United States | News & Politics

"Only a right-wing elitist would think that owning a bunch of farmland makes you a farmer," said one critic. "No, farming makes you a farmer, Scott. You’re an investor and landowner."

Marina Dunbar in Forest Hills Mon 27 Oct 2025 06.00 EDT

For Mitch, the key issues facing NYC right now are “safety, the trains being safe, and affordability”, adding that while he’s skeptical about whether Mamdani can deliver on all his promises, he’s open-minded. “I don’t know who’s going to pay for all this stuff he wants done … but I’m going in open-minded, and just hoping somebody is offering some alternatives.”

Brooklyn, 30, also from Astoria, said their top priorities were protecting LGBTQ rights and tackling the city’s affordability crisis. “I think Mamdani is doing a great job of addressing everything I’m concerned about,” they said.

Nicole, 30, echoed that sentiment, praising Mamdani’s authenticity: “I feel like Mamdani is very genuine in his responses in a way that isn’t typically seen in most politicians. He’s a little less lip service-y than usual.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A fighter jet and a helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz both crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet said.

The three crew members of the MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter were rescued on Sunday afternoon, and the two aviators in the F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet ejected and were recovered safely, and all five “are safe and in stable condition,” the fleet said in a statement.

The causes of the two crashes were under investigation, the statement said.

President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Tokyo on Monday, said the incidents could have been caused by “bad fuel.” He ruled out foul play and said there was “nothing to hide.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37927105

TRIGGER WARNING

Article also discusses allegations of violent rape of Giuffre by a former Prime Minister.

The number of well known assholes that are being protected by not having the files released must be in the hundreds now.

She also wrote that she was forced to have sex with a "well-known prime minister" who she alleged beat her so badly that she begged for her life.

She does not reveal the man's nationality nor any other details about his identity.

Her long-time publicist and friend Dini von Mueffling told 7.30 she believes the name of this former prime minister and the others in Epstein's network will eventually be revealed.

[…]

Virginia says Epstein told her he had set up hidden cameras in his numerous properties, from Manhattan to West Palm Beach, to film rich and powerful people and in some cases to blackmail them.

"She talked to lots of people about it, including me," Ms von Mueffling said.

"It's very well known that Epstein had video cameras all over all of his homes.

https://archive.ph/0jOAx

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37874537

Michael Sainato
Sun 26 Oct 2025 17.16 EDT

British journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.

A statement from Cair said it was “a blatant affront to free speech” to detain Hamdi for criticizing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza while he engaged on a speaking tour in the US. A Trump administration official added in a separate statement that Hamdi is facing deportation.

Archive: [ https://archive.is/NJXym ]

Unsurprisingly, “Independent” is a fascinating book for all the wrong reasons. It was dated before it arrived at the printers, perhaps before it was even written; no doubt it will be studied by the historians and anthropologists of the future. Jean-Pierre is an artifact of an age that looks recent on paper but feels prehistoric in practice — the age of pantsuits, the word “empowerment,” the musical “Hamilton,” the cheap therapeutic entreaties to “work on yourself” and “lean in” to various corporate abysses. “Independent” is written in the outmoded register of one of those lawn signs proclaiming that “in this house, we believe kindness is everything,” which have been firmly planted, to no tangible electoral effect, since 2016.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6540372

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4083

Just over nine months after President Donald Trump returned to office and pardoned his supporters who stormed the US Capitol, one of the Republican's top aides suggested that federal law enforcement may arrest Democrats standing up to the White House's anti-migrant agenda, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

Asked about the administration's willingness and federal authority to arrest the Illinois leader on Fox News Friday, Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, responded: "Well, the answer I'm about to give doesn't only apply to Gov. Pritzker, it applies to any state official, any local official, anybody who's operating in an official capacity who conspires or engages in activity that unlawfully impedes federal law enforcement conducting their duties."

"So if you engage in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws or to unlawfully order your own police officers or your own officials to try to interfere with ICE officers, or even to arrest ICE officers, you're engaged in criminal activity," he said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Different types of crimes would apply. There is obstruction of justice. There is harboring illegal aliens. There is impeding the enforcement of our immigration laws."

"And then, as you get up the scale of behavior, you obviously get into seditious conspiracy charges, depending on the conduct, and many other offenses. So again, it depends on the action. It depends on the conduct. It depends on what is taking place," Miller continued. He went on to tell ICE officers that "you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties."

Both Miller's threat toward Pritzker and other officials, and his immunity claim, were met with swift backlash, including from Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan, who highlighted Trump's pardons for the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists.

"Remember, these fascist freaks pardoned the actual people convicted of 'seditious conspiracy' while falsely accusing their opponents of this serious crime," the journalist wrote on social media. "(On a side note, arresting Pritzker would make him the most popular politician in America overnight.)"

— (@)

Trump himself has called for jailing Pritzker and Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson "for failing to protect" ICE officers. Priztker, a billionaire and potential 2028 presidential candidate, has suggested Trump should be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during the first Trump administration and authored an infamous, anonymous 2018 New York Times editorial, said Friday, "Feels like we're going down the rabbit hole pretty fast here, folks."

California state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-11), one of the Democrats running for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's seat in the next cycle, said: "They're now explicitly taking the position that state and local elected officials are committing crimes when they attempt to protect their communities from the ICE secret police."

Weiner's state Senate district includes San Francisco, one of the cities targeted by Trump with immigration agents, and a potential National Guard deployment. The president said he backed off the threat to send troops to the city, for now, after calls from billionaire friends.

However, Trump's administration is still fighting in federal court to deploy the National Guard in the Chicagoland area, where ICE's Operation Midway Blitz is underway. The people of Illinois have responded with persistent protests, including at an ICE facility in suburban Broadview, where agents have met demonstrations with violence.

"No, ICE officers do not have immunity to assault and arrest unarmed Americans without a warrant," former Obama administration official and Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau stressed on social media Friday.

Tufts University international politics professor Daniel Drezner similarly said, "This seems very disturbing and also wrong."

Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) concluded: "Stephen Miller is the most evil, fascist, wannabe authoritarian in the Trump regime. And that’s saying something."

Miller's comments came just two days after Pritzker appeared on Fox News and discussed Trump's attacks on him, immigration agents' actions in Illinois, and the risk that Trump may try to use US troops to steal future elections.

— (@)

The governor's deputy chief of staff for communications, Matt Hill, responded to Miller's remarks by pointing to that appearance.

"Holy crap. Gov. Pritzker did ONE interview on Fox, and Stephen Miller is freaking out," Hill said on social media with a snowflake emoji. "All the Gov. did was appoint experts to collect videos and testimony of what's happening in Chicago. Now, Miller is threatening to silence Illinoisans and arrest their governor."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6548698

Federal funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are being felt across the Native art community.

“Some of the cuts have been absolutely devastating, including research centers that we were partnering with at Bard College that were led by artists that completely lost all of their federal support after the grant was awarded, and I’ll also say that this is really unprecedented,” said Candice Hopkins, executive director and chief curator at the Forge Project. Hopkins is Carcross and Tagish First Nation.

The Forge Project is a Native-led organization that cultivates and advances Indigenous leadership in arts and culture. They have worked with hundreds of people through their programs of partnerships, including the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin.

While her nonprofit organization has not been affected by the funding cuts, many of their partners have like Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art received a notification in May from the National Endowment for the Arts that the awarded grant for the support of Gibson’s commission “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT” was terminated.

The museum’s director Kristy Edmunds said the National Endowment for the Arts awarded it during the Biden administration.

“In reading our notification multiple times, I am struck by the words being used, how important they are to absorb, and is why I am sharing them here with you as supporters of MASS MoCA,” Edmunds said in a statement. “The loss of these crucial funding awards for projects at MASS MoCA (pending appeals) is real and will throw us into greater financial strain. As painful as this is financially, what is more so is the diminishment of our revered national agencies and their staff after decades of service in elevating our national creativity, innovation and cultural contributions. These actions in combination with their rhetoric are unnerving, and are but one of many challenges at hand and to come.”

Full Article

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/56330518

“It is shocking and unacceptable that in the United States in 2025, poverty steals almost a decade of older Americans’ lives,” said Ramsey Alwin, president of the National Council on Aging.

The amount is meaningless — less than one day of salary. But the principle is important: once the armed services are paid by the oligarchs, they become a private militia, and we no longer have a country.

— Timothy Snyder

Two decades ago, Sara Carlson, then a mother of three, was newly single because of a traumatic event, and the US’s food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), helped her feed her children with free food supplies.

“I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live,” said Carlson, 45, who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and now works as an operations manager for a wealth-management firm and serves on the board of Channel One Regional Food Bank, which works to increase food access.

While the food stamps helped her, the government cut her off after a couple years because she started making too much money, which meant she again had to worry about having enough food.

Now, nearly 42 million people around the country could face the same fate if the federal government shutdown continues and funding for Snap is cut off on 1 November.

Kamala Harris says she is not done with politics and strongly suggested that she is considering another bid for president in a new interview.

In an interview scheduled to air on the BBC on Sunday morning, Harris says that she would “possibly” be the next president, making the clearest suggestion to date that she will make another run for the White House in 2028 despite lagging far behind in the polls.

Harris insisted that she had not yet made a decision, but that she was confident that there will eventually be a woman in the White House and her political career is not over.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37860057

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 4

This November, 17 amendments have been proposed by our legislature (under attack for its similar efforts to kick you out of your own government through racial redistricting) to continue in this strong tradition of taking away opportunity for civic engagement. Don’t let them, and learn what’s on the ballot next month ahead of time (totaling to more than $50 billion in property tax cuts). Fund your public services, and fight back by getting informed on what other unsatisfactory things are going to be added to this work-in-progress document.

Edit:

Here is a collection of helpful guides to the November 2025 Constitutional Amendment election:

League of Women Voters of Texas - 2025 Constitutional Amendment Election Voters Guide

Texas Tribune - 17 statewide propositions will appear on the November ballot. Here’s what Texas voters need to know.

KUT News - Your guide to Texas' proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this November

Austin Chronicle - Chronicle Endorsements for the November 2025 Election

Lone Star Left - Texas 2025 Constitutional Amendments Ballot Guide And Vote Recommendations

Progress Texas - 2025 Texas Statewide Ballot Guide