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Tag: Elections

  • Denmark Eyes New Law to Protect Citizens From AI Deepfakes

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — In 2021, Danish video game live-streamer Marie Watson received an image of herself from an unknown Instagram account.

    She instantly recognized the holiday snap from her Instagram account, but something was different: Her clothing had been digitally removed to make her appear naked. It was a deepfake.

    “It overwhelmed me so much,” Watson recalled. “I just started bursting out in tears, because suddenly, I was there naked.”

    In the four years since her experience, deepfakes — highly realistic artificial intelligence-generated images, videos or audio of real people or events — have become not only easier to make worldwide but also look or sound exponentially more realistic. That’s thanks to technological advances and the proliferation of generative AI tools, including video generation tools from OpenAI and Google.

    These tools give millions of users the ability to easily spit out content, including for nefarious purposes that range from depicting celebrities Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to disrupting elections and humiliating teens and women.

    In response, Denmark is seeking to protect ordinary Danes, as well as performers and artists who might have their appearance or voice imitated and shared without their permission. A bill that’s expected to pass early next year would change copyright law by imposing a ban on the sharing of deepfakes to protect citizens’ personal characteristics — such as their appearance or voice — from being imitated and shared online without their consent.

    If enacted, Danish citizens would get the copyright over their own likeness. In theory, they then would be able to demand that online platforms take down content shared without their permission. The law would still allow for parodies and satire, though it’s unclear how that will be determined.

    Experts and officials say the Danish legislation would be among the most extensive steps yet taken by a government to combat misinformation through deepfakes.

    Henry Ajder, founder of consulting firm Latent Space Advisory and a leading expert in generative AI, said that he applauds the Danish government for recognizing that the law needs to change.

    “Because right now, when people say ‘what can I do to protect myself from being deepfaked?’ the answer I have to give most of the time is: ‘There isn’t a huge amount you can do,’” he said, ”without me basically saying, ‘scrub yourself from the internet entirely.’ Which isn’t really possible.”

    He added: “We can’t just pretend that this is business as usual for how we think about those key parts of our identity and our dignity.”


    Deepfakes and misinformation

    U.S. President Donald Trump signed bipartisan legislation in May that makes it illegal to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including deepfakes. Last year, South Korea rolled out measures to curb deepfake porn, including harsher punishment and stepped up regulations for social media platforms.

    Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said that the bill has broad support from lawmakers in Copenhagen, because such digital manipulations can stir doubts about reality and spread misinformation.

    “If you’re able to deepfake a politician without her or him being able to have that product taken down, that will undermine our democracy,” he told reporters during an AI and copyright conference in September.

    The law would apply only in Denmark, and is unlikely to involve fines or imprisonment for social media users. But big tech platforms that fail to remove deepfakes could face severe fines, Engel-Schmidt said.

    Ajder said Google-owned YouTube, for example, has a “very, very good system for getting the balance between copyright protection and freedom of creativity.”

    The platform’s efforts suggest that it recognizes “the scale of the challenge that is already here and how much deeper it’s going to become,” he added.

    Twitch, TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    Engel-Schmidt said that Denmark, the current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, had received interest in its proposed legislation from several other EU members, including France and Ireland.

    Intellectual property lawyer Jakob Plesner Mathiasen said that the legislation shows the widespread need to combat the online danger that’s now infused into every aspect of Danish life.

    “I think it definitely goes to say that the ministry wouldn’t make this bill, if there hadn’t been any occasion for it,” he said. “We’re seeing it with fake news, with government elections. We are seeing it with pornography, and we’re also seeing it also with famous people and also everyday people — like you and me.”

    The Danish Rights Alliance, which protects the rights of creative industries on the internet, supports the bill, because its director says that current copyright law doesn’t go far enough.

    Danish voice actor David Bateson, for example, was at a loss when AI voice clones were shared by thousands of users online. Bateson voiced a character in the popular “Hitman” video game, as well as Danish toymaker Lego’s English advertisements.

    “When we reported this to the online platforms, they say ‘OK, but which regulation are you referring to?’” said Maria Fredenslund, an attorney and the alliance’s director. “We couldn’t point to an exact regulation in Denmark.”


    ‘When it’s online, you’re done’

    Watson had heard about fellow influencers who found digitally-altered images of themselves online, but never thought it might happen to her.

    Delving into a dark side of the web where faceless users sell and share deepfake imagery — often of women — she said she was shocked how easy it was to create such pictures using readily available online tools.

    “You could literally just search ‘deepfake generator’ on Google or ‘how to make a deepfake,’ and all these websites and generators would pop up,” the 28-year-old Watson said.

    She is glad her government is taking action, but she isn’t hopeful. She believes more pressure must be applied to social media platforms.

    “It shouldn’t be a thing that you can upload these types of pictures,” she said. “When it’s online, you’re done. You can’t do anything, it’s out of your control.”

    Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, Kelvin Chan in London, and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco, contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Marjorie Taylor Greene rips into Republicans after Democratic election wins

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    Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia took a swipe at her fellow Republicans on the heels of Tuesday night’s sweeping Democratic wins across the country.

    Newsweek reached out to GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office via email for comment Wednesday night.

    Why It Matters

    The Democratic victories in mayoral and gubernatorial races—as well as a key ballot measure—across New York, New Jersey, Virginia and California have prompted public criticism and questions from high-profile conservative figures. Tuesday’s losses by the GOP could be viewed as a barometer for voter attitudes ahead of the 2026 midterms, reflecting broader dissatisfaction among core Republican constituencies and raising questions about the party’s direction and messaging.

    Greene, known for her advocacy of President Donald Trump’s agenda, has also sharply condemned her own party recently on policies pertaining to Israel and health care.

    What To Know

    Tuesday’s elections saw significant Democratic gains. In New York City, State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race against high-profile opponents. New Jersey elected Mikie Sherrill as governor after a tightly fought race, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger became the state’s first female governor. Democrats also secured a substantial advantage with California’s Proposition 50 redistricting measure, potentially impacting House control in 2026.

    These outcomes follow a polarizing race for Virginia attorney general, where Democrat Jay Jones prevailed despite controversy over leaked text messages containing violent references aimed at a Republican lawmaker. The victories are seen by many analysts and political figures as a signal that Democrats have regained momentum after losses in the 2024 election cycle—while some Republican voices warn of growing disconnection from core voters.

    In a post to X on Wednesday, Greene said: “If you don’t understand, yesterdays [sic] election results, here are the groups that Republicans have disenfranchised: 1. America First America Only. 2. MAHA. 3. Americans suffering from high cost of living, rising food and energy prices, and leaving them out to dry with no plan on our skyrocketing health insurance premiums. You can’t meme and throw red meat rants and interviews and get your way out of this. These people are serious and only support action, they are done with words. And I completely agree with them.”

    Loading twitter content…

    What People Are Saying

    Trump, on Truth Social Monday, before the elections: “Virginia and New Jersey, VOTE REPUBLICAN IF YOU WANT MASSIVE ENERGY COST AND CRIME REDUCTIONS. The Democrats will double and even triple your Energy Costs, and CRIME will be rampant. A vote for the Democrats is a DEATH WISH! VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!”

    Johnson, on X Wednesday: “Zohran Mamdani’s victory marks the BIGGEST WIN FOR destructive, dangerous, big government SOCIALISM in U.S. history — and a loss for freedom loving American people. He’s an unapologetic Marxist — fully EMBRACED by the Democrat establishment. Hakeem Jeffries ENDORSED him. Barack Obama personally called to CONGRATULATE him. The Democrat Party has officially surrendered to socialists and the radicals who HATE America — they now control the movement.”

    Greene, on The View this week, in part, about the ongoing government shutdown: “The government has failed all of us and it purely disgusts me. It really does. And I represent a district that is rural, manufacturing district, blue-collar workers, and people have been crushed by decades of failure in Washington, D.C. And so, I have no problem pointing fingers at everyone, and the worst thing that I just can’t get over is we’re not working right now, and I put that criticism directly on the speaker of the House.”

    What Happens Next

    The Democratic Party will likely aim to build on these momentum shifts as it prepares for the 2026 midterm elections, particularly with an eye toward regaining House control. Republican leadership faces mounting pressure to address internal divisions, clarify the GOP’s platform and offer policy alternatives for key issues like health care, the cost of living and economic insecurity.

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  • FACT FOCUS: New York City ballots do not show proof of election fraud

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    NEW YORK (AP) — For many years, New York voters have found candidates listed twice, three times or even more on their ballots when they go to the polling booth.

    It isn’t an error — it’s a practice known as fusion voting that allows candidates to appear under multiple political parties.

    But such intentional duplications on the New York City ballot this year, along with other layout choices, have some outside observers around the country wondering whether they are seeing evidence of rigged voting in Tuesday’s widely-watched mayoral race.

    Billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who briefly served as a top advisor to President Donald Trump, was among those criticizing the ballots.

    “The New York City ballot form is a scam!” he wrote in an X post. “No ID is required. Other mayoral candidates appear twice. Cuomo’s name is last in bottom right.”

    But there is nothing amiss about the ballots, which are in keeping with New York’s voting laws.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: New York City ballots are proof of election fraud because some candidates appear twice and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is listed low in the order.

    THE FACTS: This is false. Candidates may appear more than once on ballots in New York if they are nominated by multiple political parties — a practice called fusion voting. Cuomo is in the eighth spot because he filed to run as an independent later in the process.

    New York, along with Connecticut, is one of few states where fusion voting is legal and commonly used. The practice has existed in New York since at least the mid-20th century. It is also legal in Oregon, Vermont and Mississippi.

    “This occurs pretty frequently and it enables the Democratic candidate to get the votes of people who don’t normally vote for Democrats and Republicans to get the vote of people who don’t vote Republican etc.,” said Richard Briffault, an expert on election administration and a professor at Columbia Law School, said of fusion voting in New York.

    Two mayoral candidates appear twice this year on New York City ballots. Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is also the nominee of the Working Families Party, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is also the candidate for the independent “Protect Animals” party.

    Fusion voting does not allow candidates to receive more than one vote from the same voter, as voters may only vote for a candidate under one party.

    Cuomo is a Democrat, but is running as an independent under a new party he created called “Fight and Deliver” after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.

    Under state law, there are currently four official parties on the ballot in New York — Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families Party — based on the number of votes their candidate received in the most recent gubernatorial and presidential elections. That vote count also determines the order they appear on the next ballot, from highest to lowest.

    Candidates must file a petition to run as an independent. Boards of elections determine the ballot order of independent parties, which must appear below the official parties.

    “In the case of the New York City Board of Elections, this is determined by the date and time stamp when the independent nominating petition was filed with that board,” said Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections.

    According to McGrath, Cuomo’s “Fight and Deliver” party was the fourth out of five independent parties to submit a nominating petition, meaning that Cuomo is listed eighth on the ballot.

    Mamdani is listed first under the Democratic Party and fourth under the Working Families Party. Sliwa appears second under the Republican Party and fifth under the “Protect Animals” party. Two other candidates running as independents — incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden — dropped out of the race too late to be taken off the ballot.

    “In short, Cuomo is only listed once because he was only nominated once, and he is low in the order because no recognized political party nominated him,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “Surely Elon Musk has people who could have looked this up for him.”

    New York City does not require voters to show ID to vote unless they did not provide identification with their registration. The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, the AP has reported.

    Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Kansas mayor hit with criminal charges for allegedly voting as noncitizen in several elections

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    Kansas leaders brought criminal charges Wednesday against Joe Ceballos, the mayor of a small city in rural Kansas, alleging he voted in several elections but is not a U.S. citizen.

    Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, both elected Republicans, announced they filed six charges in Comanche County against Ceballos, a lawful permanent resident from Mexico, for voting in elections in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

    Ceballos is the mayor of Coldwater and previously served as a city councilman.

    MAINE VOTERS DEFEAT VOTER ID BALLOT INITIATIVE, APPROVE ‘RED FLAG’ GUN RESTRICTIONS

    States are required by law to have mechanisms in place to regularly clean voter registration lists, also known as voter rolls. The process includes using external databases to screen for noncitizens, which Kobach, a longtime immigration hawk and ally of President Donald Trump, said is not error-proof.

    “Noncitizen voting is a real problem. It is not something that happens once in a decade. It is something that happens fairly frequently,” Kobach said, echoing the broader sentiments of Republicans who say voter fraud is a pressing issue.

    Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach speaks at a rally with President Donald Trump at the Kansas Expocenter Oct. 6, 2018, in Topeka, Kan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Ceballos’ charges, which include perjury and voting without being qualified, according to the complaint reviewed by Fox News Digital, carry a maximum penalty of more than five years in prison. Ceballos did not respond to a request for comment.

    Kobach, who previously served as Kansas secretary of state, has a long history of pushing for tougher immigration enforcement and stricter voter ID laws. In 2018, he lost a high-profile federal lawsuit after attempting to enforce a state law that required voters to provide physical documentation of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

    A court found it exceeded the necessary requirements to confirm citizenship, in violation of federal election laws.

    CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS LAUNCH VOTER ID BALLOT PUSH, NEED 875K SIGNATURES BY DEADLINE

    Michigan Ballot Box with person putting envelope in.

    A voter inserts an absentee voter ballot into a drop box. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

    The court said at the time that the state law could not “be justified by the scant evidence of noncitizen voter fraud before and after the law was passed.”

    Kobach did not detail how state officials came to learn that the mayor and former city councilman is allegedly a noncitizen, but he said investigators had “unassailable evidence” against Ceballos.

    Citizens for Voter ID at the Nebraska Capitol building

    Boxes of signatures are displayed after a conference hosted by Citizens for Voter ID at the Nebraska Capitol building July 7, 2022, in Lincoln, Neb. (Noah Riffe/Lincoln Journal Star via AP)

    Kobach said city officials, such as mayors, are also required by law to be U.S. citizens, which the attorney general said was “worth noting” but not a criminal offense. Ceballos was on the ballot for re-election on Election Day, but the official results have not been certified yet.

    “In large part, our system right now is based on trust, trust that when the person signs the registration or signs the poll books saying that he is a qualified elector or that he is a United States citizen, that the person is telling the truth,” Kobach said. “In this case, we allege that Mr. Ceballos violated that trust.”

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Kobach and Schwab said they recently began taking advantage of a federal government database that helps cross-check voter rolls with immigration records that they expect will lead them to identify more voting violations.

    Ceballos’ first court appearance is Dec. 3. 

    Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.

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  • Divided Jewish Leaders React With Warnings and Hope as New York Elects Its First Muslim Mayor

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Within hours of Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York’s first Muslim mayor, the Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism, launched an initiative to track policies and personnel appointments of the incoming administration, part of a swift and harsh reaction from his Jewish critics.

    The ADL said Wednesday the goal is to “protect Jewish residents across the five boroughs during a period of unprecedented antisemitism in New York City.”

    Mamdani’s main rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, received about 60% of the Jewish vote, according to the AP Voter Poll, after a campaign that highlighted Mamdani’s denunciations of Israel and kindled debate over antisemitism. About 3-in-10 Jewish voters supported Mamdani, the AP poll said.

    A conservative pro-Israel newspaper, The Jewish Voice, depicted the city’s Jewish community — the largest in the U.S. — as fearfully bracing for an “exodus.” The two top leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations labeled Mamdani’s election “a grim milestone.”

    Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s national director, said Mamdani has “associated with individuals who have a history of antisemitism, and demonstrated intense animosity toward the Jewish state.”

    “We are deeply concerned that those individuals and principles will influence his administration at a time when we are tracking a brazen surge of harassment, vandalism and violence targeting Jewish residents and institutions,” Greenblatt added.

    Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the centrist pro-Israel group J Street, criticized the ADL and Conference of Presidents statements as he called for efforts to bridge divisions.

    “The fearmongering we have seen from some Jewish institutions and leaders surrounding Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is harmful, overblown and risks needlessly deepening divisions in the city and in our community,” Ben-Ami said. “Our community’s responsibility now is to engage constructively with the mayor-elect, not to sow panic or to demonize him.”


    Israel-Hamas war was a key election issue

    Throughout his campaign, Mamdani was steadfast in his criticism of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, depicting it as genocide targeting Palestinians. But he welcomed Jewish supporters to his campaign, denounced the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and denied suggestions from Cuomo that he was insufficiently opposed to antisemitism.

    “We will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism,” Mamdani declared at his victory celebration.

    He reiterated that commitment again Wednesday in his first news conference since winning election, touting his plan to increase funding for hate crime prevention. “I take the issue of antisemitism incredibly seriously,” he said.

    Mamdani has described his pro-Palestinian views as “central” to his belief in a “universal system of human rights.” But it was Cuomo who sought to make the race a referendum on Israel — a strategy that some Democratic strategists say backfired as the war in Gaza shifted public views.

    Leaders of the Reform Movement, representing the largest branch of U.S. Judaism, issued a nuanced statement after Mamdani was declared winner of what they called a “deeply polarizing campaign.”

    “In this moment, we urge the Jewish community to help lower the temperature, listen generously, and take steps to promote healing,” the statement said. “We will hold the new mayor accountable to his commitments to protect Jewish communities and all New Yorkers, to confront antisemitism and every form of hate, and to safeguard civil rights and peaceful expression.”

    Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, urged Mamdani and Jewish leaders to work toward a common goal of “a strong, safe and inclusive city in which Jewish and all New Yorkers can thrive.”

    “This was an election in which Jews became a political football — which did nothing to advance Jewish or any community’s safety,” Spitalnick said. “Rather, in so many ways, this election was used to validate the worst instincts and fears on both extremes.”

    Among the Jewish groups elated by Mamdani’s win were IfNotNow, which has organized protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and Bend The Arc: Jewish Action, which describes itself as a progressive Jewish advocacy group.

    “Throughout this election, Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, as well as far too many out-of-touch Jewish leaders sought to weaponize antisemitism to divide Jews from our fellow New Yorkers,” IfNotNow said. “As Zohran faced an onslaught of Islamophobia, we organized our Jewish communities and refused to succumb to that fearmongering.”

    Jamie Beran, CEO of Bend the Arc, said the group “endorsed Zohran because we know a strong democracy is what keeps Jews the safest.”

    “We plan to take this playbook to cities and towns across the nation and work with our Jewish communities to bridge divisions, see through smokescreens and take back Congress.”


    Mamdani will need to prove himself to some

    A Hasidic Jewish civic leader, Zalman Friedman, had a mixed assessment of Mamdani’s win.

    “We are disappointed, and we are hopeful that he will make life better and not worse,” said Friedman, a board member of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council and part of the Chabad-Lubavitch community that is prominent in that Brooklyn neighborhood.

    Friedman said he’s wary of big-government solutions that Mamdani may promote, and hopes the new mayor focuses on public safety, lowering housing costs and supporting government funding for Jewish religious schools.

    “We are resilient and resourceful and, thank God, we do have a lot of friends all over the world,” he said. “We will survive this and we will thrive.”

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish politicians, said he’s not comfortable with some of Mamdani’s comments on Israel.

    “I’ve expressed that to him personally. We’ve had good private communications,” Shapiro said. “I hope, as he did last night in his victory speech, that he’ll be a mayor that protects all New Yorkers and tries to bring people together.”

    AP journalists Peter Smith in Pittsburgh, Jake Offenhartz in New York and Steve Peoples in Washington contributed.

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Democrats are hopeful again. But unresolved questions remain about party’s path forward

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    WASHINGTON — For a day, at least, beleaguered Democrats are hopeful again. But just beneath the party’s relief at securing its first big electoral wins since last November’s drubbing lay unresolved questions about its direction heading into next year’s midterm elections.

    The Election Day romp of Republicans stretched from deep-blue New York and California to swing-states Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. There were signs that key voting groups, including young people, Black voters and Hispanics who shifted toward President Donald Trump’s Republican Party just a year ago, may be shifting back. And Democratic leaders across the political spectrum coalesced behind a simple message focused on Trump’s failure to address rising costs and everyday kitchen table issues.

    The dominant performance sparked a new round of debate among the party’s establishment-minded pragmatists and fiery progressives over which approach led to Tuesday’s victories, and which path to take into the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The lessons Democrats learn from the victories will help determine the party’s leading message and messengers next year — when elections will decide the balance of power in Congress for the second half of Trump’s term — and potentially in the 2028 presidential race, which has already entered its earliest stages.

    “Of course, there’s a division within the Democratic Party. There’s no secret,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference about the election results.

    Sanders and his chief political strategist pointed to the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a model for Democrats across the country. But Rep. Suzan Del Bene, who leads the House Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy, avoided saying Mamdani’s name when asked about his success.

    Del Bene instead cheered the moderate approach adopted by Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in successful races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey as a more viable track for candidates outside of a Democratic stronghold like New York City.

    “New York is bright blue … and the path to the majority in the House is going to be through purple districts,” she told The Associated Press. “The people of Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska aren’t focused on the mayor of New York.”

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a likely Democratic presidential prospect who campaigned alongside Democrats in several states leading up to Tuesday’s elections, noted the candidates hit on a common issue that resonated with voters, regardless of location.

    “All of these candidates who won in these different states were focused on peoples’ everyday needs,” Shapiro said. “And you saw voters in every one of those states and cities showing up to send a clear message to Donald Trump that they’re rejecting his chaos.”

    Amid Democrats’ celebratory phone calls and news conferences, members of the party’s different wings had some sharp critiques for each other.

    While Shapiro cheered the party’s success during a Wednesday interview, he also acknowledged concerns about Mamdani in New York.

    Shapiro, one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish elected leaders, said he’s not comfortable with some of Mamdani’s comments on Israel. The New York mayor-elect, a Muslim, has described Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks as “genocide” against the Palestinian people and has been slow to condemn rhetoric linked to anti-Semitism.

    “I’ve expressed that to him personally. We’ve had good private communications,” Shapiro said of his concerns. “And I hope, as he did last night in his victory speech, that he’ll be a mayor that protects all New Yorkers and tries to bring people together.”

    Meanwhile, Sanders’ political strategist, Faiz Shakir, warned Democrats against embracing “cookie cutter campaigns that say nothing and do nothing” — a reference to centrist Democrats Spanberger and Sherrill.

    Despite potential cracks in the Democratic coalition, it’s hard to understate the extent of the party’s electoral success.

    In Georgia, two Democrats cruised to wins over Republican incumbents in elections to the state Public Service Commission, delivering the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years.

    In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept not only three state Supreme Court races, but every county seat in presidential swing counties like Bucks and Erie Counties, including sheriffs. Bucks County elected its first Democratic district attorney as Democrats there also won key school board races and county judgeships.

    Maine voters defeated a Republican-backed measure that would have mandated showing an ID at the polls. Colorado approved raising taxes on people earning more than $300,000 annually to fund school meal programs and food assistance for low-income state residents. And California voters overwhelmingly backed a charge led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw its congressional map to give Democrats as many as five more House seats in upcoming elections.

    Trump made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters in 2024. But this week, Democrats scored strong performances with non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia that offered promise.

    About 7 in 10 voters in New Jersey were white, according to the AP Voter Poll. And Sherrill won about half that group. But she made up for her relative weakness with whites with a strong showing among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.

    The vast majority — about 9 in 10 — of Black voters supported Sherrill, as did about 8 in 10 Asian voters.

    Hispanic voters in New Jersey were more divided, but about two-thirds supported Sherrill; only about 3 in 10 voted for the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli.

    The pattern was similar in Virginia, where Spanberger performed well among Black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters, even though she didn’t win a majority of white voters.

    The debate over the party’s future is already starting to play out in key midterm elections where Democrats have just begun intra-party primary contests.

    The choice is stark in Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, where Democrats will pick from a field that features establishment favorite, Gov. Jan Mills, and Sanders-endorsed populist Graham Platner. A similar dynamic could play out in key contests across Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Michigan.

    Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is aligned with the progressive wing of the party, said the people he speaks to are demanding bold action to address their economic concerns.

    “Folks are so frustrated by how hard its become to afford a dignified life here in Michigan and across the country,” he said.

    “I’m sure the corporate donors don’t want us to push too hard,” El-Sayed continued. “My worry is the very same people who told us we were just fine in 2024 will miss the mandate.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporter Mike Catalini in Newark and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed.

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  • Democrats Are Hopeful Again. but Unresolved Questions Remain About Party’s Path Forward

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — For a day, at least, beleaguered Democrats are hopeful again. But just beneath the party’s relief at securing its first big electoral wins since last November’s drubbing lay unresolved questions about its direction heading into next year’s midterm elections.

    The Election Day romp of Republicans stretched from deep-blue New York and California to swing states Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. There were signs that key voting groups, including young people, Black voters and Hispanics who shifted toward President Donald Trump’s Republican Party just a year ago, may be shifting back. And Democratic leaders across the political spectrum coalesced behind a simple message focused on Trump’s failure to address rising costs and everyday kitchen table issues.

    The dominant performance sparked a new round of debate among the party’s establishment-minded pragmatists and fiery progressives over which approach led to Tuesday’s victories, and which path to take into the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The lessons Democrats learn from the victories will help determine the party’s leading message and messengers next year — when elections will decide the balance of power in Congress for the second half of Trump’s term — and potentially in the 2028 presidential race, which has already entered its earliest stages.

    “Of course, there’s a division within the Democratic Party. There’s no secret,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference about the election results.

    Sanders and his chief political strategist pointed to the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a model for Democrats across the country. But Rep. Suzan Del Bene, who leads the House Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy, avoided saying Mamdani’s name when asked about his success.

    Del Bene instead cheered the moderate approach adopted by Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in successful races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey as a more viable track for candidates outside of a Democratic stronghold like New York City.

    “New York is bright blue … and the path to the majority in the House is going to be through purple districts,” she told The Associated Press. “The people of Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska aren’t focused on the mayor of New York.”

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a likely Democratic presidential prospect who campaigned alongside Democrats in several states leading up to Tuesday’s elections, noted the candidates hit on a common issue that resonated with voters, regardless of location.

    “All of these candidates who won in these different states were focused on peoples’ everyday needs,” Shapiro said. “And you saw voters in every one of those states and cities showing up to send a clear message to Donald Trump that they’re rejecting his chaos.”

    Amid Democrats’ celebratory phone calls and news conferences, members of the party’s different wings had some sharp critiques for each other.

    While Shapiro cheered the party’s success during a Wednesday interview, he also acknowledged concerns about Mamdani in New York.

    Shapiro, one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish elected leaders, said he’s not comfortable with some of Mamdani’s comments on Israel. The New York mayor-elect, a Muslim, has described Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks as “genocide” against the Palestinian people and has been slow to condemn rhetoric linked to anti-Semitism.

    “I’ve expressed that to him personally. We’ve had good private communications,” Shapiro said of his concerns. “And I hope, as he did last night in his victory speech, that he’ll be a mayor that protects all New Yorkers and tries to bring people together.”

    Meanwhile, Sanders’ political strategist, Faiz Shakir, warned Democrats against embracing “cookie cutter campaigns that say nothing and do nothing” — a reference to centrist Democrats Spanberger and Sherrill.

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who defeated democratic socialist Omar Fateh to win a third term, said at a news conference Wednesday that “we have to love our city more than our ideology.”

    “We need to be doing everything possible to push back on authoritarianism and what Donald Trump is doing,” Frey said. “And at the same time, the opposite of Donald Trump extremism is not the opposite extreme.”

    Despite potential cracks in the Democratic coalition, it’s hard to understate the extent of the party’s electoral success.

    In Georgia, two Democrats cruised to wins over Republican incumbents in elections to the state Public Service Commission, delivering the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years.

    In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept not only three state Supreme Court races, but every county seat in presidential swing counties like Bucks and Erie Counties, including sheriffs. Bucks County elected its first Democratic district attorney as Democrats there also won key school board races and county judgeships.

    Maine voters defeated a Republican-backed measure that would have mandated showing an ID at the polls. Colorado approved raising taxes on people earning more than $300,000 annually to fund school meal programs and food assistance for low-income state residents. And California voters overwhelmingly backed a charge led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw its congressional map to give Democrats as many as five more House seats in upcoming elections.


    Key groups coming back to Democrats

    Trump made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters in 2024. But this week, Democrats scored strong performances with non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia that offered promise.

    About 7 in 10 voters in New Jersey were white, according to the AP Voter Poll. And Sherrill won about half that group. But she made up for her relative weakness with whites with a strong showing among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.

    The vast majority — about 9 in 10 — of Black voters supported Sherrill, as did about 8 in 10 Asian voters.

    Hispanic voters in New Jersey were more divided, but about two-thirds supported Sherrill; only about 3 in 10 voted for the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli.

    The pattern was similar in Virginia, where Spanberger performed well among Black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters, even though she didn’t win a majority of white voters.


    Democrats will soon face a choice

    The debate over the party’s future is already starting to play out in key midterm elections where Democrats have just begun intra-party primary contests.

    The choice is stark in Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, where Democrats will pick from a field that features establishment favorite, Gov. Jan Mills, and Sanders-endorsed populist Graham Platner. A similar dynamic could play out in key contests across Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Michigan.

    Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is aligned with the progressive wing of the party, said the people he speaks to are demanding bold action to address their economic concerns.

    “Folks are so frustrated by how hard its become to afford a dignified life here in Michigan and across the country,” he said.

    “I’m sure the corporate donors don’t want us to push too hard,” El-Sayed continued. “My worry is the very same people who told us we were just fine in 2024 will miss the mandate.”

    Associated Press reporter Mike Catalini in Newark and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Md. Gov. Moore cheers on Election Day wins for Democrats – WTOP News

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    Maryland Gov. Moore talks with WTOP about Democrats’ Election Day wins on the East Coast and the government shutdown’s impact.

    Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is among the Democrats celebrating big wins for the party after voters largely threw their support behind Democratic candidates during Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, New York and New Jersey.

    The states of Virginia and New Jersey elected two women as Democratic governors, including the first woman governor in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger.

    Tuesday night was the backdrop to a lengthy government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history at 36 days. President Donald Trump has stated the federal government will restrict SNAP food aid, despite two judges’ rulings to use emergency funds.

    Some states, including Maryland and Virginia, have put together plans to temporarily pay for funding gaps in the food stamp program.

    Wes Moore talked about the developments with WTOP anchors Shawn Anderson and Anne Kramer.

    WTOP anchors Anne Kramer and Shawn Anderson debrief on recent developments with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

    This story will be updated to include a a full transcript of Moore’s interview with WTOP.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • Zohran Mamdani’s signature housing policy is widely loathed by economists. Here’s why | Fortune

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    New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani swept to victory Tuesday evening on a platform of affordability, anchored by a plan to freeze rents across nearly 2 million rent-stabilized apartments. 

    But economists, universally, hate rent control. In a 2012 poll of top economists, just 2% agreed that rent-control laws have had “a positive impact” on the supply and quality of affordable housing. The Nobel laureate Richard Thaler even quipped in the survey that the next question should be: “Does the sun revolve around the Earth?”

    Why do economists revile a plan that seems to promote fairness and equity in a housing market that is clearly broken? 

    Seductive simplicity

    To most voters, freezing rents looks like common sense: If prices are out of reach, stop them from rising. But to economists, that’s like treating a fever by breaking the thermometer: It suppresses the symptom without curing the disease, the persistent shortage of housing.

    “Freezing rents doesn’t fix scarcity,” said David Sims, a Brigham Young University economist whose research on Massachusetts rent control remains a touchstone. “It just reshuffles who bears the cost.”

    Sims’s work examined the rent-control regime that once governed Cambridge, Mass., where tenants could stay indefinitely at below-market rents. The policy was meant to keep housing affordable, but it led to what he calls misallocation. 

    “People who could do better by moving tend to stay,” he told Fortune. “Older households hang on to large units they no longer need, while young families can’t find space. Over time, you end up with the wrong people in the wrong apartments.”

    When Massachusetts voters repealed rent control in 1994, property values in Cambridge rose 45%—not only for the deregulated apartments, but for entire neighborhoods. It turned out that years of capped rents had discouraged investment and dragged down surrounding property values, meaning that when controls were finally removed, landlords were empowered to upgrade and renovate their apartments. Neighborhoods that had been frozen along with the rents suddenly seemed to revitalize.  

    That dynamic is already visible in New York. According to the city’s Housing and Vacancy Survey, roughly 26,000 rent-stabilized apartments are sitting empty, many uninhabitable because renovation costs far exceed what landlords can legally recover. The state’s 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act caps recoverable renovation expenses at $50,000 spread over 15 years. Rehabilitating a century-old tenement can cost twice that, leaving owners little incentive to do anything but lock the door.

    Short-term relief, long-term pain

    Rent control’s immediate benefits, for current residents, are undeniable. It offers stability to tenants living paycheck-to-paycheck and reduces the risk of displacement. But over the long term, economists argue it functions the same way as throwing sand in the gears of the housing market. Landlords defer maintenance they can’t recoup, new construction slows, and the available housing stock quietly erodes.

    A 2018 Stanford study led by Rebecca Diamond, one of today’s leading experts in housing markets, found that when San Francisco expanded rent control in the 1990s, the supply of rental housing fell 15% over the next decade. Many landlords converted apartments to condos or owner-occupied housing to escape regulation. The policy helped existing tenants, but ultimately raised market rents citywide and accelerated gentrification, causing the opposite of what policymakers intended.

    “It’s not about pitying landlords,” Sims said. “It’s about understanding incentives. You can’t expect people to invest in something if they’ll never break even—just like you can’t expect tenants to volunteer to pay more rent.”

    For economists, the deeper problem with rent freezes is conceptual: They imply that affordability can simply be decreed against the logic of supply and demand. 

    “It creates this belief that the problem can be solved by fiat,” Sims said. “But rents are high because people want to live in New York. The only lasting fix is to make it easier to build more housing that people actually want.”

    He offers a visceral analogy of market pressures: Black Friday. People don’t wait in line for stores anymore on Black Friday, Sims said, but there was a time when, for a $1,000 TV at $200, there’d be a line around the block at 4 a.m., and only a few lucky people would get the TV.

    “But housing isn’t like a $200 TV,” Sims observed. “Everyone kind of needs a place to live, but if housing is priced like the $200 TV, then there’s a bunch of people in that line who don’t get it.”

    That’s the thing about rent control, economists say: It benefits insiders at the expense of outsiders. Over time, it can deepen inequality by keeping younger, lower-income, or newly arrived residents locked out of regulated neighborhoods that effectively become closed clubs.

    Band-Aid policy in a broken market

    Supporters of Mamdani’s plan counter that New York’s crisis is so severe, temporary freezes are a moral necessity. 

    With median rents above $4,000, they argue, the city cannot wait for zoning reforms and construction projects that take years to materialize. But even sympathetic economists warn that without parallel measures to boost supply, a freeze simply defers the reckoning.

    “If you don’t pair a rent freeze with a credible plan to add housing,” Sims said, “you’re not solving the problem. You’re just pushing off accountability without really solving the underlying problem.”

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  • What the Democrats’ Good Night Means for 2026 and Beyond

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    Election Night 2025 was a good one for Democrats. On Tuesday, the Party recaptured the governorship in Virginia, with the victory of the former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger over the Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, and held the governorship in New Jersey, with the congresswoman Mikie Sherrill’s defeat of Jack Ciattarelli. Both victories had been expected, as was Zohran Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York mayoral election. (Spanberger and Sherrill won by approximately fifteen and thirteen percentage points, respectively; Mamdani appears on track for a high single-digit win.) Democrats also did well lower down the ballot in a number of Virginia races, in state races in Pennsylvania and Georgia, and, notably, in California, where the redistricting referendum led by Gavin Newsom—a response to Texas’s Republican-led effort to create five new G.O.P. House seats—passed overwhelmingly.

    To talk about the election results, and what they portend for next year’s House and Senate races, I spoke by phone with Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Democrats managed to outperform expectations, the trouble Republicans face without Donald Trump on the ballot, and what the results mean for 2026 and 2028.

    What’s your biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s results?

    It’s a bad night to be a Republican. It’s hard to see what the silver lining is when you have losses all over the place.

    In the past nine months or so, a lot of people have been saying that the Democratic Party’s brand is in the toilet. Democrats are not popular. They seem disliked by much of the country, including a big chunk of their own voters. This is not a good place to be if you’re a Democrat. How much does this really matter if you are the opposition party? How did you see that question before tonight, and do you see it any differently now?

    I have a long-standing belief that elections are referenda on the party in power. My first reaction when I started hearing the argument that Democrats were in trouble was that I had heard the exact same argument in 2010. You may recall that Obama had an entire post-financial-crisis spiel about how the Republicans had driven the car into the ditch and now the Democrats were trying to help it out. It went on for quite some time, but voters didn’t care. They didn’t like Republicans, but they didn’t like what Democrats were doing, either. [Republicans had huge success in the 2010 midterms.] And I think it’s the same story today, with the parties flipped. People’s dislike of some things that Democrats believe and do might be a problem for governing when Democrats win, but I don’t think it’s a problem for elections.

    Trump is not that popular, but he does bring certain benefits to Republicans when he is on the ballot, especially in terms of turnout. In most elections during the Trump era when he has not been on the ballot, Democrats have done well. Broadly speaking, Republicans seem to do quite poorly when he is not on the ballot.

    Yeah, we saw a similar thing with Obama. He was a political force and could turn out all kinds of voters in Presidential elections, but the Democrats would get walloped in the off-year elections. And I think Trump has a similar effect. There are a lot of true Trump voters out there who just aren’t going to show up in the off-year elections. And, meanwhile, Republicans have kind of traded away their big advantage, which was upper-class suburbanites who vote during the off years. Now those people are mostly Democrats.

    When I grew up and was following politics, people often talked about the desire of voters to keep a check on the party in power. So, if you had Republicans in power, you would want to vote for Democrats, and the President’s party would often lose midterm elections. That still seems true, but now the story seems to be about there being different electorates in off-year elections. Has there been a change of some sort?

    I think that, as we’ve become more polarized and there are fewer swing voters, it’s become more about who is voting. It’s less of a persuasion game and more of just a simple turnout game. That’s the beginning and end of it. We are in a highly polarized environment where there just aren’t that many marginal voters, and you don’t really see the types of swings that you would have seen from, say, 1964 to 1980. It’s just harder and harder to persuade people. It’s about getting your voters to the polls, and that’s not a good bargain for Republicans right now.

    The theory of politics you have just described—that it’s more about motivating people than persuasion—is normally viewed more sympathetically by more ideological party members, and less so by centrists. Democrats have been engaging in this debate about whether they need to fire up their own voters or reach out to voters in the center. As someone who’s followed your work closely, I would not think of you as someone who has the perspective that parties just need to fire up their own voters. Have you changed your opinion?

    Generally speaking, Americans still don’t like radical change. They don’t like tariffs being sprung on them willy-nilly. They don’t like some of the things that Democrats in power do. So where moderation, I think, can help is when you’re actually governing. That distinction is what we were talking about a little bit at the beginning—about how it doesn’t matter that you’re unpopular when you’re out of power, but, when it comes to governing and we start talking about the, like, seven or eight per cent that’s persuadable, it could be a problem.

    On Tuesday, two gubernatorial candidates, in Virginia and New Jersey, who are considered more moderate did quite well, and outperformed the polls. In Virginia, they did better than Democrats had done in 2017, during Trump’s first term. And in New Jersey they maybe did a little bit worse, but, at the same time, New Jersey has come much closer to being a purple state in the past decade, or at least it was in the last election. So, do people who are making the case that moderation is crucial for Democrats to win have an argument about these two races?

    Yeah, and I think you summed up the argument there. If you’re looking for a counter on that, it would be the Virginia attorney general’s race, right? That’s where you had, I think, a pretty radical-sounding Democratic candidate. Maybe people rationalized it away, but he ended up running only four points behind Spanberger. And, over all, he will win by about six points, and Spanberger will have won by about fifteen. So I think that actually gives you a pretty good insight into what the universe of persuadable voters was. Twenty years ago in Virginia, a guy who got caught texting the things that the soon-to-be attorney general did would have run much worse. [Jay Jones, the Democrat, fantasized in text messages about shooting a Republican colleague.] So that’s the polarization and the limit on how much radicalism can hurt you in a general election right there.

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    Isaac Chotiner

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  • Mamdani’s Historic Win as New York City’s Mayor Sparks Excitement and Hope Among Many US Muslims

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    Zohran Mamdani’s historic election as New York City’s first Muslim mayor has sparked excitement and hope among American Muslims.

    Many are relieved and proud that anti-Muslim vitriol directed at Mamdani during the campaign didn’t discourage New Yorkers from voting for him.

    “For the first time in a very long time I feel hope — as a Muslim, as a Democrat, as an American, as an immigrant,” said Bukhtawar Waqas, who literally jumped for joy and called her father to celebrate.

    She said she attended Mamdani’s victory speech and was reassured by the diversity of New Yorkers around her despite any challenges that may be ahead.

    Growing up, Waqas, a Pakistani American physician, never thought she’d see a Muslim become mayor of New York City. She said she gravitated toward Mamdani’s messages to the working class and found his affordability vision to have wide resonance.

    Mamdani won the vast majority of Muslim voters; about 9 in 10 Muslim voters supported him, according to the AP Voter Poll. They made up a very small group of voters in the city: about 4% of NYC voters were Muslim.

    Mamdani, a democratic socialist who cast his win as a boon for blue-collar workers struggling to get by, has campaigned on an agenda that includes free buses, free child care and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments.


    Lives shaped by 9/11’s legacy

    His victory enables “a collective sigh of relief from Muslim New Yorkers, which would ripple across the country,” said Sylvia Chan-Malik, who teaches about Islam in America at Rutgers University. “The legacy of 9/11 and the War on Terror has wholly shaped the lives of entire generations of Muslims in NYC and beyond.”

    It also offers some reassurance that “there are many non-Muslims who see through the lies and distortions about Islam,” she said.

    Waqas said some of the vitriol Mamdani faced reminded her that Islamophobia “is certainly alive and well — and it’s heartbreaking.”

    During his speech, Mamdani said that “no more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.”

    Wa’el Alzayat, CEO of Emgage Action, a Muslim American advocacy organization that endorsed Mamdani, said the victory was a rebuke to those who stoke fear and spew anti-Muslim bigotry. Calling it a historic moment, he said Mamdani “won on the issues,” including affordability.

    Given 9/11 and its aftermath, it’s hard to overstate the symbolic weight of Mamdani’s win, said Youssef Chouhoud, who teaches political science at Christopher Newport University.

    “It sends a powerful message that Muslims are not just part of this nation’s civic fabric, we help shape it,” Chouhoud said. “For years, American Muslims have worked to show that we belong in this society. Mamdani is showing that we belong in the halls of power, and that we’re ready to lead.”


    A shift from outsiders to insiders

    Muslims make up a small but racially and ethnically diverse percentage of Americans. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many have faced hostility, mistrust, questions about their faith and doubts over their Americanness. In the years since, many have also organized, built alliances and wrote their own nuanced narratives about their identities.

    “The bigger story here is how a community once seen mainly as outsiders or even scapegoats has steadily built political capital and visibility,” even as some tensions remain, said Chouhoud. “With every gain comes pushback.”

    With Mamdani’s win, Chouhoud said he keeps “thinking about all those young immigrant boys and girls throughout New York who will be standing just a bit taller.”

    New York City resident Ibtesam Khurshid, a Bangladeshi American, is proud that Mamdani succeeded “without betraying any part of his identity.” She is excited that her children will “witness that a South Asian Muslim can lead our great city.”

    His win speaks to New York’s open-mindedness and diversity, she said, adding she hopes his visibility and that of other Muslim politicians can further shatter stereotypes.

    Many Mamdani supporters and detractors will be watching whether he delivers on his promises. Before Mamdani, 34, won a stunning upset over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June’s Democratic primary, he was a state lawmaker unknown to most New Yorkers. Cuomo, who also ran against him in Tuesday’s general election, has argued Mamdani was too inexperienced.

    “I will wake each morning with a singular purpose: To make this city better for you than it was the day before,” Mamdani promised in his victory speech.


    Israel-Hamas war a factor in New York election

    Takiya Khan, who canvassed for Mamdani, said a candidate’s faith and ethnicity have no bearing on her voting decisions, but his support of Palestinian rights and ideas for New York City were a significant draw.

    Positions on Israel and its war in Gaza were points of contention during the race, with some of Mamdani’s detractors assailing him over his vehement criticism of Israel ’s military actions and other related stances.

    Khan said Mamdani’s victory may be impactful. Also on Tuesday, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim and first Indian American to win statewide office in Virginia.

    “That could be a catalyst for more Muslim mayors, more Muslim politicians to be in office and we need that representation because America is a country for everybody,” she said.

    New York voter Ismail Pathan, an Indian American, was heartened by the support Mamdani received from so many who “don’t look like him.”

    “The United States is a country of different cultures. That’s what makes us incredible,” Pathan said. “Being able to — especially as I’m about to have a child and bring them into the world — to say, ‘Oh look, a Muslim man was elected mayor in New York,’ how incredible of a thing is that?”

    Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Why California Voters Approved a Redistricting Ballot Measure, According to the AP Voter Poll

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Most California voters didn’t like redrawing their congressional districts to favor Democrats. But many may have felt Republicans left them with no alternative.

    The AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of more than 4,000 voters in California, captured the mixed emotions of an electorate that chose to adopt President Donald Trump’s own strategy of rewriting the rules by redistricting outside of Census years. Most voters in favor of the proposition hoped to counter his efforts to preserve Republican control of the House in next year’s midterm elections – even if they thought redistricting should ideally happen another way.

    The ballot measure’s success, as well as voters’ apparent hesitations, demonstrates how many people appear to see the current redistricting fight as a political necessity, even if they don’t agree with it in principle. The findings suggest that voters see this as a tense and high stakes moment for the country, where compromises may be required.


    California voters said party control of Congress was highly important

    About 9 in 10 California voters said that, generally speaking, each state’s congressional district lines should be drawn by a non-partisan commission. But a majority nevertheless backed Proposition 50 to replace the existing districts with new maps crafted to send more California Democrats to the House of Representatives.

    Roughly 7 in 10 California voters said party control of Congress was “very important” to them, and those voters overwhelmingly supported the amendment to the state’s constitution backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has emerged as one of Trump’s leading antagonists.

    Newsom said ahead of the vote that democracy itself was at risk.

    “Prop 50 is not about drawing lines on a map,” Newsom told a crowd. “It is about holding the line to what makes us who we are.”

    The ballot measure was a response to Trump’s efforts earlier this year to tilt more congressional districts toward the GOP. Voter discontent with the status quo was apparent. About half of California voters said they are angry about the country’s direction, and a similar share pointed to the economy as the most important issue facing the state. Many voters have been left frustrated as Trump’s pledge to vanquish inflation has gone unfulfilled, while his import taxes have created a sense of confusion and chaos among businesses and the public.

    The president has successfully pushed Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri to craft new congressional districts, with Trump placing pressure on additional states in an attempt to swing midterm races that have traditionally favored the party out of the White House.

    “The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote.


    Proposition 50’s “Yes” voters hoped to counter Republicans in other states

    Two-thirds of California voters said they were opposed to states redrawing their congressional district lines in response to how other states have drawn their lines. But the vast majority of the voters who supported the ballot measure said it was necessary to counter the changes made by Republicans in other states.

    California now has the chance to do that by recrafting its 52 House seats in ways that could add five Democrats to Congress in next year’s elections. Democrats and voters who lean toward the Democrats — who make up a majority of voters in the state — overwhelmingly voted in support of the ballot measure.

    Many acknowledged the process so far has been unjust. About half of California voters said neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are handling the redrawing of congressional district lines fairly.

    But knowing the choices made by other state legislatures, enough California voters decided they had the right reason – even if it felt like the wrong thing.

    The 2025 AP Voter Poll, conducted by SSRS from Oct. 22 – Nov. 4, includes representative samples of registered voters in California (4,490), New Jersey (4,244), New York City (4,304) and Virginia (4,215). The AP Voter Poll combines data collected from validated registered voters online and by telephone, with data collected in-person from election day voters at approximately 30 precincts per state or city, excluding California. Respondents can complete the poll in English or Spanish. The overall margin of sampling error for voters, accounting for design effect, is plus or minus 2.0 percentage points in California, 2.1 percentage points in New Jersey, 2.2 percentage points in New York City, and 2.1 percentage points in Virginia.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • A Next-Generation Victory for Democrats

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    None of the three Democrats who won convincingly on Tuesday was in politics when Donald Trump was first elected President. In 2016, Abigail Spanberger, the governor-elect of Virginia, had recently left the C.I.A. and was working for an educational consultancy. Mikie Sherrill, who just won the race to be New Jersey’s next governor, was a helicopter pilot turned federal prosecutor. Zohran Mamdani, the thirty-four-year-old state assemblyman who will soon be New York City’s mayor, was rapping as Young Cardamom and volunteering for left-wing City Council candidates. For much of the past decade, the Democratic Party has seemed stuck in a pre-Trump past; Tuesday seemed like the turning of a generational page. At his victory party on Tuesday night, Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and the most ideological of the trio, was the most explicit about the shift: “We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.”

    The 2025 elections were always going to be about the Democrats, not just because this year’s major races were set in blue places but because the Party has been adrift since last year’s Presidential election. Lately, the most reliable rhythm in political news has been commentators explaining what the Democrats “should” and “must” do. (“The Democrats must add to their collective vocabulary two words . . . equality and oligarchy,” Fintan O’Toole wrote, in The New York Review of Books, urging a more populist turn. More ecumenically, Ezra Klein wrote, in the Times, “The Democratic Party does not need to choose to be one thing. It needs to choose to be more things.”) For some more centrist Democrats, what the Party needed was to avoid being tagged with Mamdani’s more expansive left-wing views. Asked on CNN whether Mamdani was the future of the Party, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pointedly said no. (“Good to know,” Mamdani said, when told about Jeffries’s comment.) Senator Chuck Schumer refused to say who he voted for. “People do want us to be aspirational and dream big,” Spanberger said of Mamdani, a few days before the election. “They also don’t want us to lie to them.”

    But despite all the prickly talk and the very careful factional positioning—left versus center—the Democrats who won Tuesday all shared the same theme: that the most important things cost too much. Asked to define his closing message, Mamdani said it was “the same message that we opened with, which is that this is the most expensive city in the United States of America, and it’s time to make it affordable.” NBC News, following Spanberger during the last days of her campaign, found her “laser-focussed” on an economic message, because, as she put it, “We see the hardships of this moment.” In Sherrill’s final ad, she said, “I’ll serve you as governor to drive your costs down.” Mamdani’s support of a rent freeze was seen as a socialist-style proposal, but Sherrill had herself campaigned on declaring a state of emergency on her first day in office, in order to freeze utility costs for New Jersey families, including suburban homeowners. These ideas came from opposite factions in the Party, but, when you listened to them, they sounded very much the same.

    Set aside the endless and sometimes annoyingly abstract debate over whether the Democrats should move to the left or to the center, and a pair of insights emerge from Tuesday’s results, both of which might give some hope to a Party that has lately been starved for it. First, the prospect that the 2024 election marked an electoral “realignment,” in which young and nonwhite voters without college degrees moved inexorably toward the Republicans, now seems increasingly unlikely. The margins in Virginia, where Spanberger won by about fifteen percentage points, and New Jersey, where Sherrill won by twelve, suggested that these weaknesses had been largely circumstantial, with some racially diverse areas that had been drifting away from the Democrats, such as Hudson County, in New Jersey, swinging back toward them on Thursday. In the Washington Post/ABC News poll taken shortly before the election, sixty-six per cent of young voters disapproved of the job that President Trump is doing, as did more than seventy per cent of racial minorities. (“That’s not screaming realignment,” the analyst Ronald Brownstein noted.) Exit polls published by NBC had Spanberger and Sherrill winning men under twenty-nine—the demographic most thought to be fleeing to the right—by ten points. Mamdani won them by forty. This time, it was the New York socialist who brought new voters into the political process.

    Maybe more significant, as Mamdani, Sherrill, and Spanberger all seemed to recognize, Trump has handed them not just an issue but a theme that the Party might carry through to the midterms. Having won the Presidency in part because of concerns about the escalating cost of living, Trump has governed in ways that have deepened the problem. His so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act amounted to a vast transfer of money from the poor to the rich. He has been personally fixated on an escalation of tariffs that has made ordinary goods much more expensive. During the ongoing government shutdown, he has at one point refused a court order requiring his Administration to disburse funds to pay food-stamp recipients, as lines at food pantries grow. Millions of people now stand to lose health insurance because of the President’s hard-line position in budget negotiations. The most natural campaign for Democrats to run—one that the Party was built to run in the twentieth century—is ordinary people against the rich. Trump is handing it back to them. Cue the ads: the billionaire pardoned after investing in the Trump family’s crypto projects; the twenty billion dollars sent away to bolster the Argentinean President, a political ally of the White House, at the expense of American farmers; the bulldozers razing the East Wing in a project underwritten by Trump’s donors.

    How much more optimistic should Democrats allow themselves to be? Trump is still the President, and the pressures of his policies and his authoritarian tendencies are still mounting. Tuesday’s elections took place mostly in safely Democratic cities and states, among an off-year electorate that has recently tended to be bluer than in Presidential years, and the Party is still full of contradictory instincts and mutual antipathy. Even so, the winning campaigns suggested the themes that might help renew the Party, and their margins of victory offered hope for a strong midterm. Tuesday night on CNN had begun with Dick Cheney’s death and ended with a live stream hosted by Ben Shapiro and Charlamagne tha God. The old system was under pressure everywhere. “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older,” Mamdani told his Election Night party. For the first time in a while, he might have said the same of his party, too. ♦

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  • What’s Next in the National Redistricting Fight After California Approved a New US House Map

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    The new congressional map that California voters approved marked a victory for Democrats in the national redistricting battle playing out ahead of the 2026 midterm election. But Republicans are still ahead in the fight.

    The unusual mid-decade redistricting fray began this summer when President Donald Trump urged Republican-led states to reshape their voting districts to try to help the GOP retain control of the House in next year’s election. Democrats need to gain just three seats to win the chamber and impede Trump’s agenda.

    Texas responded first with a new U.S. House map aimed at helping Republicans win up to five additional seats. Proposition 50, which California voters supported Tuesday, creates up to five additional seats that Democrats could win.


    What’s the score in the redistricting battle?

    If the 2026 election goes according to the redistricting projections, Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas could cancel each other’s gains.

    But Republicans could still be ahead by four seats in the redistricting battle. New districts adopted in Missouri and North Carolina could help Republicans win one additional seat in each state. And a new U.S. House map approved last week in Ohio boosts Republicans’ chances to win two additional seats.

    Some big uncertainties remain. Several Ohio districts are so competitive that Democrats believe they, too, have a chance at winning them. Lawsuits persist in Missouri and North Carolina. And Missouri’s redistricting law faces a referendum petition that, if successful, would suspend the new map until it’s put to a statewide vote.


    What’s next in California?

    Republican legal challenges are likely to continue against California’s new districts, which impose boundaries drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature in place of those adopted after the 2020 census by an independent citizens commission.

    But candidates can’t afford to wait to ramp up campaigns in the new districts.

    Though Democrats could win up to 48 of California’s 52 U.S. House seats, several districts are closely divided between Democratic and Republican voters.

    “Some of the Democratic districts are probably going to vote blue, but I wouldn’t call them locks,” said J. Miles Coleman, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You could still have some expensive races,” Coleman added.

    Republicans who control the Legislature chose not to convene a special session on redistricting Monday, after Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun had called for it. But efforts to round up enough votes continue. Lawmakers now are planning to consider redistricting during a rare December regular session.

    Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats and could attempt to gain one or two more through redistricting.

    Kansas Republican lawmakers had been collecting signatures from colleagues to call themselves into a special session to try to draw an additional Republican-leaning congressional district. But some lawmakers remained reluctant, and House Speaker Dan Hawkins ended the effort Tuesday.

    Redistricting could still come up during Kansas’ regular legislative session that begins Jan. 12.


    Could more Democrats join in gerrymandering?

    Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said he hopes approval of California’s redistricting “sends a chilling effect on Republicans who are trying to do this around the country.” But “if the Republicans continue to do this, we will respond in kind each and every step of the way,” Martin said.

    On Tuesday, Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced a commission on congressional redistricting, even though the Democratic Senate president has said his chamber won’t move forward with redistricting because of concerns the effort to gain another Democratic seat could backfire.

    National Democrats also want Illinois lawmakers to redistrict to gain an additional House seat. But lawmakers thus far have resisted, citing concerns about the effect on representation for Black residents.

    Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature recently endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting. But it needs another round of legislative approval early next year before going to voters. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats and could try to gain two or three more by redistricting, though no specific plan has been released.


    Does all this remapping matter?

    Over the past 90 years, when the president’s party has held a House majority, that party has lost an average of more than 30 seats in midterm elections. No amount of Republican redistricting this year could offset a loss of that size. But the 2026 election may not be average.

    Those past swings were so large partly because the president’s party often held large House majorities, which meant more competitive seats were at risk.

    The Republicans’ current slim majority is most similar to GOP margins during the 2002 midterm election under President George W. Bush and Democrats’ margins during the 2022 midterm under President Joe Biden. Republicans gained eight seats in 2002, when Bush was widely popular after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Democrats lost nine seats in 2022, when Biden’s approval rating was well under 50%, as Trump’s is today.

    If next year’s swing is similarly small, a gain of just half-dozen to a dozen seats through redistricting could make a difference in which party wins the House.

    “Because we have this tiny numerical sliver separating a Democratic majority from a Republican majority, the stakes are incredibly high — even in a single state considering whether to redraw its districts,” said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College.


    What does this mean for future years?

    The battle to redraw congressional voting districts for partisan advantage isn’t likely to end with the 2026 election.

    The Republican State Leadership Committee, which supports GOP candidates in state legislative races, warned in a recent memo that “the redistricting arms race has escalated to an every cycle fight” — no longer centered around each decennial census.

    Democratic lawmakers in New York are pursuing a proposed constitutional amendment that could allow redistricting ahead of the 2028 election. Several states currently under split partisan control also could pursue congressional redistricting before 2028 if next year’s election shifts the balance of power so one party controls both the legislature and governor’s office.

    “It’s important to recognize that the fight for 2027 redistricting — and the U.S. House in 2028 — has already started,” RSLC President Edith Jorge-Tuñón wrote.

    Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Marc Levy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • Key takeaways from the 2025 elections

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    After last year’s stunning electoral setbacks, Democrats needed a big night on Tuesday.

    And they got it.

    “Democrats Sweep Election Night, Fueling Momentum Going Into 2026 Midterms,” screamed the headline from a Democratic National Committee (DNC) email late in the evening, as the party pointed to double-digit victories in the gubernatorial elections in blue-leaning New Jersey and Virginia, and convincing victories in crucial ballot box showdowns in Democrat-dominated California and battleground Pennsylvania.

    In arguably the most closely watched election this autumn, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani made history as the first Muslim and first Millennial elected New York City mayor.

    HEAD HERE FOR FOX NEWS ELECTION 2025 COVERAGE

    New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill speaks during an election night party in East Brunswick, N.J., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

    While Mamdani’s victory in the nation’s most populous city is a shot in the arm for the rise of the socialist movement, it also appears to be a political gift for Republicans.

    Here are three key takeaways from Election Night 2025.

    1. The Mamdani factor

    Since Mamdani’s Democratic mayoral primary victory in June, Republicans have repeatedly aimed to make the now-34-year-old Ugandan-born state lawmaker from New York City the new face of the Democratic Party, as they work to characterize Democrats as far-left socialists.

    And as Mamdani was on his way to a roughly 9-point win in Tuesday’s general election over former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was running as an independent, the GOP struck again.

    HEAD HERE FOR FOX NEWS LIVE UPDATES ON THE 2025 BALLOT BOX SHOWDOWNS

    “Democrats have officially handed New York City over to a self-proclaimed Communist, and hardworking families will be the ones paying the price,” Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Joe Gruters claimed in a statement. “His election is proof that the Democrat Party has abandoned common sense and tied themselves to extremism.”

    National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesman Mike Marinella charged that “the Democrat Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob who are now running the show.”

    Zohran Mamdani celebrating

    Socialist Zohran Mamdani won his New York City mayoral race over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

    And as Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday morning, the NRCC immediately launched ads linking Mamdani to House Democrats who face challenging re-elections in next year’s midterms, when the GOP aims to defend its fragile majority in the chamber.

    Longtime Republican strategist Colin Reed told Fox News Digital that Democrats “are now going to have an ascendant and emboldened Mayor-elect Mamdani dominating the national spotlight.”

    WHAT THE RESULTS OF THE 2025 ELECTIONS MAY MEAN FOR DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS

    But veteran Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo, pointing to the gubernatorial victories by moderate Democrats Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, emphasized “tonight proved that the Democrats’ pathway back to majorities in both chambers and the White House runs directly through the idea of building a big enough tent to encompass moderates and progressives.”

    2. Did Democrats get their mojo back?

    Democrats lost control of the White House and Senate and failed to win back the House majority in last year’s elections, as Republicans made major gains with key parts of the Democratic Party base, including minorities and younger voters.

    And Democrats have been mostly powerless to blunt President Donald Trump‘s unprecedented and explosive second-term agenda.

    But Democrats see Tuesday’s impressive victories as the first step in a political rebound, and an affirmation of the party’s campaign trail emphasis this year on the issue of affordability.

    “American voters just delivered a Democratic resurgence. A Republican reckoning. A Blue Sweep. And it happened because our Democratic candidates, no matter where they are, no matter how they fit into our big tent party, are meeting voters at the kitchen table, not the gilded ballroom,” DNC chair Ken Martin highlighted.

    And Martin argued, “To all the Republicans who have bowed a cowardly knee to Trump all year, consider this: We’re coming after your jobs next.”

    Abigail Spanberger celebrates Virginia gubernatorial win

    Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger celebrates as she takes the stage during her election night rally at the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Nov. 04, 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Caiazzo said that the Democrats’ ballot box victories show that “voters are hungry for candidates that speak to their concerns and offer to unite, not divide.”

    But Reed countered that “Democrat candidates winning in blue parts of the country isn’t unexpected. The fact that there was any suspense at all heading into the evening was the more surprising development.”

    And he pointed out that “the battle for next year’s midterms is taking place in friendlier terrain.”

    3. No MAGA momentum

    While he lost both New Jersey and Virginia in last year’s presidential election, Trump made major gains in both states.

    And a big question heading into the 2025 elections was whether MAGA supporters, who tend to be low-propensity voters, would cast ballots in an off-election year when Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

    Many didn’t.

    The president, in a quote on social media that he attributed to “pollsters,” said that “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”

    Veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who served as a co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 White House bid, highlighted, “Candidate quality matters. Tonight was a great lesson for the Republican Party: running squishy Rs who are lukewarm on Trump and MAGA, even in “purple” states, doesn’t work.”

    Winsome Sears cheers

    Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears greets supporters on Election Night in Leesburg, Virginia. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    LaCivita specifically called out Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the GOP gubernatorial nominee who lost to Spanberger by 15 points.

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    And he warned that “Republicans must get smart and run only MAGA candidates moving forward; otherwise, there will be massive turnout problems when @realDonaldTrump is not on the ballot!”

    Reed emphasized that for the GOP, “the task remains re-assembling the winning Trump coalition without his name on the ballot. The good news for the Republican side is the deep bench of talented and proven leaders to carry that flag into battle.”

    Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast.”

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  • Here’s a recap of Tuesday’s election results in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

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    Tuesday proved to be a successful election day for Democrats competing in closely watched races around the country, including several locally.

    The main event for this region was between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli for governor of New Jersey. Sherrill won by a margin that proved not to be as close as several polls had predicted. Other races that wrapped up with little drama were the retention elections for Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the contest for Philadelphia District Attorney.

    Below is a recap of those and other elections relevant to the region.

    Additional judicial election results for Philadelphia’s Common Pleas Court and Philadelphia Municipal Court are available on the city’s election website, along with results of the retention elections in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. And results of judicial elections and retention elections in Pennsylvania Superior Court and Commonwealth Court are posted on the state’s election website.

    New Jersey Governor results

    Democrat Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli in Tuesday’s election. Sherrill will succeed New Jersey’s current governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, who was term limited after eight years in office. Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and currently the congresswoman representing New Jersey’s 11th District, will be the second woman to serve as New Jersey’s governor. The first was Republican Christie Todd Whitman who was elected to two terms between 1994 and 2001.

    Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention results

    The retention elections for Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht set a record for campaign spending on a nonpartisan judicial race with a total expenditure of more than $15 million. Despite all the attention, the races proved not to be close with all three justices cruising to retention victories.

    Their return to the bench on state’s highest court means the liberal justices will maintain their 5-2 advantage over the conservative justices. By winning election, Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht are each elected to new 10-year terms. Donohue, who is 73, will only serve two more years before reaching the mandatory judicial retirement age of 75.

    Philadelphia District Attorney results

    Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner easily won election to a third term on Tuesday, defeating Pat Dugan, a former Philadelphia Municipal Court judge. This is the second time Krasner defeated Dugan this election cycle: Dugan also lost to the progressive prosecutor in May’s Democratic primary election.

    Philadelphia City Controller results

    The Philadelphia City Controller is the chief auditor of the city and the School District of Philadelphia. The auditor’s office works independently of city government, and its analyses are intended to provide objective information to city leaders and the public about Philadelphia’s finances and how its money is being spent. Incumbent Christy Brady easily defeated Republican Ari Patrinos in Tuesday’s election.

    New Jersey Assembly District 1 results

    District 1 represent parts of Atlantic and Cumberland counties and all of Cape May County. Incumbent Republicans Antwan McClellan and Erik Simonsen are running against Democrats Carolyn Rush and Carol Sabo.

    New Jersey Assembly District 2 results

    District 2 represents parts of Atlantic County including several shore towns. Assemblyman Don Guardian and Assemblywoman Claire Swift are the Republican incumbents. They face challenges from Democrats Joanne Famularo and Maureen Rowan in Tuesday’s general election.

    New Jersey Assembly District 3 results

    District 3 covers Salem County and parts of Gloucester and Cumberland Counties. Democrats Dave Bailey Jr. and Heather Simmons are the incumbents, and they are running against Republicans Chris Konawell and Lawrence Moore. 

    New Jersey Assembly District 4 results

    District 4 represents parts of Camden, Atlantic and Gloucester counties. Democrats Dan Hutchinson and Cody Miller are the incumbent members of the state assembly representing this district. They are challenged for their seats on Tuesday by Republicans Amanda Esposito and Gerard McManus.

    New Jersey Assembly District 5 results

    District 5 represents portions of Gloucester and Camden Counties. Assemblymen William Moen Jr. and William Spearman, both Democrats, are the incumbents and are running for reelection against Republicans Constance Ditzel and Nilsa Gonzalez, along with Green Party candidate Robin Brownfield.

    New Jersey Assembly District 6 results

    District 6 represents parts Camden and Burlington counties. Democrats Louis Greenwald and Melinda Kane hold the assembly seats in this district. They are running against Republicans John Brangan and Peter Sykes.

    New Jersey Assembly District 7 results

    District 7 represents municipalities in the portion of Burlington County along the Delaware River. Carol Murphy and Balvir Singh, two Democrats, are the current assembly people representing this district. Republicans Douglas Dillon and Dione Johnson are running against them. 

    New Jersey Assembly District 8 results

    District 8 represents parts of Atlantic and Burlington counties. Headed into Tuesday’s election, its assembly seats are split between Republican Michael Torrissi Jr. and Democrat Andrea Katz. The other candidates in this election are Republican Brandon E. Umba. and Democrat Anthony Angelozzi.

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  • California Republicans announce plans for legal challenge to Prop 50

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    What to Know

    • Prop 50 was the only question before voters in Tuesday’s California special election.
    • The measure asked the state’s 23 million registered voters whether they authorize temporary changes to congressional district maps approved by state lawmakers.
    • Congressional district maps are usually redrawn once a decade after each census and by an independent voter-approved redistricting commission in California.
    • Prop 50 is a response led by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats to redistricting in Texas that came at the urging of President Trump in an effort to gain Republican seats in the U.S. House.
    • Prop 50 opens a path to flip up to five of 435 U.S. House seats in favor of Democrats.
    • A federal lawsuit challenging the one measure on the November special election ballot was announced Wednesday morning by group that includes the California Republican Party.

    Planning for Republican legal challenges was underway Wednesday after California voters were projected to approve a congressional redistricting measure that redraws maps in favor of Democrats, starting with the 2026 midterm elections.

    A federal lawsuit challenging the one measure on the November special election ballot was announced Wednesday morning, just hours after vote centers closed on Election Day, by the Dhillon Law Group, Assemblyman David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the California Republican Party. At a news conference, they announced plans to pursue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent Prop 50 from going into effect.

    The group said that the measure improperly used voters’ race as a factor in drawing new district boundaries. It claims violations under the 14th Amendment, equal protections under the law, and 15th amendment, which prohibits states from denying the right to vote based on race.

    Refresh this page for updates on the lawsuit.

    Prop 50 supporters have said the measure results in “fair maps that represent California’s diverse communities and ensure our voices aren’t silenced by Republican gerrymandering in other states.”

    “Yes” votes in support of Prop 50 held a 64% to 36% lead early Wednesday morning, a day after Election Day in California where statewide voter turnout was estimated at 35 percent. More than 7 million ballots had already been cast by mail and other voting options a day before Election Day.

    Prop 50, named for the 50 states and the only question on ballot in the Tuesday statewide special election, was placed before the California’s 23 million registered voters as a counter to redistricting in Texas at the urging of President Trump that gives more seats to Republicans. The California measure, placed on the ballot by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature, was a yes-or-no question that asked voters whether they authorize temporary changes to congressional district maps already approved by state lawmakers.

    The changes could flip as many as five of 435 U.S. House seats in favor of Democrats.

    The new congressional district maps approved by lawmakers in August would be used for the next three election cycles. After the 2030 U.S. Census, California’s independent redistricting commission would resume drawing the maps.

    The next election for all U.S. House seats is 2026. Republicans have a slim 219-213 margin with three vacancies.

    Voting districts are typically redrawn just once a decade after each census, but a national battle erupted over partisan gerrymandering this year in Texas when the Republican-controlled state adopted a new map in August that could flip five Democratic-leaning U.S. House seats. California responded in an effort led by Gov. Newsom. Missouri and North Carolina both adopted new maps and other states may soon follow.

    California Democrats already hold 43 of the state’s 52 congressional seats. That number could jump to 48, if Prop 50 is approved and voters favor the Democratic candidates in those redrawn districts.

    There are 10.3 million registered Democrats and 5.8 million registered Republicans in California, according to the Secretary of State. About 5.2 million voters were not registered with any party.

    Will your district change?

    See how your congressional district will change if the proposed map goes into effect.

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  • Fox News Poll: How Spanberger won Virginia governor

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    Democrats sweep Virginia races

    Fox News co-anchor Sandra Smith dives into the stories that defined election results in Virginia during Fox News special election coverage.

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    Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears to win the Virginia governor’s race, tallying significant leads among reliable Democratic groups while capitalizing on economic worries and the deep unpopularity of President Donald Trump in the state.

    Spanberger will be the first woman to hold the office in the Old Dominion State.

    The former Virginia congresswoman replaces term-limited Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who was the first Republican to win a statewide election in Virginia in 12 years when he was elected in 2021. That race surprised many in that it was much closer than the 2020 presidential race the year before, where Biden defeated Trump by 10 points. This year it was the other way around, with Spanberger well exceeding the 2024 presidential margin that saw Harris over Trump by only six points.

    Trump was undoubtedly a factor in the race, even though he wasn’t on the ballot. Close to six in ten Virginia voters disapproved of the job he is doing, while more than half said they strongly disapprove. The vast majority of these voters backed Spanberger.

    ABIGAIL SPANBERGER SEALS HISTORIC VIRGINIA WIN, ENDING GOP’S GLENN YOUNGKIN ERA

    Two-thirds of Spanberger supporters said their vote was expressly to show opposition to the president. That compares to about one-third of those backing current Lt. Governor Earle-Sears who said theirs was to show support.

    Aside from those sending a signal of opposition to Trump, Spanberger’s strong appeal to Black voters, college graduates and the young was more than enough to offset Earle-Sears’ strength among White men, White evangelicals and those with no college degree, according to near-final data from the Fox News Voter Poll, a survey of more than 4,000 Virginia voters.

    Abigail Spanberger’s strong appeal to Black voters, college graduates and the young was more than enough to offset Winsome Earle-Sears’ strength among White men, White evangelicals and those with no college degree. (Fox News)

    Not even the prospect of voting for the first Black woman governor of any state seemed to move Black voters, who backed Spanberger by about a nine to one margin.

    Spanberger also benefited from a significant gender gap. Indeed, 65% of women backed her compared to 35% for Earle-Sears, a 30-point advantage; and men supported Earle-Sears by 4 points (48% for Spanberger, 52% Earle-Sears) – leaving a gender gap of 34 points, one of the largest in recent memory.

    Fox News Voter Poll in Virginia

    Abigail Spanberger enjoyed 65% of women backing her compared to 35% for Winsome Earle-Sears. (Fox News)

    Fox News Voter Poll in Virginia election

    Men supported Winsome Earle-Sears by 4 points. (Fox News)

    Neither party is very popular in the state, half of voters said they have an unfavorable opinion of Democrats, and more than half felt that way about Republicans.

    Between the two candidates, however, Spanberger garnered a net-positive rating – more than half had a favorable opinion of her – compared to Sears, and more than half viewed her unfavorably.

    Voters continue to be happy with Youngkin. More than half approved of the job he is doing as governor.

    The top characteristic Virginia voters wanted in a candidate was someone who shares their values, followed by someone who is honest and trustworthy.

    Values voters broke for Earle-Sears while Spanberger carried those looking for honesty.

    Spanberger focused heavily on the economy during the campaign, specifically banging home the deleterious effects that Trump administration efforts to upend government in DC are having on Virginia, home to a large number of federal workers.

    More than six in ten of those federal employees backed Spanberger.

    The economy was by far the top issue for Virginia voters – with close to half ranking it as the most important. Those voters broke significantly for Spanberger.

    Healthcare was the second most important concern – another issue Spanberger hit hard in the wake of the federal government shutdown and people facing the possible loss of health benefits.

    Those voters who said healthcare was their number one issue went overwhelmingly for Spanberger – by about four to one.

    Overall, Virginia voters – about six in ten – think the economy is doing pretty well. Those voters backed Earle-Sears.

    But when it comes to their own family’s finances, most said they were either holding steady or falling behind. Both of those groups went for Spanberger.

    And of the six in ten voters who said the federal budget cuts had affected their family finances, they backed Spanberger as well.

    Two issues that got significant attention from Earle-Sears in the campaign were controversies about trans rights, and the disclosure of violent texts from the Democratic candidate for Attorney General.

    Fewer than half of voters found the texts sent by Democrat Jay Jones, threatening a fellow lawmaker, disqualifying from the job of attorney general. Those who did broke strongly for Earle-Sears.

    Fox News Voter Poll in Virginia governor's election

    Fewer than half of voters found the texts sent by Democrat Jay Jones, threatening a fellow lawmaker, disqualifying from the job of attorney general. (Fox News)

    The rest, though – who said the texts were concerning but not disqualifying, were not a concern, or who simply didn’t know enough – went strongly for Spanberger.

    It was suspected that some voters might split their votes, backing Spanberger for governor but Republican Jason Miyares for attorney general. That did not happen. Those Democrats defecting to Miyares remained in the single digits, and Jones was declared the winner.

    Fox News Voter Poll in 2025 Virginia election

    Voters who said Jay Jones’ texts were concerning but not disqualifying, were not a concern, or who simply didn’t know enough went strongly for Abigail Spanberger. (Fox News)

    On transgender rights, voters have mixed views. Half said support has gone too far – the position Earle-Sears took, with special emphasis on its effect on schools and girls’ sports. The other half, however, said support has not gone far enough, or it’s been about right.

    SPANBERGER SAYS VIRGINIA ‘CHOSE PRAGMATISM OVER PARTISANSHIP’ IN VICTORY SPEECH

    Fox News Voter Poll in Virginia gubernatorial election

    On transgender rights, voters have mixed views. (Fox News)

    Those who said it’d gone too far backed Earle-Sears by almost four to one, while those who disagreed went hard for Spanberger.

    In the end, the headwinds of Trump’s unpopularity and the ire of the vast number of federal workers in the state was too much for Earle-Sears to overcome.

    Only about a third of Virginia voters are happy with the direction the country is going, and while these voters overwhelmingly backed Earle-Sears, the other two-thirds went big for Spanberger. Of the four in ten who are actually angry about how things are going, almost all of them – more than nine in ten – backed Spanberger.

    Asked about Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, more than half say it has gone too far, and, perhaps not surprisingly, most of these voters backed Spanberger.

    Almost all Democrats voted for Spanberger, as did a few Republicans. Earle-Sears was unable to generate any sort of crossover appeal, while winning most Republicans. The small group of independents favored Spanberger.

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    Methodology

    The Fox News Voter Poll is based on a survey conducted by SSRS with Virginia registered voters. This survey was conducted October 22 to November 4, 2025, concluding at the end of voting on Election Day. The poll combines data collected from registered voters online and by telephone with data collected in-person from Election Day voters at 30 precincts per state/city. In the final step, all the pre-election survey respondents and Election Day exit poll respondents are combined by adjusting the share of voting mode (absentee, early-in-person, and Election Day) based on the estimated composition of the state/city’s final electorate. Once votes are counted, the survey results are also weighted to match the overall results in each state. Results among more than 4,500 Virginia voters interviewed have an estimated margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points, including the design effects. The error margin is larger among subgroups.

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  • California voters approve new US House map to boost Democrats in 2026

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    LOS ANGELES — California voters approved new congressional district boundaries Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026 and, with it, the power to thwart or advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.

    The approval of Proposition 50 gives Democrats a shot at winning as many as five additional seats, just enough to blunt Texas Republicans’ move to redraw their own maps to pick up five GOP seats at Trump’s urging. Texas’ move and California’s response have kicked off a flurry of redistricting efforts around the country, with Republican states appearing to have an edge. Deeply blue California is Democrats’ best opportunity to make up seats.

    Midterm elections typically punish the party in the White House, and Trump is fighting to maintain his party’s slim House majority. Republicans hold 219 seats to Democrats’ 213.

    Tuesday’s results mark a political victory for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cast the measure as an essential tool to fight back against Trump and protect American democracy.

    Speaking to reporters in Sacramento, Newsom cast the California vote as part of a broader national rejection of Trump’s policies that saw Democratic governors elevated in New Jersey and Virginia. But he warned the more consequential battle would come next year.

    If Democrats win the House majority, they can “end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it,” Newsom said. “It is all on the line, a bright line, in 2026.”

    California’s Proposition 50 asked voters to suspend House maps drawn by an independent commission and replace them with rejiggered districts adopted by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Those new districts would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.

    The recast districts aim to dilute Republican voters’ power, in one case by uniting rural, conservative-leaning parts of far northern California with Marin County, a famously liberal coastal stronghold across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

    The measure was spearheaded by Newsom, who threw the weight of his political operation behind it in a major test of his mettle ahead of a potential 2028 presidential campaign. Former President Barack Obama urged voters to pass it as well.

    “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama said in one ad. “You can stop Republicans in their tracks.”

    Critics said two wrongs don’t make a right. They urged Californians to reject the measure, even if they have misgivings about Trump’s moves elsewhere.

    Among the most prominent critics was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star and former Republican governor who pushed for the creation of the independent commission, which voters approved in 2008 and 2010. It makes no sense to fight Trump by becoming him, Schwarzenegger said in September, arguing that the proposal would “take the power away from the people.”

    “I don’t want Newsom to have control,” said Rebecca Fleshman, a 63-year-old retired medical assistant from Southern California, who voted against the measure. “I don’t want the state to be blue. I want it to be red.”

    After an early burst of TV advertising, opponents of the plan struggled to raise cash in a state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets.

    The campaign followed an unusual trajectory. A handful of Republican congressmen who will see their districts dramatically reshaped – and their jobs endangered — mostly stayed away from the campaign spotlight. With opponents short on cash, Newsom and his supporters dominated TV screens in the critical closing weeks.

    Total spending on broadcast and cable ads topped $100 million, with more than two-thirds of it coming from supporters. Newsom told people to stop donating in the race’s final weeks.

    The GOP congressmen — Reps. Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao and Doug LaMalfa — will see right-leaning voters reduced and left-leaning voters boosted in their respective districts in a shift that would make it likely a Democratic candidate would prevail in each race.

    Issa issued a defiant statement, saying: “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll continue to represent the people of California regardless of their party or where they live.”

    Calvert said Newsom engineered a “power grab” while housing costs, gas prices and taxes continue to strain family budgets. “I am determined to keep fighting for the families I represent,” he said in an email.

    Proposition 50 won a swift and decisive victory, as the AP declared a winner when polls closed statewide. Early returns were strongly in favor of the measure, as were preliminary results from the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of more than 4,000 voters in California.

    Roughly 7 in 10 California voters said party control of Congress was “very important” to them, and those voters overwhelmingly supported the measure, according to the AP Voter Poll.

    About 8 in 10 California voters who supported the ballot measure said it was necessary to counter the changes made by Republicans in other states, while only about 2 in 10 said they supported it because it was the best way to draw maps, AP Voter Poll found.

    Trump, who overwhelmingly lost California in his three presidential campaigns, largely stayed out of the fray. A week before the election, he urged voters in a social media post not to vote early or by mail — messaging that conflicted with that of top Republicans in the state who urged people to get their ballots in as soon as possible.

    In a post Tuesday on his social media platform, the president called the state’s voting process “RIGGED” and warned that it was “under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!” Secretary of State Shirley Weber called that “another baseless claim.”

    Congressional district boundaries are typically redrawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts documented in the census. Mid-decade redistricting is unusual, absent a court order finding fault with the maps in place.

    Beyond Texas, Republicans expect to gain one seat each from new maps in Missouri and North Carolina, and potentially two more in Ohio. Five other GOP-led states are also considering new maps: Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska.

    On the Democratic side, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Virginia have proposals to redraw maps, but major hurdles remain.

    A court has ordered new boundaries be drawn in Utah, where all four House districts are represented by Republicans, but it remains to be seen if the state will approve a map that makes any of them winnable for Democrats.

    Siddhartha Deb, 52, has lived in the U.S. since he was 7 years old but he just became a citizen Tuesday. Immediately afterward he registered to vote at San Francisco City Hall and cast his ballot in favor of Newsom’s measure.

    “I don’t like the way the Republican Party is basically trying to rig elections by gerrymandering,” Deb said. “And this is the only way, to fight fire with fire.”

    ___

    Cooper reported from Phoenix and Nguyen from Sacramento, California. Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Norco, California, and Terry Chea in San Francisco contributed.

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  • Zohran Mamdani’s Rise: From Queens Lawmaker to New York City Mayor

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    NEW YORK (AP) — When he announced his run for mayor last October, Zohran Mamdani was a state lawmaker unknown to most New York City residents.

    But that was before the 34-year-old democratic socialist crashed the national political scene with a stunning upset over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June’s Democratic primary.

    On Tuesday, Mamdani completed his political ascension, again vanquishing Cuomo, as well as Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, in the general election.

    The former foreclosure prevention counselor and one-time rapper becomes the city’s first Muslim mayor, first born in Africa, and first of South Asian heritage — not to mention its youngest mayor in more than a century.

    “I will wake up each morning with a singular purpose: To make this city better for you than it was the day before,” Mamdani promised New Yorkers in his victory speech.

    Here’s a look at the next chief executive of America’s largest city:


    Mamdani’s progressive promises for New York City

    Mamdani ran on an optimistic vision for New York City.

    His campaign was packed with big policies aimed at lowering the cost of living for everyday New Yorkers, from free child care, free buses to a rent freeze for people living in rent-regulated apartments and new affordable housing — much of it funded by raising taxes on the wealthy.

    He’s also proposed launching a pilot program for city-run grocery stores as a way to combat high food prices.

    Since his Democratic primary win, Mamdani has moderated some of his more polarizing rhetoric, particularly around law enforcement.

    He backed off a 2020 post calling to “defund” the New York Police Department and publicly apologized to NYPD officers for calling the department “racist” in another social media post.

    While Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he’s said he’s running on his own distinct platform and does not embrace all of the activist group’s priorities, which have included ending mandatory jail time for certain crimes and cutting police budgets.


    NYC’s first Muslim mayor

    Outside a Bronx mosque in late October, he spoke in emotional terms about the “indignities” long faced by the city’s Muslim population, and vowed to further embrace his identity.

    “I will not change who I am, how I eat, or the faith that I’m proud to call my own,” he said. “But there is one thing that I will change. I will no longer look for myself in the shadows. I will find myself in the light.”

    Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to Indian parents and became an American citizen in 2018, shortly after graduating from college.

    He lived with his family briefly in Cape Town, South Africa, before moving to New York City when he was 7.

    Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include “Monsoon Wedding,” “The Namesake” and “Mississippi Masala.” His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is an anthropology professor at Columbia University.

    Mamdani married Rama Duwaji, a Syrian American artist, earlier this year. The couple, who met on the dating app Hinge, live in the Astoria neighborhood of the city’s borough of Queens.

    Mamdani attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he cofounded the prestigious public school’s first cricket team, according to his legislative bio.

    He graduated in 2014 from Bowdoin College in Maine, where he earned a degree in Africana studies and cofounded his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

    After college, he worked as a foreclosure prevention counselor in Queens, helping residents avoid eviction, a job he says inspired him to run for public office.

    Mamdani also had a notable side hustle in the local hip-hop scene, rapping under the moniker Young Cardamom and later Mr. Cardamom. During his first run for state lawmaker, Mamdani gave a nod to his brief foray into music, describing himself as a “B-list rapper.”

    Mamdani cut his teeth in local politics working on campaigns for Democratic candidates in Queens and Brooklyn.

    He was first elected to the New York Assembly in 2020, knocking off a longtime Democratic incumbent for a Queens district covering Astoria and surrounding neighborhoods. He has handily won reelection twice.

    The democratic socialist’s most notable legislative accomplishment has been pushing through a pilot program that made a handful of city buses free for a year. He’s also proposed legislation banning nonprofits from “engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

    Mamdani’s opponents, particularly Cuomo, dismissed him as woefully unprepared for managing the complexities of running America’s largest city.

    But Mamdani framed his relative inexperience as a potential asset, saying in a mayoral debate he’s “proud” he doesn’t have Cuomo’s “experience of corruption, scandal and disgrace.”

    Mamdani used buzzy campaign videos — many with winking references to Bollywood and his Indian heritage — to help make inroads with voters outside his slice of Queens.

    On New Year’s Day, he took part in the annual polar plunge into the chilly waters off Coney Island in a full dress suit to break down his plan to “freeze” rents.

    He interviewed food cart vendors about “Halal-flation” and humorously pledged to make the city’s beloved chicken over rice lunches “eight bucks again.”

    In TikTok videos, he appealed to voters of color by speaking in Spanish, Bangla and other languages.

    During his general election campaign, the viral clips were joined by talked-about television commercials — with on-theme ads that aired during “The Golden Bachelor,” “Survivor” and the Knicks’ season opener.

    A longtime supporter of Palestinian rights, Mamdani continued his unstinting criticism of Israel — long seen as a third rail in New York politics — through his campaign.

    Mamdani has accused the Israeli government of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and has said Israel should exist as “a state with equal rights” for all, rather than a “Jewish state.”

    He was hammered by his opponents and many leaders in the Jewish community for his stances, with Cuomo accusing Mamdani of “fueling antisemitism.”

    After facing criticism early in the race for refusing to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada,” Mamdani vowed to discourage others from using it moving forward. He also met with rabbis and attended a synagogue during the High Holy Days as he courted Jewish voters.

    In his victory remarks Tuesday, he pledged that under his leadership, City Hall will stand against antisemitism.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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