Trump

An Ohio panel adopted new U.S. House districts on Friday that could boost the GOP’s chances of winning two additional seats in next year’s elections and aid President Trump’s efforts to hold on to a slim congressional majority.

The action by the Ohio Redistricting Commission came as Virginia’s Democratic-led General Assembly advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that could pave the way for redistricting in the state ahead of the 2026 congressional elections. That measure still needs another round of legislative approval early next year before it can go to voters.

Trump has been urging Republican-led states to reshape their U.S. House districts in an attempt to win more seats. But unlike in other states, Ohio’s redistricting was required by the state constitution because the current districts were adopted after the 2020 census without bipartisan support.

Ohio joins Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers already have revised their congressional districts.

Democrats have been pushing back. California voters are deciding Tuesday on a redistricting plan passed by the Democratic-led Legislature.

The political parties are in an intense battle, because Democrats need to gain just three seats in next year’s election to win control of the House and gain the power to impede Trump’s agenda.

In a rare bit of bipartisanship, Ohio’s new map won support from all five Republicans and both Democrats on the redistricting panel. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee praised the Ohio Democrats “for negotiating to prevent an even more egregious gerrymander” benefiting Republicans.

Republicans already hold 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats. The new map could boost their chances in already competitive districts currently held by Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman in Cincinnati and Marcy Kaptur near Toledo. Kaptur won a 22nd term last year by about 2,400 votes, or less than 1 percentage point, in a district carried by Trump. Landsman was reelected with more than 54% of the vote.

National Democrats said they expect to hold both targeted seats and compete to flip three other districts where Republicans have won by narrow margins.

Ohio residents criticize new map

Ohio’s commission had faced a Friday deadline to adopt a new map, or else the task would have fallen to the GOP-led Legislature, which could have crafted districts even more favorable to Republicans. But any redistricting bill passed by the Legislature could have been subject to an initiative petition campaign from opponents seeking to force a public referendum on the new map.

The uncertainty of that legislative process provided commissioners of both parties with some incentive for compromise.

But Ohio residents who testified to commissioners Friday denounced the new districts. Julia Cattaneo, who wore a shirt saying “gerrymandering is cheating,” said the new map is gerrymandered more for Republicans than the one it is replacing and is not the sort of compromise needed.

“Yes, you are compromising — your integrity, honor, duty and to represent Ohioans,” she said.

Added resident Scott Sibley: “This map is an affront to democracy, and you should all — every one of you — be ashamed.”

Republican state Auditor Keith Farber, a member of the commission, defended the map during a testy exchange with one opponent. Because many Democrats live in cities and many Republicans in rural areas, he said there was no way to draw a map creating eight Republican and seven Democratic districts — as some had urged — without splitting cities, counties and townships.

Virginia Democrats point at Trump to defend redistricting

Virginia is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans. Democratic lawmakers haven’t unveiled their planned new map, nor how many seats they are trying to gain, but said their moves are necessary to respond to the Trump-inspired gerrymandering in Republican-led states.

“Our voters are asking to have that voice. They’re asking that we protect democracy, that we not allow gerrymandering to happen throughout the country, and we sit back,” Democratic Sen. Barbara Favola said.

The proposed constitutional amendment would let lawmakers temporarily bypass a bipartisan commission and redraw congressional districts to their advantage. The Senate’s approval Friday followed House approval Wednesday.

The developments come as Virginia holds statewide elections Tuesday, where all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are on the ballot. Democrats would need to keep their slim majority in the lower chamber to advance the constitutional amendment again next year. It then would go to a statewide referendum.

Republican Sen. Mark Obenshain said Democrats were ignoring the will of voters who had overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan redistricting commission.

“Heaven forbid that we actually link arms and work together on something,” Obenshain said. “What the voters of Virginia said is, ‘We expect redistricting to be an issue that we work across the aisle on, that we link arms on.’”

But Democratic Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, who has long championed the bipartisan redistricting commission, noted the panel still would be in charge of redistricting after the 2030 census.

“We’re not trying to end the practice of fair maps,” he said. “We are asking the voters if, in this one limited case, they want to ensure that a constitutional-norm-busting president can’t break the entire national election by twisting the arms of a few state legislatures.”

Indiana and Kansas could be next

Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called a special session to begin Monday to redraw congressional districts, currently held by seven Republicans and two Democrats. But lawmakers don’t plan to begin work on that day. Although it’s unclear exactly when lawmakers will convene, state law gives the Legislature 40 days to complete a special session.

In Kansas, Republican lawmakers are trying to collect enough signatures from colleagues to call themselves into a special session on redistricting to begin Nov. 7. Senate President Ty Masterson says he has the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate, but House Republicans have at least a few holdouts. The petition drive is necessary because Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly isn’t likely to call a session to redraw the current map that has sent three Republicans and one Democrat to the House.

Lieb, Diaz and Scolforo write for the Associated Press. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Mo.; Scolforo from Harrisburg, Pa.; and Diaz from Richmond, Va. John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., and Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

President Trump’s favorite musical is, famously, “Les Misérables,” but few fans have been storming the barricades to get into the Kennedy Center this season.

The Washington Post reports that sales for the current season of music, dance and theater at the Washington, D.C., cultural institution have declined dramatically since the president’s inauguration and his subsequent takeover of the Kennedy Center’s leadership.

The Post cites data showing the Kennedy Center has sold only 57% of its tickets from September to mid October, many of which are believed to be comped giveaways. That contrasts with a 93% ticket sale rate through the same period last year.

The venues surveyed include the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater, with performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, touring Broadway musicals and dance troupes. Out of 143,000 possible seats for the current season, 53,000 have not yet sold. When fans have bought tickets, they’ve spent less than half as much money from September to the first half of October 2025 compared with the same time last year — the lowest total since 2018 other than the height of the 2020 pandemic.

After Trump’s election, he appointed Republican diplomat and former State Department spokesperson Richard Grenell to lead the Kennedy Center, whose board elected Trump as its president. The new leadership fired several longtime staffers, and prominent board members and leaders like Ben Folds left the organization.

““I couldn’t be a pawn in that,” Folds told The Times. “Was I supposed to call my homies like Sara Bareilles and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come play here?’”

Artists that do perform at the Kennedy Center have noted a change in the audience. Yasmin Williams, a singer-songwriter who performed in September after a contentious email exchange with Grennell, said that “During my Kennedy Center show on Thursday night, a group of Tr*mp supporters boo’d me when I mentioned Ric Grenell and seemed to be there to intimidate me,” yet “playing that Malcolm X video in that space and forcing this current administration to reckon with the damage they’ve caused, while also promoting joy and the power of music to the audience … this is why I do what I do.” (Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the Post that “This is an absolutely ridiculous claim.”)

Grennell, for his part, said on X that that “We are doing the big things that people want to see. We are seeing a huge change because people are recognizing that they want to be a part of something that is common-sense programming.” In August, Trump announced his picks for Kennedy Center honors, including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rockers KISS, singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor and comedian Michael Crawford.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s government on Friday criticized the U.S. refugee policy shift that gives priority to Afrikaners, the country’s white minority group of Dutch descent.

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a ceiling of 7,500 refugees to be admitted to the United States, a sharp decrease from the previous 125,000 spots and said Afrikaners would be given preference over other groups.

U.S. President Trump has claimed that there is a “genocide” against Afrikaners in South Africa and that they are facing persecution and discrimination because of the country’s redress policies and the levels of crime in the country.

It’s one of the contentious issues that has seen diplomatic relations between South Africa and U.S. hit an all-time low, with Trump suspending all financial aid to South Africa and setting one of the highest tariffs for the country’s exports to the U.S.

The South African government’s international relations department said Friday that the latest move was concerning as it “still appears to rest on a premise that is factually inaccurate.”

“The claim of a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa is widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” spokesman Chrispin Phiri said.

Phiri said that a program designed to facilitate the immigration and resettlement of Afrikaners as refugees was deeply flawed and disregarded the country’s constitutional processes.

“The limited uptake of this offer by South Africans is a telling indicator of this reality,” Phiri said.

The U.S. notice, which signifies a huge policy shift toward refugees, mentioned only Afrikaners as a specific group and said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 budget year “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

Trump’s asylum offer for Afrikaners has sparked divisive debate in South Africa, but has been largely rejected even by many in the Afrikaner community.

This week, a group of prominent Afrikaners including politicians, activists, writers and businesspeople penned an open letter rejecting the notion that Afrikaners needed to emigrate from South Africa.

“The idea that white South Africans deserve special asylum status because of their race undermines the very principles of the refugee program. Vulnerability — not race — should guide humanitarian policy,” they wrote in the widely publicized letter.

However, some Afrikaner groups continue to be very critical of the South African government’s handling of crime and redress policies even though they reject the “white genocide” claim.

An Afrikaner lobbyist group, Afriforum, on Thursday said that it doesn’t call the murder of white farmers a genocide, but raised concerns about white people’s safety in South Africa.

“This does not mean AfriForum rejects or scoffs at Trump’s refugee status offer — there will be Afrikaners that apply and they should have the option, especially those who have been victims of horrific farm attacks or the South African government’s many racially discriminatory policies,” AfriForum spokesman Ernst van Zyl said.

While it’s unclear how many white South Africans have applied for refugee status in the U.S., a group of 59 white South Africans were granted asylum and were received with much fanfare in May.

Magome writes for the Associated Press.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump declined to say Friday whether he plans to resume underground nuclear detonation tests, as he had seemed to suggest in a social media post this week that raised concerns the U.S. would begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades.

The president told reporters “You’ll find out very soon,” without elaborating when asked if he means to resume underground nuclear detonation tests.

Trump, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to Florida for a weekend stay, said, “We’re going to do some testing” and “Other countries do it. If they’re going to do it, we’re going to” but then refused to offer more details.

His comments on nuclear testing have drawn confusion inside and outside the government when the president seemed to suggest in a brief post that the U.S. would resume nuclear warhead tests on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, whose last known tests were in the 1990s. Some of Trump’s comments seemed to refer to testing missiles that would deliver a warhead, rather than the warhead itself. There has been no indication that the U.S. would start detonating warheads.

The U.S. military already regularly tests its missiles that are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, but it has not detonated the weapons since 1992. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. signed but did not ratify, has been observed since its adoption by all countries possessing nuclear weapons, North Korea being the only exception.

The Pentagon has not responded to questions. The Energy Department, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile, declined to comment Friday.

Trump’s post on nuclear tests came as Russia this week announced it had tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Russia responded to Trump’s post by underscoring that it did not test its nuclear weapons and has abided by a global ban on nuclear testing. The Kremlin warned though, that if the U.S. resumes testing its weapons, Russia will as well — an intensification that would restart Cold War-era tensions.

Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to lead the military command in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, struggled to interpret the president’s comments when he testified before senators during a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, telling them, “I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out of it.”

Price and Ceneta write for the Associated Press. Price reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON — Back from a week abroad, President Trump is calling on the Senate to scrap the filibuster and reopen the government after a monthlong shutdown, breaking with majority Republicans who have long opposed such a move.

Trump said in a post on his social media site Thursday that “THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER.”

Trump’s sudden decision to assert himself into the shutdown debate — bringing the highly charged demand to end the filibuster — is certain to set the Senate on edge. It could spur senators toward their own compromise or send the chamber spiraling toward a new sense of crisis.

Trump has long called for Republicans to get rid of the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections, dating all the way back to his first term in office. The rule gives Democrats a check on the 53-seat Republican majority and enough votes to keep the government closed while they demand an extension of health care subsidies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and most members of his Republican conference have strongly opposed changing the filibuster, arguing that it is vital to the institution of the Senate and has allowed them to halt Democratic policies when they are in the minority.

Thune has repeatedly said he is not considering changing the rules to end the shutdown, and his spokesman, Ryan Wrasse, said in a statement Friday that the leader’s “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged.”

Broad GOP support for filibuster

Even if Thune wanted to change the filibuster, he would not currently have the votes to do so.

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah posted on X Friday morning, responding to Trump’s comments and echoing the sentiments of many of his Senate Republican colleagues. “Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it.”

Debate has swirled around the legislative filibuster for years. Many Democrats pushed to eliminate it when they had full power in Washington, as the Republicans do now, four years ago. But they ultimately didn’t have the votes after enough Democratic senators opposed the move, predicting such an action would come back to haunt them.

Speaker Mike Johnson also defended the filibuster Friday, while conceding “it’s not my call.” He criticized Democrats for pushing to get rid of it when they had power.

“The safeguard in the Senate has always been the filibuster,” Johnson said, adding that Trump’s comments are “the president’s anger at the situation.”

Little progress on shutdown

Trump’s call comes as the two parties have made little progress toward resolving the shutdown standoff while he was away for a week in Asia. He said in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to his choice on his flight home and that one question that kept coming up during his trip was why “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government.

While quiet talks are underway, particularly among bipartisan senators, the shutdown is not expected to end before next week, as both the House and Senate are out of session. Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension to the health care subsidies while Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.

As the shutdown drags on, from coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of the shuttered federal government is hitting home: Alaskans are stockpiling moose, caribou and fish for winter, even before SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Mainers are filling up their home-heating oil tanks, but waiting on the federal subsidies that are nowhere in sight.

Flights are being delayed with holiday travel around the corner. Workers are going without paychecks. And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing health care insurance costs that are at the center of the stalemate on Capitol Hill. Money for food aid — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — will start to run out this weekend.

“People are stressing,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce.

“We are well past time to have this behind us.”

Money for military, but not food aid

The White House has moved money around to ensure the military is paid, but refuses to tap funds for food aid. In fact, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law this summer, delivered the most substantial cut ever to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, projected to result in some 2.4 million people off the program.

At the same time, many Americans who purchase their own health insurance through the federal and state marketplaces, with open enrollment also beginning Saturday, are experiencing sticker shock as premium prices jump.

“We are holding food over the heads of poor people so that we can take away their health care,” said Rev. Ryan Stoess during a prayer with religious leaders at the U.S. Capitol.

“God help us,” he said, “when the cruelty is the point.”

Deadlines shift to next week

The House remains closed down under Johnson for the past month and senators departed for the long weekend on Thursday.

That means the shutdown, in its 30th day, appears likely to stretch into another week if the filibuster remains. If the shutdown continues, it could become the longest in history, surpassing the 35-day lapse that ended in 2019, during Trump’s first term, over his demands to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The next inflection point comes after Tuesday’s off-year elections — the New York City mayor’s race, as well as elections in Virginia and New Jersey that will determine those states’ governors. Many expect that once those winners and losers are declared, and the Democrats and Republicans assess their political standing with the voters, they might be ready to hunker down for a deal.

“I hope that it frees people up to move forward with opening the government,” Thune said.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Matt Brown and Josh Boak in Tokyo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump made sure during his visit to Asia this week to praise regional allies who have backed his push to bring about a permanent end to the Israel-Hamas war.

As he handed out plaudits, Trump appeared to go out of his way to name-check one leader in particular — Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto — for his help in Gaza.

“I want to thank Malaysia and Brunei as well as my friend, President Prabowo of Indonesia, for their incredible support of these efforts to secure the new day for the Middle East,” Trump told leaders at the Assn. of Southeast Nations summit in Malaysia, using only the Indonesian president’s first name. “It really is a new day.”

In the weeks since Israel and Hamas agreed to a fragile ceasefire and hostage deal, Indonesia, which boasts the biggest Muslim population in the world, has emerged as an intriguing partner to a White House keen on making peace in the Middle East a defining legacy of his presidency.

Trump has said that a priority tied to that plan, if the fragile ceasefire can hold, is building on his first-term Abraham Accords effort that forged diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

White House officials believe that a permanent peace agreement in Gaza could pave the way for Indonesia as well as Saudi Arabia — the largest Arab economy and the birthplace of Islam — to normalize ties with Israel, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

For his part, Subianto has shown eagerness to build a relationship with Trump and expand his nation’s global influence.

Earlier in October, at a gathering in Egypt to mark the ceasefire, Subianto was caught on a hot mic talking to the U.S. leader about a Trump family business venture. He appeared to ask Trump to set up a meeting with the president’s son Eric, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, which has two real estate projects underway in Indonesia.

But Indonesia, much like Saudi Arabia, has publicly maintained it can’t move forward on normalizing relations with Israel until there’s a clear pathway set for a Palestinian state.

“Any vision related to Israel must begin with the recognition of Palestinian independence and sovereignty,” said Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yvonne Mewengkang.

Could Trump’s dealmaking pave the way?

There may be a reason for the administration to be hopeful that the ceasefire deal has created an opening for Indonesia to soften its position. The White House might also have some cards it could play as it pitches Subianto.

Jakarta badly wants to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and Trump’s backing would be pivotal. Indonesia views joining the 38-member OECD as an opportunity to raise Indonesia’s international profile, access new markets, and attract investment from other organization members.

Greater U.S. investment in Indonesia’s rare earths industry could also be inviting to Jakarta, which boasts a top-20 world economy.

Indonesia has set its sights on dominating the global nickel market, and is already responsible for about half of the metal used around the world. Demand has skyrocketed as automakers need it for electric vehicle batteries and clean electricity projects that require larger batteries.

“Trump’s transactional dealmaking opens up possibilities that otherwise might not exist,” said Daniel Shapiro, a former top State Department official who worked on Israel-Indonesia normalization efforts during the Biden administration. “If the Indonesians have something they’re seeking from the United States — whether it’s in the realm of tariff relief, other types of trade arrangements, or security arrangements — this could represent an opportunity.”

Indonesia pledged troops and helped with Trump’s 20-point plan

Indonesian officials were among a small group of leaders from Muslim and Arab nations whom the White House used as a sounding board to help the administration fine-tune Trump’s 20-point ceasefire and hostage proposal. And Trump at this week’s summit in Malaysia again conferred with Subianto and other leaders about U.S.-led efforts to maintain the ceasefire in Gaza, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the private leaders’ conversation.

And Subianto, at the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly days before the ceasefire agreement was reached, pledged 20,000 Indonesian troops for a prospective U.N. peacekeeping mission in Gaza. In the remarks, Subianto reiterated his country’s call for “an independent Palestine” but underscored the need to “recognize and guarantee the safety and security of Israel.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier, a president for the interfaith group Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and an advocate of the Abraham Accords effort, said Subianto’s pledge for troops and his rhetoric about Israel suggest that the Indonesian leader could be primed to make the leap.

“Yes, he’s talking about a Palestinian state, but he’s also being clear that he wants a Palestinian state that does not come at the expense of a Jewish state,” Schneier said. “That’s what gives me hope.”

Indonesia’s historic backing of Palestinian state

Trump met with Subianto and other leaders soon after the U.N. remarks, and seemed as impressed with the Indonesian president’s style as he was with the pledge to a peacekeeping mission. Trump said he particularly enjoyed watching Subianto “banging on that table” in his U.N. speech.

But Subianto is likely to face deep skepticism from the Indonesian public on Israel normalization efforts.

Indonesian leaders, dating to the Republic’s first president, Sukarno, have sought to burnish an image of “a country that leads the fight against world colonialism,” said Dina Sulaeman, a scholar at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia. The country had a protracted struggle for independence, freeing itself from Dutch colonial rule in its late 1940s revolution.

Indonesian leaders’ historical support for Palestinian statehood is also at odds with the current government in Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which remains adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.

“So, if Indonesia suddenly wants to join the Abraham Accords and normalize Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the good image that the Indonesian government has built … over decades will collapse,” Sulaeman said.

The Trump administration had talks with the Indonesians about joining the Abraham Accords in its first term. The Biden administration, which tried to pick up on the normalization effort, also had “serious talks” with the Indonesians, Shapiro said.

Shapiro said he was directly involved in talks between the Biden administration and senior Indonesian officials about using a November 2023 state visit by then Indonesian President Joko Widodo to offer preliminary announcements “about moving forward” on a normalization effort. But the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel scuttled the effort.

“My judgment is there is good possibility, assuming the ceasefire holds,” Shapiro said of Trump’s chances of getting Jakarta to sign the accords. “How and when that deal can begin to take shape — that remains to be seen.”

Madhani and Tarigan write for the Associated Press. Tarigan reported from Jakarta.

Tuesday is election day, and, as usual, the pundits are breathless, the predictions are dubious and the consultants are already counting their retainers. But make no mistake: Off-year elections matter. Tuesday’s results will shape the political landscape for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s start in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to fight Texas Republican gerrymandering with a little creative cartography of his own.

Proposition 50, which began as the “Election Rigging Response Act,” wouldn’t just help level the playing field by handing Democrats five House seats; it would also boost Newsom’s presidential ambitions. Polls suggest it’ll pass.

When it comes to elections involving actual candidates, the main attractions are in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

In the New York City mayoral contest, Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old democratic socialist who seems like the kind of guy who probably buys albums on vinyl — is leading both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (running as an independent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

National Republicans are already making Mamdani the avatar of everything Fox News viewers fear.

President Trump went so far as calling Mamdani a “communist” and threatening to send in the troops if he wins.

One thing is for certain: Mamdani is already a symbol. If he wins, he’ll be evidence for progressives that politics can still be interesting, exciting and revolutionary. To conservatives, he’ll be evidence that Democrats have gone insane.

If you’re paying attention, these arguments are not mutually exclusive.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill (whose resume includes having been a naval officer and a federal prosecutor) is a very different kind of politician — the “I’m a competent adult, please clap” variety.

Her gubernatorial opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, is an ex-state legislator who radiates the kind of energy usually found at bowling alleys and diners. He’s the grandson of Italian immigrants, the son of blue-collar workers and the spiritual heir of every guy in a tracksuit yelling at a Jets game.

Ciattarelli came dangerously close to winning the governorship in 2021, which should be cause for concern for Sherrill, who’s sitting on a slim lead.

The main problem for Ciattarelli is Trump, who, despite his bridge-and-tunnel aesthetic, does more harm than good in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988.

Trump’s termination of the Gateway Tunnel project didn’t help either. It’s one thing to be loud and populist; it’s another to cancel something that would make voters’ commutes slightly less horrible.

Speaking of commutes, a few hours south, down I-95, Virginia will also elect a new governor. Here, Democrat Abigail Spanberger — former CIA officer, former U.S. representative, professional moderate — is coasting toward victory against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor.

Earle-Sears, a Marine, trailblazer and gadfly, is about to add “failed gubernatorial candidate” to her resume.

Her biggest headline was firing her campaign manager (a pastor who had never run a campaign before), which sounds like a metaphor for today’s GOP. Her best attack on Spanberger involved attempting to tie her to something someone else (the Democratic attorney general nominee) did (sending a violent text about a Republican politician).

Virginia has a history of electing governors from the party that opposes the sitting president, and Trump’s DOGE cuts (not to mention the current government shutdown) have outsize importance in the commonwealth.

Depending on how things shake out in these states, narratives will be set — storylines that (rightly or not) will tell experts and voters which kinds of candidates they should nominate in 2026.

For example, if Mamdani, who represents the progressive wing, wins, but Sherrill and/or Spanberger lose, the narrative will be that cautious centrism is the problem.

If the opposite occurs, the opposite narrative (radicalism is a loser!) will take root.

The postmortems write themselves: “Progressive Resurgence,” “Year of the Woman” and/or “The Return of the Center.” The problem? It’s unwise to draw too many conclusions based on Tuesday’s election results.

First, it’s misguided to assume that what works in New York City could serve as a national model.

Second, even if Sherrill and Spanberger both win, it’s impossible to know if they simply benefited from 2025 being a good year for Democrats.

Still, what happens on Tuesday will have major repercussions. Within a day of the election, everyone with a stake in the midterms and future elections will claim the outcome means what they want it to mean. Within a week, narratives will have congealed, while heroes and scapegoats will have been assigned.

And the rest of us will be right here where we started — anxious, exhausted — and dreading the fact that the 2026 midterm jockeying starts on Wednesday.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Oct. 31 (UPI) — The Trump administration will permit a record-low 7,500 refugees into the United States during the 2026 fiscal year, with most spots allocated to White South Africans.

The number, a drastic drop from the 125,000 that the previous Biden administration had set for 2025, is expected to be swiftly challenged by Democrats and human rights and immigration advocates.

The announcement was made Thursday, with the presidential determination being published in the Federal Register.

According to the document, the Trump administration said the number “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

The document specifies that “admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners,” in line with President Donald Trump‘s February executive order that sought to penalize South Africa over a land expropriation law allowing the government to confiscate land if it was in the public interest and in a few specific cases without compensation.

Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Black-majority South Africa would use the law to take land from White Afrikaners. He has said that they were victims of “racial discrimination” and “large-scale killings.”

South Africa has repeatedly refuted the characterization.

In May, the first 49 Afrikaners granted refugee statues by Trump arrived in the United States.

About two weeks later, tensions flared between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Trump at the White House as the American leader said he had heard “thousands of stories” about violence against White South Africans in the country.

The International Refugee Assistance Project criticized the Trump administration for issuing the decision without consultation with Congress, as required by law. It also rebuked the administration for reserving admissions mostly for Afrikaners, at the expense of at-risk refugees.

It said the Trump administration was valuing “politics over protection.”

“Today’s announcement highlights just how far this administration has gone when it comes to abandoning its responsibilities to displaced people around the world,” IRAP President Sharif Aly said in a statement.

The 7,500 is the lowest since Trump set the refugee limit at 15,000 for fiscal year 2021, during his first term.

Beijing is positioning itself as the defender of free trade as Washington’s tariff hikes disrupt the global economy and Trump skips the economic summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for efforts to promote economic globalisation and multilateralism at an annual economic regional forum pointedly snubbed by United States President Donald Trump.

Xi took centre stage at the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that began Friday in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, as Trump left the country a day earlier after reaching deals meant to ease the escalating trade war with China.

“The more turbulent the times, the more we must work together,” Xi said during the opening session. “The world is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the international situation becoming increasingly complex and volatile.”

The Chinese leader positioned his country as the defender of free trade systems that observers say are being threatened by Trump’s tariff hikes and “America first” policy.

Xi called for maintaining supply chain stability, as opposed to US efforts to decouple its supply chains from China, and expressed hopes to work with other countries to expand cooperation in green industries and clean energy.

Chinese exports of solar panels, electric vehicles and other green tech have been criticised for creating oversupplies and undercutting the domestic industries of countries it exports to.

The US president left the country before the summit, after reaching several deals with Xi meant to ease their escalating trade war. Trump described his meeting with Xi on Thursday as a roaring success, saying Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and to start buying US soya beans in exchange for slashing tariffs.

The US president’s decision to skip APEC, a forum that represents nearly 40 percent of the world’s population and more than half of global goods trade, fits in with his well-known disdain for big, multi-nation forums that have been traditionally used to address huge global problems, with his preference for grand spectacle one-on-one meetings that generate blanket media coverage.

Al Jazeera’s Jack Barton, reporting from Gyeongju, said Xi was “filling the vacuum left by Trump”.

While on his first visit to South Korea in 11 years, Xi is scheduled to meet South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi separately on Friday. Xi and Lee are scheduled to discuss denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula on Saturday.

Barton said the meeting with Japan’s Takaichi would be “setting the diplomatic tone for the foreseeable future”. The Japanese prime minister is described by Chinese media as a far-right nationalist who has visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.

The site, dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese who died in wars beginning in the 19th century, is a political lightning rod in East Asia. Among those honoured are World War II leaders convicted as “Class A” war criminals, some of whom committed their atrocities under the Imperial Japan flag in China in the 20th century.

“South Korea and China share some of these historical issues with Japan,” Barton said. “They came out essentially saying, we’re going to put legacy issues on one side and diplomacy on another, so there is scope for a positive outcome.”

Xi also met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to discuss trade. “We’re expecting perhaps the biggest substantial economic deal to come out of that meeting,” Barton said.

Leaders and other representatives from 21 Asian and Pacific Rim economies are attending the APEC meeting to discuss how to promote economic cooperation and tackle shared challenges.

The APEC region faces an array of issues, including strategic competition between the US and China, supply chain vulnerabilities, ageing populations and the effect of AI on jobs.

South Korean officials said they have been communicating with other countries to prod all 21 members to adopt a joint statement at the end of the summit, so as not to repeat the failure to issue one in 2018 in Papua New Guinea due to US-China discord over trade.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said last week that issuing a joint statement strongly endorsing free trade would be unlikely because of differing positions among APEC members.

Al Jazeera’s Barton said the result might be a “watered-down version”.

“The question really is, can APEC survive this age of US-China rivalry?” he added.

Tehran rebukes US plans for nuclear tests, citing hypocrisy over peaceful nuclear programme accusations.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has condemned calls by United States President Donald Trump for the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, calling the move both “regressive” and irresponsible”.

“Having rebranded its ‘Department of Defense’ as the ‘Department of War,’ a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X late Thursday.

“The same bully has been demonising Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in blatant violation of international law,” he said.

Trump made the surprise announcement in a Truth Social post on Thursday shortly before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Trump said he had instructed the Pentagon to immediately resume nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with other countries like Russia and China, whose nuclear weapons arsenal will match the US in “five years”, according to Trump.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear security expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s decision was likely a response to recent actions by Russia and China rather than Washington’s ongoing dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this week that Moscow had tested its Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo, after separately testing new Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missiles earlier in the month, according to the Reuters news agency.

China also recently displayed its nuclear prowess at a military parade in September, which featured new and modified nuclear weapons systems like the Dongfeng-5 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile.

Having rebranded its “Department of Defense” as the “Department of War”, a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons. The same bully has been demonizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in… pic.twitter.com/ft4ZGWnFiw

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) October 30, 2025

Despite these public displays of firepower, neither Russia nor China has carried out a nuclear test – defined as a nuclear explosion above ground, underground, or underwater – in decades, according to the United Nations.

Nuclear testing is banned by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty of 1996. The US, China, and Iran all signed but have not ratified the original treaty, while Russia withdrew its ratification in 2023.

Moscow carried out its last nuclear test in 1990 while still the Soviet Union, and China carried out its last nuclear test in 1996, according to the UN. The last nuclear test by the United Kingdom was in 1991, followed by the US in 1992 and France in 1996. North Korea is the only country that has carried out nuclear tests in the past two decades, with its last test in 2017.

Trevor Findlay, a nuclear security expert and honorary professional fellow at the University of Melbourne, told Al Jazeera that it was unclear what type of testing Trump was referring to in his post.

“My assumption is that he means missile launches of nuclear-capable missiles, as North Korea and Russia have been doing very publicly. These do not carry an actual nuclear warhead [but likely a dummy], nor do they create a nuclear explosion,” he said.

“The US already tests its own missiles periodically, both existing ones and ones in development, often splashing down in the Pacific. It does announce them but tends not to make a big deal of it, like North Korea and Russia,” he said.

Trump, meanwhile, has called for the “total dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear programme and says he does not want Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon. In June, the US and Israel also carried out air strikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities in part to slow its progress.

Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only, and it has never carried out a nuclear test, according to the Carnegie Endowment’s Panda.

“Iran has never done any nuclear tests. They’ve constantly been saying they are not intending to make a nuclear bomb,” Panda told Al Jazeera. “The only thing that Iran has which might be taken seriously is some highly enriched uranium. That’s it. They have not even tested a nuclear ballistic missile.”

The US president called for Republicans to go for the ‘Nuclear Option’ in order to end the Democratic Senate roadblock.

United States President Donald Trump has called on the Senate to vote to scrap the filibuster custom so that Republicans can end a weeks-long federal government shutdown.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, the US leader chastised “Crazed Lunatics” in the Democratic Party.

“It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option – Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote.

“WE are in power, and if we did what we should be doing [end the filibuster], it would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous, Country destroying ‘SHUT DOWN’,” he added.

The filibuster is a longstanding Senate tactic that delays or blocks votes on legislation by keeping debate open. The Senate requires a supermajority – 60 of the chamber’s 100 members – to overcome a filibuster and pass most legislation.

Senate rules, including the filibuster, can be changed by a simple majority vote at any time. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority.

Since October 1, when the new fiscal year began, Senate Democrats have voted against advancing a government bill extending funding to federal agencies.

Democrats have demanded that Republicans reverse planned sweeping cuts to Medicaid, which extends healthcare coverage to tens of millions of low-income Americans, and prevent health insurance premiums from going up.

The deadlock entered its 31st day on Friday. It is set to become the longest deadlock in history if it surpasses the 35-day lapse that took place in 2019 under the first Trump administration.

Federal employees categorised as “essential” continue to work without pay during government shutdowns until they can be reimbursed when it ends.

Most recently, on Tuesday, US air traffic controllers were told they would not receive their paychecks this month, raising concerns that mounting financial stress could take a toll on the already understaffed employees who guide thousands of flights each day.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that the federal government shutdown could cost the US economy between $7bn and $14bn.

Trump has just returned to the US from his Asia tour, in which he visited Qatar, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea – where he held a major summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In his Truth Social post, the US leader said that while the trip was a success, conversations had caused him to consider the filibuster issue.

“The one question that kept coming up, however, was how did the Democrats SHUT DOWN the United States of America, and why did the powerful Republicans allow them to do it? The fact is, in flying back, I thought a great deal about that question, WHY?” he wrote.

The US leader continued that he believed that should the Democrats come back into power, they would “exercise their rights” and end the filibuster on the “first day they take office”.

Announcing the move, staff at the outlet said ‘authoritarian regimes are already celebrating’ its potential demise.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) will shut down its news operations on Friday, citing the government-funded news outlet’s dire financial situation caused by funding cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration and the ongoing US government shutdown.

Bay Fang, RFA’s president and CEO, said in a statement that “uncertainty about our budgetary future” means that the outlet has been “forced to suspend all remaining news content production”.

“In an effort to conserve limited resources on hand and preserve the possibility of restarting operations should consistent funding become available, RFA is taking further steps to responsibly shrink its already reduced footprint,” she said on Wednesday.

Fang added that RFA would begin closing its overseas bureaus and would formally lay off and pay severance to furloughed staff. She said many staff members have been on unpaid leave since March, “when the US Agency for Global Media [USAGM] unlawfully terminated RFA’s Congressionally appropriated grant”.

On March 14, Trump signed an executive order effectively eliminating USAGM, an independent US government agency created in the mid-1990s to broadcast news and information to regions with poor press freedom records.

Alongside RFA, USAGM also hosts sister publications Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE) and Voice of America (VOA).

Following March’s executive order, RFA was forced to put three-quarters of its US-based employees on unpaid leave and terminate most of its overseas contractors.

Another round of mass layoffs followed in May, along with the termination of several RFA language services, including Tibetan, Burmese and Uighur.

Mass layoffs also took place at VOA in March when Trump signed another executive order placing nearly all 1,400 staff at the outlet – which he described as a “total left-wing disaster” – on paid leave. It has operated on a limited basis since then.

Trump has said operations like RFA, RFE/Radio Liberty and VOA are a waste of government resources and accused them of being biased against his administration.

Since its founding in 1996, RFA has reported on Asia’s most repressive regimes, providing English- and local-language online and broadcast services to citizens of authoritarian governments across the region.

Its flagship projects include its Uighur service – the world’s only independent Uyghur-language outlet, covering the repressed ethnic group in western China – as well as its North Korea service, which reports on events inside the hermit state.

An announcement penned by RFA executive editor Rosa Hwang, published on the outlet’s website on Wednesday, said, “Make no mistake, authoritarian regimes are already celebrating RFA’s potential demise.”

“Independent journalism is at the core of RFA. For the first time since RFA’s inception almost 30 years ago, that voice is at risk,” Hwang said.

“We still believe in the urgency of that mission – and in the resilience of our extraordinary journalists. Once our funding returns, so will we,” she added.

RFE/Radio Liberty, which went through its own round of furloughs earlier this year, said this week that it received its last round of federal funding in September and its news services are continuing for now.

“We plan to continue reaching our audiences for the foreseeable future,” it said.

It’s not immediately clear why RFA and RFE/Radio Liberty – which share the same governing and funding structure, but are based in the US and Europe, respectively – are taking different approaches.

The United States Department of Justice has reportedly placed two federal prosecutors, Samuel White and Carlos Valdivia, on administrative leave after they referred to the participants in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “a mob of rioters”.

Documents the two prosecutors had filed in advance of a Thursday sentencing hearing were also amended to remove references to the January 6 attack.

The new filings were made on Wednesday, the same day that the prosecutors received their notices and were locked out of their government devices.

Both were members of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, according to sources who spoke to Reuters and The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity.

The punishment they faced was the latest instance of the administration of President Donald Trump taking action against federal prosecutors who participated in cases the Republican leader perceives as unfavourable.

Trump has long defended the participants in the January 6 attack, going so far as to pardon more than 1,500 rioters who had pending criminal charges or convictions during the first day of his second term.

Another 14 rioters had their sentences commuted. In a presidential statement, Trump called the prosecutions a “grave national injustice”.

The attack on the Capitol was prompted by Trump’s false claims that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election had been “rigged”. Spurred by the misinformation, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on the day that lawmakers inside were certifying the Electoral College votes.

More than 100 police officers were hurt, and multiple deaths were attributed to the attack, including a protester who was shot while trying to enter the Speaker’s Lobby and a police officer who collapsed and suffered multiple strokes, potentially due to the stress of being assaulted.

Some officers were beaten with flag poles, fire extinguishers and hockey sticks.

The Justice Department has yet to comment on Wednesday’s suspensions of the two prosecutors.

The lawyers were previously scheduled to appear on Thursday in federal court for the sentencing of Taylor Taranto, a Navy veteran who was among those pardoned by Trump for participating in the January 6 attack.

During that clash, he was observed attempting to breach the Speaker’s Chamber, a restricted area. Taranto had been charged with four misdemeanours for those actions before Trump pardoned his charges.

In May, Taranto was convicted on unrelated charges, including illegally carrying two firearms, the unlawful possession of ammunition, and spreading false information and hoaxes.

Taranto had been arrested on June 29, 2023, near an address in Washington, DC, supposedly linked to former President Barack Obama, one of Trump’s political rivals.

Trump had posted the address on social media, and Taranto proceeded to drive to the area, livestreaming his progress, in an attempt to seek out “tunnels” to enter the residence.

Upon exiting his vehicle and entering a restricted area, he was confronted by Secret Service agents. He allegedly told them, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.”

There were reportedly more than 500 rounds of ammunition in his van.

A day earlier, Taranto had also recorded a “hoax” video claiming that a car bomb was headed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Taranto’s defence lawyers have described him as a “journalist” and “comedian”. But prosecutors have sought a sentence of more than two years in prison for Taranto.

That sentencing recommendation was kept in the revised documents submitted on Wednesday.

At Thursday’s hearing, US District Judge Carl Nichols praised the suspended prosecutors, White and Valdivia, saying they did a “commendable and excellent job” and displayed the “highest standards of professionalism” in the case.

Nichols ultimately sentenced Taranto to 21 months in prison. Since Taranto has already been in custody for 22 months, he will not serve any additional time.

Career prosecutors are assigned to criminal cases regardless of the presidential administration in power.

But the Trump White House has repeatedly sought to sideline, if not fire, those who prosecuted cases that run contrary to the Republican president’s interests.

In January, for instance, nearly two dozen employees of the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, were fired, many with links to the January 6 prosecutions carried out under former President Joe Biden.

And in June, another three prosecutors involved in the January 6 cases were reportedly fired.

The Trump administration will limit the number of refugees admitted to the US to 7,500 over the next year, and give priority to white South Africans.

The move, announced in a notice published on Thursday, marks a dramatic cut from the previous limit of 125,000 set by former President Joe Biden and will bring the cap to a record low.

No reason was given for the cut, but the notice said it was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.

In January, Trump signed an executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Programme, or USRAP, which he said would allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.

The previous lowest refugee admissions cap was set by the first Trump administration in 2020, when it allocated 15,000 spots for fiscal year 2021.

The notice posted to the website of the Federal Register said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.

In February, the US president announced the suspension of critical aid to South Africa and offered to allow members of the Afrikaner community – who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers – to settle in the US as refugees.

South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was later expelled after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle”.

In the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and claimed white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.

The White House also played a video which they said showed burial sites for murdered white farmers. It later emerged that the videos were scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.

The tense meeting came just days after the US granted asylum to 60 Afrikaners.

The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other White South Africans are being persecuted.

On his first day in office on 20 January, Trump said the US would suspend USRAP to reflect the US’s lack of “ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans” and “protects their safety and security”.

The US policy of accepting white South Africans has already prompted accusations of unfair treatment from refugee advocacy groups.

Some have argued the US is now effectively shut to other persecuted groups or people facing potential harm in their home country, and even former allies that helped US forces in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

“This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling,” Global Refuge CEO and president Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said on Thursday. “It lowers our moral standing.”

“At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility,” she added.

Refugees International also slammed the move, saying it “makes a mockery of refugee protection and of American values”.

“Let us be frank: whatever hardships some Afrikaners may face, this population has no plausible claim on refugee status – they are not fleeing systematic persecution,” Refugees International said in its statement.

The South African government has yet to respond to the latest announcement.

During the Oval Office meeting, President Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Trump’s] head”.

Earlier this year, Ramaphosa signed a controversial law allowing the government to seize privately-owned land without compensation in some circumstances.

While the country does not release race-based crime figured, figures published earlier this year showed that 7,000 people were murdered in South African between October and December 2024.

Of these, 12 were killed in farm attacks and only one of the 12 was a farmer. Five others were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.

A Nov. 4 statewide ballot measure pushed by California Democrats to help the party’s efforts to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and stifle President Trump’s agenda has a substantial lead in a new poll released on Thursday.

Six out of 10 likely voters support Proposition 50, the proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies to redraw the state’s congressional districts to try to increase the number of Democrats in Congress, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times. About 38% of likely voters oppose the ballot measure.

Notable in an off-year special election about the arcane and complicated process of redistricting, 71% of likely voters said they had heard a significant amount of information about the ballot measure, according to the poll.

“That’s extraordinary,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll. “Even though it’s kind of an esoteric topic that doesn’t affect their daily lives, it’s something voters are paying attention to.”

That may be because roughly $158 million has been donated in less than three months to the main campaign committees supporting and opposing the measure, according to campaign fundraising reports filed with the state last week. Voters in the state have been flooded with political ads.

Californians watching Tuesday night’s World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays saw that firsthand.

In the first minutes of the game, former President Obama, Newsom, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other prominent Democrats spoke in favor of Proposition 50 in an ad that probably cost at least $250,000 to air, according to a Democratic media buyer who is not associated with the campaign.

According to the survey, the breakdown among voters was highly partisan, with more than 9 out of 10 Democrats supporting Proposition 50 and a similar proportion of Republicans opposing it. Among voters who belong to other parties, or identify as “no party preference,” 57% favored the ballot measure, while 39% opposed it.

Only 2% of the likely voters surveyed said they were undecided, which DiCamillo said was highly unusual.

Historically, undecided voters, particularly independents, often end up opposing ballot measures they are uncertain about, preferring to stick with the status quo, he said.

“Usually there was always a rule — look at the undecideds in late-breaking polls, and assume most would vote no,” he said. “But this poll shows there are very few of them out there. Voters have a bead on this one.”

In the voter-rich urban areas of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay area, Proposition 50 led by wide margins, the poll found. Voters in Orange County, the Inland Empire and the Central Valley were pretty evenly divided.

Redistricting battles are underway in states across the nation, but California’s Proposition 50 has received a major share of national attention and donations. The Newsom committee supporting Proposition 50 has raised far more money than the two main committees opposing it, so much so that the governor this week told supporters to stop sending checks.

The U.S. House of Representatives is controlled by the GOP but is narrowly divided. The party that wins control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections will determine whether Trump can continue enacting his agenda or whether he is the subject of investigations and possibly another impeachment effort.

California’s 52 congressional districts — the most of any state — currently are drawn by a voter-approved independent commission once every decade following the U.S. census.

But after Trump urged GOP leaders in Texas this summer to redraw their districts to bolster the number of Republicans in Congress, Newsom and other California Democrats decided in August to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan redrawing of the state’s district boundaries. If passed, Proposition 50 could potentially add five more Democrats to the state’s congressional delegation.

Supporters of Proposition 50 have painted their effort as a proxy fight against Trump and his policies that have overwhelmingly affected Californians, such as immigration raids and the deployment of the National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.

Opponents of the proposition have focused on the mechanics of redistricting, arguing the ballot measure subverts the will of California voters who enacted the independent redistricting commission more than a decade ago.

“The results suggest that Democrats have succeeded in framing the debate surrounding the proposition around support or opposition to President Trump and national Republicans, rather than about voters’ more general preference for nonpartisan redistricting,” Eric Schickler, co-director of IGS, said in a statement.

Early voting data suggest the pro-Proposition 50 message has been successful.

As of Tuesday, nearly 5 million Californians — about 21% of the state’s 23 million registered voters — had cast ballots, according to trackers run by Democratic and Republican strategists.

Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans among the state’s registered voters, and they have outpaced them in returning ballots, 52% to 27%. Voters who do not have a party preference or who support other political parties have returned 21% of the ballots.

The Berkeley/L.A. Times poll findings mirrored recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California, CBS News/YouGov and Emerson College.

Among voters surveyed by the Berkeley/L.A. Times poll, 67% of Californians who had already voted supported Proposition 50, while 33% said they had weighed in against the ballot measure.

The proposition also had an edge among those who planned to vote but had not yet cast their ballots, with 57% saying they planned to support the effort and 40% saying they planned to oppose it.

However, 70% of voters who plan to cast ballots in person on Nov. 4, election day, said they would vote against Proposition 50, according to the poll. Less than 3 in 10 who said they would vote at their local polling place said they would support the rare mid-decade redistricting.

These numbers highlight a recent shift in how Americans vote. Historically, Republicans voted by mail early, while Democrats cast ballots on election day. But this dynamic was upended in recent years after Trump questioned the security of early voting and mail voting, including just recently when he criticized Proposition 50.

“No mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting, Yes to Voter ID! Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being ‘shipped,’” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”

GOP leaders across the state have pushed back at such messaging without calling out the president. Urging Republicans to vote early, they argue that waiting to cast ballots only gives Democrats a greater advantage in California elections.

Among the arguments promoted by the campaigns, likely voters agreed with every one posited by the supporters of Proposition 50, notably that the ballot measure would help Democrats win control of the House, while standing up to Trump and his attempts to rig the 2026 election, according to the poll. But they also agreed that the ballot measure would further diminish the power of the GOP in California, and that they didn’t trust partisan state lawmakers to draw congressional districts.

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 8,141 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Oct. 20 to 27. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

Advocates say new rules let Education Department to politically punish groups working on immigration, transgender care.

The United States Department of Education has finalised new rules that could bar nonprofits deemed to have undertaken work with a “substantial illegal purpose” from a special student loan forgiveness programme.

Those rules, finalised on Thursday, appear to single out certain organisations that do work in areas that President Donald Trump politically opposes, including immigration advocacy and transgender rights.

Under the new rules, set to take effect in July 2026, the education secretary has the power to exclude groups if they engage in activities like the “chemical castration” of children, using a politically charged term for gender-affirming healthcare, including puberty-delaying medication.

It also allows the education secretary to bar groups accused of supporting undocumented immigration or “terrorist” organisations.

The Trump administration has said its decisions “will not be made based on the political views or policy preferences of the organization”.

But advocates fear the move is the administration’s latest effort to target left-leaning and liberal organisations.

Trump has already threatened to crack down on several liberal nonprofits, which the White House has broadly accused of being part of “domestic terror networks”.

Thursday’s rules concern the Public Service Loan Forgiveness programme, created by an act of Congress in 2007.

In an effort to direct more graduates into public service jobs, the programme promises to cancel federal student loans for government employees and many nonprofit workers after they have made 10 years of payments.

Workers in the public sector, including teachers, medical professionals, firefighters, social service professionals and lawyers, are among those who can benefit.

In a statement, the Trump administration defended the updated rules, calling them a necessary bulwark to protect taxpayer funds.

The programme “was meant to support Americans who dedicate their careers to public service – not to subsidize organizations that violate the law, whether by harboring illegal immigrants or performing prohibited medical procedures that attempt to transition children away from their biological sex”, said Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent.

Critics, however, have denounced the administration for using false claims of “terrorism” or criminal behaviour to silence opposing views and restrict civil liberties.

Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said the new rules weaponised loan forgiveness.

Lukens explained that many of the lawyers, social workers and paralegals who work at his organisation handle cases to stop deportations and other immigration litigation.

They count on public service loan forgiveness to take jobs that pay significantly less than the private sector, he said.

“All of a sudden, that’s going away,” Lukens told The Associated Press news agency. “The younger generation, I hope, will be able to wait this out for the next couple of years to see if it gets better, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to see a lot of people leave the field to go and work in a for-profit space.”

Organisations have raised concerns over the education secretary’s broad power to determine if a group should be barred. Short of a legal finding, the secretary can decide based on a “preponderance of the evidence” whether an employer is in violation.

The National Council of Nonprofits was among the associations criticising the change.

It said the rules would allow future administrations from any political party to change eligibility rules “based on their own priorities or ideology”.

Like a teenager armed with their first smartphone, President Trump’s masked immigration enforcers love nothing more than to mug for friendly cameras.

They gladly invite pseudo-filmmakers — some federal government workers, others conservative influencers or pro-Trump reporters — to embed during raids so they can capture every tamale lady agents slam onto the sidewalk, every protester they pelt with pepper balls, every tear gas canister used to clear away pesky activists. From that mayhem comes slickly produced videos that buttress the Trump administration’s claim that everyone involved in the push to boot illegal immigrants from the U.S. is a hero worthy of cinematic love.

But not everything that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and its sister agencies do shows up in their approved rivers of reels.

Their propagandists aren’t highlighting the story of Jaime Alanís García, a Mexican farmworker who fell 30 feet to his death in Camarillo this summer while trying to escape one of the largest immigration raids in Southern California in decades.

They’re not making videos about 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe, an Orange County resident who moved to this country from Mexico as a 4-year-old and died in a Victorville hospital in September after spending weeks in ICE custody complaining about his health.

They’re not addressing how ICE raids led to the deaths of Josué Castro Rivera and Carlos Roberto Montoya, Central American nationals run over and killed by highway traffic in Virginia and Monrovia while fleeing in terror. Or what happened to Silverio Villegas González, shot dead in his car as he tried to speed away from two ICE agents in suburban Chicago.

Those men are just some of the 20-plus people who have died in 2025 while caught up in ICE’s machine — the deadliest year for the agency in two decades, per NPR.

Publicly, the Department of Homeland Security has described those incidents as “tragic” while assigning blame to everything but itself. For instance, a Homeland Security official told the Associated Press that Castro Rivera’s death was “a direct result of every politician, activist and reporter who continue to spread propaganda and misinformation about ICE’s mission and ways to avoid detention” — whatever the hell that means.

An ICE spokesperson asked for more time to respond to my request for comment, said “Thank you Sir” when I extended my deadline, then never got back to me. Whatever the response would’ve been, Trump’s deportation Leviathan looks like it’s about to get deadlier.

As reported by my colleagues Andrea Castillo and Rachel Uranga, his administration plans to get rid of more than half of ICE’s field office directors due to grumblings from the White House that the deportations that have swamped large swaths of the United States all year haven’t happened faster and in larger numbers.

Asked for comment, Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, described The Times’ questions as “sensationalism” and added “only the media would describe standard agency personnel changes as a ‘massive shakeup.’”

Agents are becoming more brazen as more of them get hired thanks to billions of dollars in new funds. In Oakland, one fired a chemical round into the face of a Christian pastor from just feet away. In Santa Ana, another pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at activists who had been trailing him from a distance in their car. In the Chicago area, a woman claimed a group of them fired pepper balls at her car even though her two young children were inside.

La migra knows they can act with impunity because they have the full-throated backing of the White House. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller crowed on Fox News recently, “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”

That’s not actually true, but when have facts mattered to this presidency if it gets in the way of its apocalyptic goals?

Greg Bovino, El Centro Border Patrol sector chief, center, walks with federal agents near an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Ill.

(Erin Hooley / Associated Press)

Tasked with turning up the terror dial to 11 is Gregory Bovino, a longtime Border Patrol sector chief based out of El Centro, Calif., who started the year with a raid in Kern County so egregious that a federal judge slammed it as agents “walk[ing] up to people with brown skin and say[ing], ‘Give me your papers.’” A federal judge ordered him to check in with her every day for the foreseeable future after the Border Patrol tear-gassed a neighborhood in a Chicago suburb that was about to host its annual Halloween children’s parade (an appeals court has temporarily blocked the move).

Bovino now reports directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and is expected to pick most of the ICE field office directors from Customs and Border Protection, the arm of the federal government that the Border Patrol belongs to. It logged 180 immigrant deaths under its purview for the 2023 fiscal year, the last year for which stats are publicly available and the third straight year that the number had increased.

To put someone like Bovino in charge of executing Trump’s deportation plans is like gifting a gas refinery to an arsonist.

He’s constantly trying to channel the conquering ethos of Wild West, complete with a strutting posse of agents — some with cowboy hats — following him everywhere, white horses trailed by American flags for photo ops and constant shout-outs to “Ma and Pa America” when speaking to the media. When asked by a CBS News reporter recently when his self-titled “Mean Green Machine” would end its Chicago campaign — one that has seen armed troops march through downtown and man boats on the Chicago River like they were patrolling Baghdad — Bovino replied, “When all the illegal aliens [self-deport] and/or we arrest ‘em all.”

Such scorched-earth jibber-jabber underlines a deportation policy under which the possibility of death for those it pursues is baked into its foundation. ICE plans to hire dozens of healthcare workers — doctors, nurses, psychiatrists — in anticipation of Trump’s plans to build more detention camps, many slated for inhospitable locations like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz camp in the Florida Everglades. That was announced to the world on social media with an AI-generated image of grinning alligators wearing MAGA caps — as if the White House was salivating at the prospect of desperate people trying to escape only to find certain carnage.

In his CBS News interview, Bovino described the force his team has used in Chicago — where someone was shot and killed, a pastors got hit with pepper balls from high above and the sound of windshields broken by immigration agents looking to snatch someone from their cars is now part of the Windy City’s soundtrack — as “exemplary.” The Border Patrol’s peewee Patton added he felt his guys used “the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission. If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them.”

One shudders to think what Bovino thinks is excessive for la migra. With his powers now radically expanded, we’re about to find out.

WASHINGTON — Stewart McLaurin knew it was coming.

An entire wing of the White House, a building he calls “the most special, important building on the planet,” was going to be replaced to make way for a ballroom that President Trump wants to add to the building.

But when McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Assn., saw the first images of backhoes tearing into the East Wing, it still came as a bit of a shock.

“When the reality of things happen, they strike us a little bit differently than the theory of things happening, so it was a bit of a jarring moment,” McLaurin told the Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

McLaurin, who has led the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for more than a decade, did not take a position on the changes. It’s not his job. “Ours is not to make happen, or to keep from happening — but to document what does happen, what happens in this great home that we call the White House,” he said.

But he said he sees a silver lining from the “jarring” images: They have piqued public interest in White House history.

“What has happened since then is so amazing in that in the past two weeks, more people have been talking about White House history, focused on White House history, learning what is an East Wing, what is the West Wing … what are these spaces in this building that we simply call the White House,” McLaurin said.

Trump demolishes the East Wing

The general public became aware of the demolition work on Oct. 20 after photos of construction equipment ripping into the building began to circulate online, prompting an outcry from Democrats, preservationists and others.

In a matter of days, the entire two-story East Wing — the traditional base of operations for first ladies and their staffs — was gone. The demolition included a covered walkway between the White House, the family movie theater and a garden dedicated to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Trump had talked about building a ballroom for years and pushed ahead with his vision when he returned to office in January. His proposal calls for a 90,000-square-foot structure, almost twice the size of the 55,000-square-foot White House itself and able to accommodate 1,000 people. The plan also includes building a more modern East Wing, officials said.

The president ordered the demolition despite not yet having sign-off for the ballroom construction from the National Capital Planning Commission, one of several entities with a role in approving additions to federal buildings and property. The White House has yet to submit the ballroom plans for the commission’s review because it is closed during the government shutdown.

Trump appointed loyalists to the planning commission in July. On Tuesday he also fired the six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a group of architectural experts that advises the federal government on historic preservation and public buildings. A new slate of members who are more aligned with Trump’s policies will be named, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions. The Washington Post was first to report the firings.

East Wing art and furnishings preserved

It was the job of the White House curator and their staff to carefully remove, catalog and store the art, the official portraits of former first ladies, and furnishings from the East Wing, McLaurin said.

The White House Historical Assn. does not have a decision-making role in the construction. But it has been working with the White House to prepare for the changes.

“We had known since late summer that the staff of the East Wing had moved out. I actually made my last visit on the last day of tours on August the 28th,” McLaurin said.

Working with the curator and chief usher, the association used 3D scanning technology “so that every room, space, nook and cranny of the East Wing, whether it was molding or hinges or door knobs or whatever it was, was captured to the nth degree” to be digitally recreated as an exhibit or to teach the history of that space, McLaurin said.

A photographer also documented the building as it was being taken apart. It will be a while before any images are available, but McLaurin said items were found when flooring was pulled up and when wall coverings were pulled back that “no living person remembered were there. So those will be lessons in history.”

White House has grown over the years

Trump’s aides have responded to criticism of the demolition by arguing that other presidents have made changes to the White House too. Trump said the White House needs a bigger entertaining space.

McLaurin said the building continues to evolve from what it looked like when it was built in 1792.

“There is a need to modernize and to grow,” he said, noting that White House social secretaries for generations chafed at the space limitations for entertaining. “But how it’s done and how it’s accomplished and what results is really the vision of the president who undertakes that project.”

What the White House Historical Assn. does

Jacqueline Kennedy created the historical association in 1961 to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It receives no government funding and raises money mostly through private donations and sales of retail merchandise.

It is not the mission of the association to take a position on construction, McLaurin said. Its primary mandate is preserving the State Floor and some of the historic bedrooms upstairs in the private living quarters, and teaching the history of the White House, which is an accredited museum. The State Floor is made up of the Green, Blue and Red Rooms, the East Room and State Dining Room, the Cross Hall and Grand Foyer.

“Ours is not to support — or to not support,” McLaurin said. “Ours is to understand, to get the details.”

Since the demolition, McLaurin said he has seen attendance spike at a free educational center the association opened in September 2024 a block from the White House. “The People’s House: A White House Experience” is open seven days a week — including during the shutdown.

The educational center had its busiest days the weekend of Oct. 17-19, with about 1,500 daily visitors, up from a previous average of 900, he said.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump isn’t curtailing travel. He’s not avoiding golf or making do with a skeleton staff in the West Wing. Even hamburgers served at the White House aren’t from McDonalds, this time.

In shutdowns past — including during Trump’s first term — presidents normally scaled back their schedules. With staffers deemed “non-essential” sent home, the White House often sought to appear sympathetic to Americans affected by disruptions to healthcare, veterans benefits and other key services.

The current one has left around 750,000 federal employees furloughed and others working without pay. Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is lapsing after Friday.

Nonetheless, it’s been mostly business as usual for Trump over the last 29 days.

“It’s like that country song: ‘Sometimes falling feels like flying for a little while,’” said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and former advisor to President Clinton, who presided over two shutdowns between 1995 and 1996. “They seem to be like, ‘So far, so good, man.’ ”

Ballroom, golf and trips

Trump was on a six-day swing through Asia, after a recent, whirlwind Middle East visit. He hosted a White House fundraiser for major donors to his $300-million ballroom that has seen construction crews tear down the East Wing, and held another fundraiser at his Florida estate.

Members of the Cabinet have similarly hit the road. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Israel, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went to Oregon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth toured Topgun, the U.S. Navy’s elite fighter weapons school in Nevada.

Only 32% of staff in the Executive Office of the President were set to be furloughed during the current shutdown, according to a White House budget office contingency report. That’s down from 61% during the last shutdown in 2018-19, in Trump’s first term. About half of the Executive Mansion’s team that includes housekeepers, ushers, valets and butlers are currently working. Last time, more than 70% were furloughed.

It’s often been hard to tell a shutdown is happening with so many staffers remaining at their desks.

“I don’t even know if they’re supposed to be working, but they wouldn’t miss a day,” Trump said during an event last week.

It’s a departure from Trump’s first term, when he cut out golf and canceled a planned trip to Florida for Christmas during the 2018 shutdown, which stretched into the new year. He made a surprise visit to troops in Iraq then, but nixed plans to go to the Swiss Alps for the World Economic Forum.

When hosting Clemson University football players celebrating their NCAA football championship, Trump brought in burgers and fries from McDonald’s and Domino’s pizza because of White House staff furloughs.

This time, the president had Republican senators over for a lunch that featured burgers, too. But staff made them. “They do great food at the White House,” Trump said.

‘A smarter approach’

Some say barreling ahead like there’s no shutdown has some political advantages for Trump, allowing him to look presidential while avoiding congressional bickering.

“It’s a much smarter approach,” said Marc Short, chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.

In Trump’s first-term shutdown, he rejected a congressional compromise to force the government to close — an attempt to win funding to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border. Then, he named Pence as lead negotiator to end the shutdown while involving his son-in-law Jared Kushner — creating the visual of them having to go to Capitol Hill.

“The first go-around, he was pretty clear with cameras rolling: He said he wanted the shutdown. He claimed ownership,” Short said. This time? “The White House has been clear about not owning it.”

Back in 1995, Begala recalled talking strategy with Clinton during a sweaty summer run at Fort McNair in Washington, and telling the president that Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his party “think they can roll you,” forcing cuts to Medicare by threatening a shutdown.

Clinton responded: “‘My favorite movie’s ‘High Noon,’ ” Begala recalled, meaning the western in which a marshal stands up to outlaws. ”They do that — then I just have a Gary Cooper, ‘High Noon’ moment. That’s easy.”

When Gingrich later came to the White House to negotiate, Begala said Clinton wouldn’t budge, even though some advisors urged him to cut a deal. Voters ultimately blamed congressional Republicans more than the White House for the government closing, and Clinton was easily reelected in 1996.

“That could have really gone badly for Clinton,” Begala said. “But he did understand that standing strong, and having a Gary Cooper moment, would be really good for him.”

Trump could probably find a way to end the current shutdown if he wanted to prioritize it, said Leon Panetta, who worked to end past government closures as Clinton’s chief of staff. But Trump’s “attention is focused on everything but sitting down and getting both parties together to resolve this issue,” Panetta said.

‘Continuing to work night and day’

During the 16-day government shutdown of 2013, President Obama scrapped a four-country Asia trip and skipped the Congressional Hispanic Caucus gala. His schedule featured events meant to show the shutdown’s effects, including visiting a Maryland construction firm that benefited from the kind of federal loans jeopardized with the government shuttered.

In 2019, as that shutdown dragged on, Trump’s White House officials acknowledged feeling pressure to end it. This time, the administration’s approach has been to blame the Democrats, while signaling that it’s prepared to wait — even warning of coming travel delays during the Thanksgiving holidays.

“President Trump is continuing to work night and day on behalf of American people,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “The entire administration, including the president, will continue highlighting the workers and families who are suffering because of the Democrats’ decision to shut down the government.”

Bill Daley, a White House chief of staff to Obama before the 2013 shutdown, said Trump isn’t acting like he’s feeling political heat to reopen the government, even before next Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey — both home to sizable federal workforces.

“My guess is, he thinks it helps him,” Daley said, “until — and I don’t know if it will — the bottom falls out.”

Democrats are demanding an extension of expiring tax credits that have helped millions of people afford health insurance, while Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.

Trump has said the shutdown must end, but also used it to cut federal positions and target programs Democrats favor, while redirecting funds to his own priorities — like covering military paychecks. The president has even said of closed museums, “We should probably just open them.”

Americans, meanwhile, are divided on who’s to blame.

Roughly 6 in 10 say Trump and congressional Republicans have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown, while 54% say the same about Democrats in Congress, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Mike McCurry, a White House press secretary under Clinton, said Democrats have yet to settle on a clear shutdown message that has resonated. Trump has the presidency to deliver his take, but McCurry noted he has been “mercurial.”

“It is not likely we’re going to have clear winners or losers after this,” McCurry said. “It’s going to be a bit of a muddle.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.