan to trim the roughly $2-trillion annual budget deficit. Bessent is working with White House budget director Russell Vought on cuts they’re branding as a “fiscal consolidation plan,” to be released after the election.

Deficit reduction would likely require some combination of tax increases and spending cuts, Goldwein said. But he said that the lowest hanging fruit would be to trim Medicare expenditures in ways that save money for both the government and patients.

“It’s not rocket science,” he said. “The most important thing you can do is reduce healthcare costs and find policies that lower the costs of Medicare, which will reduce deficits and interest rates.”

AI poses a dilemma for economy

When Harvard University economist Jason Furman thinks about the most important economic issues facing the United States, AI is at the top of his list.

“It’s the most screamingly obvious investment boom this country has ever had, or, possibly, second to railroads” in the late 19th century, Furman said.

Using AI, Furman has built an economic analysis tool called Econvitals that replicates some of the work done when he was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in Democratic President Obama’s administration.

Econvitals parsed construction spending data on Tuesday and found an 80.6% increase in data center construction over the past year, while spending on building homes, schools, factories and offices had fallen.

The stock market sold off last week on concerns that Democrats could restrict the construction of data centers and impose guardrails on AI. But the American economy still needs the technology to keep fueling growth now and into the future.

Trump has been vociferous in promoting the sector and has taken a hands-off stance on regulating AI, insisting that existing laws and voluntary agreements signed by tech companies are enough. He has shrugged off public concerns about the risks of job losses and large-scale cyberattacks, but a majority in the AP Voter Poll, a sweeping survey of the American electorate conducted in all 50 states, say AI does more harm than good for the economy.

The dilemma is that AI is helping to propel demand in the economy and sustain the stock market. If those slipped, there could be less consumer spending, lower growth and many in the U.S. feeling even worse off financially.

“Every time you have a single strength in an economy you are also having a big vulnerability,” Furman said.

Social Security needs to be rescued

Senators who won six-year terms last week will face the politically fraught challenge of working with Trump’s successor to find ways to save Social Security, which is projected to be unable to pay full benefits at the end of 2032.

Removing the cap on payroll taxes and increasing the retirement age are among the possible lifelines for sustaining the program that provides income to older Americans and those with disabilities. But any changes would likely need to be bipartisan to get enough votes to clear the Senate because Social Security overhauls cannot be made by party-line votes through the reconciliation process.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said she saw an opening earlier this year to fix Social Security when she overheard Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, talk about the need to lift the cap on payroll taxes. “I reached out to him in a matter of days,” she said in an interview this summer. The two senators went public with a plan that is still being formulated as legislation.

Warren, who worked with the Republicans on a law this year to encourage the construction of more homes, said other bipartisan efforts had failed because Republican lawmakers had been afraid to cross Trump.

But with Social Security, there is a need to act now. Experts say “the checks that go out to seniors will drop by nearly a quarter” after 2032, Warren said.

“Think what that means, literally, to millions and millions of Americans, who depend on those Social Security checks, or who have parents who depend on them. And Congress is doing nothing,” she said.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

While United’s victory was certainly well received, it will not mask wider issues.

‘Green and gold’ protests against the ownership took place before kick-off and during a first-half when the home side were abysmal.

Chants against the Glazer family, minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and director of football Jason Wilcox will not stop just because of this victory, no matter how thrilling.

The sober assessment should also recall United came from behind to beat Atalanta 3-2 at Old Trafford during Solskjaer’s time. They lost 5-0 at home to Liverpool four days later. Within a month, the Norwegian had been sacked.

In October 2018, Jose Mourinho was on the brink of dismissal before a Premier League encounter with Newcastle. United trailed 2-0 after 10 minutes but fought back to win. Mourinho lasted 13 more games.

No-one can know how much time Carrick has bought himself with this victory.

“I don’t have a crystal ball to know what happens next,” he told Amazon Prime. “We move on to the weekend. We’ve got a really important game here against Aston Villa, which we need to prepare for.”

Chief executive Omar Berrada and Wilcox certainly looked much happier at the final whistle than they had done midway through the first half.

Suddenly United look like they can qualify for the next phase of the Champions League. For the first time since September, Carrick’s players are enjoying the winning feeling.

But it will mean little unless they can maintain the momentum against Villa, who were getting beaten heavily by Barcelona as Old Trafford was in tumult.

Asked if he will sleep better thanks to the win, Carrick was honest enough to admit that would not be the case.

“Genuinely, no. I don’t. Really, I don’t,” he said. “Whether that’s right or wrong, or normal or not, I don’t know, but I didn’t feel relief. It was more I was genuinely pleased for the players.

“I know how much they care, I know what they’re giving. Sometimes it looks like that, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes we play well, sometimes we haven’t, and I understand that.

“But I could feel their willingness to do well, and so for them to have to dig really deep, and to see everybody having that feeling that we all crave, that’s why we’re all here.”

THE UK’s best restaurants used to be ruled by cocky French chefs with big hats and even bigger bellies.

But that all changed thanks to a trio of rock ‘n’ roll Brits.

Kitchen mavericks Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal turned the stuffy industry on its head with their trendy establishments, where members of the Spice Girls, Oasis and Hollywood’s finest would compete with high-society folk for the most sought-after dinner reservations going.

New BBC documentary Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs explores the rise of the three men who were blazing a trial — when they weren’t barking at their sous chefs.

Gordon sums them up as “council house rebels with a f***ing cause”, while Marco says: “Chefs have always been naughty. They were naughty before me, and they’re naughty after me.

“But the likes of Gordon and Heston made it rock ’n’ roll.”

According to Gordon, it was his mentor Marco who exhibited the most rock-star behaviour.

The Leeds-born chef won legions of new admirers by posing semi-naked in black-and-white snaps taken by provocative photographer Bob Carlos Clarke for his cook book White Heat.

And some customers couldn’t get enough of Marco, including a female diner on a date in Harveys, his restaurant serving French cuisine in Wandsworth, South West London.

Gordon, 59, said: “Marco left service, ran through the restaurant, ran upstairs, jumped in the cubicle, did whatever in the bathroom, and then jumped through the window of that bathroom.

“He then dropped down the f***ing skylight, back on to my hot plate having done whatever.

“And then she then went back into the restaurant and continued eating her dessert with her boyfriend.”

Marco also had form for fighting with customers, according to Gordon.

During his time running Harveys — Gordon’s first-ever chef’s job — seeing scruffy-haired Marco brawling in the restaurant would be a common sight, especially if a diner had the nerve to point out something was wrong with their meal.

Gordon recalls: “I remember, I think it was my second week, this customer had complained the pigeon was overcooked and Marco said to him, ‘Do me a favour. Dinner’s on me, and what you didn’t spend in my restaurant, buy your wife some new clothes.’

“This guy said to him, ‘Say that again, what did you say to me?’, and then this guy started walking towards Marco, knocks into me, and then they start going at it.

“This customer, he’s like sprawling all over the floor and I’m boning out my pigeon.”

Nick Munier, who was Marco’s maitre d’ at Harveys, where actor Oliver Reed would often be found lying drunk on the floor, revealed what happened if a customer asked a waiter for salt and pepper.

He added: “What we used to say is ‘You’ve ruined your own meal, we won’t be serving you any more food.”

“We’d start to clear the table and everything will be clear and the guest would be left embarrassed with nothing in front of them, and the only thing they could do was leave.”

Munier also witnessed Marco chuck the entire contents of his cheeseboard trolley against a wall because he was unhappy with how it looked.

He recalled: “No one was to clean them and he wanted me to see these cheeses through service, so that next time I don’t make the same mistakes.”

Celebrities were not safe from Marco’s wrath either.

Actor Nigel Havers said he was booted out of The Canteen, which Marco set up with Sir Michael Caine in 1992 in Chelsea Harbour, for commenting about waiting time.

He revealed: “I went there in the first week and it took three hours to get the first course.

“Someone came over and said, ‘How was the meal?’ I said ‘I don’t really remember the food, it took three hours’. Marco looms up and says, ‘Get out of my restaurant’.

“It was scary, and you’re paying through the nose to be harangued by this chef, this mad fool.”

Despite their rock ’n’ roll personas, neither Gordon nor Marco claim to have dabbled in drugs, although other chefs in that era certainly did.

Gordon says: “Chefs were becoming heavy drinkers, drugs were getting involved in the industry.

“Heart attacks every other week.

“Everyone thought you could stay up all night and do drugs and cook.

“That was the opposite of where I came from.”

Marco, 64, added: “I’ve never taken drugs in my life and I didn’t drink until I was 41.”

Gordon and Marco’s tumultuous relationship and rivalry is very much at the core of this three-parter, which also celebrates 60-year-old Heston’s visionary role and how he quietly equalled their three Michelin star haul from his Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire.

The trio meet in person for the first time in decades in the third episode, but it is the coming together of Gordon and Marco which is likely to provide the most drama, given the mighty fallout between them.

The pair came to blows inside Harveys during Gordon’s last service in October 1989.

Marco secretly did not want to lose his protégé, and the skirmish became famous as it was the first and only time Gordon cried in a kitchen.

The F-Word star explained: “I got absolutely pummelled.

“It was almost like, if I can’t have you and own you, I’m going to destroy you.

“There was an issue with the timing, I think it was something to do with the red mullet and I answered him back.

“He was angry, literally two fists, chef jacket buttons flying everywhere, and he’s shaking me on this coffee machine and then a glass bowl of coffee fell and smashed everywhere, and the kitchen went silent.”

When Marco was quizzed about the alleged ruckus, he said: “Not true.”

Gordon continued: “I bawled my eyes out. I was f***ing upset.

“I was in shock that I was leaving and this level of aggression — he knew I could run this restaurant without him and it was a relationship that was coming to an end and he wanted to finish me before I got to somebody else.

“I’ve never forgiven him for that.

“It still brings back incredible moments when you read ‘the chef who made Gordon Ramsay cry’ — why is that a headline?

“Did I f**k up massively and destroy his reputation? Nothing of the sort.

“Was it justified? No, it wasn’t.

“It was just another scenario where he wanted to prove he was better than me and he wanted to dine out on it. You sad c***.”

Marco responded again: “It’s not personal, it’s service.”

Gordon eventually got his revenge on Marco by not only equalling his Michelin stars total but by becoming a household name worldwide.

Both Gordon and Heston profited from the era where the chefs became the stars by landing big-money TV deals, with the former getting further exposure by fronting a cooking show across the pond.

Marco attempted to downplay their achievements, saying in the documentary: “I don’t do TV.

“They like to manipulate, they like manufactured drama — it’s called reality TV.

“Don’t blame me for that.

“Have it, Gordon — it’s all yours.”

But that didn’t stop Marco from hosting ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen for two series from 2007 to 2009 before the show was axed, much to Gordon’s delight given he hosted the debut series in 2003.

Gordon added: “I couldn’t believe my luck.

“I was so happy for Marco to pick up the slack and step into my shoes.

“All that s**t you have given me for doing TV, now you’re following in my footsteps.

“Boy, has the tide turned.

“That was the start of Marco’s demise on TV because Hell’s Kitchen tanked.

“Of all the f***ing people, how many times I’ve told him, do not take sloppy seconds.”

• Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs starts on BBC Two on Thursday at 9pm.

LAS VEGAS — Five days after settling back into the White House, President Trump embarked on a political victory lap that took him to a rally in downtown Las Vegas.

Joined by Nevada’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, Trump told boisterous supporters that, as a first order of business, he’d directed every member of his Cabinet “to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring down the cost of daily life.”

That hasn’t happened — not even close — and that failure is one big reason that Nevada’s governor is fighting for his political life.

Democrats, still smarting from their loss four years ago, have made Lombardo their No. 1 gubernatorial target this election season. Republicans are battling to keep their top-of-the-ticket foothold in a state that will, once more, stand at the center of the presidential campaign.

With just over a week to go — and with more than 335,000 ballots already cast — the contest could go either way.

After a career in law enforcement and eight years as sheriff of Clark County — home to Las Vegas — Lombardo made the leap to governor in 2022 in a pandemic-fueled backlash against Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak.

Reserved by nature and a political civilian most of his life, Lombardo has spent the last four years focused on the basics — crime, education, job growth, economic development — and largely steered clear of the country’s incendiary culture wars.

Unlike other Republican lawmakers, Lombardo has also shied away from the provocations and flamboyant pugilism of the MAGA movement.

Still, Trump hangs like an anvil around Lombardo’s neck — a fact his Democratic opponent, Aaron Ford, exploits at every turn.

Appearing last week at a gas station two miles off the Las Vegas Strip, Ford cited record-high fuel prices — and the knock-on effects they’ve had on tourism, groceries and online shopping — and said Nevadans were suffering for no other reason than Trump’s “war of choice” against Iran.

“And where,” Ford asked rhetorically, as traffic whooshed past, “is our current governor? As usual, he’s at Trump’s feet, serving as his doormat.”

Nevada Democratic gubernatorial candidate and current Nevada Atty. Gen. Aaron D. Ford arrives at a get-out-the-vote event on Oct. 7 in Las Vegas.

(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

Ford, who’s bidding to become Nevada’s first Black governor, has one of those up-by-the-bootstraps biographies that campaign consultants see as spun gold.

He grew up in Dallas in a family that struggled to stay above water and, as a single father in his early 20s, relied on Medicaid and food stamps to get by. He worked as a waiter and a teacher to pay for law school and a Ph.D. in education before moving to Nevada in 2007. After six years in the state Senate, Ford was elected in 2018 to the first of two terms as the state’s attorney general.

Like Democratic candidates everywhere, Ford has made affordability a key component of his campaign.

Standing on the sidewalk outside a Circle K — where regular was going for $5.35 a gallon — Ford squatted to sign a blown-up copy of a “letter” to Trump demanding a $2,000 “pain-at-the-pump” rebate for every Nevada household. A line was provided, obligingly but obviously unnecessarily, for Lombardo’s signature.

Four years ago, Ford noted, when gas was around $4.68 a gallon, his Republican rival wrote on social media that hard-pressed Nevadans needed “leadership that ensures our families and businesses are protected from these disastrous policies.”

“But once he got in office,” Ford said, Lombardo “stopped fighting for us in Nevada and he started working for Trump full time.”

A few hours later, at a country-themed nightclub in northwest Las Vegas, the governor took to the stage to extol his performance these last four years.

Small-business creation and job growth are up, he told a crowd of supporters gathered on the dance floor. Teachers are better paid and more people are working in Nevada than ever before. “Kicking butt,” he said, referring to either himself, Nevada or both; it wasn’t clear which. “Kicking butt.”

Also, Lombardo added, Nevada’s crime rate has fallen for both violent and property crimes — “without any help from the attorney general.”

The words “Donald” and “Trump” never passed the governor’s lips.

Lombardo has had a somewhat mixed relationship with the president.

He kept his distance during the 2024 campaign and has occasionally, selectively, taken issue with the administration since Trump returned to office. The governor, for instance, spoke out against cuts to Medicaid as well as the shuttering of wind and solar projects in Nevada.
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But Lombardo didn’t help himself in the least when Trump came to town in August for another rally, this one at the Red Rock Casino. He heaped praise on the president and defended, of all things, the care and feeding of Trump’s plutocratic pals.

“Quite often when the press and the media runs him down, they think about, you know, he’s taking care of his billionaire friends,” Lombardo said. “Those billionaire friends provide jobs. Unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.”

Naturally, the moment showed up in a campaign ad, showing the grinning governor alongside a smirking Trump and ending with the tagline: “Joe Lombardo. For Trump, Not Nevada.”

For his part, the governor has portrayed Ford as feckless and borderline corrupt.

He’s seized on the attorney general’s abundant out-of-state travel — for official business, Ford says — to portray him as a high-flier beholden to the special interests that financed his jaunts.

Lombardo has also accused Ford of being weak on crime, citing, in particular, the case of a Nevada inmate convicted of manslaughter in the killing of a pregnant woman. Ford placed the inmate’s bid for clemency on the agenda of the state pardons board — an example, Lombardo claims, of the way Ford treats criminals.

The Democrat said he was merely following procedure and would have opposed the clemency request had he not missed the board’s meeting due to an unspecified family emergency.

With a big financial advantage and the benefit of a highly practiced campaign team, Lombardo has kept the race close despite the rough political climate. But to a considerable degree, his fate is beyond anything that Lombardo can control. The key question is how big the Democratic wave is on Nov. 3 and how strong the Trump undertow.

Those forces of red and blue — more than anything either candidate says or does — will determine the winner in this most purple of states.

WASHINGTON — N’nanba (Robin Rue Simmons) has spent years trying to answer a question that has vexed the United States since the abolition of slavery: What would it actually look like to repair the damage?

In Evanston, Ill., she helped turn that question into a $25,000 housing grant for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies. Now, Rue Simmons is spreading the nation’s first municipal reparations program to more than 100 communities across the country.

But as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, there is a formidable hurdle: President Trump’s administration.

The administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and its broader efforts to curtail federal support for race-based initiatives and Black history, have prompted some institutions to reconsider or quietly scale back reparations work.

Those reversals come while at least part of the world community is reexamining the past. In March the U.N. General Assembly issued a resolution declaring the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. More than 120 countries supported the resolution — only three voted against it — Argentina, Israel and the U.S. Fifty-two, including England and 27 members of the European Union, abstained.

“Under this administration, of course, there are many barriers to achieving that, but we still stand on federal redress as our collective north star,” Rue Simmons, the chairman of Evanston’s Reparations Committee and a former city councilwoman, told the Associated Press.

For more than 3½ centuries, the transatlantic slave trade forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans aboard ships bound for the Americas; some 1.8 million didn’t survive the journey.

Roughly 388,000 enslaved people were taken to what is now the U.S. and their enslavers maintained a system of chattel slavery, treating the enslaved and their children as property, until abolition in 1865.

Enslavement deprived generations of Black Americans their freedom and any meaningful share of the fruits of their labor. Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and systemic racism further depressed the Black population’s ability to build wealth that is still largely concentrated among white families.

From the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule, to modern-day reparations proposals, initiatives to address the legacy of slavery are entering a new era of political uncertainty.

“I don’t think that there’s been any president who’s been supportive of comprehensive Black reparations — for a long time it was just taboo to even speak the word,” said William Darity, who wrote a book on reparations with A. Kirsten Mullen.

“Now, Trump will speak the word, but with hostility,” he added.

“They want to steal your money for reparations,” Trump told his supporters during a speech in September. “Our country doesn’t have that kind of money. … The people that hate our country are asking for it, but it’s going nowhere.”

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociologist in African American studies at UCLA, said reparations are about atoning for the past crime of chattel slavery, even if some programs come in the form of housing grants or college scholarships instead of direct cash payments.

“It’s not even a lot of money that they are given. But it comes back to the recognition, the acknowledgment, responsibility and remedy,” he said.

The Trump administration disagrees and has entered the legal fight in Evanston to stop it from happening.

The Republican administration’s attacks on modern-day repayment efforts include a lawsuit in Evanston, which was initially filed by Judicial Watch.

Michael Bekesha, who represents the plaintiffs, says the Evanston program distributes funds based on race without specific harm identification. He argues the city’s program is unlike historical reparations programs.

“The Constitution prohibits governments from picking winners and losers based entirely on race,” Beshka told the AP.

The Justice Department this month received a federal judge’s permission to intervene in the case, alleging that the city’s actions violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

Last year, the Justice Department sent a letter of warning to leaders in Asheville and Buncombe County, N.C., contemplating creating their own programs.

Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement to the AP that “race-based government benefit programs are both unconstitutional and often violate federal civil rights laws.”

“Those implementing these programs do so in violation of federal law and the federal government has an obligation to stop them,” she said.

The White House referred questions to the Justice Department.

Georgetown University was one of the leaders, offering admission consideration for the descendants of enslaved people tied to the campus’ past, an effort that has continued despite Trump’s crackdown on campus DEI efforts.

But across higher education, new efforts have come to a standstill, said Richard Cellini, who previously led a Harvard University project to identify descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s past leaders.

“People don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to hear about it, they’re not hiring for it,” Cellini said.

Some Virginia universities have quietly been taking steps to provide scholarships to descendants, as required under a 2021 state law. But otherwise there has been no sign of new scholarship programs being started since Trump returned to office, said Kirt von Daacke, a University of Virginia historian who leads a consortium of colleges studying slavery.

The Georgetown initiative focuses on descendants of slaves sold by Georgetown’s Jesuit priests to slaveholders in Louisiana.

The Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual cash payments to the descendants whose family members labored on its campus during slavery and Jim Crow eras. The private institution’s program is funded by an endowment started in 2019 that has grown from $1.7 million to $2.8 million. Payments to individuals vary based on the closest lineage to the family members and continue into perpetuity.

“We believe we’re the only educational institution in the United States which makes annual cash reparations payments” with no strings attached, said Nicky Burridge, the seminary’s spokeswoman.

“The moral repair, the healing aspect is as great as the monetary one,” said Ebonee Davis-Hayes, its director of reparations.

Hussein, Fields and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Comedian and TV star Miranda Hart had years of illness but became a fan favourite on Celebrity Traitors with her hilarious TV comeback, before being murdered by the Traitors

Miranda Hart fought back tears of sadness and joy when she left the Celebrity Traitors – as she explained the show was genuinely life changing for her. The 53-year-old fan’s favourite was murdered by the Traitors on the show tonight, and reacted by jokingly screwing up the piece of paper with her name on and saying “Bottoms! I knew it.”

But getting more serious, Miranda went on to explain how competing on the programme, her first major TV appearance for several years, meant a lot, having been bed-bound and housebound with chronic fatigue after being diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Getting emotional, she said: “Ultimately, in my little personal story, this has been quite extraordinary that I’ve been able to get back and do the thing that I love professionally and do the things that I love personally, like wandering around a Scottish highland and being in nature and laughing and connecting. There were times that I didn’t think that would be possible again.”

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And in an interview after the cameras had finished rolling, the actor and comedian went on to say she was fulfilled and satisfied after getting herself back to work and competing.

Asked for her proudest achievement, she explained: “I think just getting there and being part of it full stop. I have missed doing television so much and it has been a very hard road to get to a place after restricting long term illness to be fit enough to do something again.”

She added: “I think it’s a good thing that I wasn’t banished because my speech would have ended up being emotional and mushy. I would have told them how precious the connection and the joy and playfulness had meant after years of not being able to experience that, knowing that they are the most important things in life. And then no doubt the floodgates would have opened.

“I also would have tried to extend the reveal of what I was an absurdly long time. Anything for some more airtime!” Miranda has been an amusing presence throughout the series, including one memorable scene where she was recreating a Little Mix dance with former band member Leigh-Anne Pinnock. It was so dramatic and funny that it led actor Michael Sheen to wrongly believe it could be some kind of smokescreen for a murder plot. But it was just Miranda having the time of her life.

She recalled: “I love Leigh-Anne so much for making my Big Mix wish come true. Though I would like to apologise to all viewers for the dance – bosoms as menopausally wobbly as mine should not have been doing those moves.

“However, I would like to say to Little Mix that I am available and will go into training. When Michael[Sheen] suggested it could have been the way I had been murdered in plain sight I did in part want that to be true – what a way to go!”

Miranda said she loved the game but admitted it was intense and during filming she thought of nothing else, even dreaming one night she was married to Michael Sheen.

She said: “The actual game was much harder than I thought it would be. And much more all-consuming. I am sure for many the idea of doing it is a hard no for a number of reasons – it’s an intense experience and being idiotic and vulnerable on international television isn’t for everyone! – but for me it combined so much of what I love.

“The landscape, games, playing, being part of a team, deep and fun connection with people, being able to look down a camera and have a chat from time to time. I could go on. But when I say it was intense, it REALLY was – way more than I expected. I understand now why you become close to people on shows like it.”

She said she felt closest to Michael, Joe Lycett and James Blunt, but was also wrongly certain that King Kenny was a faithful. Looking back, she concluded: “I think you will always go away from something as intense and unusual an experience as this learning something.

“I learnt many things, or rather relearnt. One being never judge a book by its cover and be open to being wrong about your first judgement about someone. Secondly, that however assured people come across we are all vulnerable, have needs, and ultimately desire to be kind, so look for the good in people and treat them how you want to be treated. Make time for people rather than always looking after your own interests socially – that’s a big one.

“And finally, it has cemented my hatred of the smart phone because the joy of being with people without their phones – we talked and connected in a way I remember when I was younger. We need to put those darn things away.”

Elsewhere in last night’s episode, the remaining Faithfuls continued to struggle to spot the three Traitors – Maya Jama, King Kenny and James Acaster. In fact, they were so bad that they picked to save the trio at the end of the mission called Field Of Screams, as the players who could be eligible for a “game-changing power”.

Grinning Maya joked: “I had to hold in my laughter. Of all people, you saved us. I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, have we completed this game already? We are trusting, we are unsuspecting, we are killing you all.’”

Kenny added: “Can’t believe we’ve been chosen as the most trustworthy. What on earth? Feels too good to be true.” And James said: “None of this comes back to us because they keep on doing it themselves.”

After he was picked to have the new power by the Traitors, host Claudia Winkleman gave Kenny a dagger, which meant he had two votes instead of one in the latest Round Table. As the show ended, Sharon Rooney and Joanne McNally tied on four votes each, and so they had to make a final plea to survive being banished before a second vote took place.

Kenny will have the deciding vote at the start of next week’s episodes, but whoever leaves, they are both part of team Faithful. It means the three Traitors will have all survived until the final week of the contest, and the struggling Faithfuls are up against it.

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BANGOR, Maine — Ever the optimist, Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes Republicans will hold on to their U.S. House majority, defying a surge of Democratic momentum in the final stretch of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

It’s the crowds he says he’s seeing as he crosses the country campaigning for GOP candidates. The caliber of recruits and incumbents he calls workhorses, not show horses. And the nearly half a billion he has raised for House Republicans.

He also has faith.

“We run to win, and that’s biblical: You run to win,” he told the Associated Press during a campaign stop in Maine.

“And I believe that we will.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, applauds along with President JD Vance as President Trump delivers his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in February in Washington.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The speaker of the House is one of the most consequential elected officials in the United States, second in line of succession to the president. While Johnson quipped to Fox News recently that he may return to his hometown of Shreveport, La., to start a lawn care business if Republicans lose power on Nov. 3, he fully expects to buck an American midterm tradition that often sees the president’s party dumped in Congress.

It can be said that Johnson, who has drawn so close to President Trump that he routinely fields 1 a.m. calls — they spoke the night before as Trump rallied in Alaska — walks on the sunny side of the street. That’s despite voter frustration over high prices and the Iran war, and his own challenge of leading one of narrowest House majorities in modern times.

In his three years as speaker, Johnson has pushed past the doubters and naysayers, holding his thread-thin GOP majority together to deliver Trump’s agenda. He notably led passage of the big tax breaks and social service cuts bill. Most days he does not have a single vote to spare.

“So many times everybody had written off, there was no way he was going to be able to pull off a particular vote,” said Republican Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina, who joined the speaker on the campaign swing. “Yet he always seems to pull out the win in the end.”

In the interview, Johnson did not speak brashly about expanding the House majority on election day, as he has in the past. But on track to visit more than 20 states and 40 congressional districts though November, he said the political mood reminds him of the 2024 election that swept Republicans to control of Congress and the White House.

“It’s not going to be a giant majority,” he said. “But I genuinely believe that we will have a working majority.”

Emboldened by Trump

Johnson first fell into the speaker’s job almost by accident, a desperate choice by his GOP colleagues after a contingent of renegade Republicans ousted his predecessor, then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California in 2023.

Johnson had been a lower-level member of House leadership, but distinguished himself before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by organizing support for Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

In the time since, Johnson has secured proximity to Trump’s power. He joined Trump at a UFC fight in New York and once gifted the president a speaker’s gavel as Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law. It was a symbolic act, but one that critics saw as giving away the authority of a coequal branch of government.

More recently, Johnson abruptly sent lawmakers home early rather than face a vote forced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as lawmakers tried to halt the Iran war, which has not been authorized by Congress.

Over coffee in Bangor, after rallying for House candidate Paul LePage, a former governor, Johnson brushed back criticism that Congress has eroded under his watch as Trump works to amass executive power.

“Absolute nonsense,” Johnson said.

“We did not yield Article 1 authority to the president,” he said, referring to the powers spelled out in the Constitution. “We used our own,” he said, to muscle GOP priorities past Democratic opposition.

Trump agenda at risk

Johnson has focused the election on Democrats he portrays as “communists.” A handful of far-left liberals, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, are on the ballot.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader who is in line for the speaker’s gavel if his party sweeps to power, is preparing a first-100 days agenda for when the new Congress convenes in January, if there is a change in control.

What the Republicans will do if they retain power is less defined.

“Lots of plans,” Johnson said, “along the same course of what we’ve been doing — less taxes, less regulation.”

Trump “wants to go big for his legacy,” he said. “We have big things on the horizon that we can do.”

The president has essentially purged the House GOP ranks of those perceived to be disloyal. Among them are Massie, who lost his primary, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who retired early after breaking with Trump over release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Pressed how he would keep Republicans in line, Johnson said he is preparing to change the House rules if he returns as speaker.

“There’s going to be some changes that are going to make the machinery work smoother,” he said.

Praying for the speaker, and the country

Faith has often been strong among House leaders. Two former speakers, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich are Catholics, as is John Boehner, who invited Pope Francis to address Congress.

Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer who was first elected alongside Trump in 2016, is expected to win his own reelection next month.

“My faith is a huge component of how I think and how I act and what I do,” said Johnson, who led a public prayer on the National Mall as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

He is drinking lots of coffee these days, he said, cutting back on the Celsius, and still has 1,413 unread text messages, a slight dip from the frightful number reported a few months ago by the Wall Street Journal.

One text is from someone praying for him.

Johnson said he is grateful for the outpouring of prayers he receives, for him and the country.

“I pray for God’s will. And I believe God’s will is for us — and not the communists — to be in charge of America,” Johnson said.

“And it does say in the New Testament, you run the race to win,” he said, citing 1 Corinthians 9:24. “This is a biblical admonition. So we will.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.