Senate working to avert partial government shutdown before midnight deadline

Here’s a little more on the comments to reporters by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. According to a post on X by Kadia Goba, political reporter at Semafor, Ocasio-Cortez said:

There are members of Congress who have won Trump held districts in some of the most difficult territories in the United States; who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people … just to see some Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk. I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, said that he will vote to allow the deeply partisan Republican spending bill become law because a government shutdown would do more harm.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that Senator Chuck Schumer’s statement was “a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”

Stocks plunged again after Trump’s threat to impose a 200% tariff “on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products” from European Union countries if the trading bloc makes good on its threat to retaliate for steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the US president by adding a 50% tariff on American products, including Kentucky bourbon.

In a letter sent to the president of Columbia University and the co-chairs of its board of trustees on Thursday, the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce demanded nine specific changes to university policies and structures before negotiations over federal funding would begin.

Columbia announced the same day it received the letter that it had complied with item one on the list of demands: expelling and suspending pro-Palestinian student protesters who occupied a campus building last year or took part in a Gaza Solidarity encampment.

Representative Raúl Grijalva died after a long battle with cancer, his office announced on Thursday. His seat will remain vacant until at least September.

In 1996 a federal judge found the legal provision now being used to target Mahmoud Khalil unconstitutional. She was Donald Trump’s sister.

The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship.

The US Postal Service will reduce its staff by 10,000 through early retirements, and has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) to streamline its operations, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced.