politics

WASHINGTON — Political advertising warns about Democratic plots to defund the police. Campaign events feature law enforcement unions and tough talk about law and order. Stump speeches boast about record low levels of violent crime.

From coast to coast, Republicans are focusing on public disorder, illegal immigration and violent crime in midterm campaigns as voters sour on their party’s handling of the cost of living and the war with Iran.

Democrats have tried to counter the attacks by recruiting candidates with law enforcement backgrounds and emphasizing their own anti-crime plans, but Republicans believe it’s a rare opportunity to go on the offensive in an otherwise challenging year.

“Do you know that right now we have the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years in America right now? Because we emphasize the rule of law,” House Speaker Mike Johnson recently told an audience at Louisiana State University. Crime rates have generally trended down since the 1990s with a brief spike during the COVID pandemic. “We have the most secure border we have had in the past half century.”

President Trump returned to the topic Monday night in Nebraska, warning about how the country used to be before he returned to the White House.

“We had a border with people pouring in, crime like nobody’s ever seen,” he said.

Republicans say Democrats will ‘defund the police’

In Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin, Republican candidates for governor have attacked their Democratic rivals as weak on crime or warned they could cut police funding. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, for instance, has lambasted Democratic nominee and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa for not supporting legislation that would require judges to deny bail to illegal immigrants charged with a violent crime.

Hinojosa has campaigned on her tenure as a civil rights lawyer and criticized Abbott’s crime policies as violating civil liberties.

Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare executive running in Georgia, has repeatedly attacked Democratic opponent Keisha Lance Bottoms over her tenure as Atlanta mayor.

“I grew up in the type of neighborhood Keisha Lance Bottoms abandoned,” Jackson said at a summer campaign rally. “I know who gets hurt when politicians defund the police.”

In an interview with Atlanta station 11Alive, Bottoms emphasized that her administration gave pay raises to police and firefighters, and said she called for increased federal funding for public safety during her time as mayor.

Crime warnings pervade congressional races

It’s a similar story in U.S. House races.

In Virginia’s first congressional district, Rep. Rob Wittman has attacked his Democratic opponent, prosecutor Shannon Taylor, over her allegedly “soft on crime” record in office. In Michigan’s 10th district, Republican Michael Bouchard is running on his service as a Bronze Star Army captain and son of a longtime local sheriff. He’s claimed his Democratic opponent, former prosecutor Christina Hines, supports “woke, soft on crime, socialist policies.”

In Colorado’s eighth district, Rep. Gabe Evans touts his time as a police officer against Democratic challenger Manny Rutinel. And in Wisconsin’s third district, Rep. Derrick Van Orden hopes to win a third race against Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke by painting her as a communist who wants to defund the police.

Republicans hope that by reprising warnings of crime and disorder the party can reenergize their disillusioned base and win back skeptical moderate voters who have drifted over concerns like affordability.

Democratic rivals have responded in kind. Taylor aired an ad featuring 13 local sheriffs who endorsed her campaign. Rutinel aired ads with local police and rolled out a safety plan that called for greater police funding and drug prevention programs. Hines said she’ll continue to prioritize public safety and prosecute corruption in Washington. Cooke has vowed to fully fund police departments in Congress.

Not all Republicans see crime as a winning issue

It’s yet to be seen if the strategy will prove effective.

“We’ve got to talk about it. I think that in many ways, we are the victim of our own success because it’s off the headlines a little bit more,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican and former state attorney general. “Having a completely secure border now, no one even talks about it. But that’s a huge accomplishment from where we were at before.”

An AP-NORC poll conducted in September found that border security — which Trump and Republicans often link to crime — was a relative strength for the Republican president, with 48% of U.S. adults saying they approved of his performance on the issue. But that was still a decline from a year ago, when his approval on border security was at 55%.

Not everyone in the party is sold on Republicans rehashing the crime message.

“I don’t see that bubbling up as a major issue for the voters,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who chose not to seek reelection this year. Aiming to make the race to succeed Tillis a referendum on crime, Republicans have run ads claiming that Democratic nominee Roy Cooper went easy on convicts during his two terms in the governor’s mansion.

Black political leaders have criticized the ads as racist and reminiscent of past Republican campaigns that used dog whistles to appeal to suburban white voters. Trump made the message explicit when he invoked the infamous 1988 “Willie Horton” ad and displayed dozens of mugshots of men of color on a jumbotron during a rally stumping for Michael Whatley, Cooper’s Republican rival.

In contrast to his party’s messaging, Tillis noted his state’s safety in recent years.

“Frankly, when I hear somebody talking about crime in Charlotte, I live 25 minutes from downtown. I’m not worried about walking through Charlotte at night,” said Tillis.

Democrats accuse Trump of corruption

National Democrats contend that Republicans’ message on violent crime is undercut by the Trump administration’s hardline immigration enforcement actions, which resulted in the killing of two American protesters in January and the fatal shootings of multiple undocumented people. They accuse Trump of corruption and have hammered Republicans for alleged complicity in the president’s self-dealing.

“This is the biggest criminal organization that we’ve ever seen,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, of the current White House.

He added that, “Democrats should be pushing back with the fact that, if not for the fact that he was president, this guy would be leading some type of mafia right now.”

Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said “extreme Democrats are trying to deflect from their radical soft on crime agenda.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

Who will be the next president of the largest Latin American economy? We’ll know for sure with the run-off on October 25, but after the first-round results in Brazil’s general election, it seems it won’t be Lula da Silva. The 80-year-old socialist who was close friends with Hugo Chávez and failed to pressure Nicolás Maduro after he stole the 2024 election would need a miracle to stop Flávio Bolsonaro. The ultra-conservative populism of the candidate’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro —currently in jail for the coup attempt of 2023—, surpassed Lula in the presidential vote and grabbed the majority of states and seats in Congress.

Unless the Workers Party has a secret weapon against Bolsonaro and recruits enough voters in extremis, Lula will end his career defeated by a family closely associated with attacks to democracy, misinformation, open dismissal of environmental concerns, militarism, and sexism. 

We’ll see what millions of Brazilian voters, who are fed up with inflation and crime, will decide. But from a Venezuelan point of view, the idea of having Flávio Bolsonaro ruling over our big neighbor to the south sounds like bad news for chavismo, especially if the rest of Venezuela’s land borders touch Guyana, a rising oil producer closely protected by the US, and Colombia, where Abelardo de la Espriella, a leader who resembles Bolsonaro, is already president.

Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. He’s not fighting socialism and trying to spread capitalist democracy.

If we add that Panama, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Chile, and Argentina have conservative presidents who declared a new war on drugs and are even joining the Trump administration’s Shield of the Americas initiative, we’ll see a map turning dark-blue hostile to the heirs of 21st-century socialism. No more silence about chavismo’s abuse. No more anti-imperialist performance in global arenas. Finally, the pendulum swung away from chavismo’s old circle. This right-wing storm on the continent is bad for Delcy Rodríguez and good for María Corina Machado. Right?

Not necessarily.

Before and after Trump

Before Trump, things were simpler. Conservative governments in Latin America were like Álvaro Uribe’s in Colombia or Felipe Calderón’s in Mexico: they tried to get along with Chávez but ended up as enemies, cutting commercial and diplomatic ties, fighting chavista diplomats in the UN and accusing their local adversaries of trying to export chavismo. Predicting a vote involving Venezuela in the OAS was easy: you just had to count how many representatives were on the right and how many on the left or the Chávez payroll, like Petrocaribe’s members. 

After Trump, on the contrary, those old categories no longer matter. Ideology is not important. Not even cultural wars, which are so good for social media and for recruiting powerful allies like evangelical churches; a government can allow abortion and same sex marriage and be considered a friend by Trump, as long as this government connects with the priorities of the president’s political and corporate circles.

Hugo Chávez would be worried about the Bolsonaros’ apparent return to Brasília. Delcy Rodríguez, not so much.

Trump’s foreign relations favor those governments who are in sync with the specific matters his administration is about, like pushing China out of the region, securing markets for American companies, and, more particularly, supporting Trump’s narratives. If you lose an election, as he did with Biden, you blame socialism and try to reverse the results; if Trump says fentanyl and cocaine are coming from your country, you help the Americans to attack boats and produce viral clips on social media; if Trump says your migrants are poisoning his country, you help him to stop them before they approach the US, and even accept that your own citizens are sent to prisons in third, remote countries.

Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. He’s not fighting socialism and spreading capitalist democracy. He’s not even treating China as a geopolitical adversary, but a corporate competitor with a CEO you can visit and have at home, as Trump just did with Xi Jinping. Trump is in worse terms with a fully democratic, pro-market government like Mark Carney’s in Canada, which did not bend to his demands, than with President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, a hardcore leftist, who is more cooperative with the White House. And, in fact, Trump is allowing the existence of three socialist autocracies on the continent: Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. 

Trump can coexist with socialists, as long as they do what he wants. In practice, this means that our old premises about the impact of having left- or right-leaning governments around are not as valid as they were when Chávez was alive.

New friendz n the hood

We Venezuelans can easily see how things changed in the region’s geopolitical play, and how ideology lost relevance, in the evidently comfortable relationship between Donald Trump and Delcy Rodríguez, or in the aftermath of the earthquakes in June. Many governments sent help to La Guaira, but one of the first and most spectacular rescue missions came from El Salvador, where the government is a very public enemy of chavismo. The Salvadorans’ equipment and efforts in the rubble were highlighted on President Nayib Bukele’s social media. El Salvador’s fast response helped the dictatorship to manage the disaster, not the Venezuelan opposition, which is currently led by a pro-market politician, Machado, who courted the Republican Party for years.

We have also seen how Paraguay, Argentina and Chile, all of them with right-wing leaders very close to Trump, started to restore relationships with Miraflores Palace, even if it is still in the hands of the people who perpetrated the 2024 fraud and besieged the Argentine embassy in Caracas. 

Hugo Chávez would be worried about the Bolsonaros’ apparent return to Brasília. Delcy Rodríguez, not so much. She can invite big Brazilian companies in energy, retail and agribusiness, which would get deregulation and diplomatic support in a Bolsonaro government, to join the investment frenzy in the Caracas Marriott. Yes, Machado and Bolsonaro met in Chile, during Kast’s inauguration in March, and she congratulated him on social media last Sunday, but Venezuela’s democratic renewal is not an urgent priority for Flávio Bolsonaro.

A critical difference between Abelardo and Flávio is that the new Colombian government needs to put pressure on Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela.

A good proxy to estimate how Bolsonaro Jr. would behave with chavismo and Machado is Abelardo de la Espriella. The Colombian president, who used a similar mix of conspiracy theories and a macho persona to defeat the Pacto Histórico leftist coalition, has so far been as passive about Venezuela’s suspension of democratic rights as Gustavo Petro. De la Espriella has been pushing Venezuelan migrants to go home, like Trump. As experts see it from Colombia, he is just following Trump’s lead regarding his neighbor. One critical difference between De la Espriella and Bolsonaro is that the new Colombian government needs to put pressure on Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela (with American support and, probably, even Delcy’s help), a variable absent in the Brazilian case.  

I’m not saying that the Bolsonaros and the rest of the Trumpian Right will support Delcy forever. My point is that we can’t see their spread over South America as a force meant to crush socialists. We must observe what Trump and their allies do, instead of just believing what they say. Trump said a lot of things about Maduro and chavismo, but at the time of writing, Venezuelan citizens remain deprived of influence, just like when Maduro stole their votes, and Maduro’s former vice president is having the time of her life.

Protests have continued across France for a third week as tens of thousands of school pupils and trade unionists have taken to the streets across many cities.

Students initially began boycotting classes in deprived areas of Paris on September 21 over teacher shortages and poor conditions, but protests have quickly morphed into a nationwide movement, with some of the largest demonstrations taking place on Tuesday.

School blockades have turned violent, with protesters accused of hurling items at police and officers allegedly responding forcefully using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets. In one case, a teenager lost his hand in a grenade explosion.

The mass demonstrations, which also coincided with a public sector strike over government budget plans last week, have presented another challenge for President Emmanuel Macron’s cash-strapped government ahead of next year’s elections, amid an ongoing fiscal crisis as government debt has rocketed in recent years.

Here’s what we know:

What do protesters want?

Students have been protesting over what they say are poor conditions in France’s high schools – or lycees – especially in poorer areas. Protests have been held in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille, Lyon and other towns and cities.

Students say absent teachers are not replaced, dilapidated school buildings are sometimes rodent-infested, there are inadequate tables and chairs, large class sizes and long classroom hours.

The intense heatwave which hit France in the summer exacerbated existing problems in neglected school buildings, which also suffer from a lack of air conditioning, school pupils say.

The protests have coincided with ongoing nationwide public sector strikes over a proposed 2027 cost-cutting budget that aims to achieve 54 billion euros ($61.3bn) in savings as Macron’s government races to bring a large public deficit under control.

Public sector staff and unions object in particular to a government plan to freeze salaries to save about two billion euros ($2.27bn).

Parents are also increasingly present at protests amid widespread anger about the police response to demonstrating minors.

But the protests are happening amid wider discontent over soaring fuel and commodity prices and reduced public spending under Macron.

Government officials have meanwhile accused political opposition groups and unionists of taking advantage of the student movement. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu accused political opponents last week of encouraging escalation.

What has happened so far?

At least 6,100 people had been arrested by early Tuesday, many of them under the age of 18, as police tactics come under intense scrutiny.

Serious injuries have also been reported.

A 15-year-old lost a hand in the northern city of Lens on Monday after he reportedly came into contact with a police stun grenade, which then exploded. Public prosecutors say investigations are ongoing into whether the youth actively picked up the grenade or if it landed on him.

Overall, at least 190 high school students have been injured, Education Minister Edouard Geffray said on Monday. On Sunday, he said 78 teaching staff had been injured, and 24 schools had been burned or ransacked.

Some 715 police officers have been injured, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Tuesday.

Officials said as many as 589 schools have been disrupted this week, down from 735 on Friday last week.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have criticised the use of force against minors amid media reports of students being hit with batons and rubber bullets, as well as sprayed with tear gas.

What happened on Tuesday?

Protesters again blockaded schools on Tuesday as thousands demonstrated over their demands.

Placard-waving crowds were reported in southern Marseille, eastern Strasbourg and other major cities.

In Paris’s 20th district, protesters outside the shut Helene Boucher lycee tipped over rubbish bins and bicycles and created a makeshift barricade, The Associated Press news agency reported. Parents, meanwhile, positioned themselves between the demonstrators and police to protect their children.

“They are our children. Teachers, parents, federations, we all share the same goal: the protection of children’s rights, and it is a legitimate right to demonstrate and to make demands,” said Emilia Sichili Suriam, one member of a parents’ association.

Interior Minister Nunez rejected criticism of the police on Tuesday, saying the response has been proportionate in “almost all cases”. He claimed that the protests were transforming into “riots”.

What does this mean for the French government?

These are only the latest in a series of high-profile protests that have marked Macron’s presidency and undermined his government’s reform efforts ahead of elections in April and May.

Macron will not run in next year’s elections, but his image and that of his government have no doubt been tainted by photos of police chasing students in the streets, France expert Jacob Ross, from the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), told Al Jazeera.

“He is not taken seriously any more because many think of him as already out of government,” Ross said of Macron. “But this is still very significant for his government because it has become clear that they don’t have the capacity to calm things down. There’s clearly little fiscal room to manoeuvre.”

Macron’s terms have long been beset by political and financial instability. Successive prime ministers have faced difficulties in pushing through policies in the highly polarised National Assembly where Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and allied blocs lack a majority.

Critics have taken aim at Macron’s deeply unpopular austerity measures, which have seen drastically reduced government spending taking a toll on pensions and healthcare. Officials, however, have defended these policies amid rising debt following COVID-19-era spending.

On Sunday, Lecornu said the government had kickstarted initiatives to address the protesters’ demands and that a report was expected by the end of the month. He, however, added that Paris would not “yield an inch” to violence.

Meanwhile, frontrunner and opposition leader Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally party submitted a shadow budget on Tuesday promising 140 billion euros ($157.6bn) in cost savings by 2032 if elected next year.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a hero among the nation’s progressive voters, stumped in Southern California on Monday for a wealth tax on the California ballot in November that has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending.

“What you are showing people from coast to coast and all over is that, yes, we can take on the greed of the oligarchs,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), who called Proposition 40 the most important ballot measure in the country. “Yes, we can create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.”

Sanders name-checked billionaire tech founders including Elon Musk of SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose mentions were repeatedly met with boos from the crowd gathered at the Novo in downtown Los Angeles.

Labor leaders, speaking earlier on Monday at a union training facility in La Palma, argued that although the billionaires tax is billed as a one-time tax on the assets of the state’s wealthiest residents, it includes a loophole that would allow state lawmakers to tax the savings and retirement accounts and home equity of all Californians.

“In the trades, we know you always read the blueprints and you always read the fine print,” said Xochitl Medrano, the political director for the district council of the Ironworkers of the State of California and Vicinity. Medrano was surrounded by union workers chanting, “No on 40!”

“Our workers are not billionaires; they are working people. After 20, 30, or even 40 years of breaking their backs on the job sites, our members have the opportunity to have a decent pension, some retirement savings, and equity in a home that they’ve been working to pay off,” she said. “That’s not wealth handed to them. That’s sweat equity. … We won’t stand by and let a tax that’s supposed to target billionaires turn into a trap door for working families.”

Proposition 40 is among the most contentious issues on the Nov. 3 ballot. The measure was crafted by a healthcare union to offset $100 billion in impending federal healthcare funding cuts approved by congressional Republicans and signed by President Trump last year. Millions of Californians could lose their healthcare coverage because of those cuts.

There are two opposing measures on the November ballot, Propositions 41 and 42, that would nullify the billionaires tax if either receives more votes.

About 45% of likely voters supported Proposition 40, while 42% opposed it and 13% were undecided in a late September poll by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times. That’s a decline in support compared with a poll six weeks earlier, when 48% of likely voters supported it while 41% opposed it.

The proposal has drawn more than $300 million in campaign contributions, nearly all against it. Ballot measures are not subject to caps on campaign donations.

Sanders was joined by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) and artists including the rapper Common, who called for “them billionaires to pay up” between freestyle verses. Shepard Fairey, known for his famous portrait of President Obama, unveiled banners in support of the wealth tax campaign, which served as a backdrop on the event stage.

Rally attendee Datosha Williams, an SEIU-UHW member who works in healthcare customer service, said Proposition 40 is a backstop to federal healthcare cuts, which could lead to hospital closures around the state.

“My biggest fear is that I will see some of my coworkers lose their jobs,” she said. “My biggest fear is that my 8-year-old son, who is asthmatic, will have long waits in an ER.”

At the event at the Ironworkers Training Center in La Palma organized by labor leaders to oppose the wealth tax, apprentices attended workshops about rigging and collective bargaining rights.

“We’re not opposed to making the wealthy pay their fair share. We’re not opposed to creating a high-quality and low-cost health insurance plan for Californians,” said Andrew Gonzales, the council representative for the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. “We just don’t think Prop. 40 is the right vehicle to go about that.”

Gonzales pointed to the volatile state budget’s dependence on tax revenue from wealthy Californians, some of whom have proactively moved out of the state because of the proposal.

“That’s already having an immediate impact to the state’s budget,” he said. “So we already see the danger that can occur.”

Foes of Proposition 40 attend a rally on Monday at the Ironworkers Training Center in La Palma.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed legislation cracking down on the practice of luxury-car buyers in California registering cars out of state to avoid taxes.

Senate Bill 1406, introduced by state Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton), closes the so-called Montana loophole, in which tax evaders create shell companies in Montana or other states without sales tax or vehicle registration fees and use them to purchase Ferraris, Porsches and other luxury cars. The state estimate it loses millions of dollars annually because of such schemes.

The new law expands California’s definition of who is a resident under state sales tax law in an effort to weed out phony shell companies, making a company liable for state taxes when at least one member of the business is a California resident.

The law, which went into effect immediately, also authorizes the state tax agency to impose tax liability on individual members of a business.

California had already looked to enforcement efforts to investigate suspicious out-of-state car sales, which officials estimate amount to $10 million annually in lost tax revenue.

Under state law, residents were already required to pay California sales tax on vehicles unless they are first used out of state and stay out of state for at least 12 months. Dealers are required to maintain records showing sales of vehicles so that authorities can ensure vehicles sold to buyers in another state are actually delivered there.

Earlier this year, the state’s Department of Justice charged 14 people — including auto dealers and customers purchasing cars — with concealing the purchase of more than $20 million worth of high-end vehicles including Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis, and evading upward of $1.8 million in state taxes.

Text messages included in the criminal complaint showed buyers seeking to conceal their purchases. One Lamborghini buyer boasted about fees avoided: “70k saved — I can’t believe Montana registration lasts for 5 years — that’s crazy. Stupid California. Paid 3k to own a 600k car for 5 years — lol in Cali that’s like 75k for 5 years. Hella dumb.”

The new law further develops criteria to help show an LLC as a shell company involved in a potential tax evasion scheme.

If the LLC lacks a specific business activity or purpose, fails to maintain a physical location outside California, fails to employ people, or fails to file federal tax returns in another state, it could now be considered as evidence of such a scheme.

The United States Department of Justice has filed 40 new cases seeking to strip naturalised Americans of their citizenship over alleged crimes they have committed.

In a statement on Monday, federal prosecutors said they were targeting individuals accused of “serious offenses”, including money laundering, child sexual abuse, visa fraud and tax evasion.

The statement touted the 40 cases as the largest volume of denaturalisation petitions submitted in such a short period under President Donald Trump. The petitions were filed from late August through early October.

“Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice will continue to employ the denaturalization process to maintain our national security and protect the American people.”

The 40 citizens targeted in Monday’s announcement include people from a range of countries, including Mexico, Pakistan, China and Sierra Leone.

They are accused of concealing criminal acts and other facts about themselves as they sought to obtain citizenship. Their criminal convictions largely came after they took their oaths of citizenship.

Two people on the list are also accused of engaging in espionage on behalf of China. Committing these crimes before they became citizens, the Department of Justice alleges, meant these individuals lacked “good moral character” and should have been denied citizenship.

Expanded use of denaturalisation law

The laws to denaturalise US citizens have been used for decades, but historically, they have been reserved for serious crimes.

After World War II, for instance, the US government moved to denaturalise dozens of citizens accused of concealing involvement in the Holocaust or engaging in war crimes.

Notable cases include that of Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian-born anarchist and women’s rights activist who was jailed in 1917 for her antiwar activities, before being denaturalised and deported to the Soviet Union.

But the practice has become much less frequent since the end of the Cold War.

Top officials in the Trump administration, however, have sought to expand denaturalisation as part of a push to conduct the largest deportation operation in US history.

Under US law, prosecutors can ask courts to strip citizenship from those born outside the country if they wilfully concealed a “material fact” during their citizenship application that would have otherwise disqualified them.

But Trump’s efforts to widen denaturalisation proceedings have received pushback from human rights groups, which argue they could leave people stateless.

Critics have also warned that Trump has sought to leverage denaturalisation against specific groups he perceives to be political rivals or enemies.

Last year, for instance, the Trump administration indicated it would seek to denaturalise large numbers of Somali Americans after allegations emerged in Minnesota of daycare fraud involving the Somali diaspora.

“Send them back from where they came, Somalia, perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth,” Trump wrote at the time.

Members of Trump’s Republican Party, notably Representative Andy Ogles, have also floated the possibility of yanking citizenship from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda. Trump himself has falsely suggested Mamdani may be in the country illegally.

At one point, Trump even floated the idea of withdrawing citizenship from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, a close ally and adviser to his second administration, after the two men had a falling-out in 2025.

Trump has also pushed to do away with birthright citizenship, which is granted to virtually all children born in the US. The few exceptions include the babies of diplomats and foreign military forces.

Birthright citizenship is protected under the US Constitution and cannot be taken away the way naturalised citizenship can.

In June, the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship, but legal battles continue after the president issued a second executive order also seeking to restrict how birthright citizenship is applied.

Hispanic voters are twice as likely to favour Democratic Party over Trump’s Republican Party in the November elections.

A new poll from the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos has found that United States President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains at a record low as the midterm elections approach in November.

The six-day survey, completed on Monday, found that just 32 percent of US voters approve of the job Trump is doing as president.

While that low rate has held steady since September, the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll suggests his support among Latino voters is continuing to slide.

Trump’s approval rating shrunk this month to 24 percent among Hispanic voters, its lowest point in either of his two terms in office.

The Republican leader had previously made substantial inroads with that constituency.

The Pew Research Center estimated that Trump and his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, were within three percentage points of each other in the 2024 presidential race, earning 48 percent and 51 percent of the Hispanic vote, respectively.

That rate marked a significant jump for Trump over the 2020 election, when he only earned 36 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Experts have credited the boost in Hispanic support with helping Trump win the 2024 race. His 2020 bid, by contrast, ended in defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

The Monday poll found that Trump’s gains among Hispanics have largely evaporated.

About 52 percent plan to vote for the Democrats in the November midterms, compared to 26 percent for Republicans.

The upcoming midterm is largely viewed as a referendum on Trump’s second term and will decide whether the Republicans maintain their majorities in the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

Democrats have seized on Trump’s low approval ratings, hoping to translate frustration with the president into voter momentum for their party.

A Democratic majority in one or both houses of Congress would place substantial constraints on Trump’s agenda for the remainder of his time in office.

But Trump has also faced rumblings from within his Republican Party as the November 3 midterms approach.

One Republican incumbent, Representative Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, released a campaign advertisement last month that addressed Trump directly, saying, “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

She cited Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown as a source of tension. “Some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she said, pointing to the detention and deportation of immigrants with no criminal record.

Experts have also warned that the president’s shrinking popularity, driven in part by concerns about the cost of living and his decision to launch a war on Iran, could weigh down Republican candidates in key races across the country.

Still, Trump has continued to express confidence about the prospects of his Republican Party in the upcoming midterms.

He has also defended his decision to place himself at the centre of the Republican election campaign strategy. Trump recently launched a 32-day blitz of cross-country rallies ahead of the November 3 midterms.

“Just so you understand, they all want me to go,” Trump said, denying that some Republicans would prefer he keep his distance. “They all want me to go campaign.”

Student groups call for the abolition of Greek life and punitive action in wake of fraternity assault allegations.

Protesters in the United States have shattered a glass door at Cornell University’s main administrative headquarters and spray-painted messages on the building’s walls as backlash continues following allegations about a 2024 gang rape at a local fraternity.

In the early hours of Monday, the glass panes on an entrance door for the building, Day Hall, were smashed, leaving shards strewn across the floor.

Activists, outraged at the school’s handling of the case, also graffitied nearby walls with slogans like “At Cornell rapists are protected protesters are expelled” and “Smash the patriarchy”.

The predawn incident came ahead of a rally demanding “justice for survivors” by student groups on Monday.

Cornell spokesperson Kyle Kimball said Monday that the university was investigating the vandalism.

“We understand the frustration and strong emotions being expressed across our community,” Kimball said. “Those concerns deserve to be heard, but damaging property is not the answer.”

Cornell, a prominent Ivy League university in the state of New York, has been at the centre of a national firestorm over sexual violence on US campuses, after an anonymous student, Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging a gang rape at the fraternity Chi Phi.

Her complaint accuses seven former students of perpetrating “heinous criminal sexual acts” against her during a fraternity party on the night of October 19, 2024, after she says she was pressured to drink and take the drug ketamine.

The fraternity, Cornell University and others are named as co-defendants in the suit. Lawyers for two of the former students have rejected claims that they participated in sexual assault.

The case has elicited outcry over how sexual assault is handled on campuses across the country.

At Monday’s demonstration, students demanded an overhaul of the university’s sexual assault complaint process, the termination of certain school officials and stricter disciplinary action against alleged abusers.

In a statement to the student news outlet The Cornell Daily Sun, student organisers wrote that they were calling for the “abolition” of the Interfraternity Council system on campus and the “expulsion/revocation of degrees for all Chi Phi members involved in the rape”.

They also demanded that Cornell’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards be replaced by a “democratic disciplinary system”. Monday’s protest, they added, was designed to draw attention to the systemic failures that allow sexual violence to occur.

“We wanted to ensure that Day Hall, the centre of Cornell’s administrative function, was not able to continue business as usual,” the students told the campus paper.

The alleged crime at the fraternity, they wrote, was part of a “rampant pattern of sexual assault perpetrated by members of Greek life at Cornell University and hundreds of other academic institutions throughout the country”.

Under pressure by New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James, the university announced this week it would be appointing a law firm to conduct an independent internal review of how it initially handled the case.

A transcript, obtained by US media, shows that although no charges were filed, Doe told campus police at the time that she could “say with 100% confidence I was raped”.

Her lawsuit also alleges that Cornell “afforded” the accused fraternity members “the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays” to the school. Two were later expelled, and another two were suspended.

Neighbouring countries say coastal states must govern Red Sea as fighting escalates in northern Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has insisted that his landlocked country must have access to the Red Sea, despite a conflict in the north of the country that risks escalating into a regional conflict.

Abiy made the demand as he was sworn in for another five-year term in power on Monday. His call came as Ethiopian forces were pushing back opposition forces in the northern Tigray region, which are backed by Eritrea, whose independence in 1993 blocked Addis Ababa’s access to the coast.

Repeating previous assertions, Abiy said in a speech in Parliament that the country would work to secure a port on the Red Sea, saying that access was critical to Ethiopia’s “civilisation”.

“Based on the principle of give and take, we will work diligently to ensure that Ethiopia has an outlet to the sea,” he said.

Abiy’s new term and call for Red Sea access come amid worsening relations between Ethiopia and its neighbours.

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea, Egypt and Sudan of supporting opposition forces in the northern Tigray region, following a resurgence of fighting against Abiy’s government.

Lower-level clashes between the federal military and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) began in August, violating a three-year-old peace deal that ended a devastating two-year war between the parties.

Fighting intensified following the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival – a coalition of seven armed movements, including the TPLF, which has committed itself to removing Abiy’s government.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Somalia did not object to Ethiopia gaining access to the Red Sea through Somali territory but added that the two countries would need to officially negotiate.

Four of the five countries bordering the Red Sea – Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia – met on Sunday in Egypt’s New Alamein, claiming that oversight of the coastline was reserved for bordering states.

The following day, Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry said discussions over the Red Sea must account for the country’s “legitimate interests and enduring connection” to the body of water.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices sounded wary Monday of state-by-state lawsuits that could impose huge damage verdicts on energy producers for the impact of global climate change.

Instead, several of them suggested these local and state claims may be blocked by the federal Clean Air Act.

“Interstate air and water pollution are matters for federal law,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This kind of pollution is a federal matter unless Congress says otherwise.”

Justice Elena Kagan appeared to agree. State-by-state lawsuits “get in way of how Congress decided to regulate greenhouse gases,” she said.

At issue before the court was the question of whether cities and states may sue oil and gas producers for the damages inflicted by climate change.

California and nearly three dozen states and municipalities have filed such claims, but none have gone to trial.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Boulder County may sue for damages in a local court.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the oil industry backed by the Trump administration. Its lawyers argued that the Constitution and federal law do not allow for such claims to be resolved in local courts.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts sounded skeptical of opening the door to a wave of climate change lawsuits. “There will be 50 different cities. How would that work out?” he asked a lawyer representing Boulder.

For much of the two-hour argument, the justices struggled over whether federal law imposes a limit on such lawsuits, or instead whether states and their judges are free to seek damages for the harm they have suffered.

They did not signal a clear outcome but most of them sounded as though they leaned toward saying that federal law governs such far-reaching damage claims.

The energy producers turned to the Supreme Court after losing in state court.

They hope the high court will shut down more than three dozen lawsuits seeking damages for the impact of climate change.

So far, judges across the nation have been divided. Some have ruled that federal law preempts or blocks states and counties from suing under state law.

But others, including the Colorado Supreme Court, ruled the lawsuits may proceed under state law.

Justice Samuel A. Alito, a staunch conservative, said he is sitting out the case, presumably because he owns stock in oil companies that would be affected by a ruling.

If the court splits 4-4 and cannot rule, it would be major disappointment for the oil industry because it would allow all the climate-change suits to proceed, at least for now.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland, for the first leg of a four-day European tour in which he will also visit Greece and Portugal.

“Economic and security collaboration” top the agenda for his talks on Monday with Icelandic officials, according to a statement from the Department of State.

Ahead of his departure, he told reporters he would not directly tie the United States’ decision to remove its B-1 bombers from the British base of Fairford to last week’s incident.

“I wouldn’t just directly tie that to the move that was made,” Rubio told reporters, adding that “the Department of War is constantly reallocating resources where they need to be”.

Rubio asserted confidence in the security of all US bases and praised United Kingdom authorities’ cooperation.

Five British men were arrested near the British airbase at Fairford on suspicion of preparing “terrorist acts”, and were later released on bail. A sixth man, a dual UK-Iranian national arrested separately in London, has also been released on bail.

B-1 bombers were returned to the US. They had been used for strikes on Iran.

A NATO military source had, however, said: “It is still believed that Iran poses an acute threat to US assets in the UK”.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards previously said the Fairford base was a legitimate target, but Tehran denied any links to last week’s incident.

Rubio is also visiting Greece to lead the US delegation for the sixth US-Greece Strategic Dialogue, focusing on defence cooperation and regional and energy security, and will wrap up his tour in Lisbon, where he will discuss defence, economic and technology cooperation.

Karoline Leavitt, the tenacious former Trump White House press secretary, is joining Fox News as a contributor.

The network announced Monday that Leavitt, 29, known for her rapid-fire defense of Trump’s policies in the White House briefing room, will be delivering commentary and analysis across Fox News programs starting Nov. 1.

Leavitt joins a long line of former White House secretaries who have made the jump to TV news punditry. Her predecessor Kayleigh McEnany is a co-host on the daytime Fox News chat show “Outnumbered” and hosts her own Saturday program.

Jen Psaki, landed her own program on MS NOW in 2023 after two years behind the briefing room lectern for President Biden.

Leavitt joins Fox News at a time when President Donald Trump has been irritable over negative press coverage as his favorability ratings with the public are at an all-time low. He briefly banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House until a federal judge stepped in.

Trump has complained about Fox News coverage as well, although the opinion hosts on the conservative-leaning network have continued to defend him. Leavitt will likely give the president another robust advocate on the channel he often watches.

Trump has hired Fox News personalities for his cabinet as well, naming former weekend host Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary and Jeanine Pirro, a one-time co-host of “The Five,” as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

“Karoline’s first hand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail gives her a distinct understanding of today’s political landscape,” Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

Leavitt served in Trump’s second administration from Jan. 2025 until Aug. 2026. She was the youngest person in American history to hold the White House press secretary position. She departed her role after returning from maternity leave, saying she would continue to promote the Republican party and the issues important to Trump’s MAGA followers.

Prior to joining the White House, Leavitt served as national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. She ran for Congress in her home state of New Hampshire in 2022 and served as communications director for then-House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

Leavitt also served as an assistant White House press secretary during Trump’s first term.

In her time as press secretary, Leavitt created a “new media” briefing room seat, often filled by conservative commentators and pro-Trump social media influencers.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has purchased three immigrant detention facilities in Adelanto for $950 million, according to the private prison corporation that sold them.

The sale by the GEO Group, a Florida-based government contractor, follows an initial $1.5-billion sale over the summer of two other California detention facilities by GEO’s competitor, CoreCivic of Tennessee.

The facilities owned by GEO Group include the 1,280-bed Adelanto West ICE Processing Center, the 660-bed Adelanto East ICE Processing Center and 704-bed Desert View Annex.

In total, the federal government has now spent nearly $3.2 billion on detention facility purchases, the majority of them in California. CoreCivic sold off two other facilities, in Minnesota and Kansas, in August.

The sales were made possible by an infusion last year of $45 billion for immigration detention from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

In its announcement, GEO Group sad it will continue managing daily operations at the facilities under the company’s existing contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is effective through Dec. 19, 2034.

The company said it is engaged in an “active process” with Homeland Security for the potential sale of multiple other facilities. Those sales hinge on GEO Group’s ability to continue managing those facilities under long-term contracts, the company wrote.

“We are pleased with the completion of these important asset sales to the U.S. federal government, and we look forward to continuing to provide high-quality secure support services under our existing long-term contracts with ICE,” George C. Zoley, the company’s CEO, wrote in a news release.

“We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to assist the federal government in meeting its immigration enforcement priorities,” Zoley added.

During a shareholder call in August, Zoley said ICE was contemplating buying more than 10 facilities, and that number “could continue to grow.”

“We believe we have two types of assets: the buildings and the businesses of providing support services,” he said on the call. “We are pursuing a potential sale of the buildings, but we want to retain the business. We consider ourselves primarily a support services operator, and will place particular importance on our ability to continue our support services at any facility sold to ICE.”

GEO Group said it anticipates receiving $705 million in proceeds from the sales, after taxes and transaction fees. The company wrote that net proceeds will reduce the company’s debt and facilitate the repurchase of company shares.

This story will be updated.

CHICAGO — Dennis Hastert, the nation’s longest-serving Republican House speaker, who helped turn much of President George W. Bush’s agenda into law before his own political legacy was forever fouled by allegations that he molested high school athletes when he was a wrestling coach, died over the weekend, a coroner said Monday. He was 84.

Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 until 2007, died of natural causes at his home, according to Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell.

When he was sentenced in 2016 to more than a year behind bars, the former history teacher became one of the highest-ranking American politicians ever ordered to prison.

In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known Illinois lawmaker with a reputation for congeniality that had helped him ascend the ranks of congressional leaders. When Newt Gingrich lost support because of ethics violations and the GOP’s poor showing in an election, Republicans elected Hastert to succeed him. In his first weeks on the job, he presided over the House while the Senate conducted Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.

After the GOP reclaimed the White House, Hastert took much of what Bush proposed and steered it to passage, including massive tax cuts and a measure that amounted to a huge expansion of prescription drug benefits — the biggest change in Medicare in decades.

His legacy was suddenly thrown into doubt in 2015, when he was accused of evading banking regulations as part of a plan to pay hush money to conceal unspecified “prior misconduct.” Nearly a year later, prosecutors filed papers that described what media reports had suggested for months: Hastert’s misconduct involved the sexual abuse of teenage boys on his wrestling team in the small town of Yorkville, west of Chicago.

During a 16-year coaching career, he led his team to a state championship and was named national coach of the year in 1976. But behind the accolades, prosecutors said, Hastert sexually abused at least four team members from 1965 to 1981.

The person Hastert was paying, identified in court papers only as Individual A, said the abuse occurred in a motel room when he was 14 on the way home from wrestling camp. Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after saying he would give them massages. Two wrestlers said Hastert performed sex acts on them.

Prosecutors also described a recliner where Hastert often sat in the locker room with a direct view of the stalls where the boys showered.

Hastert agreed to plead guilty to evading banking laws. In all, he paid more than $1.7 million out of $3.5 million that he had promised to Individual A, sometimes in lump sums of $100,000 cash.

At the sentencing hearing where he received 15 months behind bars, the visibly angry judge called Hastert a “serial child molester.” A former wrestler struggled with his emotions as he told the court about his “dark secret” from adolescence.

In his own statement, Hastert said he was “deeply ashamed” and admitted that he “mistreated” some of his athletes. But he never referred directly to sexual abuse.

The public knew nothing about Hastert’s past when Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Hastert confronted Gingrich about dissatisfaction in the GOP ranks, saying it was unlikely Gingrich could hold his post, Hastert wrote in “Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics.”

“Well, I’ll make them support me,” he quoted Gingrich saying of the GOP rebels. Told that was unlikely, Gingrich asked Hastert what to do.

“Do what you have to do,” he replied. The next day, Gingrich stepped down as speaker and left the House.

Hastert’s path to the speaker’s office was cleared when Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, who was considered a lock to replace Gingrich as speaker, resigned after acknowledging several extramarital affairs.

In January 1999, Hastert broke with tradition by delivering his acceptance speech from the House floor and by allowing Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, to briefly preside over the day’s proceedings.

“Solutions to problems cannot be found in a pool of bitterness,” Hastert said in his speech. “They can be found in an environment in which we trust one another’s word, where we generate heat and passion, but where we recognize that each member is equally important to our overall mission of improving the life of the American people.”

Hastert was aware of the personal pitfalls of holding the powerful position.

“You know, in this business, especially in a job like this, you can get your head someplace where it shouldn’t be,” Hastert said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “But you come back home, and you’re home. You’re back where you’ve always been, and your feet are back on the ground.”

He was generally viewed as a friendly, even-tempered lawmaker. His wrestling experience followed him to Washington, with GOP colleagues often calling him “coach.”

Hastert said he lacked the appetite for higher office.

As the recount of the 2000 presidential election dragged on, Hastert’s aides briefed him on the possibility that he might become acting president in the event of an Electoral College deadlock.

“I really didn’t want to be president, temporary or otherwise,” he wrote in his book. But he decided that he would not pass the office to the constitutional officer next in line if an Electoral College deadlock extended beyond Inauguration Day. In the end, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling ended the recount, and Bush moved into the White House.

Hastert’s journey to Congress from his boyhood farm appeared to be the result of fate and luck.

In 1980, he finished third in an Illinois House primary. But the incumbent became fatally ill, and GOP leaders chose Hastert to take his place on the November ballot, where he won in a traditional GOP stronghold.

Hastert became a congressional candidate in 1986, when local Republican leaders put him on the primary ballot, replacing freshman Rep. John Grotberg, who was battling cancer. Hastert went on to beat the Democrat with 52 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory in a congressional race.

In Washington, Hastert served quietly in House leadership, working closely with Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay after Republicans took control in 1995. Several years later, DeLay was the force driving Clinton’s impeachment and was simply too toxic to seek the speaker’s chair.

Hastert’s tenure was marked by a shift of power from committee chairmen to GOP leaders, fealty to the Bush administration and an explosion of congressional pet projects known as earmarks. Democrats fumed that he weakened the ethics process that ensnared DeLay, who left Congress under a cloud of criminal charges in 2006.

Hastert became wealthy largely through a complex web of transactions that coincided with one of his own highway earmarks increasing the value of land he had purchased in his district.

He was forced to step down as speaker in 2007, when Democrats gained control of the House, and he resigned his seat later that year. In 2008, he joined the Washington lobbying firm of Dickstein Shapiro as a senior adviser, specializing in government law and strategy.

Born in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wheaton College in 1964 and a master’s in education from Northern Illinois University in 1967.

In 2007, Wheaton named its newly created public policy center the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy. After Hastert’s indictment, the school removed his name in 2015. Other organizations abandoned associations with Hastert, and his portrait was removed from a hallway outside the House chamber.

Hastert lived his entire life in Chicago’s suburbs, primarily in the Yorkville area. While growing up, he helped his father with the family feed business.

Survivors include his wife, Jean, and two adult sons.

Tarm and McCann write for the Associated Press. Tarm and McCann are former Associated Press reporters.

The United Kingdom’s Green Party has voted to define Zionism as a form of racism, drawing condemnation from the Israeli government.

In a binding vote held at the party’s conference over the weekend, members voted to usher in the new definition as well as a series of other strongly pro-Palestine policies.

However, just as the resolution has drawn international criticism, it has also proved internally controversial with four of the party’s five members in parliament opposing it.

Israel on Monday banned party leader Zack Polanski from the country just a day before the politician faces a by-election as he runs in the London constituency that former Prime Minister Keir Starmer represented.

Zionism emerged as a political ideology in the late 19th century. It called for the creation of a Jewish homeland at a time of rising anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews in Europe. Theodore Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist considered the father of political Zionism, originally proposed an independent and colonial Jewish state in either Palestine or Argentina.

Here’s what we know about what the Greens have said:

What is the resolution?

The Greens endorsed the motion to equate Zionism with racism by a vote of 1,022 to 813.

In addition, the party restated its “commitment to Palestinian liberation” and called for the “establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine”.

The party also recommitted to its support of Palestinians’ right of return as well as to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.

“The real, material, manifestation of Zionism has been the historic and ongoing dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and destruction of Palestinians,” a Green Party statement said.

A  significant number of party members, including four of its five MPs, were against parts of the resolution, exposing divisions within the party.

Codeputy leader Rachel Millward said in a post on X that while the party is committed to “stop the genocide”, the term Zionism means “different things to different people, … so I personally do not think the policy helps us do the work we all want to”.

Meanwhile, Polanski, who is Jewish and was away campaigning during the vote, told journalists afterwards that if Zionism equates to the displacement of Palestinians, “that is clearly racist.”

Polanski said he, however, did not support the reference to a single Palestinian state and external entities should not decide what a future state would look like.

How has Israel responded?

Israel has accused the party of legitimising “terrorism”, and senior officials equated it to anti-Semitism.

“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote on social media.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said it would “deliberately endanger Jews and Israelis everywhere”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the party was “racist”.

The Green Party has rejected equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and reiterated its stance against “any form of discrimination or harassment”.

“We know there is no conflict between supporting the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Jewish people,” Polanski and other senior party members said in a statement on Sunday.

Has Zionism been equated to racism before?

Yes. In 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that “determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

The vote was sponsored by the Soviet bloc and the Arab League. It passed after 72 countries, largely from the Middle East and Africa, voted for it. Israel and 34 other countries – chiefly from the West – were against it. Thirty-two other countries abstained.

Just a year before, at the 1974 General Assembly, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had given his “olive branch” speech at the General Assembly.

About the same time, African countries opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa, which was increasingly allying with Israel, had resolved separately that the Israeli government was “racist” and both had an “imperialist origin.”

Also, in 1975, at the first international women’s conference, held in Mexico City, attendees decided there would be no international peace outside the “elimination of foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid” and all other forms of “racial discrimination”.

However, the General Assembly vote proved controversial. Chaim Herzog, then-Israeli ambassador to the UN and later president, told the assembly in a speech that it was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance” and proceeded to rip up copies of the resolution in front of the audience.

The US too accused the UN of making “anti-Semitism international law”.

In December 1991, the US, under President George HW Bush, stepped up a campaign to revoke the resolution with Bush declaring at the UN that equating Zionism with racism “is to reject Israel itself” and to “challenge its right to exist”.

Israel also insisted it would not participate in the Madrid Peace Process to continue negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders if the resolution was not cancelled.

After much pressure from the US, an overwhelming majority of countries voted for its revocation – 111 to 25, including European and African countries.

Who else equates Zionism with racism?

Jewish Voice for Peace, the American anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian advocacy group, has also named Zionism as a movement that creates a “racist hierarchy with European Jews at the top”.

In a February statement, the group reiterated its stance against what it called the “colonial ideology” of Zionism’s founders.

Similarly, in the United Kingdom, an employment tribunal in 2024 backed anti-Zionist activist and professor David Miller, who was earlier sacked from his post at the University of Bristol in 2021 for his views that the movement was “inherently racist”.

SACRAMENTO —  Look, Xavier Becerra could cruise to a South Pacific island and bask on the beach until election day and Californians would still choose him as their next governor.

So, last week’s televised CNN debate between Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton really had no election significance, although it was important for the Democratic frontrunner in other ways.

Who won the debate? Becerra, because he came across as calm, collected and capable of governing this troubled state — certainly very few voters’ ideal candidate, but the only real choice for most Californians.

There’s simply no way Becerra can lose on Nov. 3 because his only opponent is a Republican. Californians will not elect a Republican governor in this polarized era, particularly one endorsed by the reviled President Trump.

Moreover, Hilton’s only previous political experience was as an advisor to a British prime minister and his sole claim to U.S. notoriety was as a Fox News TV host–not exactly resume boosters in California.

Becerra — with public office experience spanning more than three decades — held a growing 25-point lead in a recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

He’s a shoo-in simply because he has a “D” beside his name in this state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1 and despise the GOP president.

Californians haven’t elected a Republican to statewide office in 20 years — and that’s Hilton’s main pitch to voters.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result,” the GOP candidate asserted during the debate, as he does several times a day.

Turning to Becerra, Hilton said:

“You’re the candidate who is supported by the machine in Sacramento — the unions, big business, all these people that for 16 years have given us the highest cost of living in the country, made it impossible to build anything, given us the highest unemployment rate, the highest poverty rate….

“And that’s why we’ve got to try something different this time instead of voting for more of the same.”

OK, fair point. But try what exactly? That’s where Hilton stalls or veers erratically.

He’d build “10 new cities.” Build them where exactly? He doesn’t say.

He definitely doesn’t want to construct new apartment buildings in the suburbs “when we have got so much space that we could be building on in California.”

Like out in Southern California deserts or Central Valley farm fields — requiring two-hour commutes to urban jobs?

And where does the water come from for these 10 new cities as the West scrambles for what’s left of diminishing supplies? But unfortunately there was no discussion of that during the debate.

One debate exchange that caught my attention was about vaccines. Hilton seemed to be carrying the torch for whacko anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Becerra’s successor as U.S. health secretary in the Trump administration.

Debate co-moderator Dana Bash recalled what Hilton said previously about children’s vaccinations: “The government should have nothing to do with these fundamental and vital decisions.” And she asked whether he’d push to eliminate California’s vaccine requirements.

“No,” Hilton replied. “I’m pro vaccine.” But then he seemed to wander all over the stage looking to have it both ways.

It’s a “very, very emotional issue for a lot of parents,” he said, adding there’s “data around the world” showing that where vaccine “mandates are lower… you actually have higher [vaccination] compliance, where parents don’t feel that they’re being bullied into doing something that they don’t want to do. And that’s what I want to see here.”

But he ultimately said,“I’d follow the law.”

In California, the law requires all children without medical exemptions to be vaccinated for several diseases — including polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, hepatitis B and whooping cough — before they’re admitted to school.

That’s a blessing. When I grew up, practically every kid at some point was bedridden with one or more of those dangerous ailments. Then some saviors invented vaccines.

“We had nearly eradicated measles,” Becerra said, responding to Hilton. “When I left HHS, you rarely heard of a case of measles…. Today, children are dying of measles. Today, the spread of measles has reached a proportion we haven’t seen since the 1960s.

“That’s what happens when vaccine deniers take over.”

Becerra achieved all he needed to in the debate. He didn’t screw up. He kept cool and actually was fairly quick on his feet in replying to Hilton’s attacks, while planting a MAGA hat firmly on the Republican’s head.

He missed an opportunity to accomplish more, however — like making Californians feel really good about voting for him, rather than merely because he’s the only Democrat left standing in the contest to replace the termed out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Voters might like to hear what Becerra’s vision is — if he has one — for the California he wants to build.

What does he have in mind besides just defending California against Trump? That’s a given. How’s he going to lower our living costs? Upgrade public education? Prevent wildfires? Details, not platitudes.

Rather than relaxing on his lead, Becerra should be constantly moving around the state, introducing himself to Californians and — more importantly — listening to their problems and ideas. To his credit, he’s doing that this week.

“The debate was boring and uneventful, but Becerra won it,” says Republican consultant Rob Stutzman. “He is perfectly vanilla and that makes it really hard to pin him down in an attack.”

“We got the genuine Xavier Becerra. That’s exactly who he is,” says veteran Democratic strategist Garry Sragow, a longtime political ally. “Thoughtful, committed and very decent, but does not go very high on the charisma meter.”

In California right now, a candidate’s charisma rates much lower than a simple “D.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Voter ID proponents accuse California Democrats of lying about Trump’s support for Prop. 39
Eyes of the World: Will or won’t they? Newsom and Harris weigh 2028 contest — and possible collision
The L.A. Times Special: Voter guide to the 2026 California general election

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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WASHINGTON — Late September in the Oval Office, President Trump declared, “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We’re gonna win that war very soon.”

It wasn’t the first time he’s described the hostilities as “war.”

On Feb. 28, the day U.S. and Israeli began bombarding Iran, he warned that “the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”

But throughout seven months of back-and-forth strikes with Iran, Trump administration officials, and sometimes Trump himself, have performed verbal acrobatics to avoid the “W” word.

President Trump, addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22, used the word “war” one time when referring to hostilities with Iran.

(Pool / Getty Images)

Senior administration officials loosely tossed around “war” during the first stages of conflict, but with polls showing the war in unpopular and congressional support waning, “war” and even “Operation Epic Fury” have become taboo among members of the Trump administration.

Trump has called attacks on Iran a “military operation,” “military decimation,” “excursion” and “skirmish.”

At a White House press briefing last month, Vice President JD Vance attempted to clear the air when a reporter asked about a potential end to what she called a “war in Iran.”

“I wouldn’t call it a war right now,” Vance said. “Major combat operations lasted for about six weeks.”

Vice President JD Vance, addressing reporters at the White House on Sept. 3, said, “I wouldn’t call it a war right now” when asked about the conflict with Iran.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tread carefully in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee in July, repeatedly referring to a “conflict” in Iran that needed additional funding to continue.

On May 5, during the first of two delicate ceasefires with Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an end to the objectives laid out in Operation Epic Fury and the beginning of “Project Freedom” — an effort to escort merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

In April, Trump announced the blockade of Iranian ports. When asked about whether the blockade constituted an act of war, Rubio replied, “That’s not an act of war, that’s a defensive measure. It’s a counter to what they have decided to do.”

Senior Trump officials have maintained that the conflict can no longer be viewed as war because the intensity of strikes between the two countries has been reduced.

The “end” of Operation Epic Fury, the name Trump used when he announced hostilities on Feb. 28, was declared on May 5 — 60 days after the fighting began.

The timing was no coincidence. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a president must cease all hostilities abroad after 60 days if there is no congressional declaration of war.

Legal and political considerations

Under the Constitution, only Congress declares war, but past presidents have routinely circumvented this rule by exercising their authority to direct the military and initiate strikes on targeted nations.

Nearly every modern president, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Trump, has used this justification to undertake military action without the declaratory approval of Congress.

Congress can also choose to approve an Authorization for Use of Military Force, which grants the president legal authority to conduct military operations overseas.

Unless Congress sets a time limit on the authorization, authority to use the legal justification to launch military strikes can theoretically span multiple administrations.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former constitutional law professor at American University, said that presidents of both parties have avoided the term “war” when attempting to evade congressional approval of hostile action abroad.

“Trump has followed some of his predecessors in playing word games with the war power,” Raskin said. “What makes his case so extreme is that he proudly described it as a war and depicted it in glorified military terms.”

In March, seven days into the fighting, Trump said, “The war itself is going unbelievably. It’s as good as it can be.”

Congress has not officially declared war since World War II. The Vietnam War, the invasion of Afghanistan and both wars in Iraq were all approved by Congress under the umbrella of an Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

This year Congress has not approved such an authorization for the action with Iran. Fourteen Senate votes for a War Powers Resolution to curb Trump’s war efforts have failed in the chamber so far.

According to a CNN/SSRS poll last month, only 26% of Americans approve of the Trump administration’s handling of the Iran war.

Raskin said that he believes Trump’s terminology has shifted with the public mood, adding that he hasn’t heard any of his Republican colleagues “play along with the semantic games.”

“When things have turned south in the fortunes of this war, he has tried to pretend it’s something else,” Raskin said. “I think that has just further enraged the population.”

Past handling of congressional war power

The administration’s declaration that Operation Epic Fury had concluded echoed May 2003, when then-President George W. Bush stood in front of a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, approximately six weeks after Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush said. “And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

President George W. Bush speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast on May 1, 2003.

(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Despite the victory lap, combat operations in Iraq and across the Middle East continued through the aughts. The Iraq war wouldn’t officially end until 2011, with President Obama’s signature.

Obama himself relied heavily on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force — passed by Congress under Bush — in his military campaign against Islamic State during his presidency.

According to Council on Foreign Relations data, Obama launched 542 drone strikes and killed 3,797 people in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia without renewed approval from Congress.

A case more analogous to Trump’s comes in former President Truman’s unilateral decision to deploy U.S. troops to Korea in 1950. The Truman administration forwent congressional approval altogether and used United Nations Security Council resolutions to justify the intervention against Communist forces in the north, according to a White House news release from the time.

There were many critics of this exercise of executive war powers, most notably, Ohio Republican Sen. Robert A. Taft, who argued that Truman had usurped congressional war powers.

However, that Congress still provided monetary support, granting Truman military funds and extensions to the draft to raise additional troops for the Korean War effort. According to historical Gallup polls, 78% of Americans in 1950 approved of U.S. intervention in Korea.

Trump sticking with ‘war’

While Vance and other administration officials continue to avoid “war,” it does slip out now and then. Trump has been, perhaps, the most discordant messenger of the administration when discussing Iran.

After referring to the “war” on social media and public interviews more than a dozen times, Trump backed Vance’s comments about the Iran war no longer being active as he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office in September. He refuses to call the conflict a “war,” Trump said, because “you are supposed to get approval.”

“I call it a military conflict, because it’s small potatoes for us,” Trump said.

Even Fox News, one of President Trump’s preferred media outlets, isn’t exempt from his go-to term for any woman he dislikes.

“She can be so nasty,” was how Trump recently described the conservative-leaning network’s senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.

Never one to hold back, the president has also had harsh words for her spouse, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a moderate Republican congressman. “Her husband votes against me all the time,” Trump once said. “Can you imagine?”

The double-barreled attacks don’t bother Heinrich, who as president of the White House Correspondents Assn. is leading the fight against Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico. When Trump delivered his insult at the WHCA’s dinner in July, Heinrich just shrugged and smiled.

“You don’t get into journalism to be well liked by the subject that you’re covering,” Heinrich said in a recent phone interview. “As long as I’m doing my job, which is to get the story and tell it fairly and fully, the rest of it is not really my business to care about. It’s probably not the last time I’ll upset him. The president still takes my calls.”

Heinrich’s durability is being put to the test as she delivers the public and private messaging on the latest battle with the White House over press freedom. Trump banned the three outlets from the White House grounds due to what he believes is their constant negative coverage.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to block the move, calling it viewpoint discrimination and a violation of the outlets’ 1st Amendment rights. But the administration continues to prevent CNN from serving in
the press pool that follows the president at all times. More court hearings are ahead.

Over the last 10 days, Heinrich has issued public statements condemning the ban, monitored the legal proceedings and held back channel conversations with the White House in an effort to get Trump’s decision reversed. It’s a second job on top of covering the president and co-hosting a weekend program “The Sunday Briefing.”

Executives and journalists say privately that it’s helpful to have someone from a Trump-friendly outlet lead the organization to restore the press credentials of outlets the president views as hostile. The WHCA exists to maintain and facilitate access to the White House for its 900 members across 250 news organizations.

But for Heinrich, it’s logical that 1st Amendment arguments transcend any political leanings of any media outlet. If Trump’s ban stands, conservative news organizations could find themselves facing similar restrictions the next time a Democrat is in the Oval Office.

“When you empower the president to select who is allowed to ask them questions, it shrinks the room,” Heinrich said. “It shrinks the perspective and it hands over that same authority to the next administration, who will surround themselves with only voices that approve of or are supportive or friendly toward what they’re doing.”

Eugene Daniels, a co-host at the progressive-leaning MS NOW and a former White House Correspondents Assn. president, said the organization’s members from Fox News and the further right-leaning Newsmax were always supportive of 1st Amendment and press access issues during his tenure.

“A lot of our news organizations understand intrinsically that at some point the shoe could be on the other foot,” Daniels said. “The solidarity matters.”

Daniels has also known Heinrich since the two worked together years ago at a TV station in Colorado Springs, Colo., and believes she is well-equipped to push the WHCA’s cause.

“She’s clear eyed about the role of White House correspondents in covering any president,” he said. “She is very tough and always has been since we’ve met. She stands 10 toes down when it comes to what’s right.”

Heinrich’s respect for journalistic principles has even extended to her personal life. When Fitzpatrick first asked her out on a date five years ago, he had to wait several weeks for an answer. Heinrich checked with her Fox News bosses to see if dating an elected official was a conflict even though she was no longer assigned to covering congress.

“He was very patient,” Heinrich said. The couple was married at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in June.

Heinrich is among the correspondents at Fox News — which this week will mark 30 years on the air — whose reporting doesn’t adhere to the leanings of its opinion hosts and commentators.

In 2020, Heinrich reported on Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the election he lost to Joe Biden, while commentators, hosts and guests on the network continued to raise doubts about the results. Her reporting angered hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, who were concerned that her work was alienating viewers loyal to the president.

Carlson called on Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott to fire Heinrich in a text that came to light three years later when Dominion Voting System filed its defamation suit against the network. Dominion claimed Fox News deliberately aired false statements about the company’s role in the 2020 election, settling the suit for $787 million.

But Heinrich said she was unaware of the conversations before they were revealed in a legal brief in February 2023. (Carlson was fired from Fox News two months later.) She has been promoted twice since 2020.

“My bosses never interfered with my reporting,” she said.

Heinrich, 37, studied international affairs at George Washington University and wanted to pursue a career in the State Department before internships at MSNBC and WRC-TV in Washington led her to journalism. After working at several local TV stations she became a Fox News correspondent in New York in 2018. She covered Congress and the 2020 presidential campaign before moving to the White House beat in 2021.

Heinrich was raised in New England in what she describes as a politically diverse family. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she split her time between a conservative father in New Hampshire, a politically moderate mother in Maine and a Bernie Sanders-supporting stepfather from Vermont. She believes her upbringing was excellent training for her profession.

“It was ‘Live Free or Die’ and socialism all under two roofs but one family,” she said. “We have developed a really keen ability to listen. I think that’s one of the most important parts of journalism, is hearing and understanding someone’s perspective enough that you can describe it to someone else in a way that is fair and complete.”

Once Heinrich gets past the current conflict with the White House, she’ll have to plan the association’s annual dinner. (The event was cut short and rescheduled this year after a gunman attempted to enter the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.)

Heinrich said even with the president’s open hostility toward the press, he will be welcomed to the event in 2027.

“We have invited the president every single year for the last 115 years and that’s not going to change just because of President Trump,” Heinrich said. “We uphold laws, norms, and traditions around here and we intend to keep it that way.”

Brazil’s closely watched presidential election is heading to a second round between leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, prolonging a deeply polarised race with major implications for the country and the wider region.

Brazil’s electoral court confirmed on Sunday that the two candidates will advance to a run-off on October 25 after neither won the majority needed to secure the presidency outright, with Bolsonaro leading at 55.8 million votes to Lula’s almost 53.2 million.

Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth, non-consecutive term after a political career spanning nearly five decades.

Bolsonaro, 45, is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and is trying to return his father’s right-wing movement to power, even as the former president serves a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election.

The election comes at a pivotal time for Latin America’s largest economy. Brazilians are grappling with concerns over crime and the cost of living, while the country faces an increasingly tense relationship with the United States. The vote is also being closely watched across a region that has shifted sharply to the right in a series of recent elections.

While a second round was widely expected, the first-round result did not play out quite as pollsters had predicted.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the election so far.

Brazil is heading for another Lula-Bolsonaro run-off

With nearly 99 percent of votes reported, Bolsonaro had about 47 percent of valid votes, compared with 44.9 percent for Lula. Neither reached the 50 percent threshold needed to win in the first round.

That sets up another Lula-Bolsonaro showdown, four years after Lula narrowly defeated former President Jair Bolsonaro. This time, he will face the former president’s eldest son.

The race could be extremely close, as polling ahead of Sunday’s vote suggested Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro were roughly tied in a potential run-off.

That puts voters who backed one of the other 10 candidates in the first round at the centre of the fight for the presidency over the next three weeks.

Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos, who together received about 5.3 million votes, have previously said they will not endorse either candidate in the run-off.

Flavio Bolsonaro did better than polls suggested

Most polls leading up to election day predicted the race would be pushed into the second round, but had Lula finishing the first round ahead of Bolsonaro.

Instead, Bolsonaro emerged with a lead of two percentage points, raising questions about why the final polls underestimated his support.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro said the results showed that Brazilians want change.

Analysts told the Reuters news agency that Bolsonaro may have benefitted from “protest votes” from people who may have preferred another candidate but saw defeating Lula as the priority. Many had been expected to shift their support to Bolsonaro only in a second round, meaning this could have consequences for his support in three weeks.

“The protest vote foreshadows what is to come in the run-off,” political analyst Rafael Favetti told Reuters. “While this should benefit Flavio Bolsonaro now, his growth potential in the second round drops precisely because that support has already been front-loaded.”

After the results came in, Lula said the votes were “unexpected” but that he would come back stronger in the run-off.

“I admit, I was convinced I would win in the first round. The game is about to start. We are in extra time. In extra time, we will win over the Brazilian people,” the 80-year-old said.

The right had a strong night in Congress, too

Bolsonaro’s surprising performance in the first round was part of a broader show of strength for Brazil’s right.

Right-wing parties, led by Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL), were performing strongly in both houses of Congress, with the PL on track to emerge as the largest force in the Chamber of Deputies and making gains in the Senate.

This included victories for other members of the Bolsonaro family, including former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, Flavio’s stepmother, who won a Senate seat in the Federal District, her first elected office.

His brother, Carlos Bolsonaro, was elected to the Senate in Santa Catarina.

The results show that the political movement built around former President Jair Bolsonaro – known as “bolsonarista” – remains a powerful electoral force, even with the former president barred from running himself.

“The fact that far-right candidates for the legislature have exceeded all expectations suggests a deeper popular grounding for the bolsonarista project than many expected,” Andre Pagliarini, an assistant professor of history and international studies at Louisiana State University and author of a book on Lula, told Al Jazeera.

“Millions of Brazilians right now evidently feel the right best reflects their values and vision for the future,” he added.

The congressional results matter beyond election night, too. Both houses were already dominated by conservative lawmakers, and a stronger right-wing presence could make it even harder for Lula to push through his agenda if he wins another term.

A Bolsonaro victory, meanwhile, could give him more room to pursue his own priorities, including his pledge to seek an amnesty for his father.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future looks bleak for many students

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

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

His friends feel the same way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Students say political leaders are falling short

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ganun and Riccardi write for the Associated Press.

Government warns of crackdown as supporters of jailed former prime set off from northwest Pakistan towards Islamabad.

Supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan have set off on a protest march from the country’s northwest after talks with the government to call off the demonstration failed.

More than 5,000 were reported to have begun the rally on Sunday. The march, planned by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was originally scheduled for September 27 but was postponed until October 4 to allow talks between the government and the PTI leadership to take place.

However, two rounds of talks over the weekend failed to break the deadlock, and the PTI decided to carry out its plan, which is the latest attempt to pressure the government into releasing Khan, the country’s most popular political figure according to polls, who has been behind bars since August 2023 following a series of convictions that his party calls politically motivated.

All but one of the convictions against the former PM have since been suspended or overturned on appeal.

Videos posted on the PTI’s official social media showed supporters joining the march in different areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, which is ruled by the party, and setting off in convoys.

Sohail Afridi, the region’s chief minister, had earlier posted on social media that the demonstration in support of Khan would go ahead.

He said the march will make its way to Khairabad, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Islamabad, by Thursday, where the plan for the “next phase” will be announced.

Government warns protesters

The government has been preparing for weeks for the arrival of PTI demonstrators in Islamabad. It has erected barriers using shipping containers to block main access routes to the capital.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi confirmed earlier on Sunday that the talks between the two sides had failed.  He accused Afridi of “sabotaging” the negotiations, and added that the government would not allow the PTI to “create a disturbance”.

He also cited an Islamabad High Court order from September 14, ruling that no political party or its leadership has the “lawful right to occupy public roads, highways, interchanges, toll plazas and buildings in Islamabad”.

“If they violate the orders, whether they are workers or politicians, whether they are protesting within KP or outside KP, we will pursue them one by one. This time, we want to ensure that these repeated episodes of creating disturbance in Islamabad come to an end,” Naqvi said.

Concerns about the 73-year-old Khan’s health, in particular the condition of his right eye that has required months of specialist treatment, have prompted the PTI’s campaign for his release.

The party has also called for the release of Khan’s three sisters, whose arrests last month further heightened tensions.

James Dorsey, a fellow at the National University of Singapore, said Khan was “essentially a populist leader” with “a genuine popular movement that had broad popular support”.

That is behind the “determination by the government to prevent [the protesters] from entering Islamabad,” he told the AFP news agency.

Given Pakistan’s security concerns, particularly following its unresolved February 2026 conflict with Afghanistan, Islamabad wants to avoid escalation in the face of the protests, he added.

“It’s a problem for the government, but I don’t think it’s an existential threat,” he said.