THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

The one Republican elected official who has a serious and workable plan to end the government shutdown is, surprisingly enough, Donald Trump. The president’s idea is for the Senate to change its rules to allow the chamber to keep the government open with a majority vote, rather than to permit 41 senators to shut it down.To be sure, Trump has not always framed his argument in the most cogent way. In a recent post on X, he wrote, “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, NOT JUST FOR THE SHUTDOWN, BUT FOR EVERYTHING ELSE.” By way of explanation, he added, “THE DEMS ARE CRAZED LUNATICS, THEY WILL NOT OPEN UP OUR COUNTRY NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IRREPARABLY HARMED!”Generally speaking, depicting your opponents as “crazed lunatics” and yourself as the voice of reason is easier when you are not using all caps and exclamation points. Still, in this case, Trump’s position is correct.… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Zohran Mamdani will be the unlikeliest mayor in New York City history. A 34-year-old backbench state assemblyman and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Mamdani ran on the promise of affordability and was declared the winner not long after polls closed tonight. On his path to victory, he thrilled young voters in a way that few Democrats have in years. But perhaps no one was more delighted by his election than President Donald Trump.Mamdani’s victory was his second decisive win over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom he defeated in the Democratic primary in June. (The current mayor, Eric Adams, skipped the primary, choosing instead to run as an independent, but dropped out of the race in September.) Cuomo’s father, Mario, another former governor, famously said, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose,” and Mamdani will soon have to trade his lofty rhetoric for the gritty municipal work of ensuring public safety, digging… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

On the first day of every month, Ethel Ingram goes to the grocery store with $171 in federally funded food stamps and a nearly impossible mission: Buy enough food for the next 30 days. She usually fails. A couple of weeks into most months, she’s forced to pursue another goal: visiting enough food banks to stock her refrigerator until the month ends and her account reloads. But this month, the government shutdown cut off food assistance to her and millions of others. Now Ingram’s options to feed herself are dwindling. Her account balance remains zero, and the food banks she relies on are more crowded than she has ever seen them.This is what happens when a record-long government shutdown affects millions of Americans who are already struggling with the high cost of food, housing, child care, and just about everything else. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has stopped issuing payments… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The revelation that Donald Trump has demolished the East Wing, with plans to rebuild it at jumbo size with private funds, provoked an initial wave of outrage—followed by a predictable counter-wave of pseudo-sophisticated qualified defenses.“In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible,” editorializes The Washington Post. The New York Times’ Ross Douthat and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have similar assessments: We should all calm down, put aside our feelings about the president and the admittedly flawed process by which he arrived at this project, and appreciate the practical value of the new facility.Let’s forget questions of proportion and aesthetics (I could not be less qualified to judge either) and consider the matter solely on the issue of corruption. Trump has funded the project by soliciting donors who have potential or actual business before the government. By traditional standards, this… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The Trump administration has taken the government shutdown as an opportunity to end federal oversight of the education services offered to more than 8 million children with disabilities in America. Last month, the Department of Education attempted to fire nearly every staff member left at the Office of Special Education Programs—an action now stuck in litigation. The department had already canceled millions of dollars in grants to provide teacher training and parental support for students with disabilities, and it is now “exploring additional partnerships” to move special-education services elsewhere in the government. Ostensibly, these cuts and administrative changes are part of a broader effort to empower states. But whatever the motive, the result is clear: The government has abandoned its commitment to an equitable education for all children.This attack did not come out of nowhere. Over the course of five decades, Congress has repeatedly weakened the transformative law that has… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.