debate

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — If there’s agreement on anything in the two states with governor’s races this year, it’s that utility bills are a growing concern among voters.

One Virginia voter, Kim Wilson, lamented at a town hall recently that her electricity bill seems to go up every month, no matter how much she tries to mitigate the costs. She was drawn to the event in part by its title: “The energy bills are too damn high.”

“It’s way too high,” Wilson readily agreed.

In New Jersey, Herb Michitsch of Kenilworth said his electric bill has climbed to nearly $400 a month, or more than four times what it was when he and his wife moved into their home half a century ago.

“Something really has to be done,” Michitsch said.

That something must be done is pretty much where the agreement ends. It’s what must be done that splits politicians back into rival camps.

Democratic candidates in the two states are far more likely to embrace clean energy options like wind and solar than their Republican opponents. The two states’ Republican nominees are more closely aligned with the policies of President Trump, who has called climate change a “con job” and promotes more traditional energy sources like gas and coal. New Jersey Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli has acknowledged that human-caused climate change is occurring, but he says Democrats have driven up costs with their clean energy push.

Which side voters land on in the off-year elections will give both parties plenty to consider in what feels destined to be an emerging economic issue heading into next year’s midterm elections.

At a recent rally in New Jersey, Democratic state Sen. Vin Gopal made clear that he stood with Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill in support of her plans to lower costs. But Gopal acknowledged that the outcome could signal whether voters are ready to embrace the president’s approach or have simply grown weary of national politics.

“The whole country is watching what happens,” he said.

Technology drives up costs

The debate comes as people in the two states grapple with double-digit percentage increases in monthly electricity bills. The exploding costs are driven by soaring demand, particularly from data centers, and by the rapid onset of energy-intensive artificial intelligence technology. Virginia’s largest energy utility also has linked potential future rate increases to inflation and other costs.

In Virginia’s open race to succeed a term-limited GOP incumbent, Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are at odds over the development of renewable energy sources.

Spanberger has laid out a plan to expand solar and wind production in underused locations, praising a wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach. In a debate against her opponent, she also said she would “ensure that data centers pay their fair share” as costs rise. The state is home to the world’s largest data center market,

Republican Winsome Earle-Sears wasn’t having it.

“That’s all she wants, is solar and wind,” Earle-Sears said of Spanberger at the debate. “Well, if you look outside, the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing, and then what, Abigail, what will you do?”

In New Jersey, where Ciattarelli’s endorsement by Trump included recent social media posts praising his energy affordability plans, the GOP nominee blames rising costs on eight years of Democratic control of state government.

Ciattarelli says he would pull New Jersey out of a regional greenhouse gas trading bloc, which Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy reentered when he first took office in 2018.

“It’s been a failure,” Ciattarelli said at the final debate of the campaign. “Electricity is at an all-time high.”

He’s also come out as a strident opponent of wind energy off the state’s coast, an effort Democrats spearheaded under Murphy. A major offshore wind project ground to a halt when the Danish company overseeing it scrapped projects, citing supply chain problems and high interest rates.

At the center of Sherrill’s campaign promise on the issue is an executive order to freeze rates and build cheaper and cleaner power generation.

“I know my opponent laughs at it,” Sherrill said recently.

A growing concern among voters

The candidates’ focus on affordability and utility rates reflects an unease among voters. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults, at a time when data center development for AI could further strain the power grid.

Perhaps that’s why the statewide races have become something of an energy proxy battle in Virginia. Clean Virginia, a clean energy advocacy group that targets utility corruption, has backed all three Democratic candidates for statewide office in Virginia — a first for the organization. GOP statewide candidates, meanwhile, have accepted money from Dominion Energy, the largest electric utility in Virginia.

To further complicate an already complex issue: Virginia has passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which calls for utilities to sunset carbon energy production methods by 2045.

Republican House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, who represents the southwest edge of Virginia, had failed to alter part of the state’s Clean Economy Act earlier this year. Kilgore, whose top donor is Dominion Energy, said in February: “If their bills go any higher, there are folks in my region that are not able to pay them now, they’re definitely not going to be able to pay them in the future.”

Evan Vaughn, executive director of MAREC Action, a group of Mid-Atlantic renewable energy developers, said candidates from both parties are in a tough spot because bringing down prices quickly will be difficult given broader market dynamics.

“Voters should look to which candidate they think can do the best to stabilize prices by bringing more generation online,” he said. “That’s really going to be the key to affordability.”

Michitsch, who’s backing Sherrill in the governor’s race and said he would campaign for her, said her proposal shows she’s willing to do something to address spiraling costs.

“We need to change,” he said. “And I think she is here to change things.”

Diaz and Catalini write for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — Vice President George Bush and Sen. Bob Dole, chief rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, clashed over trade policy and derided each other’s plans for reduction of the federal deficit at a presidential campaign debate here Sunday.

“I don’t think we should go down the protectionist road,” Bush declared in warning against tougher trade measures now pending in Congress at the debate staged here in Georgia to focus attention on the candidates’ views in advance of the March 8 Super Tuesday Southern primaries.

“The best answer (to the nation’s trade problems) is open markets,” Bush said, adding that he was concerned about “the inevitability of retaliation” against the United States by foreign trading partners.

But Dole, who is supporting stronger trade measures on Capitol Hill, disagreed sharply. “Every time I hear the word retaliation I am reminded that Japan and South Korea and Taiwan already block Florida oranges and Georgia peaches and Alabama melons.” Dole contended that an Alabama melon would cost about $55 in Japan because of that country’s restrictive trade practices.

‘Talking About Jobs’

“Let’s be realistic,” the Kansas lawmaker said. “We’re talking about American jobs, not protectionism.”

On the issue of the budget deficit, Dole dismissed a four-year budget spending freeze advocated by Bush as a “four-year cop-out” because the plan limits only overall spending rather than specific programs.

“He’s just going to freeze bad programs for four years and not do anything about it,” said Dole, who favors a one-year across-the-board ceiling on all spending programs, except aid for the needy. Dole contended that in four years Bush’s plan would leave the nation with a deficit of $153 billion.

But Bush disputed Dole’s figures and argued that the senator’s proposal “would cut into the muscle of defense.”

“How does your plan work?” Bush demanded of Dole.

“How does your plan work?” Dole shot back.

A Spirited Argument

Bush made his most spirited argument for his deficit plan in an exchange with New York Rep. Jack Kemp, who is vying with Pat Robertson, former religious broadcaster, to become the conservative alternative to either of the two front-runners.

Responding to Kemp’s charge that the budget freeze proposals meant that national security would be sacrificed “on the altar of mindless budgeting,” Bush said: “The freeze I’m talking about provides the President with flexibility.”

“The point is, Jack, you don’t care about deficits, you never have. You don’t think they’re important. And they are public enemy No. 1.”

“George Bush is now making my speech,” grumbled Dole, who has sought to depict himself in the campaign as the chief Republican foe of budget deficits.

Although Kemp and Bush argued about budget policy, the two were by and large in agreement in opposing changes in trade policy in contrast with Dole and Robertson. Trade has become a hot issue in the Super Tuesday Republican presidential campaign in large measure because of the impact of textile imports on the economies of South Carolina and other textile-producing states in this region.

Dole and Robertson both support trade legislation, which Bush and Kemp oppose.

‘Sounds Like Gephardt’

“Your trade talk sounds like Dick Gephardt,” Kemp told Dole at one point, referring to Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who has based much of his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination on a controversial proposal to give the United States the power to retaliate against unfair foreign trade practices.

Earlier in the debate, Robertson introduced the trade issue into the discussion. “People that I’ve talked to can’t abide the thought that America is going to be No. 2 in the world in the 21st Century,” Robertson said. Decrying the rise of textile imports from China and the Soviet Union, the former broadcaster said: “I don’t believe we can continue to permit the deindustrialization of America.

“I’m for free trade in this country but it’s got to be fair. And I think if those people don’t deal fairly with us, it’s high time we started getting tough with them. I don’t want to preside over Uncle Sucker, I want to preside over Uncle Sam.”

But Kemp promptly took issue with that argument in impassioned terms.

‘Barriers to Imports’

“If we’re going to go to Iowa, Pat and Bob,” he said, addressing Robertson and Dole, “and tell the folks in Iowa we want to boost exports of grain and corn and soybeans and then go to South Carolina, as you both have done, and tell them you’re going to put up barriers to imports, we will be making a mistake under your leadership.”

Kemp charged that such a shift in trade policy would be like “the mistake that was made in 1929 and 1930 when a Republican Congress caused the worst trade war in the history of this world with the Smoot-Hawley tariff act.”

Calling for lower tax rates on labor and capital and stable exchange rates to spur economic growth, the New York congressman warned that putting up trade barriers “is not just protectionist, it is mindless with regard to the fact that we have to compete in an export war.

“So let’s not make the mistake we made in the 1930s.”

Sunday’s debate, like the debate staged here Saturday for Democratic presidential candidates, was sponsored by the Atlanta Constitution-Journal. It brought together all of the 1988 GOP presidential contenders for the first time since the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 16.

Republican Survivors

A prior effort to assemble all the Republican survivors on one platform failed 10 days ago in Dallas when Dole and Robertson refused to participate, charging that the arrangements in Bush’s home state unfairly favored the vice president.

Since winning the New Hampshire primary, Bush has seemed relaxed and confident on the stump, bolstered not only by his victory in the Granite State but also by his financial resources and his reputedly powerful organization in most of the 14 Southern and border Super Tuesday states.

The vice president’s chief rival, Dole, won the South Dakota primary and the Minnesota caucuses last week. But Dole’s satisfaction with those successes was dimmed by evidence of discord within his campaign organization, signaled most notably by the firing of two key advisers, David Keene and Donald Devine, by campaign Chairman William Brock.

Meanwhile Robertson campaign strategists have been concerned about the potential impact on his candidacy of the disclosures of the sexual misadventures of television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

For his part, Kemp, short on money and lacking the sort of Southern base Robertson can rely on among evangelical Christians, must win the backing of hard-core conservatives to stay in the race. His first objective is to finish ahead of either Bush or Robertson in the South Carolina Republican primary next Saturday, the results of which are expected to have considerable symbolic impact on the March 8 vote.

NEW YORK — A few weeks before his stunning loss to Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo put forth a political calculus long accepted as fact in New York: “Being a Democrat,” he said, “it’s synonymous that you support Israel.”

Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, could be on the cusp of shattering that convention.

An unstinting supporter of Palestinian rights, the 34-year-old democratic socialist has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, backed the movement to boycott the country’s goods and pledged to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he sets foot in New York.

In a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, where mayors have long been expected to make the long pilgrimage to the Jewish state, Mamdani identifies proudly as an “anti-Zionist.”

While he says he supports Israel’s right to exist, he describes any state or social hierarchy that favors Jews over others as incompatible with his belief in universal human rights.

City officials, Mamdani often points out, have no say in American foreign policy. And he has consistently and emphatically rejected claims that his criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism, promising to work closely with those whom he doesn’t agree with if elected.

But as Cuomo and others have framed the race as a referendum on Israel, political observers say a Mamdani victory could reverberate far beyond New York, offering permission for Democrats to speak out on an issue long seen as a third rail of politics.

“This race is a proxy for where the party goes from here in terms of support for Israel — and that’s causing a lot of consternation,” said Basil Smikle, a former chief executive of the state’s Democratic Party. “We’re treading in territory that we’ve not really dealt with before.”

The ‘most important’ issue in the race

From the beginning, Cuomo has staked much of his political comeback on painting himself as a defender of Jewish security, both in New York and the Middle East.

Shortly before launching his campaign, he announced that he had joined Netanyahu’s legal defense team to defend the prime minister against war crimes charges brought by the International Criminal Court. He cast antisemitism as the “most important” issue facing the city and himself as a “hyper aggressive supporter of Israel.”

Mamdani’s own views, he said, presented an “existential” threat to New Yorkers.

Other candidates quickly rushed to burnish their own pro-Israel credentials, including Mayor Eric Adams, who announced he would run on an “EndAntisemitism” ballot line.

As they competed for support among Brooklyn’s prominent rabbis and other Jewish voters, each equated protests for Palestinian rights with support for terrorism and backed a contentious definition of antisemitism that includes certain criticism of Israel.

Days before dropping out last month, Adams shared a smiling photo with Netanyahu.

The strategy appeared willfully ignorant of polls showing growing public disapproval in the U.S. of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, according to Alyssa Cass, a longtime Democratic strategist.

She said a handful of deep-pocketed campaign donors and some city news outlets “created an impression that you could not ever question Israel, and that impression was completely divorced from reality.”

“The unique dynamics in New York were masking a broader, larger migration in public opinion that had been brewing for some time,” Cass added. “They didn’t realize that the ground beneath them had shifted.”

Shifting political winds

Still, with less than two weeks to go before the election, Cuomo has only leaned into the issue, claiming at Wednesday’s debate that Mamdani had “stoked the flames of hatred against the Jewish people.”

The broadsides have won support from the Anti-Defamation League and pro-Israel donors, like the hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. But there is little indication that the strategy is working among ordinary New Yorkers.

In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in early October, 41% of likely voters in New York City said Mamdani’s views on Israel aligned closest with their own, compared to 26% for Cuomo.

A Fox News poll conducted in mid-October found that 50% of registered voters in New York said they identified more with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, compared to 44% who identified more with the Israelis.

Those numbers have alarmed some Jewish leaders, who have laid at least some of the blame at Mamdani’s feet. In an open letter circulated this week, 650 rabbis warned that his candidacy has contributed to “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization.”

Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, cautioned against drawing a direct link between Mamdani’s popularity and his pro-Palestinian stance.

She noted that most Jewish voters remain strong supporters of Israel, lamenting the fact that neither Mamdani nor Cuomo had articulated “the liberal nuanced perspective that most New York Jews hold.”

“Mamdani’s views on Israel matter, but it’s not the issue on which the majority of New Yorkers are voting,” she added. “If he wins, it’s because he ran a compelling campaign on making this city more affordable.”

Weaponization and authenticity

In debates and interviews, where Mamdani often faces a barrage of questions about his views on the Israel-Hamas war, he is quick to shift the focus to his platform, which includes freezing the rent for regulated apartments, making buses free and lowering the cost of child care.

“I have denounced Hamas again and again,” an exasperated Mamdani said during a debate last week. “It will never be enough for Andrew Cuomo.”

At Wednesday’s debate, Mamdani again spoke of his proposal to increase funding for hate crime prevention and his recent outreach to Jewish voters about their fears of antisemitism.

“They deserve a leader who takes it seriously, who roots it out of these five boroughs, not one who weaponizes it as a means by which to score political points on a debate stage,” he added.

But despite months of vitriolic backlash, Mamdani has stood firm on his core criticism of Israel. In his statement marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, he condemned both Hamas’ “horrific war crimes” and Israel’s occupation, apartheid and “genocidal war” in Gaza.

Whether or not those views are shared by the broader electorate, the consistency of the message has served as “proxy for authenticity” in the minds of voters, according to Peter Feld, a progressive political consultant.

And it has offered a sharp contrast with not only Cuomo, but other pro-Israel Democrats in New York, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Both have spent weeks rebuffing questions about whether they will endorse Mamdani, indicating they were still meeting and speaking with the Democratic nominee.

“The allies divided up Europe in fewer meetings,” scoffed Cass. “At this point, they’re ignoring the majoritarian view of their voters, and there’s no way around that.”

In recent weeks, Feld said he had spoken to several potential candidates weighing primary challenges to other pro-Israel Democratic incumbents.

“Mamdani changed how candidates and donors think about what is politically possible,” Feld said. “We’ve seen that siding with Palestine over Israel doesn’t make you radioactive. It shows voters that you’ll stick to your principles.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa faced off in the final debate of the New York City mayoral race on Wednesday, in a final push to woo voters before the November 4 vote.

But the attack lines they deployed against each other, and their defences, were mostly along predictable lines, as their track records, United States President Donald Trump and Israel’s war on Gaza dominated their clash at LaGuardia Community College in the borough of Queens.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, maintains a sizeable lead in the polls, after surging to a surprise victory in the June primary on a platform of affordability: pushing free buses, rent freezes, and universal childcare, paid for, in part, by raising taxes that favour the wealthy.

Cuomo has sought to portray Mamdani’s promises – most of which would require buy-in from state lawmakers – as unrealistic and has repeatedly taken aim at the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist’s lack of experience in governing. The race has narrowed since the current mayor, Eric Adams, exited the race, leaving just Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliva in the contest.

Here were the top takeaways from the debate:

Experience versus the future

The night began with Cuomo and Mamdani hammering home the themes that have defined the final stretch of the race.

Cuomo called himself the candidate who “can get it done, not just talk about it”.

“He’s never run anything, managed anything. He’s never had a real job,” he said of Mamdani.

Mamdani called himself the “sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city”.

“He is a desperate man lashing out because he knows that the one thing he’s always cared about, power, is now slipping away from him,” Mamdani said of Cuomo.

Later in the night, Sliwa took a swipe at both his opponents: “Zohran, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City.”

Countering Trump

The US president has loomed large over the New York City mayoral race. Wednesday’s debate also came hours after immigration agents raided Manhattan’s Chinatown, an escalation of federal enforcement measures in America’s largest city.

Trump has pledged to deploy the National Guard and to cut federal funding to the city if Mamdani is elected. Cuomo, who shares many of the same donors as Trump, has seized on those threats to portray a win for his rival as dangerous for the city.

“[Trump] has said he’ll take over New York if Mamdani wins, and he will, because he has no respect for him. He [Trump] thinks he’s a kid, and he’s going to knock him [Mamdani] on his tuchus,” Cuomo said.

“I believe [Trump] wants Mamdani, that is his dream, because he will use him politically all across our country, and he will take over New York City,” he said. “Make no mistake, it will be President Trump and Mayor Trump.”

Mamdani called Cuomo “Donald Trump’s puppet”.

“You could turn on the TV any day of the week, and you will hear Donald Trump share that his pick for mayor is Andrew Cuomo, and he wants Andrew Cuomo to be the mayor, not because it will be good for New Yorkers, but because it will be good for him,” he said.

Support for Palestine again looms large

Mamdani was again asked about his staunch support for Palestinian rights, which Cuomo has repeatedly decried, baselessly, as anti-Semitic.

Mamdani said he “will be the mayor who doesn’t just protect Jewish New Yorkers, but also celebrates and cherishes them”. He said Cuomo was using false claims of anti-Semitism to “score political points”.

Cuomo accused him of stoking “the flames of hatred against Jewish people”.

Sliwa falsely accused Mamdani of endorsing “global jihad”.

“That is not something that I have said and that continues to be ascribed to me,” Mamdani responded, “and frankly, I think much of it has to do with the fact that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election.”

Mamdani announces pick for police commissioner

The leading candidate also broke some news during the debate, announcing he would ask current Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to stay on in her post if he wins.

That may upset some of Mamdani’s supporters, who could see the police chief, who is serving under current Mayor Adams, as out of step with the police reforms he has promised.

Tisch, whose family is worth billions, has championed increasing so-called “quality of life” enforcement that critics say disproportionately harms minority communities. She has also pushed to make some criminal laws stricter.

Cuomo grilled on sexual assault

Cuomo was repeatedly asked by his opponents about the sexual misconduct allegations from his employees that saw him leave his post as New York governor early in 2021.

Investigators with the state attorney general later found that Cuomo had “sexually harassed a number of current and former New York State employees”.

Cuomo has claimed the cases have been closed “legally”, but litigation in several cases continues.

During the debate, Mamdani revealed that one accuser, Charlotte Bennett, who Cuomo is currently suing for defamation, was in the audience.

“What do you say to the 13 women who you sexually harassed?” he asked Cuomo.

Cuomo pushed back, arguing that the sexual harassment cases have been dropped. “What you just said was a misstatement, which we’re accustomed to,” he responded to Mamdani.

Oct. 22 (UPI) — The top two candidates to become New York’s next mayor lashed out at one another Wednesday in their second and final general election debate two weeks before the election.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, is running as an independent after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, 34, defeated him in the city’s Democratic Party primary.

In 2020, Mamdani, a Muslim, became the first Ugandan and South Asian man to serve in the state chamber. Cuomo was governor from 2011 until 2023, when he resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

Also on stage was Guardian Angels founder and radio show host Curtis Sliwa, 71, who secured the Republican Party’s nomination and is vowing not to drop out of the race to close Cuomo’s gap.

During the 90-minute debate, they agreed on one issue: a federal crackdown by U.S. Immigration and Law Enforcement. But they disagreed how to best deal with President Donald Trump

Mamdani is polling as the favorite to win New York City’s mayoral election, which is scheduled for Nov. 4, but Cuomo has closed ground in recent polls, though Mamdani has a double-digit lead, according to CBS News. Early voting starts Saturday.

An AARP/Gotham Polling poll released on Monday shows Mamdani with 43.2%, followed by Cuomo at 28.9% and Sliwa at 19.4%. In a head-to-head race, Mamdani prevails 44.6% to 40.7% for Cuomo.

Trump would prefer Cuomo over Mamdani and has asked Sliwa to drop out.

“He has no respect for him,” Cuomo said about Trump, who has called his opponent a Communist. “He thinks he’s a kid and he’s going to knock him on his tuchus.”

Cuomo called Mamdani divisive and lacked experience. Mamdani responded that Cuomo was a “desperate man lashing out.”

Sliwa also noted Mamdani’s lack of experience, saying his resume could “fit on a cocktail napkin.” And he said that Cuomo has enough failures to “fill a library.”

Mandani’s experience was punctuated during an exchange on housing policy.

“The governor doesn’t build housing in New York City,” Cuomo said in response to a question.

“Not if it’s you,” Mamdani responded.

“I did things; you have never had a job,” Cuomo said, pointing toward Mamdani and drawing applause from the crowd. “There is no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives. You don’t know how to run a government.”

In describing his opponent’s limited experience, Cuomo said: “You don’t know how to handle an emergency, and you literally never proposed a bill on anything that you’re not talking about in your campaign.”

Mamdani said Cuomo was “creating his own facts.”

“We just had a former governor say in his own words that the city has been getting screwed by the state,” Mamdani said. “Who was leading the state? It was you, governor.”

Cuomo has referred to his opponent as “de Blasio lite” and “de Blasio 2.0.” Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was the city’s mayor from 2014 until 2021 and has backed Mamdani.

Mamdani has not been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats of New York.

Mamdani’s opponents have accused him of promoting antisemitism.

“You’re the savior of the Jewish people? You won’t denounce ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ which means ‘Kill Jews,'” Cuomo said, noting that hundreds of rabbis had signed a letter criticizing him. “There’s unprecedented fear in New York.”

Mandani said: “I look forward to being a mayor for every single person that calls the city home. All 8.5 million New Yorkers, and that includes Jewish New Yorkers who may have concerns or opposition to the positions that I’ve shared about Israel and Palestine.”

He described his own Jewish family members, saying that members of the community were “scared.”

The debate at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center at LaGuardia Community College was moderated by Errol Lewis of NY1, Brian Lehrer of WNYC and Katie Honan of The City and aired live on Spectrum News’ NY1 and via streaming.

Cuomo favors city oversight of the New York City Transit’s budget, while Mamdani has advocated for revising how the city’s Department of Education approves contracts, WABC-TV reported.

Sliwa is running as a law-and-order candidate and on Wednesday morning said he is ending his conservative talk show on WABC Radio due to the station hosting Cuomo several times in recent weeks.

WABC Radio owner John Catsimatidis and program host Sid Rosenberg each have advocated for Sliwa to end his campaign in favor of Cuomo, according to WABC-TV.

After the debate, Cuomo went to the New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden with Mayor Eric Adams, who lost in the Democratic primary and dropped out as an independent.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — With less than three weeks before New Yorkers head to the polls to select the city’s 111th mayor, candidates Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and independent Andrew Cuomo squared off for a heated debate Thursday night in Manhattan.

Though a trio of candidates stood before lecterns at WNBC’s 30 Rockefeller Center studios, the debate was mainly a fight between Mamdani, the New York City assemblyman leading in the polls, and Cuomo, the former governor of New York State, leaving Sliwa, founder of the nonprofit crime prevention Guardian Angels organization, trying to enter the fray.

Leadership

Cuomo, who left the New York governor’s mansion in August 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, was quick to attack Mamdani, saying the New York assemblyman’s inexperience makes him unfit to oversee a 300,000-employee city workforce and a multi-billion-dollar budget.

“This is no job for on-the-job training,” he said. “And if you look at the failed mayors they’re ones that have no management experience. Don’t do it again.”

Mamdani, in rebuttal, attempted to frame Cuomo as an out-of-touch politician backed by wealthy donors, while pointing to his successes in the state’s assembly as proof of his own experience.

The former governor said Mamdani’s answer was proof of his lack of experience — and a lack of experience in leading New York could have deadly consequences.

“This is not a job for a first timer,” Cuomo said. “Any day you could have a hurricane, God forbid, a 9/11, a health pandemic. If you don’t know what you’re doing people will die.”

“If we have a health pandemic, then why would New Yorkers turn back to the governor who sent seniors to their deaths in nursing homes?” Mamdani replied, referring to a public scandal over how Cuomo’s administration handled COVID-19 in nursing homes and other elder-care facilities.

Sliwa, who has taken a tough-on-crime stance, attempted to interject into the conversation, at one point telling the moderators that he was being “marginalized.”

He then attempted to set himself apart from the two men who have held political seats, by emphasizing that he is not a politican, and referring to Cuomo as the “architect” and Mamdani the “apprentice.”

“Thank God I’m not a professional politician because they have helped create this crime crisis in the city that we face and I will resolve [it],” he said.

President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump’s presence and ongoing immigration crackdown have loomed large over the race and ahve put a greater spotlight on Mamdani, who was recently little known outside of the city, as the American leader has called him and his left-leaning policies out on social media.

Asked what he would say to Trump in their first phone call, Mamdani said he would tell the American leader that he is willing to work with him to help raise the living standards of New Yorkers, but if that he seeks to cut funds to the city “he’s going to have to get through me as the next mayor.”

Cuomo similarly offered that he’d like to work with Trump “but Number One, I will fight you every step of the way if you try to hurt New York.”

Sliwa criticized both candidates for trying to act “tough” when doing so would only end up hurting New Yorkers.

“They want to take on Donald Trump. Look, you can be tough, but you can’t be tough if its going to cost people desperately needed federal funds,” he said, stating he would sit down with the president and negotiate.

“But if you try to get tough with Trump, the only people who are going to suffer from that are the people of New York City.”

Israel-Hamas

With the first phase of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal underway, moderators called on Mamdani to clarify previous statements he has made about the Palestinian militant group specifically about whether it should disarm.

In response, Mamdani said he was “proud” to be among the first New York elected officials to call for a cease-fire, which he defined as meaning “all parties have to cease fire and put down their weapons.”

Sliwa then jumped in to chastise Cuomo and Mamdani for neither applauding Trump for securing the cease-fire deal.

Cuomo then rebutted that he did applaud Trump and his administration, using the topic to accuse Mamdani and his stance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as coded language meaning “Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state.”

Mamdani then clapped back that “occupation” is an international legal term that “Mr. Cuomo has no regard for” as he has joined the legal defense team of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their fight against arrest warrants at the International Criminal Court.

He was then pressed on his previous reluctance to condemn the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which to some is a pro-Palestinian slogan of resistance against oppression and to others as encouragement of violence against Jews.

Sliwa also lashed out at Mamdani, stating “Jews don’t trust you’re going to be there for them when they are victims of anti-Semitic attacks.”

The second mayoral debate is scheduled for Oct. 22.

Early voting opens Oct. 25. The election is to be held Nov. 4.

The UK government plans to introduce digital ID cards to curb illegal immigration, requiring employers to verify workers’ status. The scheme has faced strong opposition over its effectiveness and privacy concerns. Al Jazeera’s Ruby Zaman tells us more.

In a darkened airport hotel ballroom room, a bevy of California Democrats sought to distinguish themselves from the crowded field running for governor in 2026.

It was not an easy task, given that the lineup of current and former elected officials sharing the stage at the Sunday morning forum agreed on almost all the issues, with any differences largely playing out in the margins.

They pledged to take on President Trump, make the state more affordable, safeguard immigrants and provide them with Medi-Cal healthcare benefits, and keep the state’s over-budget bullet train project intact.

There is not yet any clear front-runner in the race to run the nation’s most populous state, though former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter has had a small edge in recent polling.

Aside from a opaque dig from former state Controller Betty Yee, Porter was not attacked during the debate.

They were joined onstage by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. State Sen. Toni Atkins, who was supposed to participate, dropped out due to illness. Wealthy first-time political candidate Stephen J. Cloobeck withdrew due to a scheduling conflict.

The forum was sponsored by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, in partnership with the Los Angeles Times and Spectrum News. It was held in Los Angeles and moderated by Associated Press national planning editor Lisa Matthews, with L.A. Times California politics editor Phil Willon, Spectrum News 1 news anchor Amrit Singh and Politico senior political reporter Melanie Mason asking the questions.

Sen. Alex Padilla and businessman Rick Caruso have also both publicly flirted with a bid for the state’s top office, but have yet to make a decision.

Two major GOP candidates, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, are also running for California governor, but neither were invited to the debate because they did not complete an endorsement questionnaire from the union.

With Prop. 50 in the forefront, a lack of attention on the race

California’s June 2 gubernatorial primary is just eight months away, but the horde hoping to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom has been competing for attention against an extraordinarily crowded landscape, with an unexpected special election this November pulling both dollars and attention away from the race for governor. To say nothing of the fact that the race had been somewhat frozen in place for months until the end of July, when former Vice President Kamala Harris finally announced she would not be running.

The candidates reiterated their support for Proposition 50, the Newsom-led November ballot measure to help Democrats win control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year by redrawing California congressional districts. Newsom pushed for the measure to counter efforts by Republican-led states to reconfigure their congressional districts to ensure the GOP keeps control of Congress.

“This is not a fight we actually wanted to have,” Yee said. “This is in response to a clear attempt to mute our representation in Washington. And so we have to fight back.”

A focus on immigrant backgrounds, and appeals to Latino voters

The candidates repeatedly focused on their families’ origins as well as their efforts to protect immigrants while serving in elected office.

Thurmond raised his upbringing in his opening remarks.

“I know what it is to struggle. You know that my grandparents were immigrants who came here from Colombia, from Jamaica? You know that I am the descendant of slaves who settled in Detroit, Mich.?” he said.

Becerra highlighted his support for undocumented people to have access to state healthcare coverage as well as his successful lawsuit protecting undocumented immigrants brought to this nation as young children that reached the Supreme Court.

“As the son of immigrants, I know what happens when you feel like you’re excluded,” he said.

Becerra and Thurmond addressed the diverse audience in Spanish.

Yee, who spoke about sharing a room with her immigrant parents and siblings. also raised her background during a lightning-round question about what the candidates planned to dress up as on Halloween.

“My authentic self as a daughter of immigrants,” she said.

Differing opinions on criminal justice approaches and healthcare

The debate was overwhelmingly cordial. But there was some dissent when the topic turned to Proposition 36, a 2024 anti-crime ballot measure that imposed stricter penalties for repeat theft and crimes involving fentanyl.

The ballot measure — which undid key parts of the 2014 criminal justice reform ballot measure Proposition 47 — sowed division among California Democrats, with Newsom and groups including the ACLU strongly opposing it. Its passage marked a turning of the tide in Californians’ attitudes about criminal justice reform and response to crime, following years of support for progressive policies that leaned away from punitive prison sentences for lower-level crimes.

First, Villaraigosa contended that he was the only candidate on stage who had supported Proposition 36, though Porter and Becerra quickly jumped in to say that they too had supported it.

But Porter also contended that, despite her support, there were “very real problems with it and very real shortcomings.” The measure should have also focused on prevention and incarcerating people for drug offenses doesn’t make anyone safer, she said.

Thurmond strayed sharply from the pack on the issue, saying he voted “no” on Proposition 36 and citing his career as a social worker.

“Prop. 36, by design, was set up to say that if you have a substance abuse issue, that you will get treatment in jail,” Thurmond contended, suggesting that the amount of drugs present in the prison system would make that outcome difficult.

As governor, he would more money into treatment for substance abuse programs and diversion programs for those who commit minor crimes, he said.

When the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they supported a single-payer healthcare system, Porter and Villaraigosa did not, while Becerra, Yee and Thurmond did.

The need to build more housing

Issues of affordability are top of mind for most Californians, particularly when it comes to housing.

Thurmond said he would build two million housing units on surplus land on school sites around the state and provide a tax break for working and middle class Californians.

Villaraigosa also focused on the need to build more housing, criticizing bureaucratic red tape and slow permitting processes.

Villaraigosa also twice critiqued CEQA — notable because the landmark California Environmental Quality Act was once held seemingly above reproach by California Democrats. But the law’s flaws have become increasingly accepted in recent years as the state’s housing crisis worsened, with Newsom signing two bills to overhaul the the law and ease new construction earlier this year.

Porter said that if she were governor, she would sign SB 79, a landmark housing bill that overrides local zoning laws to expand high-density housing near transit hubs. The controversial bill — which would potentially remake single-family neighborhoods within a half-mile of transit stops — is awaiting Newsom’s signature or veto.

WASHINGTON — In an interview with Rachel Maddow this week promoting her new memoir, Kamala Harris was asked whether her book tour is part of a strategy to run again for the presidency in 2028.

“That’s not my focus at all,” Harris replied, dismissive of the idea. “It really isn’t.”

Democratic strategists agree that her book, “107 Days,” and the tour that has followed suggests Harris lacks a serious plan for a future in elected politics, generating more questions than clarity on her path forward and future role in public life.

The book has reopened a fractious intraparty debate over who is to blame for last year’s loss to President Trump. Polls show Harris’ standing in the field of 2028 Democratic presidential contenders as relatively weak for a figure who led the party less than a year ago. And even in California, her home state, Democrats prefer another potential candidate, Gov. Gavin Newsom, over her for the next contest.

A historically weak showing

Harris argues in her book she had too little time to mount a competitive campaign after President Biden announced he would drop out of the race that July, handing the party mantle to her with little notice.

She called it “reckless” to allow Biden to make the decision to run for reelection on his own, and on tour, has acknowledged responsibility for not speaking up more on the matter herself. But she has not stated explicitly that it was a mistake for him to enter the race in the first place.

Harris would ultimately post the worst electoral college showing for a Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988.

“I realize that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on,” she told Maddow. “When I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I’m talking about myself.”

Potential 2028 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, many of whom already are making visits to battleground states, have seized the moment of her tour to criticize her handling of the 2024 race. Harris wrote in the book that it was her duty as Biden’s vice president to remain loyal to him, despite acknowledging that, at 81, Biden “got tired” on the job.

“She’s going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told a SiriusXM podcast last week.

The book touches on Shapiro as well as Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s former Transportation secretary and another possible contender in 2028, as figures she considered as potential running mates. But airing her assessments of active political aspirants has only drawn more scrutiny. On “Good Morning America” this week, asked whether her book had hurt her relationships with fellow Democrats, Harris replied, “that’s not my intention, and I hope not.”

“Harris, like other well-known Democrats, naturally wants to be a part of the national conversation — about 2024, 2026 and 2028. What happened, what should the party do, and who should lead it forward?” said Andrew Sinclair, an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “These are all questions Democrats are actively debating now, and even if she decides not to run in the future, Harris has a high enough profile in the party to have a role in answering those questions.”

Passing on a potential run for governor of California, Harris told Stephen Colbert that she had decided America’s system of elected offices was no longer the venue for her to enact change. “I think it’s broken,” she said.

But her memoir and book tour have shed little light on what alternatives she might have in mind to remain a relevant figure in public life — or what vision she has for the Democratic Party going forward.

She concludes the book with a handful of platitudes on the need to invest in Gen Z.

“We need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for our country,” she wrote.

Newsom better positioned

High-quality polls show Harris remains a leading choice for Democrats in the next campaign cycle, tied or slightly edged out by Newsom. But under the hood, data indicate that less than 20% of Democrats view her as an ideal party leader entering the coming race.

Newsom’s polling trajectory, on the other hand, has begun moving in the opposite direction.

A series of polls published late last month found support for the California governor had surged over the summer, as Newsom embraced high-profile battles with Trump over ICE raids in Los Angeles, national gerrymandering efforts and the cultural memesphere.

And after Trump took substantial time in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week to deride climate change as a “hoax,” Newsom is in New York, as well, to attend Climate Week, highlighting California initiatives in interviews with Colbert and the New York Times.

His combative appearances, looking forward to 2028 and beyond, offer a contrast with a book tour by Harris that has thus far focused on the past.

“Governor Newsom has deftly positioned himself as the national Democrat most consistently ready to stand up to the president, adopting the tools — his podcast — and tactics — in-your-face-social media — that proved so effective for the GOP ticket last time,” said Bruce Mehlman, a bipartisan campaign consultant in Washington.

But the pace of political change in Trump’s America makes current polling unreliable, Sinclair said.

“The 2028 election is far away at a time when the political situation in the United States is changing rapidly,” he said, adding: “At best, Democratic leaders today can put themselves in a position to be influential, but I do not think anyone knows enough about what is going to happen next to have much more of a plan than that.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Family of former DACA recipient who died in ICE custody says officials ignored his pleas for help
The deep dive: RFK Jr. wants an answer to rising autism rates. Scientists say he’s ignoring some obvious ones
The L.A. Times Special: How viral rumors worsened the fallout from an ICE raid at Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Sept. 23 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump has said he plans to address “the good and the bad” across the globe as one of the first speakers when the U.N. General Assembly’s annual general debate opens Tuesday in New York City.

Specifically, he’s expected to speak about his own accomplishments handling conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said ahead of his appearance.

Trump touted his role in negotiating peace across the globe Friday while making remarks on an executive order on H-1B visas.

“Nobody’s done a better job than I’ve done on world peace. Nobody’s settled so many wars as I have,” he said, claiming to have “settled” seven conflicts.

Trump spoke about the two ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine as well as his upcoming U.N. appearance to reporters Sunday.

“The hatred between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky is very substantial,” Trump said, according to CBS News. “There’s a lot of bad blood.

“And, course, Gaza is a basic disaster. We’ve got to get that taken care of. But the big thing will be that I’m going to be speaking at the United Nations, and I hope to do a good job.”

Trump is likely to touch on some of the bigger news coming out of meetings on the sidelines of the general debate — the recognition by several countries of an independent Palestinian state.

At an international peace summit hosted by France and Saudi Arabia on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron formally recognized Palestine. His announcement was joined by the countries of Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and San Marino, and Australia, Britain and Canada made their own declarations Sunday.

“The time has come for Israel to live in peace and security,” Macron said, sharing his support for a two-state solution to the conflict. “The time has come to give justice to the Palestinian people and to recognize the state of Palestine.”

Washington, DC – Journalists, academics, airline employees, doctors and restaurant workers across the United States have been fired or investigated by their employers over the past week for comments deemed insensitive on the killing of Charlie Kirk.

The firings at a moment of rising political tensions in the US have ignited debates over the limits of free speech, cancel culture, doxxing and labour protections, as well as the legacy of Kirk.

The 31-year-old right-wing commentator was fatally shot in Utah last week.

While parts of the country mourned Kirk as a martyr who championed patriotism and open debate, others recalled his divisive views, including his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Some even celebrated his death.

Many Republicans responded with a campaign of naming and shaming to ostracise people who reacted to the assassination in ways that they considered objectionable.

Former MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was one of the earliest targets of that effort.

Shortly after Kirk was shot, Dowd said the conservative commentator pushed “hate speech” against some groups. “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” the analyst said on air.

The comment sparked outrage from Kirk’s supporters, leading MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler to apologise for what she called the “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable” remarks.

Dowd was later fired – a move that he rejected and blamed on a right-wing “media mob” that “misconstrued” his words.

This week, columnist Karen Attiah was also sacked from her position at the Washington Post over her response to the killing of Kirk.

Attiah had fired off a series of social media posts around race and gun violence after the assassination.

A letter of termination that she shared online on Tuesday cited a post in which she defended refusing to engage in “performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence” without explicitly mentioning Kirk as one of the reasons for her sacking.

A statement from Post Guild leadership:

The Washington Post Guild condemns the unjust firing of columnist Karen Attiah

The Washington Post wrongly fired Opinions columnist Karen Attiah over her social media posts.

— Washington Post Guild (@PostGuild) September 15, 2025

Officials back sacking campaign

Private citizens from all walks of life have also faced calls to be let go from their jobs over their takes on the killing of Kirk – social media posts that ranged from revelling in his death to linking the assassination to the commentator’s own views and support for gun rights.

For example, influential right-wing social media accounts have been demanding the firing of a Pennsylvania teacher for calling Kirk “racist”, although she also said that he “didn’t deserve to die”.

Kirk himself was no stranger to controversial opinions. He repeatedly attacked Islam and Muslims.

“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote in a recent social media post.

He was also a promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory – the notion that there is a plan (usually claimed to be carried out by Jewish elites) to replace white populations with immigrants, which has inspired white nationalist mass shooters across the world.

But on the right, the status of Kirk only rose after his death. With that apparent canonisation came the push to protect his legacy from detractors and those finding humour, joy or irony in his death.

Almost immediately after the shooting, right-wing groups started publishing the names and personal information – including place of employment – of social media users who allegedly celebrated the assassination.

Republican politicians, including lawmakers, joined calls for the firing of individuals over Kirk-related social media posts deemed by them to be offensive.

In Indiana, State Attorney General Todd Rokita encouraged submissions to a database on school employees who made “comments that celebrate or rationalise” the shooting of Kirk.

🚨Hoosiers: If you have evidence of Indiana educators or school administrators making comments that celebrate or rationalize the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we need to hear from you.

These individuals must be held accountable—they have no place teaching our students.

➡️… pic.twitter.com/w6ohKUyLqP

— AG Todd Rokita (@AGToddRokita) September 12, 2025

US Vice President JD Vance backed the effort as well, saying that people who celebrated the assassination should be held to account. “Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” he said on Monday.

US Congressman Randy Fine, of Florida, threatened to revoke the professional state licences of offenders, including lawyers, teachers and doctors.

Fine himself cheered for the killing of US citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces last year. “One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway,” he wrote on social media after Eygi was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank.

Is it legal?

While the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it does not apply to private employers.

But some states have laws to protect speech and political activities of employees when they are not at work.

Jenin Younes, a prominent free speech lawyer who recently became the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said private companies have “a lot of latitude” to reprimand workers for their speech.

However, when it comes to public schools and universities, it’s more complicated.

“Public employers, broadly speaking, are bound by the First Amendment,” Younes said. “But there are circumstances in which they can consider someone’s speech to fire them.”

These “exceptions and qualifications” are on a case-by-case basis.

For example, Younes said a public school teacher could say that Kirk’s ideas were “loathsome”, but saying that he deserves to die would probably cross the line.

The law aside, Younes said the firing frenzy is “problematic philosophically”, especially given that some of the people were sacked for simply criticising Kirk, not glorifying violence.

“It’s very bad for a free society,” she told Al Jazeera. “People rely on their jobs. They need their jobs in order to live and support their families. So, if we want to live in a society where we have robust dialogue and debate, which is the purpose of the First Amendment, it’s bad from a practical standpoint.”

Younes said she understands why private employers may want to curb social media posts by employees that clash with the company’s brand and mission.

But a better approach than letting go of workers, she added, is to discuss the matter with them and warn them to refrain from posting similar messages in the future.

“We should always err towards more discussion and debate and not silencing people,” Younes said. “And we have to remember people have moments when they get emotional and say things they don’t mean.”

Beyond the firing campaign, several Republican politicians have pushed policy ideas to regulate speech, especially on social media, after Kirk was killed.

Republican US Congressman Clay Higgins vowed to “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate [an] immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination” of Kirk.

US Congressman Chip Roy led a congressional letter requesting the formation of a committee to investigate the “radical left”.

For her part, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that federal authorities will push to penalise speech that they view as hateful.

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” she said on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Role reversal

For some observers, that right-wing push is increasingly appearing like a role reversal of the ideological blocs in the US.

For years, the right raged against the notion of “hate speech” and some left-wing activists’ push to fire and “cancel” those with views they find offensive – especially on issues of race and gender identity.

Right-wing politicians were also vocal opponents of any governmental efforts to regulate social media content.

Kirk himself had rejected penalising “hate speech”, although he backed US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on pro-Palestine student activists.

“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk wrote in a social media post last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Younes, who led a lawsuit against the Democratic administration of former US President Joe Biden over alleged social media censorship efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, noted what she called “the hypocrisy”.

“A lot of the people who were against ‘cancel culture’, when it was the left doing it, are now suddenly very eager to embrace cancel culture when they don’t like the speech in question, which I think shows the heart of the struggle on this issue,” she said.

“Everybody claims to be against censorship when it’s ideas that they like that are being censored, but then when it’s their ideological opponents, they’re very happy to do the censoring.”

She warned that the push to curb freedom of expression around the killing of Kirk could extend to other issues, including intensifying the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocacy.

“Any kind of censorship that’s used for one type of speech can always be adjusted to apply to another type of speech,” she said.

“Eureka Day,” a comedy by Jonathan Spector that wades into the debate on vaccine mandates, has only become more explosively topical since its 2018 premiere at Aurora Theatre Company, in Berkeley, Calif.

The play, which is having its Los Angeles premiere at Pasadena Playhouse, seems like it could have been commissioned to skewer this destructive, benighted and completely mortifying anti-science moment. But Spector wrote the work before the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed our political demons and made stupid great again.

“Eureka Day” takes its name from the fictional private elementary school in Berkeley that is the setting for what is both a satire of anti-vaccine culture and a comedy of woke manners. Held in a determinedly cheerful Bay Area classroom (brightly summoned with all the necessary social justice touches by set designer Wilson Chin), the play unfolds as a series of meetings of the school’s executive committee.

Don (Rick Holmes), the head of school, is ostensibly in charge, though his duck-and-cover strategy for dealing with conflict has a way of protracting problems. Four parents, one a newcomer still acclimating to the school’s strenuously progressive rules, are part of the executive brain trust.

The first discussion of the new school year is relatively innocuous though no less testing for being so. Eli (Nate Corddry), a stay-at-home dad who made a fortune at Facebook, has proposed adding “Transracial Adoptee” to a drop-down menu on an admissions form already burgeoning with identity subcategories.

Suzanne (Mia Barron), a mother who has sent so many children through Eureka Day that she has a proprietary attitude about the place, doesn’t think this additional category is necessary. She’s sensitive — self-consciously so — to Eli’s good intentions, but she persuades the group that no changes are necessary at this time.

“Persuades” might be a euphemism. Suzanne has an iron will that she thinly veils with a solicitous smile.

One of the quirks of the executive committee is that it operates by consensus rather than a majority vote. This can lead to some “very long meetings,” Suzanne informs Carina (Cherise Boothe), the new Black lesbian mom who recently moved from Maryland.

Suzanne claims to want everyone to feel “empowered,” though her controlling temperament pokes through her welcoming facade. Meiko (Camille Chen), who knits during meetings with a subtle air of annoyance, has to loudly ask Suzanne to please stop speaking on her behalf.

Cherise Boothe in “Eureka Day” at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

These blind spots, a standard ingredient of comic characters, are particularly glaring in Suzanne’s case. When Carina tells her that she didn’t homeschool her son for kindergarten but sent him to public school, Suzanne is mildly horrified. She also makes the assumption that Carina is not a “full pay” family.

There’s even something passive-aggressive about Suzanne’s show of concern for all viewpoints, a trait that becomes all the more conspicuous after a crisis erupts at the school. A mumps outbreak forces Eureka Day to temporarily close its doors.

Don informs the executive committee that the health department has issued a letter stipulating what parents must do for their child to return to school. The subject isn’t open for debate, but Suzanne is uneasy about how this letter is being “framed.”

She’s an advocate of parental choice when it comes to vaccines, not trusting the experts who have determined that only children who are vaccinated can return to school when there’s a risk of infection. She believes vaccines stand in the way of natural herd immunity.

Mia Barron, left, Rick Holmes, Cherise Boothe, and Camille Chen in “Eureka Day” at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

Meiko is less vociferous in her anti-vaccine stance than Suzanne, but she has her own skepticism about modern medicine and doesn’t want to be told what to do. When her daughter develops mumps, it becomes an emergency for Eli, who’s been having an affair with Meiko. The two arrange their assignations around playdates, and their kids were recently in contact.

Eli, who’s married but in a complicated open relationship situation with his increasingly resentful wife, would rather not have to choose sides in the vaccine mandate debate. But when his son gets sick after spending time with Meiko’s unvaccinated daughter, he finds he can no longer stay on the fence.

The well-programmed comedy hilariously runs its course in the leadership vacuum created by the school’s over-accommodating culture. Don is so worried about seeming to favor one parental faction over another that he allows Suzanne to become the dominant voice in the room.

The production, directed by Teddy Bergman, has a field day with the woke-run-amok ethos of Eureka Day, where kids at the school cheer the other team’s goals at soccer games. But Bergman’s approach is more schematic than Anna D. Shapiro’s Tony-winning Broadway revival.

Perhaps the urgency of the moment calls for a clearer moral stand, but the comedy has lost some nuance. On Broadway, Jessica Hecht made Suzanne seem totally oblivious to her own rage. She really believed that she was seeking consensus, tolerant of all perspectives as long as they didn’t impinge on her beliefs, the origins of which are poignantly related later in the play.

The fury of Barron’s Suzanne is much more on the surface. The humor is more direct — Barron can be very funny — but the debate is less trenchant. Bergman’s production, marred by blasts of jarring folk music between scene transitions, is a little too on the nose.

Boothe’s Carina, by far the strongest performance in the cast, is our rational surrogate in the play — a parent trying to fit in without betraying her intelligence or child’s welfare. I appreciated the way Holmes lets us come to our own conclusions about Don’s go-along-to-get-along style of running the ship.

Meiko is woefully underwritten, and Chen’s performance, while amusing when Meiko erupts, sometimes seems disconnected. Corddry refuses to play a tech industry cliché, but Eli, a bland creep, comes off as unnecessarily vague.

Bergman has trouble locating that sweet spot between jokey exaggeration and multidimensional authenticity. Comedy trades in types, but the cast could have benefited from more fine-tuning.

Perhaps that’s why the funniest scene in the play involves the live chat portion of a virtual meeting that’s organized for Eureka Day parents alarmed about the quarantine situation. Avatars square off against one another in a vaccine debate free-for-all that puts the lie to the school’s “community of respect” motto with uncensored savagery punctuated by missile-like emoticons.

“Eureka Day” will make you laugh, but how much this production will make you think is an open question.

MICHAEL OWEN has launched a passionate defence of his own career after being compared to Wayne Rooney on social media.

Owen, 45, has made sure everybody remembers just how good he was in his youth, replying to a question over who was better at 17 between Rooney and the former Real Madrid man.

2

2

Fans online have been debating the topic of which breakthrough teenager was the better player, given that both Owen and Rooney burst on to the scene and impressed at such young ages.

But in reply to a post asking who was better aged 17, Owen laid out the facts as to why he thinks his early years trump Wazza’s.

He wrote on X: “At 17 I scored 18 PL goals (winning the Golden Boot), Wazza scored 6.

“At 18, I again scored 18 goals (again winning the Golden Boot and coming 4th in The Ballon d’Or), Wazza scored 9.

“In our opening 7 seasons, Wazza didn’t outscore me once (117 goals v 80). In which time I became the 2nd youngest Ballon d’Or winner ever.

“Injuries hindered me from then on while he sustained his level.

“Therefore, he’ll go down as a better player than me. But, at 17, please…”

Owen won the Ballon d’Or in 2001 – the last Brit to lift the prestigious individual award.

BEST FREE BETS AND BETTING SIGN UP OFFERS

While he twice won the Premier League Golden Boot as a teenager, doing it at 18 and 19 years of age to become the youngest ever recipient of the award.

Despite Owen’s claims of scoring 18 goals in the Premier League aged 17, he had actually only bagged five league goals before his 18th birthday.

He went on to score a total of 18 during the 1996/97 season, subsequently winning his first Golden Boot, but scored 13 of those goals after his 18th birthday.

His later career tailed off, with injuries meaning Owen ended his playing days with a total of 223 goals in 483 appearances.

Rooney, on the other hand, notched 313 goals in 764 appearances.

Owen recently described his “agony” at the fact people don’t remember how good he was.

Speaking on the Rio Ferdinand Presents Podcast, Owen explained: “People will have only seen me or remember me in the later years when I’m getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

“The agony for me is that nobody remembers. Only a few people remember what I was like when I was ten and 12 and 15 and 18 and maybe up to 22.

“I was past it and on the way down by 21 or whatever.

“That’s the agony because was there another 18-year-old that was anywhere near me at 18? I was light years clear of anything in my age group, anything in England.

“You can bring the next kid and the next kid and the next kid and the next one that scores ten goals and everybody’s like: ‘Oh, it’s the next Michael Owen’.

“But I was competing against great strikers. Now there’s like four, five good strikers in the Premier League.”

Rooney vs Owen before they turned 18

Here’s a look at how Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney’s careers looked before their 18th birthdays…

MICHAEL OWEN

• Club apps: 21
• Club goals: 9
• Club assists: 5
• International apps: 0
• International apps: 0

WAYNE ROONEY

• Club apps: 46
• Club goals: 9
• Club assists: 2
• International apps: 8
• International apps: 2

Already a real-estate magnate by that point, Trump viewed owning an American football team as a means of building his brand. After attempting to acquire an NFL franchise, a 37-year-old Trump bought the New Jersey Generals in September 1983.

They were founding members of the USFL, which started in the spring of 1983 so did not clash with the NFL. The new league managed to lure top players from the NFL and the college game.

The Generals improved during their two seasons under Trump but lost in the first round of the play-offs in both 1984 and 1985.

However, Trump had made his intentions clear from the outset. He didn’t want the USFL to remain a spring league; he wanted to go directly against the NFL in autumn-winter.

That was not the USFL’s original plan but, in August 1984, Trump convinced team owners to vote on switching to an autumn-winter schedule from 1986.

Then, two months, later the USFL filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL – led by Trump. The case went to trial in May 1986, with the USFL arguing the NFL had conspired to monopolise TV contracts, seeking damages worth $1.7bn (£1.25bn).

Trump hoped it would force a league merger and earn him an NFL franchise. He also envisaged a Trump-branded stadium in Manhattan.

The trial lasted 42 days and a jury found the NFL was an ‘illegal monopoly’. But it rejected the other charges and the USFL was awarded just $3 as the jury felt most of the USFL’s problems were self-inflicted.

The league had built up huge debt and, days after the verdict, it folded.

In a book about the USFL,, external one of the jurors said Trump “came off as arrogant and unlikeable” in court.

Trump and then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle provided contrasting accounts of a meeting they had in March 1984, during which Rozelle is alleged to have told Trump, external “as long as I or any of my heirs are involved in the NFL, you will never be a franchise owner in the league”.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — A special session of the U.N. Security Council was set to convene Tuesday morning at the request of Israel to discuss the dozens of its citizens being held in Gaza after Hamas released footage of starving hostages over the weekend.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called for an urgent meeting of the 15-member council after shocking videos of hostages Evyatar David, 24, and Rom Braslavski, 21, in which they appear severely emaciated, were circulated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“The international community must make it not worthwhile for the terrorists. The world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and center on the world stage,” he said at a news conference Monday.

He thanked the United States and Panama for seconding his call for the special session meeting in New York.

The Israeli consulate in New York upped the pressure by uploading the video of David for all to see on a giant screen in Times Square in midtown Manhattan.

“Hamas kidnapped him. Hamas tortures him. Hamas is starving him. This is what real hunger looks like. This is what truth looks like. Evyatar David is being starved by a Nazi terrorist organization that dares, with the backing of parts of the media, to spread the blood libel that Israel is starving the people of Gaza,” Consul General Ofir Akunis said in a post on X.

“We will continue to expose, everywhere and at all times, the lies of these vile terrorists and their collaborators. Now his face is on Times Square — because the world can’t look away anymore.”

Hamas insisted that the same provisions were provided to the hostages as those available to its members and ordinary people in Gaza and that it did not purposely starve them, stressing that the enclave was in the depths of the hunger crisis.

World leaders joined in the condemnation of the images of the hostages released after Hamas said it would not lay down its arms until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy led the criticism, calling what he described as hostages being paraded for propaganda “sickening” and demanding their release without conditions.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Hamas stood for “abject cruelty,” while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was left shocked by the images and reiterated that no cease-fire could be reached without the hostages’ release.

Calling the videos “appalling,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a post on X that the images provided “stark evidence of the life-threatening conditions in which the hostages are being held,” and demanded it be allowed to visit them.

“We know families watching these videos are horrified and heartbroken by the conditions they see their loved ones held in. We reiterate that all hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. This dire situation must come to an end now.”

Israel said David and Braslavski are among 22 hostages who remain alive out of 49 still being held captive.

In its latest update posted to social media Tuesday morning, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the number of malnutrition deaths recorded by hospitals in the Palestinian enclave in the past 24 hours had risen to 188 martyrs, including 94 children.

WASHINGTON,, July 16 (UPI) — A fiery House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday exposed deep partisan divisions over the role of non-governmental organizations in aiding migrants.

Republicans accused faith-based and humanitarian groups of enabling illegal immigration, while Democrats sharply criticized holding the session as a political stunt that targeted religious freedom.

The hearing marked an escalation in the Republican-led effort to scrutinize the role of non-governmental organizations in federal immigration policy.

GOP lawmakers argued that groups receiving taxpayer dollars are contributing to what they called a historic border crisis by providing services to undocumented migrants who are not being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Conversely, Democrats vehemently argued that the purpose of the hearing was a politically motivated attempt to discredit humanitarian organizations.

Led by Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., the hearing centered on claims that the former Biden administration created the “worst border crisis in history,” and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with other organizations supported by tax dollars, are paying for hotels for immigrants’ stays instead of utilizing detention centers.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., sternly pushed back, accusing the majority of vilifying groups that serve vulnerable populations and abusing congressional power to intimidate those driven by missions to assist immigrants. He also criticized the majority’s witnesses, whom he said represented only one side of the issue.

“Today’s hearing are shameful abuses of congressional power to bully people for how they choose to exercise their religion and help their own name, ” said Thompson, who entered into the record a letter from more than 600 nonprofits opposed to the hearing.

In addition, a staffer showed a chart showing the committee’s Republicans who have voted in favor of NGO funding, including Reps. Clay Higgins, R-La., Michael McCaul, R-Texas, August Pfluger, R-Texas and the committee chairman, Mark Green, R-Tenn.

Thompson criticized Green for not being present at his final full committee hearing. He announced his retirement announcement in June, effective Sunday.

To support their arguments, Republicans invited three witnesses critical of the Biden administration’s immigration approach and the role of non-governmental organizations. Their testimony, at times emotional and combative, prompted sharp responses from Democrats on the panel.

Mike Howell, president of The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, opened with an ardent statement related to violence against ICE officers.

The Oversight Project “works to expose and root out corruption in government, among elected officials, and in our most influential organizations to ensure power resides with the American people,” according to the Heritage Foundation’s website.

“The violence is getting out of control, and it is fueled by demagoguery of politicians, whether it is one of your members telling Axios that there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the public,” Howell said. “Another saying stability is important to prepare for violence, or even a member of this committee being arrested for forcibly impeding or interfering with federal officials.”

Thompson said he interpreted Howell’s statement to be outside of the scope of the hearing, and the issue was put to a vote. The committee decided 9-8 in favor of Howell’s continued testimony.

The other two witnesses were Ali Hopper, founder and president of GUARD Against Trafficking, an organization whose mission is to combat human trafficking, and Julio Rosas, a national correspondent for Blaze Media, a U.S. conservative media company.

Hopper focused on the harms to children within the immigration system and questioned the accountability of nonprofit organizations, while Rosas echoed Republican concerns, arguing that while NGOs aim to help, they may unintentionally worsen situations.

The hearing took an unexpected turn late in the session when Thompson criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for her recent online presence, referencing her controversial personal posts and past statements. He drew a sharp comparison between Noem’s actions and the deportation of vulnerable migrants, including a child with cancer.

Thompson, in a motion, wanted to subpoena Noem given the committee’s broader oversight efforts. Republicans quickly moved to table the motion in a non-debatable vote, which passed by a narrow margin.

Summing up the session, Guest said, “I am offended when people from the other side say we’re not being Christian. we’re not saying that all nonprofits are bad. Many of us support and give money and volunteer.”

“But, this hearing today is focused on those nonprofits which were government funded, which were used by the Biden-Harris administration to continue to move people across the border against the will of the public and without the authorization of Congress.”

July 2 (UPI) — House members are meeting to debate U.S. President Donald Trump‘s key Senate-passed domestic policy bill, with lawmakers still aiming for a July 4 deadline to pass it.

Members went over over a key procedural vote Wednesday morning after the House Rules Committee pushed the Senate version overnight, setting the stage for a possibly dramatic and uncertain floor vote to pass Trump’s broad tax and spending bill.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a joint statement with House GOP leaders that they will “work quickly” to pass the bill and put it on Trump’s desk “in time for Independence Day.”

“Don’t let the Radical Left Democrats push you around,” Trump posted Wednesday morning on social media. “We’ve got all the cards, and we are going to use them.”

The new version of the legislation, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes steeper cuts to Medicaid, a debt limit increase, rollbacks to green-energy policies, and changes to local and state tax deductions.

“All legislative tools and options are on the table,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Tuesday after the Senate vote.

It extends trillions in dollars in tax cuts, largely for the wealthiest Americans, but substantially cuts healthcare and other nutritional programs in order to partially beef-up border security and defense spending.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s Senate-passed bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to America’s debt over the next decade, which is a trillion-dollar increase from the bill’s last version.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has accused GOP lawmakers of “trying to rip away healthcare from 17 million Americans” with Medicaid cuts stemming from Republicans’ legislation.

Meanwhile, provisions stripped from the House included the sale of public land in over 10 states, a 10-year moratorium for states to regulate AI and an excise tax on the renewable energy industry.

“Every single House Democrat will vote ‘hell no’ against this one, big ugly bill,” Jeffries wrote.

On Wednesday, a GOP fiscal hawk was critical of the Senate’s new product.

It “violated both the spirit and the terms of our House agreement” in attempts to reduce the national debt, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told USA TODAY.

Any newer alterations in the House will again require Senate approval or force a committee conference of both the Senate and House to hash out a final version.

The initial version passed the House in a 215-214 vote in May and the Senate on Tuesday after a four-day “vote-a-rama” in a 51-50 vote that saw three GOP defections in the tie-breaker vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Meanwhile, the president is expected to meet at the White House with a handful of House Republicans to help bring his tax bill to the finish line. The hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus members also are expected to meet with Trump.

Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate New York Republican, was seen Wednesday with other colleagues entering the West Wing, but it was not immediately clear which GOP lawmakers arrived.

It arrives in the face of what former White House adviser Elon Musk called in a June 30 X post “the biggest debt increase in history,” saying members of Congress who campaigned on spending reductions, “should hang their head in shame!” and added “they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

“It’s unconscionable, it’s unacceptable, it’s un-American and House Democrats are committing to you that we’re going to do everything in our power to stop it,” according to Jeffries.

He called out Pennsylvania Republicans Rob Bresnahan, Scott Perry and their California House colleagues David Valadao and Young Kim, whose districts in particular will be hard hit by Trump’s medicaid cuts.

“All we need are four Republicans, just four,” added New York’s Jeffries.

June 30 (UPI) — Argentina’s lower house of Congress will debate a bill Tuesday that would declare a two-year national health emergency in pediatric care. The measure aims to stabilize children’s medical services nationwide, with a focus on Garrahan Hospital, the country’s main pediatric facility.

The proposal seeks to ensure timely, equitable and high-quality access to pediatric care. It also calls for an immediate increase in funding for children’s hospitals and medical residency programs, with salaries updated to reflect their real value as of November 2023.

The debate comes amid a growing strain on Argentina’s public health system, marked by budget cuts, wage disputes and a wave of resignations from key hospitals.

Argentina’s public health system faces a worsening financial outlook. With no 2025 budget approved by Congress, the government extended the 2024 plan with modifications.

Health spending has dropped nearly 29% in real terms — adjusted for inflation — compared to the previous year, following a roughly 30% cut in 2023 — further straining the delivery of services and medical supplies.

The Health Ministry’s budget rose only 6% to $4.31 billion in 2025 from $4.06 billion in 2024. Its share of total government spending fell to 4.5% from 5.6%, despite annual inflation that reached 117.8% in 2024 and is projected at 28.6% for 2025, according to BBVA Research.

Alongside budget pressures, a growing shortage of healthcare workers is adding to the strain.

Argentina has 40.5 doctors per 10,000 residents — above the regional average — but their distribution is uneven, and poor working conditions are pushing professionals out of the public health system.

Delayed wages and heavy workloads are adding to the strain. Health unions warn that in many provinces, salaries have fallen below the basic cost of living, forcing staff to take on multiple jobs. About 70% of healthcare workers divide their time between public hospitals and the private sector to make ends meet, according to DataGremial.

The report also notes that several provinces and the federal government have struggled this year to fill medical residency slots — an unprecedented development blamed on low stipends and a lack of incentives to train in the public sector.

Meanwhile, demand for care remains high — and continues to rise during economic crises — as more Argentines rely exclusively on the public healthcare system. About 36% of the population, or roughly 16 million people, depend entirely on state-run coverage, according to the Health Ministry.

Garrahan Hospital has become a symbol of the country’s deepening healthcare crisis.

Since May, its staff — including doctors, residents, nurses and technicians — have staged rolling strikes and protests to demand emergency pay increases, citing what they describe as severe underfunding of the institution.

The strikes have led to the suspension of outpatient services, with care limited to emergencies and hospitalizations during walkouts, as negotiations with authorities remain stalled.

Staff shortages are beginning to take a toll. According to hospital unions, nearly 200 professionals have resigned from Garrahan in 2025. In recent weeks alone, at least 20 resident doctors left the hospital, saying their full-time wages — about $830 a month — were not enough to cover the cost of living in Buenos Aires.

President Javier Milei recently sparked backlash by falsely claiming that “70% of Garrahan’s staff is administrative” and blaming the hospital’s crisis on overstaffing. Hospital workers pushed back with official data showing that only 10% of employees hold administrative roles, while nearly 70% work in direct patient care, including doctors, nurses and technicians.

They also challenged Milei’s claim that the government had increased Garrahan’s budget by 240%. While acknowledging a nominal increase, hospital staff said inflation and stagnant wages had erased any real gains.

Amid the escalating crisis, a political response has taken shape in Congress, led by lawmakers from several opposition parties and backed by provincial health ministers.

To advance, the bill must still be reviewed by the Budget Committee, which is chaired by the ruling party. Opposition lawmakers say they plan to force debate during a special session July 2, accusing the government bloc of blocking the proposal.

The United States Senate has begun debating President Donald Trump’s 940-page “Big, Beautiful Bill” of tax breaks and sweeping cuts to healthcare and food programmes.

The all-night session on Sunday came as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the bill would add an estimated $3.3 trillion to the US debt over a decade.

It also said that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law.

Republican leaders, who reject the CBO’s estimates, are rushing to meet Trump’s deadline of July 4, the country’s Independence Day.

But they barely secured enough support to muscle the bill past a procedural vote on Saturday night. A handful of Republican holdouts revolted, and it took phone calls from Trump and a visit from Vice President JD Vance to keep the legislation on track.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted against the bill on Saturday, announced he would not seek re-election after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger in retribution for his “no” vote.

Tillis said he could not vote for the bill with its steep cuts to Medicaid, which provides health cover for low-income people.

Trump welcomed Tillis’s decision not to run again, saying in a post on TruthSocial: “Great News! ‘Senator’ Thom Tillis will not be seeking reelection.”

Other Senate Republicans, along with conservatives in the House of Representatives, are pushing for steeper cuts, particularly to healthcare, drawing their own unexpected warning from Trump.

The US president addressed “all cost cutting Republicans,” and said: “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy! We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.”

‘Most dangerous piece of legislation’

All told, the Senate bill includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.

The Senate package would roll back billions in green energy tax credits that Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide, and impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements and making sign-up eligibility more stringent.

Additionally, the bill would provide a $350bn infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.

Democratic Senators, who are all opposed to the bill, continued efforts to delay its passage, after earlier requesting the entirety of the draft legislation be read on the Senate floor – a process that took some 16 hours.

Minority Senate leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were trying to rush through the extensive bill before Americans knew what was in it, and said Democrats would continue to “shine a light” on the bill in the coming days.

“Some Republicans are trying to rush through a bill that they released less than two days ago under the cloak of darkness, written behind closed doors,” he said.

The latest version of the bill, Schumer added, includes changes such as “even worse” cuts to clean energy, which would see Americans pay 10 percent more on electricity bills and “kill 900,000 good paying jobs in clean energy”.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders called it “the most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country”.

“We don’t have enough money to feed hungry children. We don’t have enough money to make sure that people continue to have the health care that they need,” he said. “But somehow, the military industrial complex is going to get another $150bn, 15 percent increase.”

He added that Tillis’s decision not to seek re-election shows the hold that Trump’s cult of personality has over the Republican Party.

Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is a gift to the billionaire class while causing massive pain for working families. It is the most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.

I’m LIVE on the floor to oppose this disastrous bill. https://t.co/flAfpXmEzM

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 29, 2025

Lengthy process ahead

The legislation has been the sole focus of this weekend’s marathon congressional session. After the debate concludes, the Senate will enter an amendment session, known as a “vote-a-rama,” before voting on passage.

Lawmakers said they hoped to complete work on the bill on Monday.

If the Senate can pass the bill, it would need to return to the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson has told legislators there to be on call for a return to Washington, DC, this week.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the bill faces a “lengthy process” with “a lot of discussion, debate lying ahead”.

“Trump and his followers insist that it’s going to meet a lot of the promises he made during his campaign,” he said.

“Democrats point out that the massive tax relief is aimed at very wealthy individuals as well as corporations. They also argue very strongly that all of these tax cuts for the wealthy are being funded largely by massive cuts to social welfare programmes like Medicare, like food stamps,” he said.

“The other way it’s going to impact Americans is where the money is going as well. It’s a massive increase in funding for the military. It’s a massive increase in funding for those forces fighting against immigration.”

According to the American Immigration Council, the bill includes as much as “$45 billion for building new immigration detention centres, including family detention facilities”. This comes as the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention centre in the Florida Everglades is expected to open on Tuesday this week, as the Trump administration continues to call for 3,000 daily immigration arrests.

Despite the opposition, Republicans appear undeterred.

“We are going to make sure hardworking people can keep more of their money,” Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who heads the Budget Committee, promised to do everything he can to get the bill to Trump’s desk.

“We’re going to pass the ‘Big, beautiful bill,” he said.

June 29 (UPI) — The Senate has started formal debate on the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill after lawmakers spent 16 hours reading the entire measure aloud on the Senate floor.

This Senate’s version of the budget measure would make deeper cuts to social service programs and lead to fewer people having insurance than previous versions, the Congressional Budget Office has reported.

According to the Congressional Budget office report, nearly 12 million Americans would lose coverage by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, SNAP and marketplace insurance benefits would drop by $1.1 trillion. At least $1 trillion would come from Medicaid alone.

With its changes, he Senate version of the bill would add nearly $3.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, the CBO report said, while the House version would add $2.4 to the debt. These estimates are based on including the costs of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Republicans in the House and Senate have asked CBO, as well as the Joint Committee on Taxation, to score the bill using a method called “current policy baseline,” which would not include the the cost of extending the cuts.

The fate of the bill in the Senate remains unclear as some high profile lawmakers have expressed skepticism of the measure in its current form.

Majority leader John Thune, R-D., has said the measure could lack key GOP support in a final vote, which could send it back to the House.

“Well find out,” Thune said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., were the only GOP senators who voted Saturday night against brining the bill to the Senate floor for debate.

When the cost of extending the tax cuts is excluded from estimates, both the House and Senate versions of the bill have been estimated to add between $400 billion and $600 billion to the debt over the next decade, according to the New York Times and Politico.

Medicaid cuts have been at the center of a high profile debate as social service agencies and rural hospitals have planned for spending reductions that could come at the expense of the nation’s hungry children and force some hospitals, especially in rural areas, to reduce services or close their doors.

The Senate voted Saturday to open debate on the bill and began a full reading of the measure on the floor.

The Trump administration has said it is reducing waste and fraud in social service programs, and that some of those responsibilities would be shifted to the states.

President Donald Trump has said he wants the budget bill passed by July 4th.

The cuts being considered to Medicaid would be the largest since it was launched in 1965.