political

ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms talks a lot about the policies she would pursue as Georgia governor. The Democratic nominee is less likely to talk about the history she would make by winning the job.

Never has a Black woman been elected governor in any state. The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House adviser to Democratic President Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement.

“I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” Bottoms, 56, says as she campaigns. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.”

Bottoms rarely if ever mentions slavery, Jim Crow segregation or even race explicitly. But that story — hers, Georgia’s and the nation’s — shadows her battle with Republican nominee Rick Jackson.

The billionaire, a 72-year-old white man who grew up in Atlanta but now lives on a sprawling suburban estate, has hammered the former mayor as a failure, painting her four-year tenure as a crime-ridden decline. Other Republicans, up to Donald Trump, have joined in, with the president accusing Bottoms of ruining a once-great city.

“It’s a long-standing playbook to paint Atlanta as this big bad place,” Bottoms said, dismissing the Republican frame as ridiculous for a town that once hosted the Olympics and recently staged eight World Cup soccer matches.

One of her most recent ads pushes back by featuring clips of the news conference she held with the city’s law enforcement leaders during the peak of 2020 street protests of police violence in Atlanta and nationwide against Black men. “If you care about this city, then go home,” she said. “We are better than this.”

Bottoms would have her chance to answer Trump and Republicans at a rally Wednesday headlined by Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president.

Some Black women see the attacks as loaded

Republican coalitions in most states, and certainly in Georgia, are overwhelmingly white and anchored in suburbs, smaller cities and small towns. Those are places where many voters look skeptically, even scornfully, upon big cities and the people who run them. But some of the rhetoric directed against Bottoms is steeped in the specter of race and gender in a state where all 83 governors since 1776 have been white men.

Jackson’s TV ads, a deluge funded by more than $200 million of his own money, feature footage of the demonstrations and violence in Atlanta in 2020, along with grainy images of Bottoms. The protests followed the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed Black man, by a white Atlanta police officer.

The Republican campaign effort has not gone unnoticed among some Bottoms supporters, especially other Black women.

“It’s easy for people to attack Atlanta and Mayor Bottoms based on their own biases,” said retired educator Beverly Rice, a Bottoms supporter.

Bottoms’ bid marks the third consecutive time that Georgia Democrats have nominated a Black woman for governor. Stacey Abrams lost in 2018 and 2022 to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is leaving office in 2027 after eight years due to term limits. Abrams came as close to winning a governor’s race as any Black woman before her.

In an interview, Abrams was reluctant to assign race and gender as the deciding factor in her defeats. But she said Black women running for governor face a higher bar because there is no example yet for voters who place a special emphasis on executive experience. Abrams, also an Atlantan, had served previously as state House minority leader, a role Republicans minimized as insufficient experience.

Abrams said that executive standard “does not apply equally across candidates” in politics. She said Bottoms “has a sound argument” because she has held the executive’s role. Before that, Bottoms was a City Council member, magistrate judge and prosecutor. That resume, Abrams and others said, is why Republicans have so aggressively criticized Bottoms’ experience.

“Bad mayors don’t make good governors,” Jackson has said over and over in the closing stretch of the campaign.

He has taken special notice of her decision not to run for a second term as mayor, instead joining Biden’s White House as a senior adviser – a move Bottoms said she deliberately put off to finish her four-year term. In Jackson’s telling, Bottoms “turned her back on Atlanta.”

Republicans say Atlanta ‘burned’ in Bottoms’ tenure

Other conservatives have gone further than Jackson.

“Keisha Lance Bottoms let Atlanta burn,” top Jackson surrogate John King, a former Atlanta police officer and now state insurance commissioner, sometimes says at the candidate’s rallies.

That is a reference to protesters setting fire to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant close to where Brooks was killed. The reference carries an extra weight in a city whose symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes — a symbol adopted because Union forces burned parts of a young Atlanta during the Civil War.

At a Trump rally last weekend in Macon, a smaller city in middle Georgia, the president hammered away, too. Bottoms “destroyed Atlanta with her crime and filth and constant riots,” Trump said, echoing the kind of sometimes profane attacks he has leveled against many places with large or majority Black populations.

“I always viewed Atlanta as a great city,” he insisted. “It’s not considered that anymore.”

In a 2017 dispute with then-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Trump called the civil rights icon’s district, which includes Delta Airlines’ and Coca-Cola’s world headquarters and the Georgia Institute of Technology, “crime-infested” and said it was “falling apart.”

Bottoms counters with a more complicated reality

Atlanta did see a crime spike during Bottoms’ tenure, but it was not an outlier alongside the COVID-19 pandemic surge across the country, according to federal statistics. After the pandemic waned, U.S. and Atlanta crime rates dropped significantly. Bottoms did sign an executive order blocking the Atlanta jail from holding federal immigration detainees.

Republicans have exaggerated her action on bail. Bottoms signed a city ordinance that eliminated cash bail for certain nonviolent crimes, intending to reduce the jail’s population and what she and other city officials deemed excessive punishment for low-grade offenses.

Her latest advertising retort follows a surge of fundraising that she did not have throughout Jackson’s summer advertising onslaught. “When a national crisis poured into Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms stood up,” a voice-over says.

Besides her exhortation for people to leave the streets, the mother of four said, “Above everything else, I am a mother, so you are not going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are.”

Her aides see the ad — and the reality of how she handled the matter in real time — as depicting a political figure who is tough and empathetic, aware of public safety concerns and the realities for Black Americans.

But Bottoms’ advisers, and the candidate herself, also say they want Georgians to make their decisions on tangible policy distinctions, most notably her emphasis on addressing economic struggles and expanding Medicaid insurance eligibility — a move that would reach urban and rural populations across racial lines.

That is the point of the governor’s office, said Rice, the retired educator.

“I have 100% faith that she can win if people just judge her with their values,” she said. “I don’t look at her and see a ‘Black governor.’ I see a governor for all the people.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

A political advertisement released this summer claimed former L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón “almost destroyed Los Angeles” and warned that, if elected as L.A.’s next city attorney, Marissa Roy will “do the same.”

Earlier this month, a seemingly out-of-nowhere rumor spread through City Hall and among rank-and-file cops that City Councilwoman Nithya Raman plans to name Gascón the city’s next police chief if she ousts Karen Bass in the mayoral contest.

Gascón told The Times last week he has no interest in the job and hasn’t spoken to Raman or her team. Raman has dismissed the rumor as a politically motivated lie started by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the police union that supports Bass.

A spokesperson for the union said Raman’s allegation was “untrue”; Bass’ campaign also said it had nothing to do with the Gascón rumor.

Nevertheless, the claim has been amplified in a number of arenas in recent days. An article in the California Post raised the issue last week, but only cited the panic of anonymous police officers. The LAPD’s former top cop, Bill Bratton, signal boosted the issue in a tweet praising LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, whose future could be in jeopardy if Raman wins.

Gascón declined to comment for this article, other than to shoot down the rumor that he could become LAPD chief.

After suffering a crushing defeat in his bid for reelection in 2024, Gascón all but disappeared from public life. He routinely declines interview requests and has receded from the leading role he once held in the nationwide progressive prosecutor movement.

But in the homestretch of the two most important contests on most Angelenos’ ballots this year, Gascón has been conjured as a bogeyman by opponents of progressive candidates. With polls showing Roy and Raman favored to win their respective races, political observers say the attempt to make Gascón relevant again may be a sign of panic from their opponents.

“At one point in time, Gascón clearly was box office poison and he may still be,” said Roy Behr, a Democratic consultant who isn’t involved in either race. “But this feels a lot like [President] Trump and the Republicans invoking Joe Biden’s name whenever they’re in trouble. In both cases, they’re clearly signs of desperation and not invoking any particular realistic possibilities.”

On Tuesday, billionaire developer and onetime mayoral candidate Rick Caruso said if Raman hired Gascón it would “take the city into a very dark place.”

“If you’re going to fire [Chief McDonnell], who are you going to appoint? Is it going to look like somebody like a Gascón?” Caruso asked. “Because I don’t think we need LAPD being a lab experiment for the [Democratic Socialists of L.A.] It’s going to take L.A. in the wrong direction.”

Caruso, who lost to Bass by nearly 10 points in the 2022 mayoral contest, has yet to offer an endorsement in this year’s race. But he has been publicly critical of Raman and invoked the Gascón police chief rumor at an event launching a new L.A. Department of Water and Power initiative. Bass was standing right next to him.

Gascón surged into office in 2020 amid nationwide demands for criminal justice reform after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The former San Francisco district attorney and assistant LAPD chief promised to reduce mass incarceration and hold police accountable while also reducing crime. But his lone term in office was beset by turmoil.

Gascón instituted a number of unilateral policies on his first day in office — barring prosecutors from trying juveniles as adults, seeking the death penalty or charging certain misdemeanors — that left him at war with his own staff. A raft of lawsuits soon followed, as well as a battery of made-for-TV-news crimes that served as red meat to critics who wanted to blame Gascón’s reforms for violence. Crime went up early in his term, and although a Times analysis cast serious doubt on links between the spike and the district attorney’s policies, Gascón’s name became shorthand for labeling a politician as soft on crime.

Two attempts to recall Gascón from office failed. But after a bruising four years in office, current Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman routed Gascón in 2024, effectively ending his political career.

In the city attorney’s race, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney has tried to draw a straight line between Gascón and Roy, insisting in one advertisement that she won’t prosecute misdemeanor crimes, including trespassing, theft and drug possession. The claim echoes Gascón’s blanket ban on prosecuting loitering, public intoxication and other minor drug offenses he believed played a role in criminalizing homelessness.

During the primary, text messages sent out in support of McKinney’s campaign also referred to City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, a moderate, as a “Gascón-style” Democrat. Feldstein Soto never supported Gascón and endorsed one of his challengers in the 2024 primary.

Roy’s campaign declined to comment. She prefers using diversion programs to handle defendants suffering from mental illness or addiction issues, according to her campaign website, but hasn’t specifically said she’d ban deputy city attorneys from filing any particular case. She supported Gascón’s 2024 reelection bid and attended some of his rallies.

McKinney, whose shift from trial prosecutor to politician began when he became an outspoken critic of Gascón, also favors diversion for mentally ill and addicted defendants for nonviolent offenses and has referred to his platform as one of “compassionate accountability” toward unhoused defendants.

But, he stands by the comparison between Roy and Gascón.

“I think that when she talks about not prosecuting certain misdemeanors, it’s a blanket policy,” he said. “That’s very reminiscent of George Gascón.”

The invocation of the former district attorney in the mayor’s race is more complicated.

Bass and Gascón were known to have a frosty relationship. She didn’t support efforts to recall him in 2022, but she didn’t endorse her fellow Democrat’s reelection bid in 2024 either.

Raman never endorsed Gascón and the pair had “no relationship” while in office, according to two people with direct knowledge of their thinking who requested anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. In a tweet last week, she called the rumor about naming Gascón police chief a “bizarre lie.”

“This rumor was created by the Police Union Super PAC, which is spending millions of dollars to re-elect Mayor Bass,” Raman wrote.

In a statement, Raman said she would seek to remove McDonnell before his term ends in 2030, but did not mention any potential candidates for his replacement. She is seeking to remove McDonnell, in part, over the LAPD’s heavily criticized response to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration raids in L.A. last year, which saw officers trample people on horseback and deploy tear gas on citizens for the first time in decades. McDonnell, she says, has lost the trust of immigrant communities.

Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the police union, said the organization had nothing to do with the Gascón rumor. While the union is no friend to Roy, Raman or Gascón and has spent millions against all three candidates, Saggau said he first heard about the potential new police chief from a California Post reporter. None of the union’s members or directors had raised the issue beforehand, he said.

Still, in Saggau’s mind, perception trumps reality. He said there’s a reason people might believe Raman would pick a police chief who is considered persona non grata in law enforcement circles.

“Certainly they share some similar values when it comes to policing, especially on the prosecutorial side. Gascón was, I think it’s fair to say, lenient with some of his prosecutorial decisions,” Saggau said. “I think it’s her bouncing around on public safety items that has fed this rumor. … I think she’s just got a credibility issue when it comes to public safety.”

Times staff writers Itzel Luna and David Zahniser contributed to this report.

Protests are sweeping France as anger over conditions in schools meets frustration with high living costs and a government accused of doing little to address problems facing people.

About 550,000 people demonstrated nationwide on Saturday, according to the Interior Ministry. Most marched peacefully, while a small minority attacked buildings, looted shops and clashed with police, who fired tear gas and charged protesters.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said 1,200 people were arrested and 150 police officers were injured. Behind the confrontations lies a political crisis, fuelled by anger at deteriorating services and overstretched household budgets, and compounded by a sense that France’s political institutions offer little hope of change.

Here is how school blockades became a nationwide movement – and what that means for President Emmanuel Macron.

How have the protests spread, what are protesters demanding?

The movement began last month in high schools in Paris’ working-class northern suburbs, where students protested against teacher shortages and poor facilities. School blockades and demonstrations later spread to cities including Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes, Lyon, Lille and Marseille.

Saturday brought together students and trade unions, alongside supporters of the “yellow vest” movement that emerged in 2018 to challenge rising living costs and economic inequality.

Emile Chabal, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Edinburgh, told Al Jazeera the demonstrations were “the logical outcome of a series of protests” stretching back to the yellow vests.

That movement was driven by financial pressures and resentment at “the French presidential system”, he told Al Jazeera, alluding to a structure which often leads to the election of a centrist candidate, such as President Emmanuel Macron.

Saturday combined those longstanding grievances with students’ anger at deteriorating state schools. The yellow vests had demanded better public services.

Bringing students’ grievances together with wider social demands, therefore, represented “the worst possible outcome for the French government”, Chabal said.

Students’ immediate demands concern conditions in France’s lycees (public high schools), which generally educate pupils aged 15 to 18. They want smaller classes, enough teachers, better buildings and less exhausting timetables. Their complaints also reflect broader concerns about whether the state can provide the education and opportunities young people need.

But for workers, including school staff, the dispute also concerns wages and the resources available to deliver public services.

The school protests coincided with a nationwide public sector strike against the government’s budget plans. Bringing all these concerns together under one umbrella represented “the worst possible outcome for the French government”, Chabal said.

It comes as the proposed 2027 budget includes a 54 billion euro ($60.8bn) package of cost-cutting and tax measures, which the government says is necessary to reduce France’s deficit. The proposals include freezing the pay scale used to calculate civil servants’ basic salaries, which unions say would be the fourth consecutive annual freeze.

Donatella della Porta, a sociologist and political scientist, said students were inspiring wider mobilisation around inequality, cuts to public investment and democratic rights, with demands for social welfare spending rather than militarisation.

“They do not want to fight wars; they want a different future,” she told Al Jazeera.

She also linked the movement to young people’s mobilisation over Gaza, with Palestinian flags appearing at demonstrations across several European countries.

How has the government responded?

The government has focused its immediate response on public order, with President Macron saying those responsible for violence would be “prosecuted and punished”.

His comments came as a fire largely destroyed the historic town hall in the city of Limoges, while public buildings and shops were attacked elsewhere.

But those involved in violence represent only a small minority of the much larger mobilisation. Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing France Unbowed party, has accused the government of repressing school students and allowing the confrontation to intensify.

His argument reflects a wider political dispute about whether the government treats the protests chiefly as a security problem or addresses the grievances that have brought different groups together.

Experts say France’s problems extend beyond disagreement over individual budget measures and reflect deeper discontent. Emile Chabal, from the University of Edinburgh, said political paralysis since the 2024 parliamentary elections, which left no bloc with an outright majority, had created “an environment in which no political party or movement is able to channel social discontent”.

That fragmentation makes it difficult to build a durable agreement on spending, taxation or public services. It also leaves protesters questioning whether changing governments produces meaningful changes in policy.

The protests are also “a tough blow for Macron”, Chabal said, whose promises of youthful energy and a reformed, dynamic France have been undermined by “his inability to articulate his political project and his deeply unempathetic persona”.

Chabal added that the unrest included violence sometimes seen on the fringes of French demonstrations, with direct-action tactics associated with the yellow vests. Targets included shops and, more unusually, public buildings. He described the destruction of Limoges’ town hall as particularly significant because of its place in France’s civic history.

Other researchers emphasise the role of policing. Guya Accornero, a specialist in social movements at Lisbon’s University Institute, said previous confrontations had created lasting tensions between protesters and police.

During the current protests, a 15-year-old lost a hand to a police stun grenade, while a 14-year-old suffered a shattered jaw after being struck by a tear gas canister fired at close range, according to Human Rights Watch. The organisation condemned excessive force against children, saying the demonstrations had been overwhelmingly peaceful.

“Young people have been violently repressed also when using non-disruptive tactics,” she told Al Jazeera.

Who could benefit politically?

There is no clear answer from the experts who spoke to Al Jazeera. Paul Smith, an associate professor in French history and politics at the University of Nottingham, believes far-right leader Marine Le Pen stands to gain.

“I see only one beneficiary and that’s Le Pen,” he told Al Jazeera, suggesting the unrest could also damage Melenchon’s presidential prospects.

Chabal cautioned against assuming a far-right gain, but he said fear of disorder had historically benefited conservative or centrist parties in France, including after the 1968 protests.

Le Pen has not entirely dismissed the protesters’ grievances, describing them on X on Saturday as “legitimate social demands”, while claiming they had been “held hostage by the far left”.

The far-right may seek to reap the rewards of public discontent, but experts say it is more likely to channel that anger towards immigration and the scapegoating of migrants, rather than blaming the structures of neoliberalism and capitalism for the protesters’ woes, as Melenchon has suggested.

With a presidential election due in April 2027, candidates face competing pressures, demonstrating that they can restore order while convincing voters they will address the conditions behind the mobilisation.

The challenge, Chabal said, is how to create change in “an environment in which no political party or movement is able to channel social discontent”.

With three weeks left to go until election day and polls showing her on the brink of losing, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has begun to channel the Sun King himself, Louis XIV:

L’État, c’est moi.

Gaslighting voters by insisting the political establishment that has left Los Angeles a mess and that she personifies is worth keeping in office for four more years is her only hope for victory. It’s a wild strategy that reached a crescendo during Tuesday night’s debate, as Bass kept bringing up the fact that L.A.’s ancien régime just doesn’t like her democratic socialist opponent, Nithya Raman.

“Your colleagues have a very difficult time working with you,” Bass snapped at one point, later claiming that Raman’s constituents don’t care for her even though the council member won reelection two years ago. The mayor twice bragged that immigrant rights groups support her; twice referenced Imelda Padilla, the moderate San Fernando Valley council member whose internet dragging of Raman has been out of the Burn Book from “Mean Girls”; and described her opponent as “not ready for prime time.”

Well, the way the mayor’s term has gone in the last couple of years, if it was a prime-time TV show, it might be called “Breaking Bad 2.” And it wouldn’t exactly be a hit.

If it were, two-thirds of Angelenos wouldn’t have decided to vote for anyone but Bass in the primary.

Bass arguably won the debate Tuesday night, but it felt like the technical “victory” — and that’s probably the wrong word — of a politician who is simply more polished. The mayor really needed a knockout punch, and that she did not achieve.

Instead, she in effect told voters that the last four years of disasters, inefficiencies and ineptitude are still a better option than taking a chance on the City Hall equivalent of the classroom dork.

Yet people are so angry at Bass and what she represents that a democratic socialist has a great shot at becoming L.A.’s next mayor — an unthinkable prospect even last year, with no one to blame but the ruling class that has left this great city hobbled, cynical and at the point of giving up.

So the establishment doesn’t like Raman: So what? And: Boo-hoo.

Casting Raman as a political leper while asserting that Bass represents stability and good times ahead isn’t the winning strategy that Bass and Raman’s critics think it is. It’s really just a sad coda for Bass.

She’s been a good soldier for L.A., someone who has participated in nearly every progressive movement to pass through Southern California since volunteering for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign as a teenager nearly 60 years ago. Even as Bass embarked on a 22-year political career that has seen stops in Sacramento, Washington and City Hall, the native Angeleno always successfully depicted herself as a political outsider.

Because she was: a Black woman in a realm not meant for people like her. She was someone who co-founded a pioneering nonprofit in the crucible of a changing South L.A. in the 1990s and always seemed to land on the right side of history until becoming mayor in 2022.

Sadly, Bass didn’t turn out to be the visionary L.A. desperately needed.

Mayor Karen Bass, left, sits for Tuesday’s debate with Councilmember Nithya Raman, right. Between them are NBC4 reporter Conan Nolan, NBC4 News anchor Colleen Williams and Telemundo 52 anchor Alejandra Ortiz.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Like so many baby boomers, Bass eventually became The Man without realizing it. Today, she not only stands as the figurehead of the city’s liberal potentates, but she’s also calling on them to rally around one of their own — and they have responded in kind. Democratic politicians, bureaucrats and labor leaders, once rabble-rousers like Bass who nowadays seem to exist mostly to keep their sinecure, have labored mightily to convince unbelieving voters that Bass deserves another shot.

That’s always been the marvel of L.A.’s political establishment. It can take someone like Bass, once considered so radical that her days visiting communist Cuba in the 1970s torpedoed her chances of becoming then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020, and transform her into an anodyne incumbent. It can make democratic socialists like Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — people who explicitly ran to take on a sclerotic City Hall — full-throated Bass supporters who have refused to support one of their own in Raman.

Raman was also becoming part of L.A.’s political chosen ones, to the point she initially endorsed Bass. But she now embraces her turn as the machine’s biggest sellout — whether it’s a true change of heart or a chameleonic self-serving measure, as critics maintain, remains to be seen. It was Raman who said at the end of the debate, “When the mayor is confronted with issues, she blames the system. With your support, we can actually change the system” — catnip to enough Angelenos that Raman seems to be at the cusp of victory and a monumental upset.

After the debate, NBC reporter Robert Kovacic interviewed elected officials to let them hype up Bass or Raman. The latter’s proxy was City Controller Kenneth Mejia, another person loathed by L.A.’s political know-it-alls because he keeps bucking the establishment. Mejia gushed about how Raman “destroyed” Bass with the enthusiasm of a Swiftie.

Bass’ supporters were Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, both of whom gravely parroted their candidate’s warnings about just how dangerous a Raman mayoralty would be. Chavez Zbur reduced Raman’s not-bad performance to a “host of complaints” — ironic, because most of Bass’ night was spent bashing Raman instead of offering much of anything positive.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, told Kovacic that voters shouldn’t choose Raman because “we can’t afford that level of indecisive leadership.”

I rolled my eyes when Rodriguez — whose office declined a chance for her to sit down with me to talk up why Latinos should support Bass — said that.

She’s part of the fabled eastern San Fernando Valley Latino political machine, another group of former gatecrashers who assumed the trappings and stylings of the old guard once they assumed power. Rodriguez long blasted Bass with the same venom she reserved for Raman until the latter mounted her challenge — but now that Rodriguez’s power is under threat, she’s all of a sudden decided to become Bass’ ride-or-die?

Moves like that remind me of another French monarch, Louis XV. “After me, the deluge,” he is supposed to have said, a warning of what would happen once his reign ended.

If Bass’ vow to rule the same as before represents a decisive leader, more and more Angelenos seem to be saying, give us the Raman flood.

Besides, nobody ever said, nor ever put on a campaign sticker, “The establishment? It’s cool!”

Some called the 2024 US presidential election the “podcast election”. Two years on, the label looks less like hyperbole and more like a preview.

Host Josh Rushing is joined by Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, and Emily Jashinsky, host of After Party and an anchor at Breaking Points, to ask whether podcasts are genuinely widening political discourse – or simply letting candidates pick friendly rooms and dodge the scrutiny that comes with real journalism.

Presenter: Josh Rushing

Contributors:
Cenk Uygur – Founder, The Young Turks
Emily Jashinsky – Host of After Party and co-host of Breaking Points

Kosovo faces the risk of turmoil as protests against the convictions of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders coincide with a midnight deadline to elect a president.

Demonstrators have called for changes to the law governing the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, including measures affecting prison terms and where convicted people serve their sentences. The protests follow the September 16 convictions of former KLA leaders, including former President Hashim Thaci.

The protesters’ demands have become entangled with negotiations over the presidency, raising the prospect of new elections if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement. November 15 has emerged as a likely date for a new vote.

“New elections do not, in themselves, promise anything particularly positive,” political analyst Artan Muhaxhiri told Al Jazeera. “The chances of a radical political change are slim.”

He said that if a president is not elected by midnight, a new vote will take place in a tense political climate.

Anger over the verdicts will become a central campaign issue, he said, “overshadowing fundamental questions of socioeconomic development, and deepening the country’s downward spiral of systemic instability”.

How did Kosovo get here?

In 2015, the Specialist Chambers were established under Kosovo law following international investigations into alleged war crimes committed by KLA members during and after the 1998-99 conflict. Although formally part of Kosovo’s judicial system, the court sits in The Hague. It remains contentious in Kosovo because the KLA is widely revered for having fought against Serbian rule.

In September, protests erupted after the court sentenced Thaci to 25 years in prison.

Later, the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) – formerly led by Thaci – proposed amendments aimed at curbing the tribunal. The plan included capping prison sentences at 15 years, allowing convicts to serve their sentences in Kosovo, enabling appeals before Kosovo’s Supreme Court, granting presidential pardons and narrowing the court’s temporal jurisdiction.

On October 2, 2026, Prime Minister Albi Kurti’s government concluded that there were no legal obstacles to the PDK initiative and forwarded its assessment to the parliament, the Assembly of Kosovo. Days later, Kosovo’s parliament approved the initiative at first reading with 91 votes in favour, although it has not been finally adopted.

Meanwhile, Kosovo has been mired in a political impasse after the expiration of President Vjosa Osmani’s term in April, as the National Assembly has been unable to select a new president.

Now, internal power struggles within the PDK following the September sentencing have left the party fragmented, rendering the largest opposition party incapable of negotiating a cross-party presidential compromise, according to Nexhmedin Spahiu, a Pristina-based professor of political science.

On Monday, as lawmakers failed to secure a quorum to elect a president, police deployed tear gas and water cannon outside the Assembly, following confrontations involving fireworks and bottles. The use of force prompted criticism from observers.

Tensions rise

Pristina-based journalist Gezim Baxhaku believes special police units overstepped their legal authority.

“There was an overuse of force,” Baxhaku told Al Jazeera. He said that while protesters threw firecrackers, police “exceeded their legal powers and acted entirely contrary to the situation on the ground”.

Among the hundreds of protesters were KLA veterans.

Pristina had witnessed nearly three weeks of largely peaceful gatherings before Monday’s escalation.

“Citizens were routinely bringing food, water, and coffee to the officers on duty,” Baxhaku said. “There was absolutely no reason for this to happen. For the first time since the late 2000s, police acted in such an uncalled-for manner – reacting upon orders to escalate a situation.”

Spahiu, the political science professor, said the protests should not be understood as a sign that people in Kosovo broadly reject the verdicts.

“A large majority of citizens in Kosovo are satisfied with the decision of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague,” said Spahiu.

He told Al Jazeera that the court’s rejection of Serbian claims of systematic crimes against humanity by the KLA “validated the liberation struggle”.

“Furthermore, people are relieved that individuals are finally being held accountable for crimes committed against political rivals within the Albanian community itself,” he said.

The political deadlock and Kurti’s ‘transactional’ approach

The Assembly remains deadlocked over the election of a head of state, as the PDK and other opposition parties boycott the voting session, denying the legislature its constitutionally required 80-MP quorum.

Muhaxhiri blamed Kurti for the crisis, criticising his decision to link the presidential vote to the Hague court amendments.

“Tensions escalated further when Kurti presented a plan based on a transactional approach to two fundamentally distinct issues: linking the draft law amending the Law on the Specialist Chambers to the election of the new president,” said Muhaxhiri.

“In effect, this amounted to a quid pro quo. By doing so, he appeared to be placing the historical, national, and identity-related significance of the liberation war on the same political bargaining table as the immediate objective of electing a president who would serve his political interests.”

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Frankie Llerandi, 21, has been unable to land a single internship in his three years at Michigan State University.

He will graduate in the spring with an economics degree and an interest in data analytics, but true adulthood seems maddeningly far away. Most of his cousins have not been able to buy a house or start a family deep into their 30s.

Kira Saiti, a 19-year-old sophomore, is more upset about the broader world than her own future. Every time she looks at her phone she sees images of violence and horror, both in the Middle East and closer to home.

“It’s kind of hard to look at that and say, ‘This world is a great place,’” she said.

Julian Bautista, 20, saw his chosen profession of environmental work decimated by Trump administration cuts, pushing the junior to decide he will leave the United States to find work in the Netherlands when he graduates. He considers what remains his home country for the next 18 months to be a failure of democracy led by what he sees as corrupt politicians.

“Throughout my life, we’ve either stagnated or declined; we haven’t improved,” Bautista said.

For many of their classmates on campus and elsewhere around the country, the present looks bleak and the future uncertain at best. Their anxiety is fueling a restlessness with a national political system that they worry is no longer capable of improving their lives or no longer interested in helping.

Two years ago, grim economic vibes helped Donald Trump win a far larger share of young voters than is typical for a Republican — 47%, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of the electorate. Now, anxiety about artificial intelligence and the Iran war has been added to the mix, powering a wave of disruptive candidates on the opposite end of the political spectrum who have been embraced by college students.

Llerandi, Saiti and Bautista all support a slate of progressive, anti-establishment Democratic candidates in Michigan who are pledging to shake up the status quo. Among them are Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official running for U.S. Senate, and Will Lawrence, a liberal activist trying to unseat Tom Barrett, the Republican congressman who represents the swing district that includes the university.

A similar trend has been playing out in Los Angeles in recent years. Four Democratic Socialists of America members are on the L.A. City Council, and one of them — Nithya Raman — is polling strongly in her campaign to unseat the more establishment Democratic mayor, Karen Bass. The city’s dearth of affordable housing has been a leading issue in the race.

The future looks bleak for many students

Anxieties about the job market, homeownership and adulthood are widespread across the East Lansing campus, even among those who are not deeply involved in politics.

“It’s just something to laugh at, but, you know, I really do want a house when I’m older,” said Praveen Amunugama, a 21-year-old biochemistry major who plans to go to graduate school in hopes the job market improves over the next two years.

His friends feel the same way.

“They want to be able to afford things, raise a good family,” he said.

Despite the economic angst among young people, at first blush the picture does not look that bad for them. The unemployment rate for those age 22 to 27 is 7.2%, higher than the broader rate of 4.1% but lower than in some moments of economic calm.

A 2024 study found members of the younger generation known as Generation Z are poised to be wealthier than millennials, who themselves are wealthier than the prior generation despite the persistent sense of economic doom that accompanied their entry into the job market during the Great Recession.

Kevin Corinth, the economist who co-wrote that study, said he understands Gen Z angst, given modern uncertainties, especially the prospect of AI reshaping various industries and data showing younger people are taking longer to leave home and start families.

“For previous generations, if you took certain paths you were likely to succeed, to do better than your parents,” said Corinth, who is at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. For young people now, he acknowledged, that path is not as clear.

Kathryn Edwards, a Texas-based economist, noted that unemployment among recent college graduates is at 5.6%, higher than at most other times in recent history other than the Great Recession. Combined with historically high housing prices and rising costs for essentials such as food and healthcare, that is a challenging environment for young people.

“It’s pretty bad for them,” Edwards said, adding that young people are picking up on broader warning signs in the economy. “So many aspects of our current economy, I think young people have gotten right.”

They are also fully exposed to the new form of job hunting: AI-powered, digital and done almost exclusively online, where it is hard to discern real job openings from fake ones.

“Think about the amount they get spammed and scammed, and there are tons of fake jobs out there,” said Marla McGraw, assistant dean of career management in Michigan State’s business school. “They’re always coming in here going, ‘Is this real?’”

She spends a lot of time trying to buck up disenchanted students.

“Our message right now is the job market is tough, but you’re tougher,” McGraw said.

Students say political leaders are falling short

Young Americans’ optimism about the job market has plummeted since 2024, and the gap between their view of the economy and those of their elders is greater than almost anywhere in the world, according to a Gallup survey earlier this year.

They are less likely to be engaged in politics and less likely to think it is important to vote, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found. They also are less likely to be concerned about political violence.

That dissolution of beliefs in traditional political values worries Karlee VanAntwerp.

The 21-year-old Michigan State senior is also head of the local chapter of Turning Point, the group for young conservatives whose founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed by a gunman last year. VanAntwerp has been horrified to see Kirk’s killing mocked online, sometimes menacingly.

“Gen Z tends to be more extreme with their views,” VanAntwerp said. “It makes it hard to work with people of different political beliefs, because even if you’re in the middle, they assume you’re crazy.”

VanAntwerp sees that feeding into the despair many of her generation feel about real change ever happening.

“One administration does a bunch of stuff, another administration comes in and wipes it all out,” said VanAntwerp, who is also working for Barrett’s campaign. “It feels like we always go in circles. That contributes to the political temperature being so high, because people feel nothing changes.”

Her politics are the polar opposite of many liberal students who gathered to hear Lawrence, Barrett’s Democratic challenger, talk in a classroom one recent evening, but there was a similar desire for dramatic change. Lawrence sympathized with the glum feelings of early adulthood and urged the students not to succumb to despair.

“When I was a little younger I wanted to drop out of society, and it was organizing that gave me a path in life,” Lawrence said.

After the candidate left, however, Bautista still sounded on the verge of despair. He talked about how online influencers he trusts deride Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York as “mini-me’s” because, in Bautista’s view, they are just watered-down versions of Trump.

“Our leaders are representing us less,” Bautista said. “People are desperate for big stuff.”

Ganun and Riccardi write for the Associated Press.

There are few people, if any, who’ve tracked U.S. elections for longer or in greater depth than Charlie Cook.

Ever since 1984, when he started his eponymous political newsletter, Cook and his stellar crew of nonpartisan analysts have plumbed many thousands of races — for president, Congress, governor — following the money, sussing out the candidates, watching their ads and assaying the campaign landscape at a granular level.

Cook calls this midterm election the strangest he’s ever seen.

What appeared to be a fairly normal election for a president halfway through his term — a probable setback, as unhappy voters register their discontent — has the potential, Cook said, to turn into a disaster for Republicans. Big losses aren’t rare for the party in the White House. Democrats picked up 41 House seats in President Trump’s last midterm election, in 2018.

What’s unusual, Cook suggested, is the prospect of big Democratic gains when Republicans started out this election season with so many advantages. (And that was before the GOP set off on a gerrymandering jag at Trump’s behest.)

Roughly two-thirds of the Senate seats up in November are in states Trump carried in 2024. Five of the seven toss-up races are in states Trump won, several by double digits.

On the House side, Republicans maintain control by an exceedingly narrow margin, meaning there aren’t a lot of low-hanging districts for Democrats to aim for. As Cook rightly noted, “A party cannot lose a seat they don’t have.”

But Trump’s deteriorating approval rating, an unpopular war, persistent inflation and the president’s egotistical indulgences have jeopardized a number of GOP-held seats that normally would be automatic wins, including contests in such Republican strongholds as Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio and even Texas.

“I’m not a meteorologist, but it’s kind of like three competing weather fronts collided,” Cook said. “One was Iran and gasoline, diesel prices going sky high … Then there’s trade, tariffs, overall non-energy cost of living, tariff impact on farmers. And then the third is kind of the catch-all and it’s everything from ballrooms, reflecting pools, arches, vaccines, Medicaid cuts.”

We’ll get to predictions in a moment. (Patience, dear reader.)

First, let’s hear from Nathan Gonzales, another longtime election handicapper. He’s been tracking political contests nationwide for more than 25 years and edits and publishes Inside Elections — formerly the Rothenberg Political Report — another nonpartisan field guide to campaigns. Like Cook, he traffics in clear-eyed, dispassionate analysis, not partisan wish-casting or political spin.

Gonzales, too, sees a bad moon rising for Republicans.

A detail of the exhibit in the Epstein Files Bookmobile during a campaign stop for Democratic House candidate Bob Brooks at the United Steelworkers of America office in Bethlehem, Pa. Brooks is challenging Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) in Pennsylvania’s highly competitive 7th Congressional District in the upcoming midterm election.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Trump’s performance — his approval rating is flirting with record lows — “has inspired Democrats, turned off independents and created a group of apathetic Republicans,” Gonzales said, “and those are the ingredients for a good or great Democratic year.”

He noted Democrats don’t need a big wave to seize control of the House. A pickup of just three seats would flip the House, marking the seventh straight midterm election in which one chamber or the other changed partisan hands.

(For the record, there is no authoritative definition of a wave election, though it’s generally agreed the term applies to an election in which one party or the other gains a large and lopsided number of House and Senate seats.)

It’s beginning to feel a lot like 2006, Gonzales said.

“We had an unpopular Republican president, a war in the Middle East that drove up gas prices. Some members on Capitol Hill that were behaving badly,” Gonzales recalled. “I remember talking to Republicans after the fact and they admitted that, while they thought they had great research on Democratic candidates and they had a fundraising advantage, voters just didn’t care. Voters weren’t in the mood to listen to what they were saying about Democrats because they were so frustrated with what was going on with the status quo and the direction of the country.”

In that election, at the midpoint of President George W. Bush’s second term, Democrats gained six seats to take control of the Senate and netted 31 in the House, allowing the installation of Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker in history. “A thumpin’,” Bush called it.

So, 2026.

Gonzales and his team of experts believe the House is most likely gone for Republicans, forecasting a Democratic gain of seven to 15 seats, unless the bottom falls out for the GOP and their losses climb much higher.

In the Senate, where Democrats need to pick up four seats to take control, Gonzales sees the chamber teetering on a knife’s edge, forecasting a Democratic gain of three to five seats.

“It’s too late to fundamentally change the trajectory of this election,” Gonzales said. “But if Republicans can boost Republican turnout, it might be enough to save the Senate.”

For his part, Cook agrees that Mike Johnson may be nearing the end of his speakership. The best-case scenario for the GOP would be keeping its losses to 25 House seats or less, Cook said, which is right around the average for midterm elections going back well over half a century.

“It starts getting into eyebrow-raising territory if it gets north of 35,” Cook said, “because that shouldn’t be possible with the few competitive districts we have now.”

As for the Senate, he suggested the best Republicans can hope for is a net loss of two seats, keeping the GOP barely in control. (A loss of three would mean a 50-50 split, leaving Vice President JD Vance poised to be the tiebreaker on close votes — and wouldn’t he love having to drop off the 2028 campaign trail to be on hand, just in case.)

Of course, there’s still an election to be held, votes to be cast and ballots to be counted.

Blue wave, tsunami or a pale sapphire puddle?

We’ll know in a little more than four weeks.

A provocative, sexually suggestive ad by GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is drawing heat from his fellow Republicans while drawing millions of viewers online.

Two young women sit on a bed, with an LGBTQ+ flag in the background, with one urging the other to try a new experience.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” one woman says, and the other replies. “Don’t be nervous. It’s not that bad … Just try it. Look, give me your hand. Close your eyes, and I’ll do all the work.”

She leads the hesitant woman’s hand to mark her ballot for Hilton rather than Democrat Xavier Becerra, the front-runner in the race, and says, “Now lick it,” referring to the mail ballot envelope.

Fellow Republicans as well as several Democrats denounced Hilton over the messaging.

Two members of Hilton’s GOP “Golden Ticket” on the Nov. 3 ballot lashed out about the ad’s content.

“I emphatically denounce the use of young women as a political tool,” Michael Gates, the Republican candidate for attorney general who has frequently appeared alongside Hilton at campaign events, wrote on X. “California families deserve better, and as AG, I will fight every day to protect our girls, young women, and parental rights.”

Sonja Shaw, who is running to be the next state superintendent of schools, castigated Hilton, the state Republican party and its chairwoman for promoting the ad, which had been viewed by nearly 5 million people as of Saturday afternoon.

“Shame on you … for reposting and cheering this creepy, weird, disturbing garbage,” Shaw wrote on X. “This is a clear example of exactly why good people are walking away from the Republican Party. As a mother and someone who has fought to protect the innocence of children, this crosses a line. We have lost our way. Embarrassing.”

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), an openly gay member of Congress, and state Democratic Party chairman Rusty Hicks also condemned the ad.

“This is a bizarre and desperate ad from a person who has attacked the LGBTQ+ community and stands with Donald Trump,” Garcia said. “Hilton is losing and more interested in AI slop than actually talking about issues Californians care about.”

Hilton acknowledged the ad has provoked strong reactions, but it underscored the foundation of his campaign — that many Californians may be put off by his party affiliation but want change given the state’s myriad problems, such as growing unaffordability, that have taken place under a Democratic lock of every statewide office and the state Legislature.

“We’re just saying, you know, just try it,” he said in an interview. “It’s a provocative and humorous way of making a point, right? Which often the best communication does.”

He also said the ad does not conflict with his beliefs about restrictions on gender-affirming care and on youth sports because those would only apply to people who are not adults.

A spokesman for Becerra, who led Hilton 58% to 33% in a recent UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll, was gleeful about the rift the ad was creating among Republicans.

“MAGA is melting down over Steve Hilton’s creepy ad because they’re finally seeing him for the sellout he really is, willing to abandon his own twisted values to get ahead,” said Jonathan Underland.

However, some conservatives who were dismayed by the message stood by Hilton’s side.

Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, a Christian nationalist, called the ad “grotesque” and said it promoted lesbianism among young women, on a Facebook Live post Saturday. However, he said he still supports Hilton over Becerra. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Hilton is scheduled to speak on Monday to a chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, an LGBTQ group, at a brewery in Palm Desert. The organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Former California GOP chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said that while the ad wasn’t for her, she understood the campaign’s desire to expand its reach to different voters.

“Does the ad speak to me? No. He’s not going after my vote. He already has my vote. He’s trying to think of new and creative ways to make people who wouldn’t normally feel like voting for a Republican feel safe to do so,” she said. “He’s going out of his comfort zone and going for people that wouldn’t normally feel comfortable voting for him.”

Californian Fred Karger, who made history in 2012 as the first openly gay person to run for president, had mixed views about the ad, calling it shrewd yet hypocritical. And he questioned its effectiveness.

“The audience that he’s targeting there — the hipster, young hipster, lesbian audience — probably has a 1% chance of voting for him,” Karger said. “So it’s kind of a long shot. But it is a clever ad.”

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is calling for another senior official to resign.

In July, protests by the youth-led movement saw the education minister quit. Now it wants the chief of the election commission to step aside.

Critics say he is overseeing an unfair review of the electoral roll. The revisions have led to the removal of tens of millions of eligible voters.

The commission says reform is long overdue – and necessary to weed out duplicate entries.

Protesters say it. is an assault on democracy and designed to benefit the governing BJP.

So, will the Cockroach movement be successful again?

Presenter: Sami Zeidan

Guests:

Rajat Sethi – Political commentator who focuses on contemporary India

Nikita Sud – Professor of the politics of development at the University of Oxford

Sravasti Dasgupta – Senior political correspondent at The Wire

Siegfried Muresan’s loss of the confidence motion increases the prospect for snap elections.

Romania’s pro-European Prime Minister-designate Siegfried Muresan has failed to win a parliamentary vote of confidence, prolonging a political crisis seen as a boost for the rising far right.

Muresan, a liberal European Parliament member who was the latest of three designated prime ministers, secured only 182 votes out of the 233 required to secure the confidence motion on Wednesday, according to the official count.

The far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) largely boycotted the vote.

The 45-year-old had proposed what he described as a “reform-oriented” governing programme under his centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), which teamed up with the Save Romania Union party, or USR, and the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party.

President Nicusor Dan said he would nominate a new prime minister candidate on Monday afternoon, after holding talks with the leaders of the parliamentary parties, to avoid snap elections.

Romania saw the collapse of a pro-European coalition government in May, when governing social democrats, together with the opposition far right, ousted liberal Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan in a no-confidence motion at that time.

The far right, which comprises about a third of Parliament, threatened to impeach the president if he does not call early elections once the conditions are met.

Romania, a member of the EU and NATO that borders Ukraine, has not held snap elections since the fall of communism in 1989.

Political analyst Cristian Pirvulescu told the AFP news agency that snap elections would lead to another fragmented Parliament, but with an emboldened far right.

“Early elections mean that, from the moment they are called, it would take four months before a new government could be formed,” Pirvulescu told AFP. “Due to political instability, Romania finds itself in a very complicated economic situation. Four months is already a very long time.”

The country of 19 million has been struggling for months with the highest public deficit and inflation in the European Union.