Party

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called Monday for state lawmakers to return to Indianapolis for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, escalating a national fight over midcycle redistricting.

President Trump has ramped up pressure on Republican governors to draw new maps that give the party an easier path to maintain control of the House in the midterms. While Republicans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have moved quickly to enact new districts and California Democrats are seeking to counter with their own redistricting plan, Indiana lawmakers have been far more hesitant.

Braun called for the General Assembly to convene Nov. 3 for the special session. It’s unclear whether enough of the GOP majority Senate will back new maps.

The White House held multiple meetings with Indiana lawmakers who have held out for months. The legislative leaders kept their cards close as speculation swirled over whether the state known for its more measured approach to Republican politics would answer the redistricting call.

National pressure campaign

Vice President JD Vance first met with Braun and legislative leaders in Indianapolis in August and Trump met privately with state House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray in the Oval Office weeks later. Vance also spoke to state lawmakers visiting Washington that day.

Vance returned to Indianapolis on Oct. 10 to meet with the governor, as well as the Republican state House and Senate members.

Braun is a staunch ally of Trump in a state the president won by 19 percentage points in 2024. But Indiana lawmakers have avoided the national spotlight in recent years — especially after a 2022 special session that yielded a strict abortion ban. Braun previously said he did not want to call a special session until he was sure lawmakers would back a new map.

“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” Braun said in a statement Monday.

Typically, states redraw boundaries of congressional districts every 10 years after the census has concluded. Opponents are expected to challenge any new maps in court.

State lawmakers have the sole power to draw maps in Indiana, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers. Democrats could not stop a special session by refusing to attend, as their peers in Texas briefly did.

Republican opposition to redrawing the maps again

A spokesperson for Bray said last week that the Indiana Senate lacked the votes to pass a new congressional map and she said Monday that the votes are still lacking, casting doubt on whether a special session will achieve Braun’s goals.

With only 10 Democrats in the 50-member Senate, that means more than a dozen of the 40 Republicans oppose the idea. Some state Republican lawmakers have warned that midcycle redistricting can be costly and could backfire politically.

Republicans who vote against redistricting could be forced out of office if their colleagues back primary opponents as punishment for not toeing the party line. Braun’s move to call a special session could force lawmakers who haven’t commented publicly to take a stance.

Indiana’s Republican legislative leaders praised existing boundaries after adopting them four years ago.

“I believe these maps reflect feedback from the public and will serve Hoosiers well for the next decade,” Bray said at the time.

Indiana Senate Democratic Leader Shelli Yoder decried the special session and threatened legal action over any maps passed by the Legislature.

“This is not democracy,” she said in a statement. “This is desperation.”

Redistricting balloons

Democrats only need to gain three seats to flip control of the U.S. House, and redistricting fights have erupted in multiple states.

Some Democratic states have moved to counter Republican gains with new legislative maps. The latest, Virginia, is expected to take up the issue in a special session starting this week.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Indiana’s congressional delegation 7 to 2, limiting possibilities of squeezing out another seat. But many in the party see it as a chance for the GOP to represent all nine seats.

The GOP would likely target Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, a longtime Democratic stronghold that encompasses Gary and other cities near Chicago in the state’s northwest corner. The seat held by third-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan has been seen by Republicans as a possible pickup in recent elections.

Lawmakers in Indiana redrew the borders of the district to be slightly more favorable toward Republicans in the 2022 election, but did not entirely split it up. The new maps were not challenged in court after they were approved in 2021, not even by Democrats and allies who had opposed the changes boosting GOP standing in the suburbs north of Indianapolis.

Mrvan still won reelection in 2022 and easily retained his seat in 2024.

Republicans could also zero in on Indiana’s 7th Congressional District, composed entirely of Marion County and the Democratic stronghold of Indianapolis. But that option would be more controversial, potentially slicing up the state’s largest city and diluting Black voters’ influence.

Volmert writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The first caller on a telephone town hall with Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, leader of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, came ready with a question about the Affordable Care Act. Her cousin’s disabled son is at risk of losing the insurance he gained under that law, the caller said.

“Now she’s looking at two or three times the premium that she’s been paying for the insurance,” said the woman, identified as Lisa from Harford County, Md. “I’d love for you to elucidate what the Republicans’ plan is for health insurance?”

Harris, a seven-term Republican, didn’t have a clear answer. “We think the solution is to try to do something to make sure all the premiums go down,” he said, predicting Congress would “probably negotiate some off-ramp” later.

His uncertainty reflected a familiar Republican dilemma: Fifteen years after the Affordable Care Act was enacted, the party remains united in criticizing the law but divided on how to move forward. That tension has come into sharp focus during the government shutdown as Democrats seize on rising premiums to pressure Republicans into extending expiring subsidies for the law, often referred to as Obamacare.

President Trump and GOP leaders say they’ll consider extending the enhanced tax credits that otherwise expire at year’s end — but only after Democrats vote to reopen the government. In the meantime, people enrolled in the plans are already being notified of hefty premium increases for 2026.

As town halls fill with frustrated voters and no clear Republican plan emerges, the issue appears to be gaining political strength heading into next year’s midterm elections.

“Premiums are going up whether it gets extended or not,” said GOP Sen. Rick Scott. “Premiums are going up because healthcare costs are going up. Because Obamacare is a disaster.”

‘Concepts of a plan’

At the center of the shutdown — now in its fourth week with no end in sight — is a Democratic demand that Affordable Care Act subsidies passed in 2021 be extended.

Trump has long promised an alternative. “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare,” he wrote on Truth Social in November 2023. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives.”

Pressed on healthcare during a September 2024 presidential debate, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan.”

But nearly 10 months into his presidency, that plan has yet to come. Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told NBC on Wednesday, “I fully believe the president has a plan,” but didn’t go into details.

Republicans say they want a broader overhaul of the healthcare system, though such a plan would be difficult to advance before next year. Party leaders have not outlined how they’ll handle the expiring tax credits, insisting they won’t negotiate on the issue until Democrats agree to end the shutdown.

A September analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that permanently extending the tax credits would increase the deficit by $350 billion from 2026 to 2035. The number of people with health insurance would rise by 3.8 million in 2035 if the credits are kept, CBO projected.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference Monday that the tax credits are “subsidizing bad policy.” Republicans “have a long list of ideas” to address healthcare costs, he said, and are “grabbing the best ideas that we’ve had for years to put it on paper and make it work.”

“We believe in the private sector and the free market and individual providers,” he added.

A growing political issue

With notices of premium spikes landing in mailboxes now and the open enrollment period for Affordable Care Act health plans beginning Nov. 1, the political pressure has been evident in Republican town halls.

In Idaho, Rep. Russ Fulcher told concerned callers that “government-provided healthcare is the wrong path” and that “private healthcare is the right path.” In Texas, freshman Rep. Brandon Gill responded to a caller facing a sharp premium increase by saying Republicans are focused on cutting waste, fraud and abuse.

Harris echoed a message shared by many in his party during his Maryland town hall, saying costs are “just going back to what it was like before COVID.”

But the number of people who rely on Affordable Care Act health insurance has increased markedly since before the pandemic. More than 24 million people were enrolled in the marketplace plans in 2025, up from about 11 million in 2020, according to an analysis from the health care research nonprofit KFF.

Sara from Middleville, Mich., told Rep. John Moolenaar during his town hall that if health insurance premiums go up by as much as 75%, most people will probably go without healthcare. “So how do you address that?” she asked.

Moolenaar, who represents a district he handily won last year, responded: “We have time to negotiate, figure out a plan going forward and I think that’s something that could occur.”

Some Republicans have shown urgent concern. In a letter sent to Johnson, a group of 13 battleground House Republicans wrote that the party must “immediately turn our focus to the growing crisis of health care affordability” once the shutdown ends.

“While we did not create this crisis, we now have both the responsibility and the opportunity to address it,” the lawmakers wrote.

Some Republicans dismiss projections that ACA premiums will more than double without the subsidies, calling them exaggerated and arguing the law has fueled fraud and abuse that must be curbed.

Many Democrats credited their ability to flip the House in 2018 during Trump’s first term to the GOP’s attempt at repealing Obamacare, and they’re forecasting a similar outcome this time.

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they trust the Democrats to do a better job handling healthcare, compared with about one-quarter who trust the Republicans more, a recent AP-NORC poll found. About one-quarter trust neither party, and about 1 in 10 trust both equally, according to the poll.

A looming internal GOP fight

Even as GOP leaders pledge to discuss ending the subsidies when the government opens, it’s clear that many Republican lawmakers are adamantly opposed to an extension.

“At least among Republicans, there’s a growing sense that just maintaining the status quo is very destructive,” said Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute and a former health policy advisor to Trump during his first term.

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said he’s working with multiple congressional offices on alternatives that would let the subsidies end. For example, he wants to expand the Affordable Care Act exemption given to U.S. territories to all 50 states and reintroduce a first-term Trump policy that gave Americans access to short-term health insurance plans outside the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Cannon declined to name the lawmakers he’s working with, but said he hopes they act on his ideas “sooner than later.”

David McIntosh, president of the influential conservative group Club For Growth, told reporters Thursday that the group has “urged the Republicans not to extend those COVID-era subsidies.”

“We have a big spending problem,” McIntosh said.

“I think most people are going to say, OK, I had a great deal during COVID,” he said. “But now it’s back to business as usual, and I should be paying for healthcare.”

Cappelletti and Swenson write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

President Trump urged California voters on Sunday not to cast mail-in ballots or vote early in the California election about redistricting — the direct opposite of the message from state GOP leaders.

Repeating his false claim that former President Biden beat him in 2020 because the election was rigged, Trump argued that the November special election about redistricting in California would be rigged, as would the 2026 midterm election to determine control of Congress.

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

Proposition 50, a ballot measure proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional districts to boost their party’s ranks in the U.S. House of Representatives, is on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The rare mid-decade redistricting effort was in response to Trump urging GOP-led states, initially Texas, to increase the number of Republicans in the House in the 2026 midterm election to allow him to continue implementing his agenda in his final two years in the White House.

Newsom responded to Trump on X: “Ramblings of an old man that knows he’s going to LOSE.”

Trump has not weighed in on the merits of Proposition 50, while prominent Democrats who support it have, including former President Obama.

More than 4 million mail-in ballots — 18% of the ballots sent to California’s 23 million voters — had been returned as of Friday, according to a vote tracker run by Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed maps on the ballot. Democrats continue to outpace Republicans in returning ballots, 51% to 28%. Voters registered without a party preference or with other political parties have returned 21% of the ballots.

Early-voting centers also opened in 29 counties on Saturday.

Turnout figures were alarming Republicans leaders before Trump’s message.

“It’s simple. Republicans need to stop complaining and vote. We ask and ask and ask and yet turnout still lags,” the San Diego GOP posted on X. “To win this one GOP turnout needs to be materially better than average. It’s very doable but won’t just happen. Work it.”

Republicans historically voted early while Democrats were more likely to cast ballots on election day. Trump upended this dynamic, creating dissonance with GOP leaders across the nation who recognized the value of banking early votes. And it completely contradicts the messaging by the opponents of Proposition 50.

Jessica Millan Patterson, a former chair of the state GOP and leader of the “No on Prop. 50 — Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” committee, has been a longtime proponent of urging Republican voters to cast ballots as early and conveniently as possible.

“Sacramento politicians rushed this costly election for partisan gain, and mistakes have been made,” she said Sunday evening. “If Californians want change from our state’s failed one-party rule, it starts by turning out to vote no on Proposition 50.”

Where can I host a big birthday party on a restaurant patio or rent out a bar during the day? That’s not outrageously expensive? — Kristen Silva

Here’s what we suggest:

First and foremost, I respect — and deeply relate to — your desire to celebrate your birthday on a budget. It’s tough right now. The good news, though, is that L.A. is brimming with delicious restaurants and aesthetic bars that go easy on the pockets — both for you and your guests. And some even allow you to bring your own birthday cake.

For a laid-back spot where you and your friends can sit at picnic tables and enjoy juicy pastrami sandwiches, loaded French fries and refreshing cocktails, check out Johnny’s in West Adams. Senior food editor Danielle Dorsey recommends the spot in a guide to West Adams, calling the umbrella-dotted parking lot patio “the perfect al fresco setting.” Because Johnny’s has a walk-up service counter, its easy for your guests to come and go as they please. Plus, you won’t have to worry about the headache of trying to split the bill at the end of the night. Reservations are only necessary if you’re looking to rent out the space, but there is a $35 cake fee.

If you don’t mind being indoors, my colleague Deborah Vankin suggests Far Bar in Little Tokyo, where she celebrated her birthday on the mezzanine with about 50 friends. “It was a cozy, but still roomy space that felt festive and provided the best people watching below,” she says. “The price was beyond reasonable and, afterwards, a group of us walked down the street for dessert and karaoke.” If you’re open to hosting your party on a slower night (not Friday or Saturday), a manager told me you can avoid rental fees. (FYI: There’s also a narrow outdoor seating area here, but Vankin says it’s not great for parties.)

Music lovers will appreciate Zizou, a vibey French-Moroccan restaurant nestled in Lincoln Heights. Owned by two lifelong friends from France, Zizou features a stunning vintage sound system, where DJs can be found spinning jazz, French hip-hop, South African rhythms and other global sounds on the weekends. My friend Tori Johnson hosted her birthday party on the starlit patio earlier this year. “We were able to invite friends post-dinner to come and have wine with us until the restaurant closed,” she tells me. “It felt intimate and just what I was looking for for my 31st birthday.” For parties of eight or more, there’s a $75 minimum per person for seated dining, but no minimum if you’re planning to just chill at the bar or near the sound system. You can either bring your own cake at no additional cost or order Zizou’s house-made French apple tart for dessert. And don’t worry, the servers won’t look at you with disdain if you ask for separate checks — at least from my experience.

Another worthy option is Everson Royce, which deputy food editor Betty Hallock calls “one of the best bars in the city (with great food),” and I can’t agree more. This spot is popular because of its happy hour and its breezy outdoor patio. “It’s like being in a friend’s backyard, with picnic tables, string lights and a vine-wrapped tree, except you’re in the middle of downtown,” Hallock reports in a guide to the most picturesque restaurant patios in L.A. An Everson Royce staffer told me that you can book a normal reservation for up to 100 people — yes, you read that correctly — and that the restaurant doesn’t charge extra fees or require any deposits. Staff will even split the checks for each of your guests.

In the mood for dancing? Start your night with focaccia-style pan pizzas at De La Nonna, then head next door to the Let’s Go! Disco & Cocktail Club. I DJed a wedding here last year and it was a seamless transition, sweating out the delectable pizza at the Italian-inspired nightclub where 1970s disco hits (and related genres) are the soundscape. Reservations are highly recommended. For 20 guests, De La Nonna requires its prix fixe menu with optional drink packages, but 30 or more guests are considered a “partial buyout,” so both are required. There’s also a room fee. If you’re still in the mood for partying once the cocktail den closes at 1 a.m., then walk across the street to EightyTwo, an arcade bar with dozens of pinball machines and classic video games. (Note: De La Nonna charges a $20 cake fee.)

If these spots don’t satisfy your needs, some of my food colleagues also suggested Le Great Outdoor in Santa Monica, Mr. T in Hollywood, Good Neighbor Bar in Altadena and Benny Boy Brewing in Lincoln Heights — all of which have a patio.

As you can see, there are loads of options depending on what type of food, vibe and part of L.A. you prefer. Wherever you end up, I hope you have a wonderful time and, most importantly, that you have a great birthday and year ahead.

Argentinian President Javier Milei’s party has pulled off a stunning win in the country’s legislative elections, according to early results, boosting his ability to push forward with his radical overhaul of the economy, including free-market reforms and deep austerity measures.

Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, scored 40.84 percent of the votes cast for members of Congress on Sunday, compared with 31.64 percent for the opposition Peronist coalition, early results showed.

The results were based on a count of more than 90 percent of ballots cast.

The midterm elections were the first national test of Milei’s support since he won office two years ago, and will help him maintain the support of United States President Donald Trump, whose administration recently provided Argentina with a hefty financial bailout but has threatened to pull away if the libertarian leader did not do well.

At La Libertad Avanza’s headquarters on Sunday, Milei hailed the party’s victory as a “turning point” for the country and promised to charge ahead with his reforms.

Beaming as his supporters cheered, he seized on the results as evidence that Argentina had turned the page on decades of Peronism that had brought the country infamy for repeatedly defaulting on its sovereign debt.

“The Argentinian people left decadence behind and opted for progress,” Milei said, thanking “all those who supported the ideas of freedom to make Argentina great again”.

Milei’s party triples seat count

In Sunday’s elections, half of the seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies, or 127 seats, and one-third of the upper Senate, or 24 seats, were up for grabs.

Milei said his party has now tripled its seat count, winning 101 seats in the lower house, up from 37, and 20 seats in the Senate, up from six.

The most surprising results of Sunday’s election were in Buenos Aires province, where Milei’s party clawed its way back from defeat in last month’s local elections to run neck-and-neck with the Peronists.

The province has long been a political stronghold for the Peronists, and the win for Milei’s party marked a dramatic political shift.

The strong showing in Sunday’s election ensures Milei will have enough support in Congress to uphold presidential vetoes, prevent an impeachment effort, and see through his ambitious plans for tax and labour reforms in the coming months.

To support Milei, the Trump administration offered a bailout potentially worth $40bn, including a $20bn currency swap, which is already signed, and a proposed $20bn debt investment facility.

Trump has threatened to pull away if his populist ally performed poorly, warning that “if he doesn’t win, we’re not going to waste our time, because you have somebody whose philosophy has no chance of making Argentina great again”.

There was no immediate comment from the White House on Milei’s win.

‘Unobjectionable, unquestionable’

Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Buenos Aires, said that Trump’s interest in Milei may have influenced the decisions of some of the voters.

“Certainly, the United States played a crucial role in the last stage leading to this election,” she said. “People here listened, and in a way, it may have convinced many to vote for Javier Milei’s party.”

The results were a surprise, she said, “after the president’s party lost by 14 points in the province of Buenos Aires last month to the Peronist opposition after one of the harshest austerity plans in this country’s history”.

Analysts said the stronger-than-expected showing could reflect fear of renewed economic turmoil if the country abandoned Milei’s policies, which, while painful at times, have succeeded in drastically slowing inflation.

Gustavo Cordoba, the director of the Zuban Cordoba polling firm, told the Reuters news agency that he was shocked by the results and thought they reflected public wariness over a possible return to the economic crises of past governments.

“Many people were willing to give the government another chance,” he said. “We’ll see how much time Argentine society gives the Argentine government. But the triumph is unobjectionable, unquestionable.”

Milei, a key ideological ally of Trump who has slashed state spending and liberalised Argentina’s economy after decades of budget deficits and protectionism, had a lot riding on Sunday’s elections.

Milei’s government has been scrambling to avert a currency crisis ever since the defeat by the Peronist opposition in a provincial election last month panicked markets and prompted a selloff in the peso – a move that led to the US Treasury’s extraordinary intervention.

A series of scandals – including bribery allegations against Milei’s powerful sister, Karina Milei – hurt the president’s image as an anticorruption crusader and hit a nerve among voters reeling from his harsh austerity measures.

Although the budget cuts have significantly driven down inflation, from an annual high of 289 percent in April 2024 to just 32 percent last month, many Argentinians are still struggling to make ends meet.

Price rises have outpaced salaries and pensions since Milei cut cost-of-living increases. Households pay more for electricity and public transport since Milei cut subsidies. The unemployment rate is now higher than when the libertarian president took office.

For most of President Trump’s second term, Republicans have bent to his will. But in two Midwestern states, Trump’s plan to maintain control of the U.S. House in next year’s election by having Republicans redraw congressional districts has hit a roadblock.

Despite weeks of campaigning by the White House, Republicans in Indiana and Kansas say their party doesn’t have enough votes to pass new, more GOP-friendly maps. It’s made the two states outliers in the rush to redistrict — places where Republican-majority legislatures are unwilling or unable to heed Trump’s call and help preserve the party’s control on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers in the two states still may be persuaded, and the White House push, which has included an Oval Office meeting for Indiana lawmakers and two trips to Indianapolis by Vice President JD Vance, is expected to continue. But for now, it’s a rare setback for the president and his efforts to maintain a compliant GOP-held Congress after the 2026 midterms.

Typically, states redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts every 10 years, based on census data. But because midterm elections typically tend to favor the party not in power — and the GOP holds a razor-thin majority in the House — Trump is pressuring Republicans to devise new maps that favor their candidates.

Democrats need to gain only three seats to flip House control, and the fight has become a bruising back-and-forth.

With new maps of their own, multiple Democratic states including California are moving to counter any gains made by Republicans. The latest, Virginia, is expected to take up the issue in a special session starting Monday.

Opposition to gerrymandering has long been a liberal cause, but Democratic states are now calling for redistricting in response to Trump’s latest effort, which they characterize as an unprecedented power grab.

Indiana

Indiana, whose U.S. House delegation has seven Republicans and two Democrats, was one of the first states on which the Trump administration focused its redistricting efforts this summer.

But a spokesperson for state Senate Leader Rodric Bray’s office said Thursday that the chamber lacks the votes to redraw Indiana’s congressional districts. With only 10 Democrats in the 50-member Senate, that means more than a dozen of the 40 Republicans oppose the idea.

Bray’s office did not respond to requests for an interview.

The holdouts may come from a few schools of thought. New political lines, if poorly executed, could make solidly Republican districts more competitive. Others say they believe it is simply wrong to stack the deck.

“We are being asked to create a new culture in which it would be normal for a political party to select new voters, not once a decade — but any time it fears the consequences of an approaching election,” state Sen. Spencer Deery, a Republican, said in a statement in August.

Deery’s office did not respond to a request for an interview and said the statement stands.

A common GOP argument in favor of new maps is that Democratic-run states such as Massachusetts have no Republican representatives, while Illinois has used redistricting for partisan advantage — a process known as gerrymandering.

“For decades, Democrat states have gerrymandered in the dark of the night,” Republican state Sen. Chris Garten said on social media. “We can no longer sit idly by as our country is stolen from us.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, who would vote to break a tie in the state Senate if needed, recently called on lawmakers to forge ahead with redistricting and criticized the holdouts as not sufficiently conservative.

“For years, it has been said accurately that the Indiana Senate is where conservative ideas from the House go to die,” Beckwith said in a social media post.

Indiana is staunchly conservative, but its Republicans tend to foster a deliberate temperance. And the state voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

“Hoosiers, it’s very tough to to predict us, other than to say we’re very cautious,” former GOP state lawmaker Mike Murphy said. “We’re not into trends.”

The party divide reflects a certain independent streak held by voters in Indiana and Kansas and a willingness by some to break ranks.

Writing in the Washington Post last week, former Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, urged Indiana lawmakers to resist the push to gerrymander. “Someone has to lead in climbing out of the mudhole,” he said.

“Hoosiers, like most Americans, place a high value on fairness and react badly to its naked violation,” he wrote.

Kansas

In Kansas, Republican legislative leaders are trying to bypass the Democratic governor and force a special session for only the second time in the state’s 164-year history. Gov. Laura Kelly opposes mid-decade redistricting and has suggested it could be unconstitutional.

The Kansas Constitution allows GOP lawmakers to force a special session with a petition signed by two-thirds of both chambers — also the supermajorities needed to override Kelly’s expected veto of a new map. Republicans hold four more seats than the two-thirds majority in both the state Senate and House. In either, a defection of five Republicans would sink the effort.

Weeks after state Senate President Ty Masterson announced the push for a special session, GOP leaders were struggling to get the last few signatures needed.

Among the holdouts is Rep. Mark Schreiber, who represents a district southwest of Topeka. He told the Associated Press that he “did not sign a petition to call a special session, and I have no plans to sign one.” Schreiber said he believes redistricting should be used only to reflect shifts in population after the once-every-10-year census.

“Redistricting by either party in midcycle should not be done,” he said.

Republicans would probably target U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the Democrat representing the mostly Kansas City-area 3rd Congressional District, which includes Johnson County, the state’s most populous. The suburban county accounts for more than 85% of the vote and has trended to the left since 2016.

Kansas has a sizable number of moderate Republicans, and 29% of the state’s 2 million voters are registered as politically unaffiliated. Both groups are prominent in Johnson County.

Republican legislators previously tried to hurt Davids’ chances of reelection when redrawing the district, but she won in 2022 and 2024 by more than 10 percentage points.

“They tried it once and couldn’t get it done,” said Jack Shearer, an 82-year-old registered Republican from suburban Kansas City.

But a mid-decade redistricting has support among some Republicans in the county. State Sen. Doug Shane, whose district includes part of the county, said he believes his constituents would be amenable to splitting it.

“Splitting counties is not unprecedented and occurs in a number of congressional districts around the country,” he said in an email.

Volmert and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Volmert reported from Lansing, Mich., and Hanna from Topeka, Kan. AP writer Heather Hollingsworth in Lenexa, Kan., contributed to this report.

Barbara Boxer decided she was done. Entering her 70s, fresh off reelection to the U.S. Senate, she determined her fourth term would be her last.

“I just felt it was time,” Boxer said. “I wanted to do other things.”

Besides, she knew the Democratic bench was amply stocked with many bright prospects, including California’s then-attorney general, Kamala Harris, who succeeded Boxer in Washington en route to her selection as Joe Biden’s vice president.

When Boxer retired in 2017, after serving 24 years in the Senate, she walked away from one of the most powerful and privileged positions in American politics, a job many have clung to until their last, rattling breath.

(Boxer tried to gently nudge her fellow Democrat and former Senate colleague, Dianne Feinstein, whose mental and physical decline were widely chronicled during her final, difficult years in office. Ignoring calls to step aside, Feinstein died at age 90, hours after voting on a procedural matter on the Senate floor.)

Now an effort is underway among Democrats, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, to force other senior lawmakers to yield, as Boxer did, to a new and younger generation of leaders. The movement is driven by the usual roiling ambition, along with revulsion at Donald Trump and the existential angst that visits a political party every time it loses a dispiriting election like the one Democrats faced in 2024.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has become the highest profile target.

Last week, she drew a second significant challenger to her reelection, state Sen. Scott Wiener, who jumped into the contest alongside tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who’s been campaigning against the incumbent for the better part of a year.

Pelosi — who is 85 and hasn’t faced a serious election fight in San Francisco since Ronald Reagan was in the White House — is expected to announce sometime after California’s Nov. 4 special election whether she’ll run again in 2026.

Boxer, who turns 85 next month, offered no counsel to Pelosi, though she pushed back against the notion that age necessarily equates with infirmity, or political obsolescence. She pointed to Ted Kennedy and John McCain, two of the senators she served with, who remained vital and influential in Congress well into their 70s.

On the other hand, Boxer said, “Some people don’t deserve to be there for five minutes, let alone five years … They’re 50. Does that make it good? No. There are people who are old and out of ideas at 60.”

There is, Boxer said, “no one-size-fits-all” measure of when a lawmaker has passed his or her expiration date. Better, she suggested, for voters to look at what’s motivating someone to stay in office. Are they driven by purpose — and still capable of doing the job — “or is it a personal ego thing or psychological thing?”

“My last six years were my most prolific,” said Boxer, who opposes both term limits and a mandatory retirement age for members of Congress. “And if they’d said 65 and out, I wouldn’t have been there.”

Art Agnos didn’t choose to leave office.

He was 53 — in the blush of youth, compared to some of today’s Democratic elders — when he lost his reelection bid after a single term as San Francisco mayor.

“I was in the middle of my prime, which is why I ran for reelection,” he said. “And, frankly,” he added with a laugh, “I still feel like I’m in my prime at 87.”

A friend and longtime Pelosi ally, Agnos bristled at the ageism he sees aimed at lawmakers of a certain vintage. Why, he asked, is that acceptable in politics when it’s deplored in just about every other field of endeavor?

“What profession do we say we want bright young people who have never done this before to take over because they’re bright, young and say the right things?” Agnos asked rhetorically. “Would you go and say, ‘Let me find a brain surgeon who’s never done this before, but he’s bright and young and has great promise.’ We don’t do that. Do we?

“Give me somebody who’s got experience, “ Agnos said, “who’s been through this and knows how to handle a crisis, or a particular issue.”

Pete Wilson also left office sooner than he would have like, but that’s because term limits pushed him out after eight years as California governor. (Before that, he served eight years in the Senate and 11 as San Diego mayor.)

“I thought that I had done a good job … and a number of people said, ‘Gee, it’s a pity that you can’t run for a third term,’ ” Wilson said as he headed to New Haven, Conn., for his college reunion, Yale class of ’55. “As a matter of fact, I agreed with them.”

Still, unlike Boxer, Wilson supports term limits, as a way to infuse fresh blood into the political system and prevent too many over-the-hill incumbents from heedlessly overstaying their time in office.

Not that he’s blind to the impetus to hang on. The power. The perks. And, perhaps above all, the desire to get things done.

At age 92, Wilson maintains an active law practice in Century City and didn’t hesitate — “Yes!” he exclaimed — when asked if he considered himself capable of serving today as governor, even as he wends his way through a tenth decade on Earth.

His wife, Gayle, could be heard chuckling in the background.

“She’s laughing,” Wilson said dryly, “because she knows she’s not in any danger of my doing so.”

IT’S that time of year when theme parks go from shouts of joy to screams of terror – and none more so than Universal Studios, where its Halloween Horror Nights return for their 34th year.

I am a big Universal Studios fan — having been to Orlando, Florida three times this year alone, and racked up 12 visits in my lifetime.

But this is the first time I’ve felt brave enough to try the spooky events that take over the parks from the end of August until November 2.

To up the ante, I decide to swap the Sunshine State for Los Angeles and Universal Studios Hollywood.

Here, in the daytime, you’ve got much-loved characters such as Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, and Glinda from Wicked roaming the park.

But as the sun sets and evening descends, to mark the reopening of the park for Halloween Horror Nights, these cute characters vanish.

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And in their place come killer clowns such as Art from the film Terrifier, and towering crows who plays tricks on innocent attendees.

The overall experience involves eight haunted houses, four scare zones, two live shows and one terror tram.

My one piece of advice? No amount of preparation will have you ready for what Universal has in store for you.

The creative teams excel at putting you front and centre of some of the biggest movies and shows, including Terrifier, Five Nights At Freddy’s, Fallout, Friday The 13th, WWE: The Wyatt Sicks, Poltergeist — and their own creations, Monstruos 3: The Ghosts Of Latin America, and Scarecrow with music by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash.

The Poltergeist house returns as a fan favourite, which first appeared in 2018.

Only this time, as you walk through a room that resembles the inside of a brain, your senses become overwhelmed by a strong musky smell.

The haunted houses are packed with more jump scares than ever before and, despite having become slightly desensitised to the frights, I don’t think it’s possible to ever become accustomed to a demonic scarecrow running at you.

Just when I thought it was safe, numerous versions of serial killer Jason Voorhees (from Friday The 13th) leapt out to grab me as I headed for the safety of the exit.

It might not sound like fun, but trust me when I say the laughs come later as you recall your hilarious reactions and those of your pals.

When you’re not being tortured in the haunted houses, you can venture through various scare zones located around the park.

My best tip for those who are most fearful is to act confident, as the actors prey on the weak. If you clock them coming towards you, they will most likely choose another target.

For Horror Nights, The Studio Tour has been overtaken by the Terror Tram, which transports guests to the middle of the sound stages where they’ll be faced with the villains of Blumhouse movies including The Exorcist, The Purge, Happy Death Day, M3GAN and more.

This was a highlight of the event for me, as I felt all-consumed by the smoke, lights, music and actors jumping out from behind hidden doors.
After all that horror, you’ll have deserved a well-earned break.

There are plenty of themed drinks and food options to calm your nerves, whether it’s a Jason mask s’more, Art sunflower cookie sunglasses, or Fallout’s RadAway non-alcoholic concoction that’s served in a blood bag.

If the scares become too much, there’s plenty else to keep visitors busy in LA at this time of year.

Golden era of film

Take a hike with Bikes and Hikes up to the Hollywood sign and hear the tales of the area while you climb.

Or you can visit the Hollywood Walk of Fame to see landmarks such as the Chinese Theatre, and stop for a spot of lunch or dinner at the Shirley Brasserie situated inside the Roosevelt Hotel.

Just down the road from here is the Hollywood Museum, which is filled with thousands of costumes, props and sets from the golden era of film.

If you want to see some of the movie magic, then take a trip to Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood.

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This is a brilliant journey around popular TV show and film sets, from Friends to Gilmore Girls, and you can get close to costumes and props from the likes of Harry Potter and Batman.

Keep your ears tuned in wherever you go though. If you listen hard you may still hear the distant screams from Universal Studios.

The Shohei-inspired sushi roll, available only during games, features spicy tuna inside — representing Ohtani’s Japanese heritage — and avocado on top, representing California. “That’s the whole idea: the mixing of the cultures,” said owner Don Tahara. Other World Series specials — available all day, even when the game’s not on — include chili cheese fries, cocktail specials and Canadian poutine in a nod to the Blue Jays.

Oct. 22 (UPI) — Israel’s Knesset on Wednesday, in a preliminary vote, approved sovereignty in the West Bank for Israel, described as a political ploy by the right-wing opposition during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the nation.

President Donald Trump said last month that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

The bill, which is called “Application of Israeli Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, 2025,” passed 25-24 by the parliament, and was transferred to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. It must still pass three additional votes in the plenum session.

The legislation says that “the laws, judicial system, administration, and sovereignty of the State of Israel shall apply to all areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria.”

A more limited annexation bill passed 32-9, also in a preliminary reading. The bill applies sovereignty to the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim near Jerusalem.

Militant Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and not the West Bank, said in a statement that the recent bill “reflects the ugly face of the colonial occupation.”

As a “flagrant violation of all relevant international laws and resolution,” Hamas said Israel “insists on continuing its attempts to ‘legitimize’ settlements and impose Zionist ‘sovereignty’ over the occupied Palestinian territories.”

In 2007, the Palestinian territories were split into two separate administrations.

Israel maintains military control of the 2,263 square miles of the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority, led by the Fatah party, has jurisdiction over civil and security authority in specific zones, based on the 1995 Oslo Accords.

The West Bank has been divided into three zones.

Area C, which makes up about 60% the West Bank, is under full Israeli military and civilian control. Area C includes agricultural land, water springs, quarries and land for future infrastructure for Israelis.

In August, Israel approved final plans for a settlement project in E1 of Area C between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement. This arrangement would sever the West Bank for a contiguous Palestinian State, which Israel opposes as a two-state solution.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank out of the total population of 4 million.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and applies its civil law there, though the international community does not recognize this annexation. About 500,000 Israelis live there.

“By applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, we are correcting a historical wrong that is long overdue,” Avi Maoz, head of the far-right Noam party, said. “Since the government has hesitated, it is our duty as members of Knesset to act.”

All but one Likud minister boycotted the vote, with Yuli Edelstein breaking ranks to cast a decisive vote. Likud then removed Edelstein from his seat on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, a spokesperson for the lawmaker confirmed to The Times of Israel.

Maoz denied a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay the vote.

Netanyahu’s Likud party said the vote was an attempt to embarrass the government while U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited the country.

“We strengthen settlements every day with actions, budgets, construction, industry, and not with words,” the Times of Israel reported by Likud. “True sovereignty will be achieved not with a show-off law for the protocol, but by working properly on the ground and creating the political conditions appropriate for the recognition of our sovereignty, as was done in the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem.”

The United Arab Emirates said in September that annexation of the West Bank would severely undermine the spirit of the Abraham Accords.

The West Bank was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967, except for East Jerusalem, as a “temporary belligerent occupation.”

The historic city of Bethlehem is in the West Bank and is under Israeli occupation. It has historic ties to the Jewish religion, as well as to Christianity and Islam.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s presence in the West Bank was unlawful under international law because it is no longer temporary.

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders completed their remapping of the state’s U.S. House districts on Wednesday, intent on picking up one more seat to help President Trump’s efforts to retain GOP control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

The new boundaries approved by the state House could thwart the reelection of Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who currently represents more than 20 northeastern counties. The state Senate already approved the plan in a party-line vote on Tuesday.

Republicans hold majorities in both General Assembly chambers, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is unable under state law to use his veto stamp on redistricting maps. So the GOP’s proposal can now be implemented unless likely litigation by Democrats or voting rights advocates stops it. Candidate filing for 2026 is scheduled to begin Dec. 1.

Republican lawmakers made the intent of their proposed changes crystal clear — it’s an attempt to satisfy Trump’s call for GOP-led states to secure more seats for the party nationwide, so that Congress can continue advancing his agenda. Democrats have responded with rival moves in blue states. A president’s party historically loses seats in midterm elections, and Democrats currently need just three more seats to flip House control.

“The new congressional map improves Republican political strength in eastern North Carolina and will bring in an additional Republican seat to North Carolina’s congressional delegation,” GOP Rep. Brenden Jones said during a debate that Republicans cut off after an hour.

Democratic state Rep. Gloristine Brown, an African American who represents an eastern North Carolina county, made an impassioned floor speech in opposition, saying “You are silencing Black voices and are going against the will of your constituents.”

“North Carolina is a testing ground for the new era of Jim Crow laws,” Brown said.

Republican-led Texas and Missouri already have revised their U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans win additional seats. Democratic-led California reciprocated by asking the state’s voters to approve a map revised to elect more Democrats, and Jones accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of ramping up the redistricting fight.

“We will not let outsiders tell us how to govern, and we will never apologize for doing exactly what the people of this state has elected us to do,” Jones said.

North Carolina’s replacement map would exchange several counties in Davis’ current 1st District with another coastal district. Statewide election data suggests this would favor Republicans winning 11 of 14 House seats, up from the 10 they now hold, in a state where Trump got 51% of the popular vote in 2024.

Davis is one of North Carolina’s three Black representatives. Map critics suggested this latest GOP map could be challenged as an illegal racial gerrymander in a district that has included several majority Black counties, electing African Americans to the U.S. House continuously since 1992.

Davis is already vulnerable — he won his second term by less than 2 percentage points, and the 1st District was one of 13 nationwide where both Trump and a Democratic House member was elected last year, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Davis on Tuesday called the proposed map “beyond the pale.”

Hundreds of Democratic and liberal activists swarmed the legislative complex this week, blasting GOP legislators for doing Trump’s bidding with what they called a power grab through a speedy and unfair redistricting process.

“If you pass this, your legacy will be shredding the Constitution, destroying democracy,” Karen Ziegler with the grassroots group Democracy Out Loud, told senators this week. She accused the state GOP of “letting Donald Trump decide who represents the people of North Carolina.”

Democrats said this map is a racial gerrymander that will dismantle decades of voting rights progress in North Carolina’s “Black Belt” region. Republicans counter that no racial data was used in forming the districts, and the redrawing was based on political parties, not race.

Based on last week’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Louisiana redistricting case, the Democrats may lose this line of attack. A majority of justices appears willing to neuter a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has protected political boundaries created to help Black and Latino residents elect favored candidates, who have tended to be Democrats.

State GOP leaders say Trump won North Carolina all three times that he’s run for president — albeit narrowly last year — and thus merits more GOP support in Congress. Senate leader Phil Berger called it appropriate “under the law and in conjunction with basically listening to the will of the people.”

Robertson writes for the Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO — State Sen. Scott Wiener couldn’t wait any longer. The once-in-a-generation political opening he’d eyed for years had arrived, he decided — whether the grand dame of San Francisco politics agreed or not.

On Wednesday, Wiener, 55, a prolific and ambitious lawmaker, formally announced his candidacy for the San Francisco congressional seat held for nearly four decades by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 85, who remains one of the party’s most powerful leaders and has yet to reveal her own intentions for the 2026 race.

“The world is changing, the Democratic Party is changing, and it’s time,” Wiener said in an interview with The Times. “I know San Francisco, I have worked tirelessly to represent this community — delivering housing, health care, clean energy, LGBTQ and immigrant rights — and I have a fortitude and backbone to be able to deliver for San Francisco in Congress.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced Wednesdat that he will run for the congressional seat currently held by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

(Josh Edelson/For The Times)

Wiener’s announcement — which leaked in part last week — caught some political observers off guard, given Wiener had for years seemed resigned to run for Pelosi’s seat only once she stepped aside. But it stunned few, given how squarely it fit within the broader political moment facing the Democratic Party.

In recent years, a long-simmering reckoning over generational power has exploded into the political forefront as members of the party’s old guard have increasingly been accused of holding on too long, and to their party’s detriment.

Long-serving liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruffled many Democratic feathers by declining to step down during Barack Obama’s presidency despite being in her 80s. She subsequently died while still on the court at the age of 87 in 2020, handing President Trump his third appointment to the high court.

Californians watched as the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, another D.C. power player from San Francisco, teetered into frailty, muddled through her final chapter in Washington and then died in office at 90 in 2023. The entire nation watched as President Biden, another octogenarian, gave a disastrous debate performance that sparked unrelenting questions about his age and cognitive abilities and cleared the way for Trump’s return to power last year.

Visitors walk past a bust of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein at San Francisco City Hall. The former mayor of San Francisco served in the Senate until she died in 2023 at age 90.

(Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

As a result, age has become an unavoidable tension point for Democrats heading into next year’s midterm elections.

It has also been an issue for Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 83, the former Senate majority leader who has faced health issues in recent years and is retiring in 2026 after more than 40 years in the Senate. Other older Republicans are facing primary challenges for being perceived as too traditional or insufficiently loyal to Trump or the MAGA movement — including Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), 73 and in office since 2002, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), 68 and in the Senate since 2015.

For decades, many conservatives have called for congressional term limits in opposition to “career politicians” who cling to power for too long. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and David Trone, a Maryland Democrat, renewed those calls on Wednesday, announcing in an op-ed published in the New York Times that they would co-chair a national campaign to push for term limits.

However, perhaps because they are in power, the calls for a generational shake-up in 2026 have not been nearly as loud on the Republican side.

Democratic Party activists have sounded the alarm about a quickening slide into gerontocracy on the political left, blamed it for their party’s inability to mount an energetic and effective response to Trump and his MAGA movement, and called for younger candidates to take the reins — while congressional leaders in their 70s and 80s have increasingly begun weighing their options in the face of primary challenges.

“It’s fair to say the political appetite for octogenarians is not high,” said Eric Jaye, a veteran Democratic strategist in San Francisco.

“The choice in front of people is not just age,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a 39-year-old tech millionaire and Democratic political operative who is also running for Pelosi’s seat. “We need a whole different approach and different candidates.”

“There’s like this unspoken rule that you don’t do what we’re doing in this moment. You sit out and wait your turn,” said Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang, 40, who has launched a primary challenge to Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento), who is 81 and has been in Congress since 2005. “But I’m not going to wait on the sidelines, because there is an urgency of now.”

A national trend

The generational shift promises to reshape Congress by replacing Democrats across the country, including some who are leaving without a fight.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, 78 and a senator representing New Hampshire since 2009, said in March that it was “time” to step aside.

In Illinois, Sen. Richard Durbin, 80 and a senator since 1997, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, 81 and in the House since 1999, both announced in May that they would not run again. Durbin said it was time “to pass the torch,” while Schakowsky praised younger “voices” in the party as “so sharp.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, 78 and in the House since 1992, announced his retirement last month, saying that “watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party.”

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks at a news conference.

(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Other older Democrats, meanwhile, have shown no intention of stepping aside, or are seeking out new roles in power.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, 77, recently announced she is running to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is 72 and has been in the Senate since 1997. Mills has tried to soften concerns about her age by promising to serve just one term if elected.

Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, 79 and in the Senate since 2013, has stiffly rebuffed a primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton, 46, accusing Moulton of springing a challenge on him amid a shutdown and while he is busy resisting Trump’s agenda.

In Connecticut, Rep. John Larson, 77, who has been in office since 1999 and suffered a complex partial seizure on the House floor in February, has mocked his primary challengers’ message of generational change, telling Axios, “Generational change is fine, but you’ve got to earn it.”

David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., speaks at the 2022 March for Our Lives.

(Leigh Vogel / Getty Images for March For Our Lives)

David Hogg, a 25-year-old liberal activist who was thrust into politics by the 2018 mass shooting at his Parkland, Fla., high school, is among the party’s younger leaders pushing for new blood. He recently declined to seek reelection as the co-vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to bring primary challenges to older Democratic incumbents with his group Leaders We Deserve.

When he announced that decision in June, Hogg called the idea that Democratic leaders can stay in power until they die even if they don’t do a good job an “existential threat to the future of this party and nation.” His group fundraises and disperses money to young candidates it backs.

When asked by The Times about Pelosi and her primary challengers, however, Hogg was circumspect, calling Pelosi “one of the most effective and consequential leaders in the history of the Democratic Party.”

A shift in California

Pelosi is not the only older California incumbent facing a primary challenge. In addition to Matsui, the list also includes Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch), who is 70 and has been in office since 1997, and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), who is 74 and has been in office since 1999.

But Pelosi’s challenges have attracted more attention, perhaps in part because her departure from Congress would be the clearest sign yet that the generational shift sought by younger party activists is fully underway.

Nancy Pelosi is sworn in as House speaker in 2007, surrounded by her grandchildren and children of other members of Congress.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

A trailblazer as the first female speaker of the House, Pelosi presided over two Trump impeachments. While no longer in leadership, she remains incredibly influential as an arm-twister and strategist.

She played a central role in sidelining Biden after his debate meltdown, and for the last couple months has been raising big money — a special skill of hers — in support of California’s Proposition 50. The measure seeks voter approval to redraw California’s congressional districts to better favor Democrats in response to Trump’s pressure campaign on Texas and other red states to redraw their lines in favor of Republicans.

Pelosi has used Prop. 50 in recent days to deflect questions about her primary challengers and her plans for 2026, with her spokesman Ian Krager saying she “is fully focused” on the Prop 50 fight and will be through Nov. 4.

Chakrabarti, who helped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) unseat a longtime Democratic incumbent in 2019, said he sees even more “appetite for change” among the party’s base today — as evidenced by “mainstream Democrats who have voted for Nancy Pelosi their whole life” showing up to his events.

And it makes sense, he said.

For decades, Americans have watched the cost of essentials skyrocket while their wages have remained relatively flat, Chakrabarti said, and that has made them desperate to support messages of “bold, sweeping economic change” — whether from Obama or Trump — even as long-serving, mainstream Democrats backed by corporate money have worked to maintain the status quo.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leaves a news conference at the Capitol in 2019. At left is Saikat Chakrabarti, who was her chief of staff and is now a candidate for the congressional seat held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag)

He said it is time for Democrats to once again push bold, big ideas, which he plans to do — including Medicare for all, universal child care, free college tuition, millions of new units of affordable housing, a new economy built around climate action, and higher taxes on billionaires and mega-millionaires like him.

Wiener, who also backs Prop. 50 and would be the first out gay person to represent San Francisco in Congress, said he cannot speak to Pelosi’s thinking — or to Politico reporting Wednesday that Pelosi is considering dropping out and backing San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan in the race — but is confident in his readiness for the role.

Wiener agreed with Chakrabarti that big ideas are needed from Democrats to win back voters and make progress. He also said that his track record in the state Legislature shows that he has “been willing to take on very, very big fights to make significant progressive change.”

“No one has ever accused me of thinking small,” he said — citing his success in passing bills to create more affordable housing, reform health insurance and drug pricing, tackle net neutrality, challenge telecommunications and cable companies and protect LGBTQ+ and other minority communities and immigrants.

“In addition to having the desire to make big progressive change, in addition to talking about big progressive change, you have to be able to put together the coalitions to deliver on that change, because words are not enough,” Wiener said. “I’ve shown over and over again that I know how to do it, and that I can deliver.”

Political analysts said a message of big ideas will clearly resonate with some voters. But they also said that Pelosi, if she stays in the race, will be hard to beat. She will also face more serious questions than ever about her age and “her ability to function at the extraordinarily high level” she has worked at in years past, Jaye said, and will “have to answer those questions.”

If Pelosi decides not to run, Chakrabarti has the benefit of self-funding and of the current party enthusiasm for fresh faces, they said, and anyone — Chan or otherwise — would benefit from a Pelosi endorsement. But Wiener already has a strong base in the district, a track record for getting legislation passed and, as several observers pointed out, a seemingly endless battery.

“Scott Wiener is an animal. The notion of work-life balance is not a concept he has ever had. He is just like a robotic working machine,” said Aaron Peskin, who served 18 years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, some alongside Wiener.

Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland) speaks to reporters at the Capitol in September.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, which supports young progressive candidates, said there is pent-up demand for a new generation of leaders, and “older Democrats, especially those in Congress, need to ask themselves, ‘Am I the best person to lead this party forward right now?’”

Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland), 48, won her seat in 2024 after longtime Rep. Barbara Lee, 79, who had been in the seat since 1998, decided to run for Oakland mayor. Simon said that to her, “it’s not necessarily about birthdays” but who can do the job — “who can govern, who can mentor and who can hold this administration accountable.”

As a longtime community activist who worked with youth, Simon said she is “extremely excited” by all the energy of young Democratic office seekers. But as a freshman in Congress who has leaned on Lee, Pelosi and other mentors to help her learn the ropes, she said it’s also clear Democrats need to “have some generals who are really, really tried and tested.”

“What is not helpful to me in this moment,” Simon said, “is for the Democrats to be a circular firing squad.”

RALEIGH, N.C. — Democrats rallying Tuesday against a new U.S. House map proposed by North Carolina Republicans seeking another GOP seat at President Trump’s behest acknowledged they’ll probably be unable to halt the redraw for now. But they vowed to defeat the plan in the long run.

The new map offered by Republican legislative leaders seeks to stop the reelection of Democratic Rep. Don Davis, one of North Carolina’s three Black representatives, by redrawing two of the state’s 14 congressional districts. Statewide election data suggest the proposal would result in Republicans winning 11 of those seats, up from the current 10.

The proposal attempts to satisfy Trump’s call for states led by Republicans to conduct mid-decade redistricting to gain more seats and retain his party’s grip on Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats need to gain just three more seats to seize control of the House, and the president’s party historically has lost seats in midterm elections.

With Republicans in the majority in both General Assembly chambers and state law preventing Democratic Gov. Josh Stein from using his veto stamp against a redistricting plan, the GOP-drawn map appeared headed to enactment after final House votes as soon as Wednesday. The state Senate gave its final approval early Tuesday on a party-line vote. A House redistricting committee debated the plan later Tuesday.

Still, about 300 protesters, Democratic Party officials and lawmakers gathering outside the old state Capitol pledged repeatedly Tuesday that redrawing the congressional map would have negative consequences for the GOP at the ballot box in 2026 and beyond. Litigation to challenge the enactment on the map also is likely on allegations of unlawful racial gerrymandering.

“We know we may not have the ability to stop the Republicans in Raleigh right now … but we are here to show that people across this state and across this nation are watching them,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said to cheers.

The gathering served Democrats to censure state Republicans they accuse of agreeing to kneel to Trump through a corrupt redrawing of district lines to target Davis.

State GOP leaders defended their action, saying Trump has won the state’s electoral votes all three times that he’s run for president — albeit narrowly — and thus merits more potential support in Congress.

The national redistricting battle began over the summer when Trump urged Republican-led Texas to reshape its U.S. House districts. After Texas lawmakers acted, California Democrats reciprocated by passing their own plan, which still needs voter approval in November.

Republicans argue that other Democratic-leaning states had already given themselves a disproportionate number of seats well before this national redistricting fight started.

“It is incumbent upon us to react to this environment, to respond to this environment, and not let these tactics that have happened in blue states dominate the control of Congress,” state Sen. Ralph Hise, the map’s chief author, said during Tuesday’s Senate debate.

Seminera and Robertson write for the Associated Press.

Mnangagwa allies push for a term extension to 2030 as ZANU-PF factions split and opposition promises a legal fight.

Zimbabwe’s governing ZANU-PF has said it will begin a process to extend President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s term by two years, potentially keeping him in power until 2030.

The plan was endorsed on Saturday at the movement’s annual conference in the eastern city of Mutare, where delegates instructed the government to begin drafting legislation to amend the Constitution, Justice Minister and ZANU-PF legal secretary Ziyambi Ziyambi said.

Mnangagwa, 83, is constitutionally required to leave office in 2028 after serving two elected terms. Any change would require a constitutional amendment – and potentially referendums – legal experts say.

Delegates erupted in applause after the motion passed, reinforcing ZANU-PF’s pattern of securitised rule since independence in 1980. The party controls parliament, giving it significant leverage, though some insiders warn that a legal challenge would be likely.

Mnangagwa has previously insisted he is a “constitutionalist” with no interest in clinging to power. But loyalists have quietly pushed for a prolonged stay since last year’s disputed election, while rivals inside the party – aligned with Vice President Constantino Chiwenga – are openly resisting an extension.

Blessed Geza, a veteran fighter from the liberation war and a Chiwenga ally, has been using YouTube livestreams to condemn the push, drawing thousands of viewers. Calls for mass protests have gained little traction amid a heavy police deployment in Harare and other cities.

The president made no mention of the extension during his closing remarks at the conference. Chiwenga has not commented on Mnangagwa’s term extension bid or the protests.

Dire economic situation

Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 amid promises of democratic and economic reforms following the toppling of the longtime President Robert Mugabe.

Mnangagwa has presided over a dire economic collapse marked by hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and allegations of corruption. Critics accuse ZANU-PF of crushing dissent, weakening the judiciary, and turning elections into a managed ritual rather than a democratic contest.

Legal opposition figures have warned that any attempt to rewrite the Constitution will face resistance in court.

“We will defend the Constitution against its capture and manipulation to advance a dangerous unconstitutional anti-people agenda,” opposition lawyer Tendai Biti said in a statement on X.

Ten elderly activists – most in their 60s and 70s – were arrested in Harare on Friday for allegedly planning a protest demanding Mnangagwa’s resignation.

They were charged with attempting to incite “public violence” and remain in custody pending a bail hearing on Monday. Earlier this year, authorities detained nearly 100 young people in similar circumstances.

The renewed manoeuvring has exposed an accelerating power struggle inside ZANU-PF. One faction wants Mnangagwa to remain until 2030; another is preparing the ground for Chiwenga, the former army general who helped topple Robert Mugabe in the 2017 coup.

It was a major talking point in the final months of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign: If re-elected, the Republican leader pledged to make in vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for those seeking to get pregnant.

“Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News last year, adding that his plans would cover “all Americans that get it, all Americans that need it”.

“We’re going to be paying for that treatment. Or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”

While that campaign promise remains unrealised, the Trump administration took a step on Thursday to make the procedure more accessible.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump announced a collaboration with the company EMD Serono, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, to offer lower-priced fertility drugs on his upcoming prescription marketplace, TrumpRx.

“ EMD Serono, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States, including the most popular drug of all, the IVF drug Gonal-F,” Trump told reporters.

Expanding TrumpRx project

The announcement marks the third major pharmaceutical company to agree to provide discounted products on TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website slated to launch in 2026.

Trump had threatened drug companies in September with a 100-percent tariff on their products unless they started to build manufacturing facilities in the US.

But that tariff was postponed after the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer announced a deal with TrumpRx on September 30, a day before the tax hike was slated to hit. AstraZeneca, another power player in the industry, followed suit last week.

In Thursday’s news conference, Trump once again credited his tariff threats with bringing the companies to heel.

“They’ll bring a significant portion of their drug manufacturing back to the United States,” Trump said of EMD Serono. “That’s for a lot of reasons, but primarily because of the election result, November 5th, and maybe most importantly because of the tariffs.”

In addition to the forthcoming discounts from EMD Serono, Trump indicated he would encourage insurance companies to expand coverage for IVF treatments.

In the US, laws vary by state as to whether health insurance must cover fertility treatments like IVF. Trump touted the guidance as a breakthrough in making reproductive healthcare more accessible and affordable.

“Effective immediately, for the first time ever, we will make it legal for companies to offer supplemental insurance plans specifically for fertility,” Trump said.

“ Americans will be able to opt in, do specialised coverage, just as they get vision and dental insurance.”

Those plans typically come at an extra fee, on top of regular health insurance rates. That raises questions about how effective the new insurance guidance will be.

More than 26 million Americans – roughly 8 percent of the population – are uninsured, according to US census data. Even more lack access to supplemental policies for dental and vision care.

The American Dental Association, an industry professional group, estimates more than 22 percent of US adults lacked dental insurance as of 2021.

Trump seemed to acknowledge gaps in coverage during his remarks, but he maintained that the new government guidance would offer some adults a pathway to parenthood.

“They’re going to get fertility insurance for the first time,” he continued. “So I don’t know.  I don’t know how well these things are covered.”

A campaign-trail controversy

The Republican leader also credited a 2024 court decision with propelling him to focus on IVF treatments.

IVF involves removing eggs from a patient’s ovaries and fertilising them in a laboratory environment. These eggs are then inserted into the patient’s uterus or frozen for future use.

The use of such treatments is on the rise in the US: In 2023, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that 95,860 babies were born as the result of an IVF procedure.

But in February the following year, a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court prompted fears about whether IVF would remain widely available.

In a novel decision, the court – located in a strongly conservative state – ruled that embryos created through IVF could be considered children under state law, thereby making the destruction of such embryos potentially a criminal act.

The decision sent shockwaves throughout the IVF industry, with clinics in Alabama temporarily suspending services. Discarding embryos is standard practice in IVF: Generally, more eggs are collected than will ultimately be used, and not all fertilised eggs will be suitable to start a pregnancy.

Within weeks, the Alabama state legislature stepped in to shield IVF providers from prosecution. But the ruling created lingering concerns that IVF could be targeted by anti-abortion rights advocates.

On Thursday, Trump revisited that controversy, which happened in the midst of his re-election bid. He called the court’s ruling a “bad decision” and credited it with helping to make him aware of IVF.

“I wasn’t that familiar with it,” Trump said. “Now I think I’ve sort of become the father.”

Senator Katie Britt, who represents the state of Alabama, echoed that evaluation, praising Trump for taking steps to protect IVF.

Thursday was not the first time Trump has gestured at lowering costs for the fertility procedure. In February, he also issued a presidential order calling on his administration to start “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs”.

“ Mr President, this is the most pro-IVF thing that any president in the history of the United States of America has done,” Britt told Trump on Thursday. “You are the reason why the Republican Party is now the party of parents.”

Addressing the US birthrate

Trump, who previously called himself the “fertilisation president”  during a Women’s History Month event, also framed the new measures as progress towards increasing the US birthrate.

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that fertility remained at a historic low, rising slightly in 2024 to 1.6 births per woman.

Those numbers have fuelled a push within the Republican Party to ignite a new baby boom, with right-wing figures like tech billionaire Elon Musk going so far as to call the low birthrate “the biggest danger civilization faces by far”.

At Thursday’s meeting, top figures in the Trump administration echoed those concerns, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“We are below replacement right now,” he said, referencing the number of births needed to outpace deaths in the US. “That is a national security threat to our country.”

Mehmet Oz, who serves under Kennedy as the administrator for Medicaid services, took a more positive approach, framing the new IVF guidance as the beginning of a reversal of that downward trend.

“There are going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz quipped. “I think that’s probably a good thing. But it turns out the fundamental creative force in society is about making babies.”

But it remains to be seen if insurance companies and employers will follow through with Trump’s guidance to offer supplemental fertility benefits for adults seeking to get pregnant.

Most Americans receive health insurance as part of their workplace benefits. Senator Britt argued the guidelines would put employers “in the driver’s seat”, allowing them to shape the benefits they offer to their workers.

“Employers are going to be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility, things like obesity and metabolic health, and other things that are impacting infertility,” she said. “We want employers to be the ones that can make those decisions, not the government.”

But for Democrats, the guidance fell far short of what Trump promised on the campaign trail.

“Donald Trump lied when he pledged to make IVF available to every family for FREE,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted afterwards on social media. “It’s insulting – a broken promise.”

As the partial government shutdown grinds on, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto stands ready to end it right now.

The lawyerly senator from Nevada is one of just two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and Maine’s independent senator, Angus King, to have the federal government up and running.

She’s not only bucking her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but also placing herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! Now is the time! This is the fight!

Cortez Masto evinces not a flicker of doubt.

“I have been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and the impact to Americans and the fact that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming healthcare crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.

“And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”

Unlike the Democrats’ other defector, Pennsylvania’s quirky Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto hasn’t developed a reputation for partisan heresy, or antagonized party peers by playing footsie with President Trump and the MAGA movement.

Despite her temporary alliance with the GOP, she’s unstinting in her criticism of the president and the Republican stance on healthcare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown fight.

“Of course we need to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I’ve been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”

Her split with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not over ends but rather means.

It’s entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, work through the parties’ differences over healthcare, including, most imminently, the end of subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.

It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which in Cortez Masto’s view, is still possible — even in these rabidly partisan times.

“That’s what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get stuff done. I still believe in it.”

Although she noted — with considerable understatement — “there are those in the administration and some of my colleagues” who disagree.

Not to mention a great many Democratic activists who believe anything short of jailing Trump and dispatching the entire GOP-run Congress to a far-off desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.

Nevada, where Cortez Masto was born and bred, is a state that was Republican red for a very long time before turning blue-ish for a while, starting under Barack Obama in 2008. It went back to red-ish under Trump in 2024.

Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing the onetime Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, after the Democrat retired.

Six years later, when she sought reelection, Cortez Masto was widely considered Democrats’ most endangered incumbent. She was not nearly as powerful or prominent as Reid had been. Inflation was raging, and Nevada was still suffering an economic hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her opponent was a middling Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to harbor a soft spot for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

Still, Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. In retrospect, the result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in carrying the state after twice losing Nevada.

Cortez Masto next faces reelection in 2028, which is politically ages away. By then, the shutdown will be long forgotten. (And presumably long over.)

Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, especially, the shutdown’s economic effect at a time Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which runs on tourism, has experienced a notable slump, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown only makes things worse.

That, however, hasn’t deterred Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who has repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shuttered until Republicans give in.

“Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Not to cave.”

Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy. “She’s a good friend.… Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are doing it,” she said. “We both are doing it in different ways.”

So, negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.

What makes Cortez Masto think Trump, who’s run roughshod over Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats cut with Republicans to reopen the government and address the healthcare crisis she sees?

“Well, that’s the rub, right? We know what he’s doing,” she replied. He’s “flouting the law when it comes to … taking the role of legislators and appropriating funds at his own whim…. So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.

“But he is there. What you got to figure out is how you work together with Republican colleagues to get something done.”

Cortez Masto noted, dryly, that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to solve problems, she said, and do more than the president’s bidding, they “need to come out and do bipartisan legislation to push back on this administration.”

“We’ve got to govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We’ve got to work together.”

Wouldn’t that be something.

Charlie Cosser heartbroken dad makes a solemn promise to his tragic son Charlie, while sister Eloise reveals the devastating moment she heard her brother’s heart stop

After his 17-year-old son Charlie was fatally stabbed, dad Martin Cosser made a solemn double promise – he would get justice and he would dedicate the rest of his life to preventing knife crime.

Charlie was murdered by 16-year-old Yura Varybus at an end-of-term party on 23rd June 2023 in a farmhouse in West Sussex. Medics worked tirelessly to try to save his life but tragically, Charlie died two-and-a-half days later in hospital.

His father Martin broadcast his grief on TikTok, and now the story of how the murder case went viral is being told in the second series of ITV1’s TikTok: Murder Gone Viral.

In heartbreaking scenes viewers will see Charlie’s younger sister Eloise recall how police came to the family home in the night. She recalled: “I woke up to the sound of the door being banged on really hard. The police officer tells us she’ll be driving us to the hospital where they’ve taken Charlie. I didn’t have time to put my shoes on. I just ran out in the darkness into the police car.”

One of the three stab wounds had damaged Charlie’s aorta and he had a cardiac arrest in the ambulance. However, medics operated in the ambulance then managed to stabilise him before his family gathered at his bedside. Tragically, Charlie died when his heart broken family agreed to turn off his life support on the advice of doctors, whose tests showed Charlie had suffered irreversible brain damage.

Eloise revealed how she watched the life drain out of her beloved big brother, who was nicknamed Cheeks, as his heart stopped beating. She said: “I can’t even describe how it feels like to watch your brother die. I put my head on his chest and I was listening to his heart beat for the last time. I looked at his face and I could see the colour draining from his face and he became even more pale than he was before. I was told I needed to step back because I was in such a state but I’m refusing because I don’t want to leave his side in his last moments and that’s when I put my head back on his chest and realised his heart was no longer beating.”

Losing his son galvanised dad Martin to do everything he could to stop knife crime. “I just held Charlie’s hand and I made him a promise. I promised him justice but the main promise was that I would spend the rest of my life educating people about the dangers and immeasurable impacts of knife crime. I felt so isolated and alone in the immediate aftermath and I just recorded into the phone.”

Martin posts under his son’s name @CharlieCosser17. His most watched video sees Martin reacting tearfully to Varybus’ conviction and has been viewed 4.7 million times.

ITV reporter James Dunham, who covered the case, revealed how the posts made the murder go viral. He said: “Once Martin started posting his videos on Tiktok he soon gained a lot of attention but because police had arrested their prime suspect quite quickly, there wasn’t the usual Tiktok speculation about who the killer might be or where they might be hiding. Instead we got raw, unfolding agony.”

The documentary reveals how the violence unfolded. Charlie was stabbed three times after an altercation at the party. When he was arrested he initially pleaded guilty, but was later given permission to change his guilty plea to not guilty, forcing the family through a lengthy murder trial.

“An application had gone in for him to vacate his guilty plea,” Martin tells the documentary. “As far as we were concerned he’d already been found guilty, he was guilty. That was torture, absolute torture.”

However, the evidence against Varybrus was overwhelming. While the murder weapon was never recovered, there were eye witness accounts that reported Varybus being “drenched in blood”, and one witness said they heard him say “I’ve stabbed someone”. He later burned the clothes he was wearing and was also seen changing the settings on his mobile phone which detectives believe was intended to tamper with the evidence of his location. Varybrus was convicted of murder and possession of a bladed article and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of sixteen years. Because Varybrus was under eighteen at the time of the killing, reporting restrictions initially protected his identity, but the judge lifted these after conviction, allowing the press to publish his name.

On the show Charlie’s dad Martin holds up the grey t-shirt Charlie was wearing on the night he was murdered. “You can see three stab wounds clearly on there,” says Martin. “Actually they are really small knife wounds and yet they caused catastrophic damage.”

Martin’s campaigning helped make the story a national talking point and start his work to educate people about the horrendous ramifications of knife crime. Now Martin and his wife Tara have set up a charity called Charlie’s Promise which raises awareness of the dangers of carrying and using a knife.

Martin said: “I set about putting the wheels in motion and setting up a charity called Charlie’s Promise and the talks I go out and give are to prevent and make a difference to knife crime in this country. And while there is air in my lungs I will continue to tell the story of my little boy and how incredible he was and make a difference in this country to prevent other families like ours going through this misery.”

TikTok: Murder Gone Viral begins on Tuesday 21st 9pm, ITV1 and ITVX. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Hull KR’s Grand Final-winning trio Mikey Lewis, Jez Litten and Joe Burgess have all been named in England’s final 24-man squad for the autumn Ashes Test series against Australia but there is no place for Super League’s Man of Steel winner Jake Connor.

Litten’s only previous cap arrived against France in 2023, while Burgess, who scored two tries in Hull KR’s triumph over Wigan on Saturday, returns to the England set-up after a 10-year absence.

But Connor, who was also omitted from the squad get-together in June, has been unable to convince head coach Shaun Wane he deserves a spot amid fierce competition in the halves.

Wane’s stellar options in those berths include captain George Williams, Wigan’s Harry Smith and Lewis, who won the Rob Burrow Award for man of the match with a sparkling performance at Old Trafford.

Australia face England at Wembley on 25 October, at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium on 1 November and at AMT Headingley on 8 November. All three matches are 14:30 kick-offs and will be live on BBC One.

“I’m really excited by the 24 players we have selected ahead of this upcoming Ashes Series,” said Wane.

“There were some tough decisions to be made given the quality we have across both Super League and the NRL and that’s never easy, but I am confident that the 24 selected will give us the best chance of winning this series.”

England squad: John Bateman (North Queensland Cowboys), AJ Brimson (Gold Coast Titans), Joe Burgess (Hull KR), Daryl Clark (St Helens), Herbie Farnworth (Dolphins), Ethan Havard (Wigan Warriors), Morgan Knowles (St Helens), Matty Lees (St Helens), Mikey Lewis (Hull KR), Jez Litten (Hull KR), Mike McMeeken (Wakefield Trinity), Harry Newman (Leeds Rhinos), Mikolaj Oledzki (Leeds Rhinos), Tom Johnstone (Wakefield Trinity), Kai Pearce-Paul (Newcastle Knights), Harry Smith (Wigan Warriors), Morgan Smithies (Canberra Raiders), Owen Trout (Leigh Leopards), Alex Walmsley (St Helens), Jake Wardle (Wigan Warriors), Kallum Watkins (Leeds Rhinos), Jack Welsby (St Helens), George Williams (Warrington Wolves), Dom Young (Newcastle Knights)

MAFS newcomers bring the drama with them as the groom says he’s been “disrespected” by his wife at an explosive dinner party.

Reiss and Leisha walked down the aisle on the E4 show last week but its been a bumpy ride.

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They got off to a bad start at their wedding reception when Leisha pummelled him with questions about his life.

But after a in-depth conversation in tonight’s show the couple seemed to have put their differences aside and appeared happy again.

Reiss explained: “I like the stage I am at with Leisha, she’s got a heart of gold.”

Leisha agreed: “I’m happy. Complete. I’ve fallen for Reiss hard.

“He’s everything I have asked for.”

However, in a preview for tomorrow night’s dinner party things seem to have gone off the boil again.

The couple steal the spotlight as Leisha complains to Reiss: “Everyone else is holding hands.”

“I stopped holding your hand because you said don’t hold my f***ing hand and stormed off.” replies Reiss.

Then things take a turn for the worse when Leisha is asked: “Do you think you should be sat on a plane talking to a boy?”

Leisha replies: “I’ve had past relationships. That’s never been a problem.”

Julia-Ruth chimes in: “Babe, you’ve just had a honeymoon with this man.”

Then Reiss snaps: “I felt disrespected.”

Earlier in last night’s show, Leisha’s questions continued to baffle painter and decorator Reiss.

In an effort to get her husband to open up she asked: “Do you feel like you are falling for me though? Do you like me?”

Married at First Sight’s best moments

Married at First sight has brought eight explosive series of drama to the small screen. These are some of the best moments

• When series 8 couple Rozz Darlington and Thomas Kriaras brought secretly brought a sex toy to the couple’s dinner party. Unbeknownst to their fellow cast members who they were having dinner with, Rozz wore a vibrating egg gadget whilst husband Thomas had the controls.

• Nikita’s exit in series 6. Nikita was removed from the show early on due to her behaviour, which led to her husband Ant re-entering the experiment with Alexis.

• A slightly more heart warming highlight from series 6 was watching Dan and Matt’s relationship unfold. Dan and Matt were the first same-sex couple on the show, and their relationship was both ground-breaking and adorable.

• Emma and James’ wedding in series 1. They were the first couple to ever get married on the UK version of the show. Emma and James, had a beautiful ceremony that set the tone for the series.

• The dinner party showdowns are always a MAFs highlight with explosive arguments and unexpected alliances forming.

The question was met with an awkward silence until Reiss giggled and said: “Easy girl. It’s been two days.”

Then during a boat trip she asked: “”Do you visualise me in your future?”

An annoyed Reiss threw an epic strop and responded: “I can’t cope! You’re too much.

“I don’t need pressure yet, it’s so early.

“I don’t like it. I know you’re saying you want to see the real me you aint going to find that out over night.

“You know I’m a closed book. If you’re constantly pressuring me you’re just going to keep me closed.”

Fans will have to wait until tomorrow night to see if the couple can patch things up after their latest row.

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Vice President JD Vance said Sunday there will be deeper cuts to the federal workforce the longer the government shutdown goes on, adding to the uncertainty facing hundreds of thousands who are already furloughed without pay amid the stalemate in Congress.

Vance warned that as the federal shutdown entered its 12th day, the new cuts would be “painful,” even as he said the Trump administration worked to ensure that the military is paid this week and some services would be preserved for low-income Americans, including food assistance.

Still, hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed in recent days and, in a court filing Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees would soon be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we’re looking forward to, but the Democrats have dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards.”

Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the aggressive move by President Trump’s budget office, which goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, further inflaming tensions between the Republicans who control Congress and the Democratic minority.

The shutdown began Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The expiration of those subsidies at the end of the year will result in monthly cost increases for millions.

Trump and Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiations on the health subsidies, but insist the government must reopen first.

For now, negotiations are virtually nonexistent. Dug in as ever, House leaders from both parties pointed fingers at each other in rival Sunday appearances on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have repeatedly made clear that we will sit down with anyone, anytime, anyplace,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s unfortunate they’ve taken a my-way-or-the-highway approach.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) blamed Democrats and said they “seem not to care” about the pain the shutdown is inflicting.

“They’re trying their best to distract the American people from the simple fact that they’ve chosen a partisan fight so that they can prove to their Marxist rising base in the Democratic Party that they’re willing to fight Trump and Republicans,” he said.

Progressive activists, meanwhile, expressed new support for the Democratic Party’s position in the shutdown fight.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of the leading progressive protest group Indivisible, said he is “feeling good about the strength of Dem position.” He pointed to fractures in the GOP, noting that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly warned last week that healthcare insurance premiums would skyrocket for average Americans — including her own adult children — if nothing is done.

“Trump and GOP are rightfully taking the blame for the shutdown and for looming premium increases,” Levin said. “Their chickens are coming home to roost.”

And yet the Republican administration and its congressional allies are showing no signs of compromise on Democratic demands or backing away from threats to use the opportunity to pursue deeper cuts to the federal workforce.

Thousands of employees at the departments of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services as well as the Environmental Protection Agency are set to receive layoff notices, according to spokespeople for the agencies and union representatives for federal workers.

“You hear a lot of Senate Democrats say, well, how can Donald Trump possibly lay off all of these federal workers?” Vance said. “Well, the Democrats have given us a choice between giving low-income women their food benefits and paying our troops on the one hand, and, on the other hand, paying federal bureaucrats.”

Democrats say the firings are illegal and unnecessary.

“They do not have to do this,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They do not have to punish people that shouldn’t find themselves in this position.”

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.