The poll also shows 44 percent of Democrats were ‘very enthusiastic’ about voting in the 2026 midterm elections.
Published On 13 Nov 202513 Nov 2025
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The approval rating for United States President Donald Trump remains at its lowest level since he began his second term in January, according to a new poll.
But Thursday’s survey, conducted by the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos, found a jump in the share of respondents who said they disapproved of his performance.
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His disapproval rating increased from 52 percent in mid-May to 58 percent in November. His approval rating, meanwhile, stayed at approximately 40 percent, roughly the same as it was in May.
The online poll, conducted over six days this month, surveyed 1,200 US adults nationwide about their opinions on top political figures and who they planned to vote for in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.
It found that Democrats appeared to be more enthusiastic about next year’s midterms than their Republican counterparts, a result perhaps influenced by key Democratic victories this month.
Approximately 44 percent of registered voters who called themselves Democrats said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2026 elections, compared with 26 percent of Republicans.
Some 79 percent of Democrats said they would regret it if they did not vote in the midterm races, compared with 68 percent of Republicans.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs next year, as will 35 seats in the 100-member Senate. Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress.
But Democrats have recently been buoyed by wins on November 4, during the off-year elections.
The party won resounding victories in governor’s races for Virginia and New Jersey, and in New York City, a closely watched race mayoral race saw Zohran Mamdani sweep to victory over his centrist and right-wing competitors.
Voters in California also passed a ballot measure that will redraw its congressional districts to favour the Democrats, in response to Trump-inspired gerrymandering in Republican states.
The Reuters-Ipsos poll closed on Wednesday, just before Congress voted to end the longest government shutdown in US history.
The new spending bill, which extends federal funding until January 30, passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 222 to 209, with six Democrats joining the Republican majority to reopen the government.
Trump signed a federal government spending bill late on Wednesday, ending the 43-day shutdown, which caused tumult for federal workers, families in need and air travel.
The bill had previously passed the Senate on Monday, after seven Democrats and one independent agreed to support it.
While Democrats appeared more “enthusiastic” than Republicans in the Reuters-Ipsos poll, the survey noted that the two parties appeared to be evenly matched in voter intention moving forward.
When poll respondents were asked whom they would vote for if congressional elections were held today, 41 percent of registered voters said they’d pick the Democratic candidate, while 40 percent chose the Republican candidate.
The narrow difference in those results fell well within the poll’s 3-percentage-point margin of error.
During the last government shutdown six years ago, the main narrative when it came to public lands was the damage caused by unsupervised visitors. Trash cans and toilets overflowed with waste. Tourists reportedly mowed down Joshua trees to off-road in sensitive areas of Joshua Tree National Park.
This time around, national parks were directed to retain the staff needed to provide basic sanitation services, as I reported in a recent article with my colleague Lila Seidman. But meanwhile, something bigger and more coordinated was unfolding behind the scenes, said Chance Wilcox, California Desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“We’re not seeing Joshua trees getting knocked down, things getting stolen, damage to parks by the American people, but we are seeing damage to parks by this presidential administration on an even larger scale,” Wilcox told me last week before lawmakers struck a deal to reopen the government.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Wilcox and other public lands advocates allege that President Trump’s administration used the shutdown to expedite an agenda that prioritizes extraction while slashing resources dedicated to conservation and education. What’s more, they fear the staffing priorities that came into sharp relief over the past 43 days offer a preview of how these lands will be managed going forward, especially in the aftermath of another potential mass layoff that could see the Interior Department cut 2,000 more jobs.
When I asked the Interior Department about its actions during the shutdown, a spokesperson responded via email that the administration “made deliberate, lawful decisions” to protect operations that sustain energy security and economic stability. “Activities that continued were those necessary to preserve critical infrastructure, safeguard natural resources, and prevent disruption to key supply chains that millions of Americans rely on,” the spokesperson wrote.
As a resident of the Mojave Desert on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park, I’ve taken particular interest in this topic. Out here, summer days can top 110 degrees, a trip to the grocery store is an hours-long excursion and there are rattlesnakes. Lots of rattlesnakes. But one huge bonus is the proximity to public lands: We’re surrounded by the park, the Mojave National Preserve and hundreds of miles of Bureau of Land Management wilderness.
These spaces not only provide endless entertainment for residents like my 3-year-old daughter, who would rather be turned loose in a boulder field than a jungle gym, but they play a key role in drawing visitors from around the world who support the stores, restaurants and other establishments that underpin our local economy.
Sentinel Rock in Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
In short, the health of our community depends on the health of these landscapes. Now, their future seems increasingly uncertain.
During the shutdown, roughly 64% of National Park Service employees were furloughed, according to a Department of the Interior contingency plan. At Joshua Tree National Park, those sidelined included Superintendent Jane Rodgers, along with most of the staff responsible for scientific research, resource management and educational and interpretive programs, according to a source at the park who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation.
Over at the BLM, roughly 26% of staffers were furloughed. Among those who were allowed to keep working: employees responsible for processing oil, gas and coal permits and leases, along with items related to other energy and mineral resources, according to the contingency plan, which cited the president’s declared national energy emergency as rationale. As a result, the federal government issued 693 new oil and gas drilling permits and 52 new oil and gas leases on federal lands during the shutdown, according to tracking by the Center for Western Priorities.
And in Utah, the BLM is now reconsidering an application, which has been rejected seven times, to build a four-lane highway through desert tortoise habitats in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.
There’s real fear among federal employees and advocates that this dynamic — an emphasis on developing public lands, as stewardship and research efforts languish — will become the new reality, said Jordan Marbury, communications manager for Friends of the Inyo. What’s more, he said, is that some worry the administration will point to the shutdown as proof that public lands never really needed all that staffing in the first place.
“It could get to the point where conservation is totally an afterthought,” he said.
Homes sit in the shadow of the Inglewood Oil Field.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Five California tribes have established an intertribal commission to co-manage Chuckwalla National Monument, marking a historic step toward tribal sovereignty over sacred desert lands. Times environment reporter Tyrone Beason examines how this will work — and why it’s a big deal.
President Trump has tapped former New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce to lead the BLM — which manages about 10% of land in the U.S. — after his first pick, oil and gas lobbyist Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her name from consideration in the wake of reporting on comments she made criticizing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Industry trade organizations are praising Pearce’s nomination, while environmental groups allege that the former Republican Party of New Mexico chair is a climate change denier with a record of supporting expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands and shrinking national monuments, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.
The Trump administration plans to allow new oil and gas drilling off the California coast, but energy companies may not be interested in battling the state’s strict environmental rules to try and tap into limited petroleum reserves, our climate policy reporter Hayley Smith writes. Citing these obstacles, some experts told Hayley the move may be politically motivated: It’s likely to set up a fight with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said that any such proposal will be dead on arrival.
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil, on Tuesday.
(Alessandro Falco)
Speaking of Newsom and Trump, the California governor is in Belém, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate policy summit, which the Trump administration is sitting out. My colleague Melody Gutierrez, who’s also there, looks at how California hopes it can fill in the gap left by America’s absence as Newsom positions himself for a 2028 presidential run.
Meanwhile, diplomats have accused top U.S. officials of threatening and bullying leaders from poorer or small countries to defeat a historic deal to slash pollution from cargo ships that was slated by be approved by more than 100 nations, according to a bombshell New York Times report. Federal representatives denied that officials made threats but “acknowledged derailing the deal and repeated their opposition to international efforts to address climate change,” the paper reported.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.
Letitia James, attorney general of New York, attends the National Night Out in Brooklyn on August 5. She has been accused of bank fraud but says the charges were brought against her improperly. File Photo by Derek French/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 13 (UPI) — A federal judge was set to hear arguments Thursday that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was improperly in her role when she brought charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Attorneys for Comey and James are attending a rare joint hearing to put their case before U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie in Virginia. Currie traveled to Virginia from her normal jurisdiction, the District of South Carolina, to hear the case to avoid a potential conflict of interest, NBC News reported.
The attorneys have argued that Halligan, a former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, is improperly in her position as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Trump handpicked her to replace Erik Siebert, whom the president ousted in September after he refused to bring charges against people considered political opponents of his. Siebert had also served in the U.S. attorney position on an interim basis since May.
Within days of being named interim U.S. attorney, Halligan brought charges against Comey on obstruction charges related to the Russian collusion investigation and, separately, against James on charges she committed bank fraud related to a property she purchased in 2023.
Under federal law, U.S. attorney posts may be served on an interim basis for only 120 days without a Senate confirmation.
James and Comey’s attorneys said that 120 days had already passed under Siebert’s leadership by the time Halligan was named to the post in September. Additionally, they argue that 120-day timer does not reset when a new interim U.S. attorney is named, CNN reported.
Currie’s ruling on the matter could upend the Justice Department’s cases against James and Comey. Comey’s lawyers additionally said Halligan didn’t have the ability to bring charges against him because a five-year statute of limitations had passed.
Both James and Comey have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a swearing in ceremony for Sergio Gor, the new U.S. Ambassador to India, in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday. Photo by Craig Hudson/UPI | License Photo
We are being ruled by the “Epstein class,” and voters deserve to know the details of that particular scandal, and to be able to expect better of their leaders in the larger sense.
That’s the message we’ll be hearing a lot in the coming weeks and months now that Democrats have successfully moved forward their effort to release the full investigation into former President Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.
“When you take a step back, you have a country where an elite governing class has gotten away with impunity, and shafted the working class in this country, shafted factory towns, shafted rural communities,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) told me Wednesday.
He represents parts of Silicon Valley and is one of the authors of the House push to release the full government investigation into Epstein. But in the Epstein case, he also sees an opportunity to reach voters with a larger promise of change.
“What Epstein is about is saying, ‘we reject the Epstein class governing America today,’” Khanna said.
How appropriately strange for these days would it be if Epstein, who faced sex trafficking charges at the time of his death, provided the uniting message Democrats have been searching for?
“Epstein and economics” sounds like a stretch on the surface, but it is increasingly clear that Americans of all political stripes are tired of the rich getting richer, and bolder. The Epstein files are the bipartisan embodiment of that discontent.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), left, and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) have led Democrats’ push for release of the Epstein files.
(Sue Ogrocki and J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
Our collective frustration with what can appear only as a cover-up to benefit the wealthy and powerful is an unexpected bit of glue that binds regular Americans, because the corruption and hubris of our oligarchy is increasingly undeniable and galling.
But where each of those examples becomes buried and dismissed in partisan politics, sex trafficking girls turns out to be frowned upon by people from all walks of life.
“It’s universal,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and another Californian. “This is clearly a White House and a president that is the most corrupt person we’ve ever had in office serving as a chief executive, and this is just another piece of that corruption.”
Khanna, along with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, built the unlikely but unstoppable effort that brought together once-loyal Trumpers including Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene with Democrats.
Those staunch right-wingers are tied in to their voters, and probably understood just how unpopular sex trafficking is with a base that grew into maturity on QAnon-inspired fear mongering about kidnapped children.
“It’s the only thing since Trump walked down the escalator that’s been a truly bipartisan effort to expose corruption and where there’s been a break in his coalition,” Khanna said.
And by “exposing rich and powerful people who abuse the system and calling them out clearly, we start to rebuild trust with the American people,” Khanna argues, the trust required to make folks believe Democrats aren’t so terrible.
Long before he was a linchpin in the Epstein saga, Khanna built a name as a force on the progressive left for a positive and inclusive economic platform that resembles the New Deal, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to rebuild democracy in another era of hardship and discontent.
It’s all about real payoffs for average Americans — trade schools and affordable child care and jobs that actually pay the bills. That’s the message that he hopes will be the top line as Democrats push forward.
On Wednesday, the buildup of resentment that might make that possible came into full focus in Washington, as Congress opened up to anything but business as usual. Democrats, led by Garcia, released emails raising questions about Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls,” Epstein wrote, even as Trump’s press secretary argued this was all a “fake narrative to smear” her boss.
Republicans countered the emails with a massive information dump probably meant to obscure and confuse. But House Speaker Mike Johnson, out of excuses, finally swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who promptly provided the final signature on the discharge petition to call a House vote on releasing the entire Epstein files.
That happened just hours after Boebert, one of the key Republican backers of that effort, was called to the White House in a last-minute, heavy-handed bid to pressure her into dropping her name from the demand. She did not.
Enough to make your head spin, honestly. About 10 more dastardly, intriguing and unexpected things happened, but you get the gist: President Trump really, really does not want us to read the Epstein files. House Democrats are ready to fight the long fight.
Garcia said House Democrats aren’t caving, because the cover-up keeps growing.
“There’s a lot of folks now that are obsessed with hiding the truth from the public, and the American public needs to know,” he said. “The Oversight Committee is committed to fighting our way to the truth.”
But it will be a long fight, and one with only a slim chance of winning the release of the files. Any effort would have to clear the Republican-held Senate (and after the shutdown collapse, who knows if Senate Democrats have the stomach for resistance), then be signed by Trump.
Judging from his near-desperate social media posting about the whole thing being a “hoax,” it’s hard to imagine him putting his scrawl on that law.
But unlike the shutdown, the longer this goes, the more Democrats have to gain. People aren’t going to suddenly start liking pedophiles. And the more Trump pushes to hide whatever the truth is, the more Democrats have the high ground, to message on corruption, oligarchs and even a vision for a better way.
“Epstein and economics” — linking the concrete with the esoteric, the problem with the solution.
The bipartisan message Democrats didn’t know they needed, from the strangest of sources.
WASHINGTON — Before flying to Brazil this week, showing up for the United States at an international summit skipped by the Trump administration, California Gov. Gavin Newsom made a stop in Texas. The redistricting fight that had started there had come to a halt in California thanks to the governor’s action. “Don’t poke the bear,” Newsom told an elated crowd of Democrats.
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In Washington, a handful of Senate Democrats had just voted with Republicans to reopen the government, relenting on a fight for an extension of healthcare tax credits. Newsom lashed out harshly against his party colleagues. “Pathetic,” he wrote online, later telling The Times, “you don’t start something unless you’re going to finish.”
They were just Newsom’s latest moves in an aggressive strategy to shore up early support for an expected run for president starting next year, after the 2026 midterm elections, when both parties will face competitive primaries without an incumbent seeking reelection for the first time since 2016.
The opportunity to redefine a party in transition and win its presidential nomination has, in recent cycles, led to historically large primary fields for both Democrats and Republicans, often featuring over 20 candidates at the start of a modern race.
And yet, one year out, Newsom appears to be running alone and out front in an open field, with expected competitors taking few steps to blunt his momentum, ceding ground in public media and with private donors to the emerging front-runner.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris remains well-respected among Democratic voters and is said to be flirting with another campaign. Other candidates, including Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, are all said to be considering bids.
But Newsom has begun pulling away from the pack in public polling, emerging as the Democrats’ leading choice and running competitively against top Republican contenders.
“It’s very early, but at the moment Gov. Newsom seems to have his finger more acutely on the pulse of Democratic voters than his 2028 rivals,” said Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist and content creator who worked on presidential campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“As a governor, Newsom has an advantageous perch to fight back and command attention,” Hackett said, “but he’s getting a significant head start in defining himself politically — as the guy who can take on Trump. And the battle for attention will only get harder as more contenders enter the ring.”
Running to the center
Over the summer, Newsom embraced a social media strategy leaning into the vitalist, masculine culture that has captured the attention of young American men and helped drive them to President Trump’s reelection campaign last year — a strategy that Newsom has said will be key to Democratic hopes of recapturing the White House.
“We need to own up to the fact that we ceded that ground — we walked away from this crisis of men and boys,” Newsom told CNN in an interview this week. “They were attracted to this notion of strength: strong and wrong, not weak and right.”
The moves were seen as an effort by Newsom to position himself as a centrist heading into the campaign, a posture that could benefit him in a general election. But it could also open the governor up to a robust challenge from the progressive left.
In 2014, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was laying the groundwork for her run for president, polling showed her as the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination — and ahead of all competitors by 49 points in the crucial battleground state of New Hampshire. She would ultimately secure the nomination, but only after facing down a serious challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who beat her soundly in the Granite State.
“One of the biggest pitfalls is who else might get in,” said Christian Grose, a professor of political science at USC and principal of Data Viewpoint, a data and polling firm. “At this stage with such a wide-open race, he is the front-runner, but who runs and who does not will shape his chances.”
Ocasio-Cortez could pose a similar challenge to an establishment candidate like Newsom, political analysts said. But her prospects in a Democratic primary and in a general election are different matters. In 2020, when Sanders once again appeared close to the nomination, other candidates cleared the field to help Joe Biden secure a victory and take on Trump.
“The shape of the field is still fuzzy,” said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. “AOC generates excitement, but no House member has gone directly to the White House since [James] Garfield in 1880.”
Risks to an early start
Newsom’s yearlong head start has earned him practical advantages. The campaign for Proposition 50, Newsom’s successful bid to redraw California’s congressional map along partisan lines, drew a new set of donors to a governor whose experience up until now had been limited to statewide office. Assertive exposure on social and legacy media has enhanced his name recognition nationwide.
He will need both to compete against Harris, a fellow Californian who could be convinced to stay out of the race if she isn’t confident she will win the primary, a source familiar with her thinking told The Times. Harris would enter the race with the benefit of widespread name identification and inherited donor rolls from her previous campaigns.
“This stage in the race for 2028 we generally call the ‘pre-primary’ period, in which would-be candidates compete for three resources: media attention, money, and staff. Newsom is definitely ahead in the “media pre-primary” at this point,” said Todd Belt, professor and director of the political management master’s program at George Washington University.
“A candidate definitely wants to be seen as the front-runner early on in order to attract the best staff,” Belt said. “It’s also good to get donors committed early on so they don’t contribute to others in the race, and you can then go back to them for more donations and bundling.”
But in a media environment where voters have increasingly short attention spans, Newsom could risk flaming out early or peaking too soon, analysts said.
Other centrist candidates could emerge with less baggage, such as Gallego, a young Latino lawmaker and Marine combat veteran from a working-class background.
“If Democrats care about winning the general election, Ruben Gallego is one to watch,” Pitney added. “He could appeal to groups with which Democrats have struggled lately. Newsom does not exactly give off blue-collar vibes.”
Grose, of USC, also said that Newsom’s association with coastal California could pose significant political challenges to the governor.
“There are pitfalls,” Grose said. “He needs to sell California, so any perceptions of the state’s problems don’t drag him down.”
Democrats’ caterwauling this week after a few of their senators caved to end the government shutdown couldn’t completely drown out another noise: the sound of President Trump pinballing dumb “policy” ideas as he flails to respond to voters’ unhappiness that his promised Golden Age is proving golden only for him, his family and his donors.
On social media (of course) and in interviews, the president has been blurting out proposals that are news even to the advisors who should be vetting them first. Rebates of $2,000 for most Americans and pay-downs of federal debt, all from supposed tariff windfalls. (Don’t count on either payoff; more below.) New 50-year mortgages to make home-buying more affordable (not). Docked pay for air traffic controllers who didn’t show up to work during the shutdown, without pay, and $10,000 bonuses for those who did. (He doesn’t have that power; the government isn’t his family business.) Most mind-boggling of all, Trump has resurrected his and Republicans’ long-buried promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
It’s been five years since he promised a healthcare plan “in two weeks.” It’s been a year since he said he had “concepts of a plan” during the 2024 campaign. What he now calls “Trumpcare” (natch) apparently amounts to paying people to buy insurance. Details to come, he says, again.
With all this seat-of-the-pants policymaking, Trump only underscores the policy ignorance that’s been a defining trait since he first ran for office. No other president in memory put out such knee-jerk junk that’s easily discounted and mocked.
In his first term, Trump didn’t learn how to navigate the legislative process, and thus steer well-debated ideas into law. He didn’t want to. Even more in his second term, Trump avoids that deliberative democratic process, preferring rule by fiat and executive order (even if the results don’t outlast your presidency, or they fizzle in court). For Trump, ideas don’t percolate, infused with expertise and data. They pop into his head.
But diktats are not always possible, as the shutdown dramatized when Republicans couldn’t agree with Democrats on the must-pass legislation to keep the government funded.
With Republicans controlling the White House and Congress (and arguably the Supreme Court: see recent decisions siding with the Trump administration to block SNAP benefits), the Democrats were never going to actually win the shutdown showdown — not if winning meant forcing Republicans to agree to extend health insurance tax credits for millions of Americans. Expanding healthcare coverage has never been Republicans’ priority. Tax cuts are, mainly for the wealthy and corporations, and Republicans pocketed that win months ago with Trump’s big, ugly bill, paid for mainly by cuts to Medicaid.
Yet Democrats won something: They shoved the issue of spiraling healthcare costs back onto politics’ center stage, where it joins the broader question of affordability in an economy that doesn’t work for the working class. Drawing attention to the cruel priorities of Trump 2.0 is a big reason that I and many others supported Democrats forcing a shutdown, despite the unlikelihood of a policy “W.” (I did not support the Senate Democrats’ caving just yet, not so soon after Democrats won bigger-than-expected victories in last week’s off-year elections on the strength of their fight for affordability, including health insurance.)
The fight isn’t over. The Senate will debate and vote next month on extending tax credits for Obamacare that otherwise expire at year’s end, making coverage unaffordable for millions of people. Even if the Democrats win that vote — unlikely — the subsidies would be DOA in the House, a MAGA stronghold. What’s not dead, however, is the issue of rising insurance premiums for all Americans. It’s teed up for the midterm election campaigns.
Such pocketbook issues have thrown Trump on the defensive. The result is his string of politically tone-deaf remarks and unvetted, out-of-right-field initiatives.
On Monday night, having invited Fox News host Laura Ingraham into the White House for an interviewanda tour of his gilt-and-marble renovations, he pooh-poohed her question about Americans’ anxiety about the costs of living with this unpolitic rejoinder: “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats.” When Ingraham, to her credit, reminded Trump that he’d slammed President Biden for “saying things were great, and things weren’t great,” Trump stood his shaky ground, sniping: “Polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” (False.)
On Saturday, Trump had posted that Republicans should take money “from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate” Obamacare. He told Ingraham, “Call it Trumpcare … anything but Obamacare.” Healthcare industry experts pounced: Such direct payments could allow younger, healthy people to get cheaper, no-frills coverage, but would leave the insurance pools with disproportionately more ailing people and, in turn, higher costs.
As for Trump’s promised $2,000 rebates and reductions in the $37 trillion federal debt, he posted early Sunday and again on Monday that “trillions of dollars” from tariffs would make both things possible soon. On Tuesday night, he sent a fundraising email: “Would you take a TARIFF rebate check signed by yours truly?”
Maybe if he’d talked to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who professed ignorance about the idea on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Trump would have learned that tariffs in the past year raised not trillions but $195 billion, significantly less than $2,000 rebates would cost. Not only would there be nothing to put toward the debt, but rebates would add $6 trillion in red ink over 10 years. That would put Trump just $2 trillion short of the amount of debt he added in his first term.
When Ingraham asked where he’d get the money to pay bonuses to air traffic controllers, Trump was quick with a nonanswer: “I don’t know. I’ll get it from someplace.” And when she told him the 50-year mortgage idea “has enraged your MAGA friends,” given the potential windfall of interest payment for banks, Trump was equally dismissive: “It’s not even a big deal.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump outlined an ambitious effort Friday to develop, produce and distribute a fully-approved COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, a timeline that even those in charge of the project acknowledge is highly unlikely.
Trump said the $10-billion program would have a goal of producing 300 million doses to administer to Americans by January.
Officials said the initiative would seek to streamline and coordinate the work of government agencies, private industry and the military. A former pharmaceutical executive and an Army four-star general will head the effort, which the White House called Operation Warp Speed.
“We’re looking to get it by the end of the year if we can,” Trump said in the Rose Garden. “Tremendous strides are being made.”
But Trump also hedged on the importance of the effort, declaring that America is already on the rebound from the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed about 87,000 Americans and cratered the economy.
“I want to make one thing clear — vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” he said. He repeated a claim he’s made since the first U.S. coronavirus cases were reported three months ago, that the virus will eventually “go away” on its own.
“I don’t want people to think this is all dependent on a vaccine,” he said.
Public health officials worry about bringing a potential vaccine to market without several rounds of clinical trials to ensure that it is safe and effective.
The National Institutes of Health says one or two possible vaccine candidates could be ready for large-scale testing by July, with several others likely to follow. Elsewhere around the world, about a dozen vaccine candidates are teed up for small-scale testing or safety studies.
The tests are necessary to determine proper dosages and to avoid negative side effects. The process usually takes several years, but some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies are working with governments around the globe in an effort to speed up the search.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious diseases physician at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said setting a deadline for a vaccine is “dangerous because you’re going to give people a false sense of hope and security.”
But he said it’s possible scientists can accelerate the usual timeline given changes in laboratory practices, including the use of “vaccine platform technologies” that allow researchers to test various candidates without developing each one from scratch, and the decision to prepare factories for mass production before officials know for certain that a particular vaccine will work.
“All of that’s going to shave time off, but everything has to go perfectly,” he said.
Dr. Jere W. McBride, an infectious diseases specialist at the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences at the University of Texas, noted that no vaccine has been “developed that fast before.”
“Everything has to work and in science that’s often not the case,” he added. “Is it possible? Certainly.”
Officials involved in the new initiative echoed the president’s optimism.
Moncef Slaoui, who was chairman of vaccines at British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline until 2017, will lead the effort. He said early clinical trials have been encouraging.
“These data make me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020,” Slaoui said. “And we will do the best we can.”
Gen. Gustave Perna, the commanding general of the Army’s Materiel Command, will serve as chief operational officer. He called the project “a herculean task,” but expressed confidence in its success.
“Winning matters and we will deliver by the end of this year a vaccine at scale,” said Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Part of the effort involves using the military to boost production capacity before the vaccine is ready in order to expedite distribution when one is determined safe and reliable.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that his agency would evaluate about 10 vaccine candidates in early studies, and then select three to five to progress into larger studies in humans.
Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted former head of the government agency charged with developing vaccines, has cast doubt on the administration’s rush to find a vaccine.
“My concern is if we rush too quickly, and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine,” Bright told a House committee on Thursday. “So it’s still going to take some time.”
Trump’s comments in the Rose Garden were at times drowned out by loud horns from truckers parked near the White House who were protesting reduced shipping rates. Trump dismissed the din as a “sign of love” for him.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top immunologist, stood behind Trump but did not speak. Both wore face masks, although Trump did not.
Nov. 12 (UPI) — President Donald Trump late Wednesday signed legislation to reopen the federal government, resuming programs and again paying millions of workers, blaming Democrats for the longest shutdown in history at 43 days.
The new stopgap bill will fund the government through Jan. 30, and provide a full year of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and veterans programs. Furloughed employees are expected to return to report on Thursday.
The U.S. House, convening for the first time in two months, approved legislation sent two days earlier by the Senate. Most Democrats and Republicans have been on opposite sides on enhanced health insurance subsidies through the Affordable Care Act.
At 8:21 p.m., the House voted 222-209 to send the stopgap funding bill to the president. The outcome wasn’t strictly along party lines with six Democrats voting yes and two Republicans voting no. There were two not voting and two vacancies.
Two hours later, Trump appeared in the Oval Office with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune — both Republicans — as well as other House members. Also, financial industry leaders, whom he dined with earlier at the White House, watched the signing.
“I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this when we come up to midterms and other things,” Trump said about elections in 2026 for the House and Senate. “Don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”
In the public ceremony, Trump blasted the Affordable Care Act as “Obama madness,” bragged about the record-high stock market and spoke about gas prices around $2.50 a gallon. He didn’t take any questions from reporters.
Trump wants Obamacare to be scrapped.
“We’ll work on something having to do with healthcare,” said Trump, who hasn’t been able to find a replacement since first being president in 2017. “We can do a lot better.”
He has proposed bypassing providers with direct payment to users, who then could purchase their own plans.
“I’m calling today for insurance companies not to be paid,” Trump said, “but for this massive amount of money to be given directly to the people.” Basic Medicare is administered by the government rather than companies.
The House had been out of session since Sept. 19, when it passed the first version of a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government. The Senate held 14 votes on the same legislation, but failed to reach the 60-vote supermajority needed to pass it.
The House originally approved the spending bill on a majority vote, but the Senate needed 60 votes and approval was held up in finding enough Democrats to agree to legislation that doesn’t guarantee enhanced health insurance subsidies starting Jan. 1.
The GOP holds a 53-47 edge.
Trump again on Wednesday night called for an end to the filibuster, saying “if we had the filibuster terminated, this would never happen again.”
Most Republicans have opposed this “nuclear option,” because Democrats could use it when they are in power.
After the House Rules Committee advanced the Senate bill Tuesday night, the full chamber convened at 4:08 p.m., and began debate for one hour at 4:36 p.m. The bill advanced 213-209.
The GOP has a 219-214 advantage, with Democrat Adelita Grijalvi having been sworn in when the House convened. She was elected Sept. 23. There are two vacancies.
Government reopens
At least 670,000 federal employees furloughed will return to work and roughly 730,000 essential workers, including air traffic control workers, will be paid, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget furloughed workers will return on Thursday.
Essential workers had to work without pay, including air traffic control personnel. This resulted in several thousand flights being canceled.
Government programs also will resume, including 42 million people receiving monthly payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For the first time in history, November money wasn’t sent electronically.
“For 40 days, hardworking Americans have endured flight cancellations, missed paychecks and empty dinner tables – all because Democrats closed the government,” Johnson posted on X with a video before the vote.
“It was foolish, pointless, cruel and entirely avoidable. Republicans have been working every day to get the government reopened for the American people, and today we should finally be able to overcome the Democrats and accomplish our mission.”
Divided on insurance subsidies
The program, which became known as Obamacare, was approved in 2010 during Barack Obama’s presidency. A record 25 million were enrolled this year.
The credits were enhanced in 2021 by the American Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic and extended one year later through 2015. They increased the amount of financial assistance, expanded eligibility and capped the percentage of household income for the benchmark silver plan.
Eight senators who caucus with the Democrats voted Monday in favor of the new bill on Tuesday night, allowing the chamber to pass it with a vote of 60-40.
The Senate broke the impasse over the weekend after Republicans agreed to hold a separate vote on ACA tax credits in December.
On Wednesday night, Johnson told reporters that Republicans are “pulling together the best ideas that we think can, in the quickest fashion, bring premiums down.”
And that includes working with Democrats.
“I sent a note to Hakeem Jeffries and I said, ‘Look, we would love to do this in a bipartisan fashion,’ you know, and he and I exchanged texts yesterday about that.”
Democrats focus on healthcare
Jeffries unsuccessfully attempted a three-year extension of Obamacare by a discharge petition. There would be a vote if the minority party can secure support for a majority of the chamber — a total of 218 signatures. But there are only 214 Democrats and there wasn’t sufficient GOP backing.
“Affordable Care Act tax credits were extended by three years in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Jeffries said outside the Capitol before the House convened. “The legislation that we will introduce in the context of the discharge petition will provide that level of certainty to working-class Americans who are on the verge of seeing their premiums, copays and deductibles skyrocket in some cases, experiencing increases of $1,000 or $2,000 per year.”
Jeffries said Democrats will continue to fight on healthcae.
“We’ll continue to fight for the principle that in this great country, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, healthcare can’t simply be a privilege available only to the well-off, the wealthy and the well-connected.
“Healthcare must be a right available to every single American. And that’s the fight that House Democrats will continue to wage for the American people.”
Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd said he wanted to extend the enhanced premium tax credits for time to work on “the underlying drivers that are pushing up those health care costs to begin with.”
Workers union wants healthcare addresses
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, with 1.4 million members, called on Congress to help Americans afford health insurance.
“AFSCME members have been clear from the start of this shutdown: we need to lower health care costs and fund public services,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement to UPI.
“Unfortunately, this administration and the Project 2025 ideologues in Congress refused to come to the table to address the healthcare crisis gripping families across the country. We applaud all of the leaders in Congress who stood up and sounded the alarm about the massive insurance premium hikes affecting millions of Americans.
“The fight to protect families from these increases is far from over. Now that the government is reopening, we’re calling on members of Congress to keep their promise and hold a vote to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Working families cannot afford to wait any longer to lower health care costs.”
Provision on suing DOJ
The legislation includes funds for eight senators to sue the Department of Justice for obtaining their phone records during an investigation when Joe Biden was president.
Rather than removing the provision and returning it to the Senate, Johnson said he plans to have separate legislation next week.
“I was very angry about it,” Johnson said. “I was, and a lot of my members called me and said, ‘Did you know about it?’ We had no idea. That was dropped in at the last minute. And I did not appreciate that, nor did most of the House members. Many of them were very – are very angry about that.”
Democrats also opposed the provision.
“What makes this corruption so staggering is that the payout is specifically designed to go to eight senators whose phone records were lawfully subpoenaed under due process by the Department of Justice,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, wrote in a statement.
She accused the senators of voting “to shove taxpayer dollars into their own pockets — $500,000 for each time their records were inspected.”
Daniel Haynes contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a swearing in ceremony for Sergio Gor, the new U.S. Ambassador to India, in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday. Photo by Craig Hudson/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.
This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.
The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.
A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”
The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.
So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?
One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.
Asked in that same Pew survey if mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.
The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.
Esmeralda Bravo, 63, holds a photo of her granddaughter, Nevaeh, one of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims, during a prayer vigil in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.
Go back roughly 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.
Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.
Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.
California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods earlier this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.
The overall pattern is clear, nonetheless, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.
Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.
Hardcore opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.
Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.
Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.
Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.
Finally, in an era defined by “negative partisanship” — suspicion and fear of the other side — it’s easy to convince voters that a modest gun control proposal is just an opening wedge designed to lead to something more dramatic.
That leads to a common pattern when gun measures appear on ballots: They do less well than polling would suggest.
Then, as now, polls showed strong support for requiring background checks for sales that currently evade them. But support for the legislation was sharply lower than support for the general idea, Pew found.
Almost 8 in 10 Republican gun owners favored background checks in general, they found, but when asked about the specific bill, only slightly more than 4 in 10 wanted it to pass. When asked why they backed the general idea but opposed the specific one, most of those polled cited concerns that the bill would set up a “slippery slope” to more regulation or contained provisions that would go further than advertised.
Faced with that sort of skepticism from voters, Republican senators who had flirted with supporting the bill mostly walked away, and it failed.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden led the unsuccessful effort to pass that bill. Nearly a decade later, the political factors impeding action have only grown more powerful.
Texas school shooting
The recent string of devastating shootings has renewed calls for tighter gun restrictions. But as Kevin Rector reported, a loosening of gun laws is almost certainly coming instead, largely because of an expected decision from the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike down a broad law in New York that doesn’t allow individuals to carry guns in public without first demonstrating a “special need” for self-defense.
For all the impassioned speeches and angry tweets, for all the memes and viral videos of gun control proponents quaking with rage, most of the energy and political intensity has been on the side of those who favor greater gun laxity, Mark Barabak wrote.
Biden marked the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer by signing an executive order aimed at reforming policing at the federal level. As Eli Stokols reported, Wednesday’s order falls short of what Biden had hoped to achieve through legislation. It directs all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct and provides grants to incentivize state and local police departments to strengthen restrictions on chokeholds and no-knock warrants.
Sluggish response and questionable decisions by the Food and Drug Administration worsened the nation’s infant formula shortage, agency officials told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. “You’re right to be concerned, and the public should be concerned,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. The agency’s response “was too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way,” Anumita Kaur reported.
Only a couple of months ago, U.S. and European officials said a renewal of the Iran nuclear deal was “imminent.” But with little progress since then, and a shifting global geopolitical scene, the top U.S. envoy for the Iran negotiations testified Wednesday that prospects for reviving the Iran deal are “at best, tenuous,” Tracy Wilkinson reported. “We do not have a deal,” the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Cuba will not attend next month’s Summit of the Americas, a major conference to take place in Los Angeles, after the U.S. refused to extend a proper invitation, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced Wednesday. As Wilkinson reported, the decision throws the summit, which is crucial to the U.S.’ ability to demonstrate its influence in the Western Hemisphere, into further disarray.
The latest from California
GOP Rep. Young Kim would seem to have a relatively easy path to reelection in November — the national mood favors her party, she has a lot of money and the newly drawn boundaries for her Orange County district give her more Republican constituents. But Kim is suddenly campaigning with a sense of urgency, Melanie Mason and Seema Mehta report. She’s unleashed $1.3 million in advertising, and outside allies are coming to her aid with more spending. Most of it is aimed at fending off Greg Raths, an underfunded GOP opponent who has been a staple on the political scene in Mission Viejo, the district’s largest city.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and top legislative Democrats pledged Wednesday to expedite gun legislation. Among the bills are measures that would require school officials to investigate credible threats of a mass shooting, allow private citizens to sue firearm manufacturers and distributors, and enact more than a dozen other policies intended to reduce gun violence in California, Taryn Luna and Hannah Wiley reported. “We’re going to control the controllable, the things we have control of,” Newsom said during an event at the state Capitol. “California leads this national conversation. When California moves, other states move in the same direction.”
The Los Angeles mayor’s race has seemingly devolved in recent days into a rhetorical brawl between two of the city’s richest men, Benjamin Oreskes wrote. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who supports Rep. Karen Bass, says Rick Caruso’s history of supporting Republican candidates and being registered as a Republican a decade ago disqualifies him from being mayor. That came after Variety published an interview with Caruso in which he attacked the former Walt Disney Studios chairman for “lying” about him in ads by a pro-Bass independent expenditure committee predominantly funded by Katzenberg.
The growing corruption scandal in Anaheim has cost the city’s mayor his job, endangered the city’s planned $320-million sale of Angel Stadium to the team and provided a rare, unvarnished look at how business is done behind closed doors in the city of 350,000. Read our full coverage of the FBI probe into how the city does business.
The Los Angeles City Council will consider an ordinance that would prevent the LAPD from using crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents District 13, is pushing for regulations that would prohibit the Los Angeles Police Department from using “kinetic energy projectiles” or “chemical agents” unless officers are threatened with physical violence.
The Public Safety Committee unanimously approved the proposal and forwarded a vote with all council members on Wednesday. The items would be considered by the council in November or December, said Nick Barnes-Batista, a communications director for District 13.
The ordinance would also require officers to give clear, audible warnings about safe exit routes during “kettling,” when crowds are pushed into designated areas by police.
After the first iteration of the “No Kings” protest over the summer that saw multiple journalists shot by nonlethal rounds, tear-gassed and detained, news organizations sued the city and Police Department, arguing officers had engaged in “continuing abuse” of members of the media.
U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera granted a temporary restraining order that restricted LAPD officers from using rubber projectiles, chemical irritants and flash bangs against journalists.
Under the court order, officers are allowed to use those weapons “only when the officer reasonably believes that a suspect is violently resisting arrest or poses an immediate threat of violence or physical harm.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called the definition of journalist “ambiguous” in a news release Monday, raising concerns that the preliminary injunction could prevent the LAPD from addressing “people intent on unlawful and violent behavior.”
“The risk of harm to everyone involved increases substantially,” McDonnell wrote. “LAPD must declare an unlawful assembly, and issue dispersal orders, to ensure the safety of the public and restore order.”
The L.A. Press Club, plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the injunction, has alleged journalists were detained and assaulted by officers during an immigration protest in August. The Press Club is also involved in a similar lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“This case is about LAPD, but if necessary, we are ready to take similar action to address misconduct toward journalists by other agencies,” the organization wrote in a news release from June.
Vera ruled in September that “any duly authorized representative of any news service, online news service, newspaper, or radio or television station or network” would be classified as a journalist and therefore protected under the court’s orders. Journalists who are impeding or physically interfering with law enforcement are not subject to the protections.
Any ordinance passed by the City Council would apply to the LAPD but not other agencies that could be responding to protests that turn chaotic, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or California Highway Patrol, thereby complicating operational procedure.
Barnes-Batista, the District 13 spokesman, said the City Council would need to discuss how to craft the rules.
“There are definitely unanswered questions about [how] the city wouldn’t want the city to be liable for other agencies not following policy,” he said. “So that will have to be worked out.”
Last month, the City Council, led by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, voted unanimously to deny a request by the city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, to push for Vera’s injunction to be lifted.
“Journalism is under attack in this country — from the Trump Administration’s revocation of press access to the Pentagon to corporate consolidation of local newsrooms,” Hernandez said. “The answer cannot be for Los Angeles to join that assault by undermining court-ordered protections for journalists.”
Nov. 12 (UPI) — The U.S. House, convening for the first time in two months on Wednesday, approved legislation sent two days earlier by the Senate to reopen the federal government, resuming programs and paying millions of workers.
President Donald Trump plans to sign the legislation, ending the longest shutdown in history at 43 days.
The House originally approved a spending bill in September on a majority vote, but the Senate needed 60 days and approval was held up in finding enough Democrats to agree to legislation that doesn’t guarantee enhanced health insurance subsidies starting Jan. 1.
At 8:21 p.m., the House voted 222-209 to send the stopgap funding bill to the president. The outcome wasn’t strictly along party lines with six Democrats voting yes and two Republicans voting no. There were two not voting and two vacancies.
The White House said Trump would sign the legislation on camera at 9:45 p.m. from the Oval Office. He earlier attended a private dinner at the White House with financial industry leaders.
“I’ll abide by the deal,” he said earlier Monday. “The deal is very good.”
His signature means at least 670,000 federal employees furloughed will return to work and roughly 730,000 essential workers, including air traffic control workers, will be paid, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Government programs will resume, including 42 million people receiving monthly payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For the first time in history, November money wasn’t sent electronically.
After the House Rules Committee advanced the Senate bill Tuesday night, the full chamber convened at 4:08 p.m., and began debate for one hour at 4:36 p.m.
The bill advanced 213-209.
The GOP has a 219-214 advantage, with Democrat Adelita Grijalvi having been sworn in when the House convened. She was elected Sept. 23.
“For 40 days, hardworking Americans have endured flight cancellations, missed paychecks and empty dinner tables – all because Democrats closed the government,” Johnson posted on X with a video before the vote.
“It was foolish, pointless, cruel and entirely avoidable. Republicans have been working every day to get the government reopened for the American people, and today we should finally be able to overcome the Democrats and accomplish our mission.”
A provision was stripped from the House version regarding funds for eight senators to sue the Department of Justice for obtaining their phone records during an investigation when Joe Biden was president.
“House Republicans are introducing standalone legislation to repeal this provision that was included by the Senate in the government funding bill,” Johnson posted on X on Wednesday afternoon. “We are putting this legislation on the fast-track suspension calendar in the House for next week.”
Democrats have opposed the provision.
“What makes this corruption so staggering is that the payout is specifically designed to go to eight senators whose phone records were lawfully subpoenaed under due process by the Department of Justice,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, wrote in a statement. She accused the senators of voting “to shove taxpayer dollars into their own pockets — $500,000 for each time their records were inspected.”
The House had been out of session since Sept. 19, when it passed the first version of a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government. The Senate held 14 votes on the same legislation, but failed to reach the 60-vote supermajority needed to pass it.
A majority of Democrats in the Senate voted against the legislation, seeking to tie the funding bill to a renewal of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax subsidies set to expire in the new year.
The Senate broke the impasse over the weekend after Republicans agreed to hold a separate vote on ACA tax credits. Unnamed sources told ABC News that Republicans promised to hold a vote on the issue in December, though House Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to commit to voting on any ACA measure passed by the Senate.
The credits were enhanced in 2021 by the American Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic and extended one year later through 2015. They increased the amount of financial assistance, expanded eligibility and capped the percentage of household income for the benchmark silver plan.
Eight senators who caucus with the Democrats voted Monday in favor of the new bill on Tuesday night, allowing the chamber to pass it with a vote of 60-40.
The new stopgap bill will fund the government through Jan. 30, provide a full year of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and veterans programs.
Democrats criticized the bill.
“As Democrats, we’re committed to addressing this affordability crisis. That’s what this fight has been all about,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said outside the Capitol before the House convened. “We’ll continue this fight to fix our broken healthcare system.
“We’ll continue to fight for the principle that in this great country, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, healthcare can’t simply be a privilege available only to the well-off, the wealthy and the well-connected.
“Healthcare must be a right available to every single American. And that’s the fight that House Democrats will continue to wage for the American people.”
Jeffries unsuccessfully attempted a three-year extension of Obamacare by a discharge petition. There would be a vote if the minority party can secure support for a majority of the chamber — a total of 218 signatures. But there are only 214 Democrats and there wasn’t sufficient GOP backing.
“Affordable Care Act tax credits were extended by three years in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Jeffries said. “The legislation that we will introduce in the context of the discharge petition will provide that level of certainty to working-class Americans who are on the verge of seeing their premiums, copays and deductibles skyrocket in some cases, experiencing increases of $1,000 or $2,000 per year.”
Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd said he wanted to extend the enhanced premium tax credits for time to work on “the underlying drivers that are pushing up those health care costs to begin with.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, with 1.4 million members, called on Congress to help Americans afford health insurance.
“AFSCME members have been clear from the start of this shutdown: we need to lower health care costs and fund public services,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement to UPI.
“Unfortunately, this administration and the Project 2025 ideologues in Congress refused to come to the table to address the healthcare crisis gripping families across the country. We applaud all of the leaders in Congress who stood up and sounded the alarm about the massive insurance premium hikes affecting millions of Americans.
“The fight to protect families from these increases is far from over. Now that the government is reopening, we’re calling on members of Congress to keep their promise and hold a vote to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Working families cannot afford to wait any longer to lower health care costs.”
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a swearing in ceremony for Sergio Gor, the new U.S. Ambassador to India, in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday. Photo by Craig Hudson/UPI | License Photo
The successful vote means the long-delayed bill will now be passed on to President Trump to sign into law.
The House of Representatives has passed a federal government spending package, clearing the final hurdle and bringing an end to the longest government shutdown in United States history – at least for now.
In a vote held late on Wednesday evening in the Republican-held House, the bill was backed by 222 lawmakers – including six Democrats – while 209 voted against it, including two Republicans.
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The long-delayed bill will now be passed on to President Donald Trump to sign into law.
On Monday night, the upper chamber of Congress had approved the spending package by a vote of 60 to 40 to fund the US government through January 30, reinstating pay to hundreds of thousands of federal workers after six gruelling weeks.
All but essential government services had ground to a halt amid the shutdown.
The breakthrough came following negotiations last weekend that saw seven Democrats and one independent agree to back the updated spending package and end the shutdown, which entered its 42nd day on Tuesday.
Crucially, however, the deal has not resolved one of the shutdown’s most central issues – healthcare subsidies for 24 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration planned to cut.
For weeks, Democrats repeatedly blocked the bill’s passage in Congress, saying the measure was necessary to force the government to address escalating healthcare costs for low-income Americans.
Shortly before Wednesday’s vote, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson accused his Democratic colleagues of using American citizens as “leverage” in their “political game”, as he denounced them for preventing the resolution’s passage in September.
“Since that time, Senate Democrats have voted 14 times to close the government. Republicans have voted a collective 15 times to open the government for the people, and the Democrats voted that many times to close it,” he said.
As part of the deal breaking the impasse, Senate Republicans agreed to hold a vote on the issue by December, raising fears there could be another shutdown in January.
The agreement had also provoked anger among Democrats, who preferred to keep holding out, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker – considered a contender for the 2028 presidential election – who called it an “empty promise” earlier this week.
David Smith, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, also described the agreement as “just a stopgap arrangement”.
“The deal that they’ve reached means most of the government will shut down again in January if they can’t come to another agreement,” he told Al Jazeera earlier this week.
Democrats who supported the deal were Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin from Illinois, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen from Nevada, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, and Tim Kaine from Virginia.
Angus King, an independent from Maine, also backed the deal.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.
Nov. 12 (UPI) — Adelita Grijalva was sworn in Wednesday afternoon on the floor of the House of Representatives by Speaker Mike Johnson after the Democrat was elected two months ago in Arizona.
Immediately after the ceremony, she became the 218th House member to sign the discharge petition, the bare minimum to approve a floor vote on legislation compelling the federal government to release the case files of Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva, 55, won a special election Sept. 23 to fill the vacant 7th Congressional District seat after Rep. Raul Grijalva, her father and fellow Democrat, died March 13. Six days later, Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered dates for the primary and general election.
Democrats now hold 214 House seats to the Republicans’ 2019, with two still vacant.
Wednesday’s ceremony occurred before the scheduled House vote on the Senate-approved measure to fund the federal government so that it can reopen after being shut down for a record 43 days.
Johnson didn’t swear her in while the House was on an extended recess that started Sept. 19 and lasted until Wednesday amid the federal government shutdown.
“What is most concerning is not what this administration has done, but what the majority in this body has failed to do: Hold Trump accountable as a coequal branch of government that we are,” Grijalva told House members.
Grijalva said the delay deprived 813,000 people in southern Arizona of her support while the shutdown endured.
Grijalva didn’t have a working office phone, an office budget or the ability to use government systems. She also couldn’t open office in her southern Arizona district.
“This is an abuse of power,” she said. “One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons.”
Johnson earlier said he would swear in Grijalva when the House reconvened, which spurred federal lawsuits accusing the House speaker of delaying the matter.
John was accused of delaying the swearing in so the petition wouldn’t have enough votes to look at the Department of Justice investigation of the financier and convicted sex offender involving minors who committed suicide while jailed in New York City and was awaiting a federal trial on other charges.
Johnson told reporters Wednesday night that the House will vote next week on whether to force the release of documents. He said he would bypass the seven-day waiting period and instead “we’re going to put that on the floor for a full vote next week, as soon as we get back.”
The petition has signatures from all Democrats and four Republicans.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California told reporters Wednesday night: “I believe we’re going to get 40, 50 Republicans voting with us on the release. And if we get that kind of overwhelming vote, that’s going to push the Senate and it’s going to push for a release of the files from the Justice Department.”
Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act in July.
Grijalva signed it with two Epstein survivors watching in the gallery.
“Just this morning, House Democrats released more emails showing that Trump knew more about Epstein’s abuses than he previously acknowledged,” she said. “It’s about time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration and fight for we, the American people.
She added: “Justice cannot wait another day.”
The House earlier released more than 33,000 pages of files from the Epstein case that were redacted only to protect the names of witnesses and block information related to child abuse.
The petition must pass the Republican-controlled Senate before making it to President Donald Trump‘s desk.
Johnson has said the delay in swearing in Grijalva had nothing to do with the Epstein files, which the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating.
House Democrats said Johnson could have called a pro forma session of the House to swear in Grijalva and said he had done so earlier this year to swear in two Republican representatives, The Hill reported.
One vacant seat in Tennessee leans Republican and will be filled by a special election in December, according to CNN.
Another vacancy in Texas has two Democrats as the final two candidates in a runoff election that will be held in January.
A Virginia transportation security officer is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of sex discrimination over a policy that bars transgender officers from performing security screening pat-downs, according to a federal lawsuit.
The Transportation Security Administration, which operates under DHS, enacted the policy in February to comply with President Trump’s executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes: male and female.
According to internal documents explaining the policy change that the Associated Press obtained from four independent sources, including one current and two former TSA workers, “transgender officers will no longer engage in pat-down duties, which are conducted based on both the traveler’s and officer’s biological sex. In addition, transgender officers will no longer serve as a TSA-required witness when a traveler elects to have a pat-down conducted in a private screening area.”
Until February, TSA assigned work consistent with officers’ gender identity under a 2021 management directive. The agency told the AP it rescinded that directive to comply with Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order.
Although transgender officers “shall continue to be eligible to perform all other security screening functions consistent with their certifications,” and must attend all required training, they will not be allowed to demonstrate how to conduct pat-downs as part of their training or while training others, according to the internal documents.
A transgender officer at Dulles International Airport, Danielle Mittereder, alleges in her lawsuit filed Friday that the new policy — which also bars her from using TSA facility restrooms that align with her gender identity — violates civil rights law.
“Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialized certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday,” the complaint says.
Mittereder declined to speak with the AP but her lawyer, Jonathan Puth, called TSA’s policy “terribly demeaning and 100% illegal.”
TSA spokesperson Russell Read declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But he said the new policy directs that “Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs.”
The legal battle comes amid mounting reports of workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees during Trump’s second administration. It is also happening at a time when TSA’s ranks are already stretched thin due to the ongoing government shutdown that has left thousands of agents working without pay.
Other transgender officers describe similar challenges to Mittereder.
Kai Regan worked for six years at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, but retired in July in large part because of the new policy. Regan, who is not involved in the Virginia case, transitioned from female to male in 2021 and said he had conducted pat-downs on men without issue until the policy change.
“It made me feel inadequate at my job, not because I can’t physically do it but because they put that on me,” said the 61-year-old, who worried that he would soon be fired for his gender identity, so he retired earlier than planned rather than “waiting for the bomb to drop.”
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — a legal organization that has repeatedly challenged the second Trump administration in court — called TSA’s policy “arbitrary and discriminatory,” adding: “There’s no evidence or data we’re aware of to suggest that a person can’t perform their duties satisfactorily as a TSA agent based on their gender identity.”
DHS pushed back on assertions by some legal experts that its policy is discriminatory.
“Does the AP want female travelers to be subjected to pat-downs by male TSA officers?” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin asked in a written response to questions by the AP. “What a useless and fundamentally dangerous idea, to prioritize mental delusion over the comfort and safety of American travelers.”
Airport security expert and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck, said that the practice of matching the officer’s sex to the passenger’s is aimed at minimizing passenger discomfort during screening. Travelers can generally request another officer if they prefer, he added.
Deciding where transgender officers fit into this practice “creates a little bit of uncertainty,” Jacobson said. But because transgender officers likely make up a small percent of TSA’s workforce, he said the new policy is unlikely to cause major delays.
“It could be a bit of an inconvenience, but it would not inhibit the operation of the airport security checkpoint,” Jacobson said.
TSA’s policy for passengers is that they be screened based on physical appearance as judged by an officer, according to internal documents. If a passenger corrects an officer’s assumption, “the traveler should be patted down based on his/her declared sex.” For passengers who tell an officer “that they are neither a male nor female,” the policy says officers must advise “that pat-down screening must be conducted by an officer of the same sex,” and to contact a supervisor if concerns persist.
The documents also say that transgender officers “will not be adversely affected” in pay, promotions or awards, and that TSA “is committed to providing a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and retaliation.”
But the lawsuit argues otherwise, saying the policy impedes Mittereder’s career prospects because “all paths toward advancement require that she be able to perform pat-downs and train others to do so,” Puth said.
According to the lawsuit, Mittereder started in her role in June 2024 and never received complaints related to her job performance, including pat-down responsibilities. Supervisors awarded her the highest-available performance rating and “have praised her professionalism, skills, knowledge, and rapport with fellow officers and the public,” the lawsuit said.
“This is somebody who is really dedicated to her job and wants to make a career at TSA,” Puth said. “And while her gender identity was never an issue for her in the past, all of a sudden it’s something that has to be confronted every single day.”
Being unable to perform her full job duties has caused Mittereder to suffer fear, anxiety and depression, as well as embarrassment and humiliation by forcing her to disclose her gender identity to co-workers, the complaint says. It adds that the ban places additional burden on already-outnumbered female officers who have to pick up Mittereder’s pat-down duties.
American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley urged TSA leadership to reconsider the policy “for the good of its workforce and the flying public.”
“This policy does nothing to improve airport security,” Kelley said, “and in fact could lead to delays in the screening of airline passengers since it means there will be fewer officers available to perform pat-down searches.”
Savage writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
United States President Donald Trump is committed to providing Americans with $2,000 cheques using money that has come into government coffers from Trump’s tariffs.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump’s staff is exploring how to go about making the plan a reality.
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The president proposed the idea on his Truth Social media platform on Sunday, five days after his Republican Party lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because of voter discontent with his economic stewardship — specifically, the high cost of living.
A new AP-NORC poll finds that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 33 percent approve.
The tariffs are bringing in so much money, the president posted, that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.’’
“Trump has taken to his favorite policymaking forum, Truth Social, to make yet another guarantee that Americans are going to receive dividend [cheques] from the revenues collected by tariffs,” Alex Jacquez, who served on the National Economic Council under former US President Joe Biden, said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.
“It’s interesting that Trump’s arguments—which he has been pushing forward for several months now on Truth Social—do not match the arguments that his lawyers are making in court. It seems he is trying to pressure the Justices by implying that this will be some massive economic disaster if they rule against the tariffs.”
Budget experts have scoffed at Trump’s tariff dividend plan, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dividend cheques financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.
“The numbers just don’t check out,″ Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, told the Associated Press.
Details are scarce, including what the income limits would be and whether payments would go to children.
Even Trump’s US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, sounded a bit blindsided by the audacious dividend plan.
Appearing on Sunday on the ABC News programme This Week, Bessent said he hadn’t discussed the dividend with the president and suggested that it might not mean that Americans would get a cheque from the government. Instead, Bessent said, the rebate might take the form of tax cuts.
The tariffs are certainly raising money — $195bn in the budget year that ended September 30, up 153 percent from $77bn in fiscal 2024. But they still account for less than four percent of federal revenue, and have done little to dent the federal budget deficit, a staggering $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025.
Budget wonks say Trump’s dividend math doesn’t work.
John Ricco, an analyst with the Budget Lab at Yale University, reckons that Trump’s tariffs will bring in $200bn to $300bn a year in revenue. But a $2,000 dividend — if it went to all Americans, including children — would cost $600bn. “It’s clear that the revenue coming in would not be adequate,” Ricco said.
The analyst also noted that Trump couldn’t just pay the dividends on his own. That would require legislation from Congress.
Legal challenges
Moreover, the centrepiece of Trump’s protectionist trade policies — double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country in the world — may not survive a legal challenge that has reached the US Supreme Court.
In a hearing last week, the court’s justices sounded sceptical about the Trump administration’s assertion of sweeping power to declare national emergencies to justify the tariffs. Trump has bypassed Congress, which has authority under the US Constitution to levy taxes, including tariffs.
If the court strikes down the tariffs, the Trump administration may be refunding money to the importers who paid them, not sending dividend cheques to American families. Trump could find other ways to impose tariffs, even if he loses at the Supreme Court, but it could be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Mainstream economists and budget analysts note that tariffs are paid by US importers who then generally try to pass along the cost to their customers through higher prices.
The dividend plan “misses the mark,” the Tax Foundation’s York said. “If the goal is relief for Americans, just get rid of the tariffs.”
Oanaminthe, Haiti – It’s a Monday afternoon at the Foi et Joie school in rural northeast Haiti, and the grounds are a swirl of khaki and blue uniforms, as hundreds of children run around after lunch.
In front of the headmaster’s office, a tall man in a baseball cap stands in the shade of a mango tree.
Antoine Nelson, 43, is the father of five children in the school. He’s also one of the small-scale farmers growing the beans, plantains, okra, papaya and other produce served for lunch here, and he has arrived to help deliver food.
“I sell what the school serves,” Nelson explained. “It’s an advantage for me as a parent.”
Nelson is among the more than 32,000 farmers across Haiti whose produce goes to the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency, for distribution to local schools.
Together, the farmers feed an estimated 600,000 students each day.
Their work is part of a shift in how the World Food Programme operates in Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere.
Rather than solely importing food to crisis-ravaged regions, the UN organisation has also worked to increase its collaborations with local farmers around the world.
But in Haiti, this change has been particularly swift. Over the last decade, the World Food Programme went from sourcing no school meals from within Haiti to procuring approximately 72 percent locally. It aims to reach 100 percent by 2030.
The organisation’s local procurement of emergency food aid also increased significantly during the same period.
This year, however, has brought new hurdles. In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has slashed funding for the World Food Programme.
The agency announced in October it faces a financial shortfall of $44m in Haiti alone over the next six months.
And the need for assistance continues to grow. Gang violence has shuttered public services, choked off roadways, and displaced more than a million people.
A record 5.7 million Haitians are facing “acute levels of hunger” as of October — more than the World Food Programme is able to reach.
“Needs continue to outpace resources,” Wanja Kaaria, the programme’s director in Haiti, said in a recent statement. “We simply don’t have the resources to meet all the growing needs.”
But for Nelson, outreach efforts like the school lunch programme have been a lifeline.
Before his involvement, he remembers days when he could not afford to feed his children breakfast or give them lunch money for school.
“They wouldn’t take in what the teacher was saying because they were hungry,” he said. “But now, when the school gives food, they retain whatever the teacher says. It helps the children advance in school.”
Now, experts warn some food assistance programmes could disappear if funding continues to dwindle — potentially turning back the clock on efforts to empower Haitian farmers.
MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys in the case of a man charged with killing a top Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband said Wednesday that prosecutors have turned over a massive amount of evidence to the defense, and that his lawyers need more time to review it.
Federal prosecutor Harry Jacobs told the court that investigators have provided substantially all of the evidence they have collected against Vance Boelter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to attempted murder in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Some evidence, such as lab reports, continues to come in.
Federal defender Manny Atwal said at the status conference that the evidence includes more than130,000 pages of PDF documents, more than 800 hours of audio and video recordings, and more than 2,000 photographs from what authorities have called the largest hunt for a suspect in Minnesota history.
Atwal said her team has spent close to 110 hours just downloading the material — not reviewing it — and that they’re still evaluating the evidence, a process she said has gone slowly due to the federal government shutdown.
“That’s not unusual for a complex case but it is lot of information for us to review,” Atwal told Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster.
Jacobs said he didn’t have a timeline for when the Department of Justice would decide whether to seek the death penalty against Boelter. The decision will be up to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.
Foster scheduled the next status conference for Feb. 12 and asked prosecutors to keep the defense and court updated in the meantime about their death penalty decision. She did not set a trial date.
Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by a man who came to their suburban homes in the early hours of June 14, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.
Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day. He faces federal and state charges including murder and attempted murder in what prosecutors have called a political assassination.
Boelter, who was wearing orange and yellow jail clothing, said nothing during the nine-minute hearing.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. But the Trump administration is pushing for greater use of capital punishment.
Boelter’s attorney has not commented on the substance of the allegations. His motivations remain murky and statements he has made to some media haven’t been fully clear. Friends have described him as a politically conservative evangelical Christian, and occasional preacher and missionary.
Boelter claimed to the conservative outlet Blaze News in August that he never intended to shoot anyone that night but that his plans went horribly wrong.
He told Blaze in a series of hundreds of texts via his jail’s messaging system that he went to the Hoffmans’ home to make citizen’s arrests over what he called his two-year undercover investigation into 400 deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine that he believed were being covered up by the state.
But he told Blaze he opened fire when the Hoffmans and their adult daughter tried to push him out the door and spoiled his plan. He did not explain why he went on to allegedly shoot the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized.
Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said when she announced Boelter’s indictment on state charges in August that she gave no credence to the claims Boelter had made from jail.
In other recent developments, a Sibley County judge last month granted Boelter’s wife a divorce.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff was arrested Wednesday on federal charges that allege she siphoned $225,000 out of a dormant state campaign account and wrote off $1 million for luxury handbags and private jet travel as business expenses on her tax returns.
According to the 23-count indictment, unsealed Wednesday morning, political consultant Dana Williamson and her employees Greg Campbell and Sean McCluskie billed the dormant campaign account for bogus consulting services through shell companies they controlled starting in the spring of 2022.
Many of those payments went to McCluskie’s wife, federal authorities allege.
The indictment does not name the California politician whose campaign fund the trio allegedly drained.
Williamson left her job at the statehouse last December.
“Today’s charges are the result of three years of relentless investigative work, in partnership with IRS Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel. “The FBI will remain vigilant in its efforts to uncover fraud and corruption, ensuring our government systems are held to the highest standards.”
Williamson is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento.
WOLF POINT, Mont. — On the open plains of the Fort Peck Reservation, Robert Magnan leaned out the window of his truck, set a rifle against the door frame and then “pop!” — a bison tumbled dead in its tracks.
Magnan and a co-worker shot two more bison, also known as buffalo, and quickly field dressed the animals before carting them off for processing into ground beef and cuts of meat for distribution to members of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northern Montana.
As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plod toward resolving the record government shutdown that interrupted food aid for tens of millions of people, tribal leaders on rural reservations across the Great Plains have been culling their cherished bison herds to help fill the gap.
About one-third of Fort Peck’s tribal members on the reservation depend on monthly benefit checks, Chairman Floyd Azure said. That’s almost triple the rate for the U.S. as a whole. They’ve received only partial payments in November after President Trump’s administration choked off funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown.
Fort Peck officials say they anticipated such a moment years ago, when they were bolstering their herd with animals from Yellowstone National Park over objections from cattle ranchers worried about animal disease.
“We were bringing it up with the tribal council: What would happen if the government went bankrupt? How would we feed the people?” said Magnan, the longtime steward of Fort Peck’s bison herds. “It shows we still need buffalo.”
Treaty obligations
In October, the tribal government authorized killing 30 bison — about 12,000 pounds of meat. Half had been shot by Tuesday. A pending deal to end the shutdown comes too late for the rest, Magnan said. With Montana among the states that dispersed only partial SNAP payments, Fort Peck will keep handing out buffalo meat for the time being.
Tribes including the Blackfeet, the Lower Brule Sioux, the Cheyenne River Sioux and the Crow have done the same in response to Washington’s dysfunction: feeding thousands of people with bison from herds restored over recent decades after the animals were hunted to near extinction in the 1800s.
Food and nutrition assistance programs are part of the federal government’s trust and treaty responsibilities — its legal and moral obligations to fund tribes’ health and well-being in exchange for land and resources the U.S. took from tribes.
“It’s the obligation they incurred when they took our lands, when they stole our lands, when they cheated us out of our lands,” said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “It lacks humanity to do this with SNAP, with food.”
Fort Peck tribal members Miki Astogo and Dillon Jackson-Fisher, who are unemployed, said they borrowed food from Jackson-Fisher’s mother in recent weeks after SNAP payments didn’t come through. On Sunday they got a partial payment — about $196 instead of the usual $298 per month — Agosto said.
It won’t last, they said, so the couple walked 4 miles into town to pick up a box of food from the tribes that included 2 pounds of bison.
“Our vehicle’s in the shop, but we have to put food on the table before we pay for the car, you know?” Jackson-Fisher said.
Moose in Maine, deer in Oklahoma
Native American communities elsewhere in the U.S. also are tapping into natural resources to make up for lost federal aid. Members of the Mi’kmaq Nation in Maine stocked a food bank with trout from their hatchery and locally hunted moose meat. In southeastern Oklahoma, the Comanche Nation is accepting deer meat for food banks. And in the southwestern part of the state, the Choctaw Nation set up three meat processing facilities.
Another program that provides food to eligible Native American households, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, has continued through the shutdown.
Mi’kmaq is among the tribes that don’t have the program, though the tribe is eligible. The Mi’kmaq also get funding for food pantries through the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, but that money, too, was tied up by the shutdown, tribal Chief Sheila McCormack said.
Roughly 80% of Mi’kmaq tribal members in Aroostook County are SNAP recipients, said Kandi Sock, the tribe’s community services director.
“We have reached out for some extra donations; our farm came through with that, but it will not last long,” Sock said.
The demise of bison, onset of starvation
Buffalo played a central role for Plains tribes for centuries, providing meat for food and hides for clothing and shelter.
That came to an abrupt end when white “hide hunters” arrived in 1879 in the Upper Missouri River basin around Fort Peck, which had some of the last vestiges of herds that once numbered millions of animals, Assiniboine historian Dennis Smith said. By 1883 the animals were virtually exterminated, according to Smith, a retired University of Nebraska-Omaha history professor.
With no way to feed themselves and the government denying them food, the buffalo’s demise heralded a time of starvation for the Assiniboine, he said. Many other Plains tribes also suffered hardship.
Hundreds of miles to the west of Fort Peck, the Blackfeet Nation killed 18 buffalo from its herd and held a special elk harvest to distribute meat to tribal members. The tribe already gave out buffalo meat periodically to elders, the sick and for ceremonies and social functions. But it’s never killed so many of the 700 animals at once.
“We can’t do that many all the time. We don’t want to deplete the resource,” said Ervin Carlson, who runs the Blackfeet buffalo program.
In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has distributed meat from about 20 of its buffalo. The tribe worked to build its capacity to feed people since experiencing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. It now has a meat processing plant that can handle 25 to 30 animals a week, said Jayme Murray with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Buffalo Authority Corp. Tribes from Minnesota to Montana have asked to use the plant, but they’ve had to turn some down, Murray said.
A former ‘food desert’ leans on its own herds
The Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in central South Dakota recently got its first full-fledged grocery store, ending its decades-long status as a “food desert” where people had to drive 100 miles round trip for groceries. The interruption to SNAP benefits stoked panic, tribal treasurer and secretary Marty Jandreau said.
Benefits for November were reduced to 65% of the usual amount.
But the Lower Brule have buffalo, cattle and elk in abundance across more than 9 square miles. On Sunday, the tribe gave away more than 400 pounds of meat to more than 100 tribal members, council members said.
“It makes me feel very proud that we have things we can give back,” tribal council member Marlo Langdeau said.
Brown and Brewer write for the Associated Press. Brewer reported from Oklahoma City, and Schafer, who reports for ICT, from Lower Brule, S.D.
Nov. 12 (UPI) — Hundreds of Chicago Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detainees will be freed soon after a judge ordered them released on bond.
On Wednesday, District Judge Jeff Cummings ordered bond for at least 615 people in a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups. The people held were arrested in Operation Midway Blitz, President Donald Trump‘s law enforcement operation in Chicago.
Those who will be released must be granted bond by noon Nov. 21, the ruling said. People eligible are those who have no mandatory detention orders and do not pose significant risk.
NBC 5 Chicago investigated the claim that the government has arrested the “worst of the worst,” showing that 85% of those arrested have no criminal convictions.
Cummings ordered the Department of Justice to review all remaining arrests through Wednesday and have a list by Nov. 19.
The plaintiffs in the case, the National Immigrant Justice Center, argued that hundreds of arrests by ICE agents were carried out in violation of a consent decree in Illinois and five neighboring states, according to 7 Eyewitness News. The decree puts limits on warrantless arrests.
The decree said that to arrest someone without a warrant, ICE agents must pre-determine if there is probable cause to believe the person is in the country illegally, and whether they are also a flight risk. Immigrant advocates say ICE has ignored those rules.
“As we’re digging into it, we are very concerned that many, if not most [of ICE arrests], are violations of our consent decree,” Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center told 7 Eyewitness News.
“Our initial analysis is that it’s over 3,000 arrests,” that are in violation of the consent decree, Fleming said.
“We’ve started to dig into the case file that they produced to us, and the vast majority are violations. If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree.”
The government’s attorneys have argued that Congress had stripped the courts of the power to grant parole to large groups of immigrants in ICE custody.
“Federal courts cannot order the Department of Homeland Security to release any aliens on parole because Congress has stripped them of that authority,” they said.
