US government shuts down after Democrats refuse to back Republican funding plan

First shutdown in nearly seven years as Republicans accused of ‘risking America’s healthcare’ in spending bill

The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.

The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.

Continue reading...

Palestinian American denied slot at DNC competing for Georgia governor: ‘We’re trying to rebuild the coalition’

Ruwa Romman is ‘running to build a movement’ and ‘restoring civic ethos of being involved in the government’

Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-American elected to state-level office in Georgia, was fighting for a speaking slot a year ago at the Democratic national convention, hoping to draw attention to concerns among progressive voters about the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Monday, she announced her candidacy for governor in Georgia – looking for a different kind of attention.

Continue reading...

White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

Democrats accuse Trump of intimidation tactics after memo outlines much more aggressive step than previous shutdowns

The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.

In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.

Continue reading...

Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

Democrats say Trump allies are using incident for ‘political points’ against the left despite the victims being detainees

A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.

Continue reading...

US must ‘universally condemn political violence’, Democratic governor Shapiro says

Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro says US stands at ‘inflection point’ after Charlie Kirk killing and urges unity over division

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has said Americans must “universally condemn political violence, no matter where it is” after the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk as well as a deadly shootout in Shapiro’s state that left three police officers dead and two others injured.

Hours before Kirk’s funeral, Shapiro said that the nation stands at an “inflection point” and urged Americans to choose shared values over division, pointing to the solidarity shown by Pennsylvanians in the aftermath of the officers’ killings in York county last week.

Continue reading...

Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move

President tells Fox News ‘the radicals on the left are the problem’ and refuses to seek common way forward

Donald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.

Continue reading...

‘Despicable’: Republicans and Democrats condemn violence after Charlie Kirk killing

US lawmakers, in bipartisan rebuke, say violence has no place in America as Trump orders flags lowered

The killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college on Wednesday afternoon prompted outrage from Democrats and Republicans over the latest act of political violence in the United States, with Donald Trump lamenting the loss of a key ally.

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.

Continue reading...

House committee releases image of ‘sickening’ birthday note reportedly from Trump to Epstein – US politics live

White House officials seek to discredit note and claim Donald Trump signature is false

Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation.

Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned. A three-judge panel for the US court of appeals for the second circuit, rejected that argument.

Continue reading...

Will Republicans in Congress finally stand up to Trump?

The president has steamrollered the separation of powers but so far his sway over his party has been firm

Democrat Chuck Schumer returned to the Senate floor last week with some urgent questions. “Will Senate Republicans continue to kowtow to a leader they know is dragging the country down?” he demanded. “That they know is a pathological liar? Or will they, as the Founding Fathers intended, stand up to him? Will they help us fight America’s slide into authoritarianism?”

It was a recognition of how Donald Trump has spent eight months seeking to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress and others. He has signed 200 executive orders – more than Joe Biden in four years – unleashed squadrons of national guard troops in Washington, turned investigators on his political foes and sought to bring academic, cultural, financial and legal institutions to heel.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

Effort could be a tough task in current political climate, with Trump maligning ex-president and left-leaning groups daily

Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

Effort could be a tough task in current political climate, with Trump maligning ex-president and left-leaning groups daily

Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

Continue reading...

Democrats call for firing of January 6 defendant who works at justice department

Jared Wise, a DoJ senior adviser, urged fellow rioters to kill police officers during the 2021 Capitol attack

A January 6 defendant who urged fellow rioters to kill police officers should be fired from his job at the justice department, three senate Democrats wrote in a letter to US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the defendant, Jared Wise, was hired as a counselor to Ed Martin, a prominent January 6 defense lawyer who is leading a so-called weaponization working group inside the justice department that is targeting Trump’s political rivals. The scope of Wise’s role remains unclear.

Continue reading...

Democrats blast state department for lack of ‘basic oversight’ of controversial Gaza food organization

Letter by senior Democrats asks state department to reveal details behind financing of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Senior Democratic senators have called on the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, to reveal details behind the financing and oversight of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) amid concerns over rising death tolls near aid sites, the group’s apparent coordination with the Israeli army and its reported use of private military contractors linked to intelligence operations.

The letter, co-signed by senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Welch, accuses the state department of an “inability to answer basic questions about GHF in a timely manner” and said that the department’s “overriding of internal protocol and staff warnings is particularly concerning given it is unlikely to be able to conduct basic oversight of the funds it provided to GHF”.

Continue reading...

JB Pritzker calls for ‘all to stand up’ to Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago

President is preparing for controversial federal takeover of US city in crusade against immigration ‘sanctuary cities’

Illinois’s governor JB Pritzker has called on “all to stand up” to Donald Trump as the US president prepares to launch a federally led immigration crackdown across Chicago, a plan which has been met with widespread backlash from local leaders and the public.

Pritzker’s comments come as White House officials vow to target Chicago next in its sweeping immigration crackdowns across the country. Recently, the White House requested that a US military base on the outskirts of Chicago assist with immigration operations as the Trump administration plans a broader takeover of Democratic-run “sanctuary cities”.

Continue reading...

Bernie Sanders demands that RFK Jr step down as health secretary

Vermont senator says Kennedy is endangering the health of the American people as head of the US health department

Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies.

In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”

Continue reading...

The Pennsylvania Democrat marching for public transit: ‘Time honoured American tradition’

Malcolm Kenyatta is on a 105-mile march to highlight drastic cuts to the stat’s regional public transport services

“The best part of this is I get to eat as many carbs as possible,” jokes Malcolm Kenyatta, who has lost 100lbs over the past two years. “I had a bagel already, I’m eating snacks, I’m having a good time.”

The Democratic state representative was speaking by phone from Broomall, Pennsylvania, on Friday, around 12 miles into a one-man, 105-mile march from Philadelphia to Harrisburg in protest to drastic cuts to regional public transport services.

Continue reading...

Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

Democrats voted against appointing two candidates known for election denialism and voter registration challenges

The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.

The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.

Continue reading...

Trump ‘manufactured crisis’ to justify plan to send national guard to Chicago, leading Democrat says

Pentagon official confirms plan as House minority leader Jeffries says president is ‘playing’ with Americans’ lives

Planning is underway to send national guard troops to Chicago, an official at the Pentagon confirmed to ABC News on Sunday.

“We won’t speculate on further operations. The Department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel,” a Department of Defense official said, according to ABC.

Continue reading...

Zohran Mamdani leads in fundraising for New York City mayoral contest

The Democratic nominee far outpaces former governor Andrew Cuomo and embattled incumbent Eric Adams

Zohran Mamdani pulled in almost double the funds of his nearest rivals for New York City mayor between early July and mid-August, as the candidates prepare for the crucial post Labor Day push to the November poll.

New York’s City’s campaign finance board said on Saturday that the democratic socialist, who won the Democratic party nomination in June against former state governor Andrew Cuomo, raised $1,051,200, with an average donation of $121 recorded equally from donors in and outside the state.

Continue reading...