Wednesday, October 29, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"Working families are paying the price" for the president's "reckless" policies, said Groundwork Collaborative's Alex Jacquez.
By Jessica Corbett
As Americans face tariff-related price hikes, surging health insurance premiums, and fallout from the government shutdown, from missed paychecks to no food assistance, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced its second interest rate cut of the year.
“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remained low through August,” the US central bank said in a statement about the Federal Open Market Committee cutting the benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75-4%, its lowest level in three years. “Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated.”
When the Fed slashed the federal funds rate last month, economist Alex Jacquez warned that it would “do little to address” the “economic turmoil” created by President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, the former Obama administration official, who is now chief of policy and advocacy at the think tank Groundwork Collaborative, again took aim at the US leader.
“The Fed’s decision only confirms what Americans already know—the economy is slowing, job growth has stalled, prices keep climbing, and consumers are pulling back because they’re out of options,” Jacquez said in a statement. “Trump’s reckless economic agenda is pushing our economy to the brink, and working families are paying the price.”
US House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) similarly said in a Wednesday statement that “today’s rate cut is yet another warning sign about the sorry state of Donald Trump’s economy.”
“Nearly half of all states are now in or near recession, inflation is climbing, and the labor market is losing strength,” Boyle noted. “This is all a direct result of Trump’s reckless tariff taxes and his chaotic economic agenda.”
“At the same time, working families are facing the largest spike in health insurance premiums in our nation’s history,” he stressed. “I’ll keep fighting to lower costs, protect affordable healthcare, and make sure every American has access to a good-paying job.”
Rohit Chopra, who directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Biden administration, before Trump gutted the agency, was also critical of the Republican president on Wednesday.
“While he is not in the room to vote on Fed interest rates, President Trump’s shadow looms large over the Federal Reserve and many members seem eager to please him,” Chopra said. “While Gov. Lisa Cook is fighting back, markets seem to understand that the Fed’s decision-making will be heavily shaped by the whims of the White House.”
Trump is trying to oust Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors, which her lawyers call “unprecedented and illegal.” The US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in her case in January; in the meantime, earlier this month, the justices allowed her to remain in her post.
The Democratic leaders, said the outspoken I've Had It podcast co-host, have refused to show up for the NYC mayoral candidate because they are "beholden to the same corporations that helped Donald Trump get elected."
By Julia Conley
With less than a week to go until Election Day in New York City, the top Democratic leader in the US Senate has yet to endorse his party’s candidate for mayor of the city he calls home—and a podcaster who’s become increasingly known for catching establishment politicians off guard with her pointed questions was clear about her view on the matter this week.
“Listen up, Democratic establishment,” said Jennifer Welch, the co-host of the podcast I’ve Had It. “You can either jump on board with this shit or we’re coming after you in the same way we come after MAGA. Period... Stop missing out on these big rallies.”
Welch spoke on I’ve Had It the day after 13,000 New Yorkers packed Forest Hills Stadium in Queens to hear progressive Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speak alongside some of his biggest allies: US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Despite the enthusiasm around Mamdani’s campaign, in which he’s focused relentlessly on making the city more affordable for working people and ensuring corporations and the rich pay fair taxes, New York Democrats Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of whom live in New York City, were no-shows—a fact that Welch proclaimed “an embarrassment.”
“Hakeem and Chuck should have been front and center, introducing the next mayor of New York City,” said Welch. “But no, they wouldn’t show up—because they’re pussies. They’re pussies that are beholden to the same corporations that helped [President] Donald Trump get elected.”
Jeffries offered a tepid, last-minute endorsement of Mamdani late last week, but both leaders have refused to give their full-throated support to the popular state assemblyman as he faces disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani by 12 points in June. Schumer ignored a question about the mayoral race at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Progressives have condemned the two leaders for not backing the party’s nominee, a move that could be seen by some voters as a tacit endorsement of Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace after being accused by numerous women of sexual harassment, has employed racist stereotypes in his attack ads on Mamdani, and has reportedly spoken with Trump about the White House potentially intervening in the mayoral race on Cuomo’s behalf.
Welch warned Schumer, Jeffries, and other establishment Democrats that with candidates and leaders like Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez, the party “is moving on.”
“These Democrats, they continue to play patty cake with corporations and lobbyists,” she said. “Nobody wants that. Nobody wants you. We want politicians to speak freely, and look at what the benefit is. Look at what’s happening in New York. And you dipshits are sitting on the sidelines, running your social media like complete dorks. It’s embarrassing. Get your shit together, Hakeem. Chuck, seriously, get your shit together.”
Welch has taken numerous politicians to task in recent months for accepting campaign donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel interest groups—from which Schumer and Jeffries have each taken more than $1.7 million.
She advised the leaders to “stop taking AIPAC money” and “go on an ‘I’m sorry, I took AIPAC money atonement’ tour, if you want to stay in power.”
She added that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez—often known by her initials, AOC—and Mamdani “are all doing something” that corporate Democrats can’t: getting working-class Trump supporters to “cross over and vote for them.”
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke to large crowds in both red and blue areas of the country earlier this year, focusing on government corruption and inequality, on Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy Tour. This week, a photo of a man wearing a “MAGA for Mamdani” T-shirt went viral, with the man telling a reporter: “This’ll be the first time I’m voting for a Democrat. I like his policies.”
According to Welch, “Why Democratic leadership and why the Democratic National Committee is not hopping on those coattails and fucking riding the wave, tells you everything you need to know.”
“That the Democratic establishment is MAGA lite,” she said. “They have the same corporate donors. That’s why when you ask them a blunt question you get a word-salad answer. And this is why Zohran Mamdani is rising. This is why AOC is rising.”
"The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump’s family has long generated controversy and criticism for running a cryptocurrency business during his second term in office, and now they’re adding an online betting business to their portfolio.
The Financial Times on Tuesday reported that the president’s Truth Social platform is getting into the prediction market business to allow bettors to place wagers on the outcomes of elections, sports games, and other events.
The new “Truth Predict” betting market platform will be a partnership between the Trump Media and Technology Group and Crypto.com, a cryoptocurrency trading platform that in the past has donated millions to Trump causes.
According to the Financial Times, the Trump family in recent months has become more intertwined with the online betting industry, as Donald Trump Jr. has taken on “advisory roles at the two industry-leading prediction market companies, Kalshi and Polymarket.”
Additionally, Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm has invested in Polymarket, which Wired reports has not operated in the US since 2022 when it reached an agreement with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission to settle allegations that it operated an unregistered derivatives trading market.
Mike Masnick, a journalist at Techdirt, pointed out the glaring conflict of interest posed by the most powerful person in the world owning his own prediction market platform.
“So the company the president currently owns is teaming up with a cryptocurrency company to create a prediction market, which will take bets... on things the president himself has quite a lot of control over?” he wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Gosh, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.”
The Trump family’s entrance into the online betting market came on the same day that Reuters published an extensive report showing how the Trump family has used its cryptocurrency business to generate a massive increase in wealth in a matter of mere months.
According to Reuters’ calculations, “the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier,” with more than 90% of this income coming from the Trump-backed cryptocurrency venture. Reuters also reported that the $800 million is just the actual income the Trump Organization has taken in so far, and that it has billions more in unrealized gains from the crypto venture.
Washington University law professor Kathleen Clark, who specializes in teaching government ethics, told Reuters it was obvious that investors in the Trump crypto venture were hoping to get some kind of favor from the government in exchange.
“These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen,” she said. “They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.”
Trump last week sparked corruption accusations when he pardoned cryptocurrency magnate Changpeng Zhao, whose company Binance has been a major booster to the Trump family’s crypto business.
“Binance has been one of the main drivers of the growth of World Liberty’s dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, called USD1,”The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. “It delivered World Liberty’s first big break this spring when it accepted a $2 billion investment from an outside investor paid in USD1. Binance has also incentivized trading in USD1 across platforms it controls.”
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Tenn.), who for years investigated former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for his foreign business dealings, was asked by CNN host Jake Tapper if he would investigate the Trump family’s crypto venture.
Comer indicated that he was fine with the Trump family’s potentially corrupt money-making schemes because they were being done out in the open.
“We... are reading about this, we’re trying to digest it,” he said. “The difference between the way the Trump family’s operating and the Biden family, is they’re admitting they’re doing this. The president campaigned as a business guy... as long as you disclose the income and disclose the sources, I think that’s acceptable.”
Critics of the president, however, said this hands-off approach to investigating the Trump family’s business dealings was unacceptable.
Democratic operative David Axelrod wrote in a post on X that it is “kind of incredible that the House Oversight Committee is spending its time on Biden’s auto pen but they won’t touch how Trump has doubled his wealth in a year.”
Axelrod also thought congressional investigators should be asking about “who’s buying his meme coins,” “the deals his kids are cutting all over the world,” and “the gifted jet from Qatar.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) argued that no president in US history has engaged in this level of corruption.
“Trump and his family’s crypto ventures are selling out our national security through sweetheart deals with money launderers, fraudsters, and foreign governments,” he wrote on X. “The scale of this corruption—reaping more than $800 million and pardons for business partners—is unprecedented.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) noted on Tuesday that Binance this week promoted sales of the Trump family’s meme coin mere days after the president pardoned its founder.
“The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine,” he said.
"This is a political prosecution and a gross attempt to silence dissent," said Abughazaleh.
By Brad Reed
Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive candidate running for the US House of Representatives in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, struck a defiant tone on Wednesday after being indicted on federal charges by the US Department of Justice.
As MSNBC reports, the charges against Abughazaleh relate to her frequent protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, Illinois. She faces one count of conspiracy to impede or injure an ICE officer, and one count of assaulting or impeding that officer while he was engaged in his official duties.
According to MSNBC, the indictment accuses Abughazaleh and five other anti-ICE protestors of “banging aggressively” on an ICE vehicle’s back windows and hood, as well as “pushing against it to ‘hinder and impede its movement,’ and etching the word ‘PIG’ on the car.”
In a video posted on social media after the indictment, Abughazaleh labeled the criminal charges as baseless and an attempt to intimidate Americans out of exercising their First Amendment rights to protest.
“This is a political prosecution and a gross attempt to silence dissent,” she said. “This case is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges.”
Abughazaleh proceeded to accuse ICE agents of physically assaulting peaceful demonstrators outside the Broadview facility “simply because we had the gall to say masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors, and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal.”
She then closed her video by asking that her supporters show courage in the face of attempts to intimidate them.
“As scary as all this is, I have spent my career fighting America’s backslide into fascism,” she said. “I’m not going to stop now. And I hope you won’t either.”
Abughazaleh has been a regular presence at protests outside the Broadview facility, and an ICE officer last month was caught on camera throwing her to the ground during a demonstration.
Federal law enforcement officials stationed in Broadview have faced numerous accusations of deploying excessive force, including from Rev. David Black, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, who was shot repeatedly with pepper balls while peacefully protesting outside the ICE facility.
“Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities," said critics.
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump alarmed many critics this week when he once again mused about deploying the military on the streets of US cities.
As reported by The New York Times, Trump told a group of American troops stationed in Japan on Tuesday that he could send the military into US cities under the pretense of fighting crime.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled,” Trump said. “And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
Trump has deployed the National Guard to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and Portland in recent months, but local and state officials have opposed the deployment in most cases and have filed legal challenges. Most recently, a federal appeals court voted on Tuesday to rehear the administration’s case pushing to send the National Guard to Portland—vacating an earlier decision that allowed Trump to federalize Oregon’s troops.
On Wednesday, Trump was asked by a New York Times reporter to specify what he meant when he said he could send “more than the National Guard” into American cities, and he replied that he could send any branch of the military he wanted without any oversight from courts or from Congress.
“If I want to enact a certain act, I’m allowed to do it,” Trump said. “I’d be allowed to do whatever I want. The courts wouldn’t get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—I could send anybody I wanted.”
The president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act earlier this month, falsely claiming the law gives him “unquestioned power.” The Insurrection Act allows presidents to deploy federal troops to enforce US laws in cases of extreme emergency, such as violent rebellions—but local officials in the cities Trump has targeted so far have categorically denied that anti-Trump protests there meet the high threshold for invoking the law.
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition—Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen; Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn; and Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America—condemned Trump’s threats on Tuesday as “unlawful and un-American.”
“Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities,” they said. “In his remarks today, Trump claimed that he and his administration cronies ‘can do as we want to do.’ That is as dangerous as it is unlawful and un-American.”
Trump’s use of the American military for domestic law enforcement purposes was also condemned by Ret. Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former top official at the National Guard.
Writing in the Home of the Brave newsletter, Manner condemned Trump’s National Guard deployments to US cities as “un-American and wrong.”
Manner noted that the National Guard has traditionally existed to augment US forces overseas during times of war, and also to serve at the request of state governors during times of emergencies. Using the National Guard to do standard police work, Manner added, is simply unprecedented.
“Our military is not trained in law enforcement,” he argued. “There are absolutely zero situations where our National Guard should be on the streets of America as a status quo measure, absent some acute short-term crisis. We would never send our sheriff’s deputies to Afghanistan for a special operation; it’s just as illogical to send highly trained combat soldiers and put them into civilian law enforcement roles.”
Trump first began musing about deploying the US military on American soil during the 2024 election campaign, when he said he could use it to take down a group of US citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” Trump ratcheted up his threats last month when he told a group of assembled US generals that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
"The solution is straightforward, and the deadline is imminent," state lawmakers write in a new letter to Republican leaders, blaming them for the "manufactured healthcare crisis."
By Jake Johnson
Dozens of US state legislators have signed a scathing letter pushing congressional Republicans to immediately back an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year, warning of devastating impacts on their constituents as premiums skyrocket.
The letter, provided exclusively to Common Dreams ahead of its official release, comes days before ACA open enrollment is set to begin in most states on November 1. The research group KFF found in an analysis published Tuesday that health insurers are jacking up premiums by 26% on average for the coming year—and most enrollees would face even higher costs if the ACA subsidies at the heart of the ongoing federal government shutdown are allowed to expire.
The state legislators, representing millions of people from Maine to Georgia to Michigan and other states, write in the new letter that Republicans in the US Congress are responsible for a “manufactured healthcare crisis” that’s “particularly acute for younger Americans.”
“Many are just beginning their careers, working in the gig economy, are self-employed, trying to start a small business, or are in positions requiring they purchase coverage on health care exchanges set up by the ACA,” the lawmakers note. “Forcing them to go uninsured or pay exorbitant premiums could saddle them with medical debt that would haunt them for decades, stifling their ability to save, buy homes, and participate fully in our economy.”
Among the 41 signatories of the letter, orchestrated by the advocacy group Defend America Action, are Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-132) and Jeremy Moss (D-7), president pro tempore of the Michigan Senate. The letter is addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
“It is a cruel and calculated decision that prioritizes billionaires’ tax breaks over the health and financial well-being of the American people you are supposed to serve.”
Without the enhanced ACA tax credits, many younger enrollees—who are healthier on average—could decide to drop coverage altogether, potentially leading to a dreaded “death spiral” of premium increases across the board. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that more than 4.2 million people would become uninsured if the enhanced ACA tax credits lapse.
“Let us be clear: This is a conscious choice on your part to rip away healthcare from the American people,” the state legislators write. “Allowing these credits to expire will dismantle the progress we have made and plunge Americans into financial instability and uncertainty. It is a cruel and calculated decision that prioritizes billionaires’ tax breaks over the health and financial well-being of the American people you are supposed to serve.”
“The solution is straightforward, and the deadline is imminent,” they added. “You must immediately pass a clean extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits before open enrollment begins on November 1, after which it will be too late. The health of millions is at stake.”
The state legislators’ demand adds to the pressure congressional Republicans are already facing from their constituents across the nation as the lawmakers refuse to negotiate with their Democratic counterparts, who are calling for an extension of the ACA subsidies as a necessary condition of any deal to end the government shutdown.
“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,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Recent polling indicates widespread, cross-partisan concern about premium hikes among likely US voters.
“It is painfully clear that Republicans are not listening to folks back at home,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said during a press conference on Tuesday. “Because what families nationwide are saying is: ‘Please stop my premiums from doubling.’ And what Republican leaders are saying? ‘Not our problem, we never wanted to lower healthcare costs in the first place.'”
On top of the profound health implications of skyrocketing premiums and large-scale insurance loss, an expiration of the ACA tax credits could do major damage to the US economy.
An analysis released earlier this month by the Commonwealth Fund estimated that nearly 340,000 jobs would be lost across the US next year if the subsidies lapse.
Georgia, one of the states represented in the new letter, would lose 33,600 jobs in 2026, more than any other state except for Texas and Florida.
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