Politics

Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to prosecute protesters who disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota on Sunday. Bondi wrote on the social platform X that she spoke to Pastor Jonathan Parnell, who leads Cities Church. A group of protesters interrupted Parnell’s sermon on Sunday and accused David Easterwood, a pastor at the church,…

 On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what would be his final speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He would be killed by an assassin’s bullet the following day.  King was in Tennessee to support sanitation workers who were demanding better wages and working conditions. King had not initially planned to deliver his speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” but he changed his mind after seeing the audience that had gathered. “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper,’” King said, tying the promise of America’s founding to the biblical Promised Land. YouTube Video Today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is a national holiday dedicated to remembering and honoring King’s life and legacy. That remembrance is fitting; King now belongs to all of humanity, his moral stature far beyond our limited power to add or detract. What remains is our responsibility to dedicate and devote ourselves to the great promise for which King and others gave the last full measure of devotion.  Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!” Hear, hear! 

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was already irritated by what he describes as “unnecessarily contentious” questions from the team vetting him to be Kamala Harris’s running mate when a senior aide made one final inquiry: “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?” The question came from President Biden’s former White House counsel Dana Remus, who was a key member of Harris’s vice-presidential search team. Shapiro, one of the most well-known Jewish elected officials in the country—and one of at least three Jewish politicians considering a run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—says he took umbrage at the question. “Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was,” Shapiro writes in his forthcoming book, Where We Keep the Light, a copy of which The Atlantic obtained ahead of its release on January 27. The exchange became even more tense, he writes, when Remus asked whether Shapiro had ever spoken with an undercover Israeli agent. The questions left the governor feeling uneasy about the prospect of being Harris’s No. 2, a role that ultimately went to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. After Harris and Walz lost to Donald Trump, many Democrats were critical of her decision to bypass Shapiro, the popular governor of the nation’s largest swing state. In his book, Shapiro says that the decision may not have been fully hers; he says he had “a knot in my stomach” throughout a vetting process that was more combative than he had expected. Shapiro wrote that he decided to take his name out of the running after a one-on-one meeting with Harris that featured more clashes, including about Israel. The account highlights some of the fault lines that Democrats are navigating as they try to put the 2024 campaign behind them and chart a path back to the White House. With his book, Shapiro aims to showcase why Democrats lost and how his brand of consensus-building politics can usher them back to power. But before the consensus building, it seems, Shapiro felt compelled to do some score settling. Harris, after all, had written a surprisingly candid account of her truncated and, ultimately, tortured selection process for a running mate, and it did not make Shapiro look good. When my colleague Tim Alberta first informed Shapiro of Harris’s description of their meeting in her book, 107 Days, he grew uncharacteristically sharp-tongued. “That’s complete and utter bullshit,” he told Alberta. “I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.” Shapiro is more measured in Where We Keep the Light, taking pains not to attack Harris herself and instead blaming her staff for probing him in a way that at times felt gratuitous. “Remus was just doing her job,” Shapiro wrote about the Israeli-spy inquiry. “I get it. But the fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about some of the people around the VP.” (Remus and an aide to Harris did not respond to a request for comment.) In a statement, Shapiro’s spokesperson Manuel Bonder didn’t address the apparently unpleasant vetting process, and would only say that the governor had written “a very personal book” about his faith, his family, and what he has learned from a career of public service. He said the 2024 election was “one small part” of Shapiro’s “much broader story.” Shapiro does not write about the vice-presidential search until near the end of his book, which otherwise serves up the standard fare of a pre-campaign-launch political memoir, tracing his rise from a childhood in suburban Philadelphia to the governorship of the nation’s fifth-most-populous state. Shapiro writes about the importance of his Jewish faith, his role pursuing justice for survivors of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, his admiration for—and early support of—President Obama, and the astute political instincts of his wife and adviser, Lori. The book opens with the harrowing firebombing of the governor’s mansion on Passover last year by a man who later told prosecutors that he blamed Shapiro for the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Shapiro and his family had to flee the home, which suffered significant damage from the fire, in the middle of the night after being alerted by a state trooper. The governor writes that his willingness to publicly embrace his Jewish faith before and after the attack has been welcomed by people of various religious backgrounds, suggesting that his experience as part of an observant Jewish family would be a prominent part of any run for the presidency. [Read: By the time political violence gets worse, it will be too late] Where We Keep the Light is typical of the sort of memoir that candidates release before running for president. In it, Shapiro extols the virtues of using politics to improve people’s lives. He also makes subtle but clear policy distinctions between himself and other prominent members of his party, including some eyeing the party’s presidential nomination. He gets ahead of some of the major questions that Democrats are likely to face in the 2028 primary, writing, for example, that he would have handled coronavirus lockdowns differently, that he did not support the defund-the-police rhetoric in the summer of 2020, and that he privately suggested to Biden that he should consider dropping out of the presidential race after an abysmal debate performance against Trump. He also defends his support for cutting taxes and his more permissive stance on fossil fuels, policies that put him outside the mainstream of the Democratic political class. He writes that anti-Semitism has become “much scarier, much more real” in recent years and suggests a clear distinction between free speech and protest activity that veers into intimidation. But the governor also devotes several pages to providing his side of the story from the 2024 search for a vice-presidential candidate, after Harris wrote a detailed account of the traditionally secretive process, which included a less-than-warm meeting with Shapiro. Their sit-down on August 4, 2024, took place

Three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices were projected to be retained in Tuesday’s election, handing Democrats critical statewide wins in the Keystone State.  The wins ensure that Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht — all Democrats — will serve for another 10 years on the bench. The court currently has a 5-2 Democratic majority. Only…

Spencer Ackerman As much as the Trumpists claim to disavow the War on Terror, they walk a path paved by the most powerful vice president in US history. The post His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies appeared first on The Nation.

Democrat Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, was projected by multiple news outlets to become New York City’s next mayor—an outcome that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.  He defeated disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination in June, and the GOP nominee, Curtis Sliwa, frequent New York candidate perhaps best known for his red beret and love of cats.  As of publication, Mamdani led with 50% of the vote to Cuomo’s 41%, with 75% of the expected vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, left, greets supporters on Oct. 16 in New York City. If the results hold, Mamdani’s victory would amount to a generational break from the city’s political establishment—and a humiliating defeat for Cuomo, the once-dominant governor who left office in disgrace and had been itching to claw his way back. What started as a sleepy reelection bid for incumbent Mayor Eric Adams evolved into a full-blown political reckoning, reshaping the city’s political map and derailing Cuomo’s attempted comeback tour. The path to this moment took a dramatic turn in late September, when Adams withdrew from the race amid plummeting approval ratings and ongoing scandals, including federal corruption probes. In late October, he endorsed Cuomo, hoping to persuade his small base of backers to support another scandal-plagued independent. Yet Mamdani’s insurgent campaign didn’t falter. His message was steadfastly focused on the city’s cost-of-living crisis, with him proposing policies like rent freezes, higher taxes on the wealthy, free buses, and city-owned grocery stores. And clearly, it has resonated with voters. Despite facing millions in super PAC attacks as well as a well-funded establishment candidate, he built a devoted coalition of progressive activists, younger voters, and working-class New Yorkers. Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, shown in October. By early voting, the race had become a clear test of which Democratic vision New Yorkers preferred. Cuomo leaned on the old-guard playbook, promising stability and toughness, while Mamdani ran as an insurgent pushing for big, structural changes. Cuomo and his allies tried to frame Mamdani as untested and extreme, pointing to his pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel. President Donald Trump and far-right billionaire Elon Musk also waded in, with both endorsing Cuomo on Monday. Earlier this year, Trump falsely branded Mamdani a “communist,” and threatened to withhold federal funding if Mamdani enacted policies the president disagreed with. “Remember, he needs the money from me, as President, in order to fulfill all of his FAKE Communist promises,” Trump posted online in September. “He won’t be getting any of it.” Right-wing news outlets also waged a war against Mamdani. Fox News aired segments suggesting he should be deported, while the New York Post churned out near-daily front page warnings of radical rule in City Hall. (Both outlets are owned by right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch.) Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, shown in November. But the attacks seemed to only harden Mamdani’s base. His campaign mobilized a grassroots operation. Volunteers hit subway stations, organizers livestreamed rallies, and voters lined up at early-voting sites across the city—a wave of energy that recalled the campaign that propelled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress seven years ago. Privately, Trump reportedly told allies he didn’t think Mamdani could be beaten, underestimating the candidate’s broad appeal. Even as Mamdani’s rallies drew massive crowds, much of the Democratic establishment was hesitant to embrace him. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries waited until late October to endorse him, while New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer never publicly supported his campaign. But that apparent caution strengthened Mamdani’s anti-establishment image, positioning him as the candidate of street-level energy and outsider momentum. For months leading up to June’s Democratic primary, Cuomo led nearly every poll, but Mamdani closed the gap and won the party’s nomination, thanks to a surge of younger voters and working-class New Yorkers fed up with the status quo. By August, polls of the general election showed him overtaking both Cuomo and Sliwa as the Democratic base consolidated around their candidate.  Datawrapper Content Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani immigrated to New York at age 7, grew up in the city’s public schools, and has now become the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century. His election marks others firsts as well: He is the city’s first Muslim mayor and its first mayor of Indian heritage. Cuomo’s downfall reads like a political tragedy. Once a master of New York’s backroom machinery, he launched his campaign as the heavy favorite, armed with money, name recognition, and a long resume—but also a cloud of scandal. He resigned in 2021 after a report accused him of sexually harassing at least 11 women, which he denies. He has faced allegations of covering up nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. And as of May, he was under federal investigation for allegedly lying to Congress. For Democrats, the implications go far beyond City Hall. A Mamdani win suggests a leftward shift in America’s largest city—and a reminder that even after years of internal division, progressive energy isn’t going anywhere. “I will be the mayor for every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for Gov. Cuomo, or felt too disillusioned by a long-broken political system to vote at all,” he said after winning the Democratic nomination in June. “I cannot promise that you will always agree with me, but I will never hide from you. If you are hurting, I will try to heal. If you feel misunderstood, I will strive to understand. Your concerns will always be mine, and I will put your hopes before my own.”

Trump and his two administrations have been consistently evasive about his health. Instead of releasing his medical records, Donald Trump has made excuses or only released summaries and notes from his doctors. Trump is the most evasive president since Ronald Reagan when it comes to not disclosing health issues. The Reagan assessment is retroactive because the American people did not find out the true scope of Reagan’s Alzheimer’s until long after he left office. During his second term, it has long been suspected that Reagan was in decline, and his administration hid it. Fast-forward forty years, and the American people are watching an unpopular president show signs of cognitive decline regularly. One week ago, Donald Trump bragged about taking another dementia test: They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person. They have, uh, AOCs, low IQ. You give her an IQ test, have her pass like the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed, I took, those are very hard. Uh, they’re really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way, but their cognitive tests, uh, let AOC go against Trump. Okay, let Jasmine go against Trump. I don’t think, Jasmine, the first couple of questions are easy, a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe. You know, when you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions. In the same conversation with reporters, Trump also bragged about having an MRI and bragged that it was perfect. Nobody asked why Trump had the MRI until one week later. Read and watch Karoline Leavitt’s answer below. Read more

On the first day of every month, Ethel Ingram goes to the grocery store with $171 in federally funded food stamps and a nearly impossible mission: Buy enough food for the next 30 days. She usually fails. A couple of weeks into most months, she’s forced to pursue another goal: visiting enough food banks to stock her refrigerator until the month ends and her account reloads. But this month, the government shutdown cut off food assistance to her and millions of others. Now Ingram’s options to feed herself are dwindling. Her account balance remains zero, and the food banks she relies on are more crowded than she has ever seen them. This is what happens when a record-long government shutdown affects millions of Americans who are already struggling with the high cost of food, housing, child care, and just about everything else. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has stopped issuing payments for the first time in its 61-year history, leaving a sudden gash in the social safety net. For the nearly 42 million SNAP beneficiaries, November 1 was the day that the government shutdown became intensely personal. “November’s going to be kind of rough,” Ingram, a 76-year-old resident of Sanford, Florida, told me. Last week, she visited a local church’s food drive, where she was able to get two pieces of meat she hopes will sustain her for the week. “I’ve got my other bills coming up. I’ve got my light bill; I’ve got my water bill; I’ve got car insurance. It’s going to be rough.” Stories of overwhelmed food banks and hunger-stricken families have pushed members of Congress to finally begin serious discussions about bringing the 35-day shutdown to an end. Combined with snarled air traffic (Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said today to expect “mass chaos” at airports if the government remains shut down next week), sudden closures of Head Start programs, and the risk of another missed paycheck for federal workers, the SNAP cuts could represent the most significant development yet in a shutdown that has at times felt invisible. As tens of millions of people begin to feel the impact of the largest anti-hunger program going dark, the government closure has begun to morph from a nuisance into an emergency. One in eight Americans relies on SNAP to help make ends meet, a population that includes a large portion of children and seniors as well as parents hovering near the poverty line despite working full-time. Many of the beneficiaries live in Republican districts and voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, which was dominated by cost-of-living issues. A year later, members of Congress are hearing emotional tales of mothers who are planning to skip meals so their children can eat, minimum-wage workers who are forced to rely on the kindness of strangers for sustenance, and families who are having to choose which bills to forgo in order to buy a little food. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said yesterday that he is “optimistic” a resolution might be at hand, hinting that the quiet negotiations taking place between Democrats and Republicans in recent days may be making progress. Congress is set to go on a weeklong recess next week, so the coming days will be crucial in determining whether there is enough momentum to strike a deal or whether millions of Americans will approach Thanksgiving facing government-inflicted austerity. Even food banks, which typically receive bountiful donations during the holidays, are confronting concerns that demand may outstrip supply if the shutdown does not end soon. Greg Higgerson, the chief development officer at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, told me that several of the nonprofits his organization partners with—such as the church Ingram visited—have called in recent days with dire warnings. They are “concerned about their food supply and how quickly they feel like they’re going to go through it in the next week or two,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a whole lot to tell them.” Despite serving some 300,000 meals each day, his organization is no match for the SNAP program’s reach, he said. For every meal provided by a food pantry, SNAP—which typically spends more than $8 billion a month on benefits—has the capacity to provide nine, according to Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks. During past government shutdowns, the program has continued to issue assistance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, appeared to be following that precedent before abruptly changing course last month. A detailed plan for using contingency funds to cover SNAP was removed from the USDA website, which in October began featuring a series of partisan banner messages attacking “Radical Left Democrats” for the predicament. The most recent message on the taxpayer-funded website says “the well has run dry” for SNAP benefits and, without evidence, accuses Democrats of prioritizing “gender mutilation procedures” over hungry families. After a group of Democrat-led states and nonprofit organizations filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to cut off SNAP benefits, two federal judges last week ruled that USDA must use contingency funds to keep the program going. The agency told the court yesterday that it would be able to fund only half of people’s normal benefits, and that the funds could take weeks or even months to arrive. USDA said it would not tap a separate emergency account that would have allowed the payment of full benefits this month. (That account, it said in court filings, is earmarked for children’s-nutrition programs and might not be backfilled by Congress should it be used for SNAP.) Trump, who has used the shutdown to punish his perceived political enemies and shield those he sees as allies, offered a partisan take when asked last week about the shutdown. “Largely, when you talk about SNAP, you’re talking about largely Democrats,” he told reporters on Friday. But Republican beneficiaries in rural parts of the country, where food insecurity and poverty affect millions of people, are being hit

Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) called former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died on Monday, a “patriotic American who loved his country.” “While we strongly disagreed on most policy issues, his patriotism was clear when he returned to the House Floor to commemorate the first anniversary of January 6th,” Pelosi said Tuesday on the social…

Ben Lorber How the right’s crisis over US support for Israel has provided the white nationalist with the opening he needs to be welcomed into the MAGA fold. The post Nick Fuentes Has Officially Breached the MAGA Gates appeared first on The Nation.