grimpy

You can certainly argue that shutting down the government to force a vote on Obamacare subsidies was the right thing to do. But it is very hard to find any strategic sense in putting Americans through a world of pain for 43 days only to shrug your shoulders and give up. Particularly as Schumer himself said the subsidies were a “life or death” issue and there was “no fucking way” the Democrats would cave on it.

But cave they did – and just as it looked like their strategy was paying off.

Community organizer Katie Wilson… campaigned on a message of affordability in a city where the cost of living has soared. Wilson’s platform calls for progressive taxation to raise revenue from the wealthiest households and corporations to pay for affordable housing and social programs benefiting families. Wilson spoke to reporters Thursday after Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded.

Katie Wilson: “I want everyone in this great city of ours to have a roof over their head. I want universal child care and free K through 8 summer care. I want worldclass mass transit. I want great, safe public spaces where kids can run around with abandon. I want stable, affordable housing for renters. I want social housing. I want much more land and wealth to be owned and stewarded by communities instead of corporations. I want a robust economy with thriving small businesses, great living wage jobs, and strong rights for workers.”

[Mayor-elect Katie] Wilson stood in front of a makeshift podium (with nowhere to put her many, many sheets of paper) in the lobby of the Labor Temple in Georgetown for her first speech as the official Mayor Elect.

“Hello, Seattle,” she said. “I am so happy to be here on this quintessentially Seattle day, a rainy day in November, to say to all of the people of Seattle: this is your city, and I am delighted, beyond delighted to be your next mayor.”

She listed what she wanted to accomplish in this city: universal child care, K-8 summer care, “world class” transit, safe public spaces, affordable housing, and social housing, to name a few.

“I want a city where everyone has the basics of a dignified life, including healthy food, access to healthcare and supportive communities,” she said. “I want a city where your health and your life expectancy and your children's future doesn't depend on your zip code or your race. I believe that I will be stepping into office with a strong mandate to pursue this vision.”

This president will stop at nothing to take food out of the mouths of hungry kids across America. Soulless,” said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.

Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that it appears the Trump administration is “demanding that food assistance be taken away from the households that have already received it.”

“They would rather go door to door, taking away people’s food, than do the right thing and fully fund SNAP for November so that struggling veterans, seniors, and children can keep food on the table,” said Craig.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is directing states to “immediately undo” any steps that have been taken to send out full food aid benefits to low-income Americans, following a supreme court order on Friday that temporarily halted a lower court order requiring those payments.

The USDA’s directive, issued in a memo on Saturday, followed a supreme court order granting the Trump administration’s emergency request to pause an order for the USDA to provide full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits during the ongoing federal government shutdown, which is now in its 40th day.

That lower court ruling, issued on Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the Snap program for November by Friday, rather than issuing only partial benefits. The ruling led to some of the roughly 42 million Americans enrolled in Snap – commonly known as food stamps – to begin receiving their full benefits on Friday from the states, which issue the payments of federal dollars.

When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously.

“Our olives are everything for us: the backbone of our economy, in our homes, on our tables, in our culture. These last years have brought nothing but misery to us,” says Hassan, 68.

The situation is the same across much of the West Bank. Since the beginning of October, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union (PFU) has logged more than 50 incidents of violence or destruction.

“Ordinary people get one vote. Billionaires get the opportunity to spend as much as they want to elect the candidates they want,” [Senator Bernie] Sanders said, decrying the influence of super PACs that can accept unlimited political donations. “That is the context in which this election is taking place.”

[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, cast the race as one that “mirrors what we are up against nationally, both an authoritarian criminal presidency, fueled by corruption and bigotry and an ascendant right-wing extremist movement,” as well as the “insufficient, eroded, bygone political establishment, this time in the form of Andrew Cuomo.”

“Congress established an emergency fund to ensure that millions of Americans on SNAP continue to receive nutrition assistance when funding expires in November,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, said on social media Saturday.

Sanders—the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—then appealed directly to Republican President Donald Trump: “Don’t let kids go hungry. Use these emergency funds to feed low-income families.”

“Speaking as a former OMB official, I know from experience that the federal government has the authority and the tools it needs during a shutdown to get these SNAP funds to families,” [Sharon Parrott] continued. “It would be unconscionable for the administration to go out of its way to threaten millions of children, seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, parents, and workers with hunger, rather than taking all legal steps available to provide food assistance to people who need it.”

“The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism,” Garrett Graff, the American historian and author, wrote in August. “In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here.”

One awakes to new horrors each day. And it is difficult to grasp – and painful to realize – just how far gone we are, and how quickly it has happened.

New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani forcefully defended his call for a $30 minimum wage during the final debate of the race Wednesday night, warning that under the status quo, the expensive metropolis is at growing risk of becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live.”

The inability of many New Yorkers to make a livable wage in the city, Mamdani said, “is pushing them to live in Jersey City, to live in Pennsylvania, to live in Connecticut, because they can’t afford to live in New York City.”

Under Mamdani’s proposal, which would have to be approved by lawmakers, New York City’s wage floor would rise incrementally before reaching $30 an hour by 2030. The minimum wage would then be tied to either cost-of-living increases or worker productivity jumps.

I believe ICE enforcement is poised to become a mass disabling event, and I’m concerned that very few people are discussing it.

They’re already targeting the disabled and most vulnerable. They’re bullies, and when bullies get access to increasingly destructive weapons, nothing good happens.