Tuesday, September 30,2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.
The New Yorker Mayoral Election.
Much happened over the weekend.
The current corrupt mayor, Eric Adams, dropped out.
Trump threatened the voters of New York City.
What laws are violated by Trump’s threats about the NYC election?
Can a President legally take action against areas of the country that displease him?
Will anyone charge him? Or stop him? Who knows.
New Yorkers can - by electing Zohran Mamdani.
One more thing.
This endorsement happened over the weekend. 👇
# Trump continued to demonstrate his delusions of grandeur and bad taste.
The second Trump shutdown may soon begin.
The first was in 2018. It lasted 35 days.
The New York Times calls out Republican lies about the possible shutdown. 👇
New York Times - Explaining the G.O.P.’s Misleading Talking Point on the Looming Shutdown
Republicans have been falsely asserting that Democrats are shutting down the government to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants.
With Congress at an impasse over federal spending, Republicans have emerged with a new and misleading talking point: Democrats are shutting down the government to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants.
It is a message repeated by Vice President JD Vance, the official X account of Senate Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson.
The Democrats’ budget proposal seeks to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, and roll back Medicaid cuts in the tax cut and domestic policy law signed by President Trump in July.
But the proposal does not provide free health care for unauthorized immigrants.
Unauthorized immigrants are largely barred from federally funded health care programs. They cannot buy health care plans on government exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act and therefore cannot receive any subsidies. They are also ineligible for Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The Democrats’ budget proposal does not make them eligible for these programs.
Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, acknowledged this disconnect in a statement. “Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in federally funded health coverage under existing law or Democrats’ funding proposal — but millions of American citizens will see their health care premiums double next year if Republicans keep refusing to act,” she said.
Republicans may be referring to the law changing the eligibility requirements for certain immigrant groups. Under the tax cut and domestic policy law, certain groups of “lawfully present” immigrants are no longer eligible for Obamacare subsidies. The Democrats’ proposal would restore that eligibility.
There is no uniform definition for “lawful presence,” a term typically used by federal and state health care and social welfare programs to determine eligibility. Most groups of “lawfully present” noncitizens have authorized or legal immigration status like refugees and asylum recipients, but the term can also include immigrants whose legal status is more complicated, like those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Three Republican committee chairmen said in a September news release that the Biden administration had abused “‘lawful presence’ definitions” and, citing an August analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said that the Republican law would revoke subsidy eligibility from “1.2 million illegal immigrants or noncitizens.” The C.B.O. did estimate that 1.2 million people would lose subsidies and their health care coverage as a result of the eligibility restrictions, but it did not characterize those immigrants as illegal or unauthorized.
Separately, the federal government does reimburse hospitals for providing emergency care to low-income unauthorized immigrants who are otherwise ineligible for Medicaid. The Republicans’ tax cut and domestic policy law reduced the amount that hospitals receive for emergency services provided to certain unauthorized immigrants in states that expanded Medicaid, but it did not eliminate funding altogether.
More than a dozen states provide government-funded health care for low-income children regardless of their immigration status, and seven states also provide that coverage for low-income adults, according to a breakdown by the health care nonprofit KFF. But those programs are state-funded and are not affected by the federal funding currently debated in Congress.
Earlier versions of the tax cut and domestic policy bill reduced federal funding for those states, but those provisions did not appear in the final version of the bill because of Senate rules.(New York Times)
Trump posts vulgar deepfake slam of Democratic leaders after White House meeting.
“This might top the last shutdown,” one Republican said in response.
If a government shutdown wasn’t already exceedingly likely, President Donald Trump might have made it a near certainty Monday night.
The president posted a vulgar AI-generated deepfake video to his Truth Social slamming the top Democratic leaders — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — just hours after he hosted the two for an Oval Office meeting.
The video depicts Schumer and Jeffries as if speaking to reporters following the meeting, but the fabricated audio has Schumer saying Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bullshit” and that “if we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.”
That appears to be a crude reference to a shutdown talking point pushed by Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders noting that one Democratic demand is to reverse health care provisions in the recently enacted GOP megabill — including provisions aimed at excluding noncitizens from public benefits.
Jeffries is depicted in a sombrero and mariachi music plays in the background. Trump sat down with the top House Democrat for the first time ever Monday.
A spokesperson for Schumer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jeffries appeared to reply on X: “Bigotry will get you nowhere. Cancel the Cuts. Lower the Cost. Save Healthcare. We are NOT backing down.”
After looking over the video, one senior GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly said, “This might top the last shutdown.” That’s a reference to the 2018-2019 shutdown under Trump that lasted a record 35 days. (Politico)
Here’s the image. 👇 Trump respects no one.
Watch the video by clicking this link.👇
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115290424560405640
Congressman Jamie Raskin’s statement on Trump’s threat of mass firings of federal workers during his potential shutdown.
Congressman Jamie RASKIN, Maryland’s eighth district.
September 25, 2025
Washington, D.C. – Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-08) released the following statement on the Trump Administration’s threat to continue mass firings of federal workers during a potential Republican government shutdown:
“After illegally sacking tens of thousands of federal workers, Donald Trump’s now trying to use the livelihoods of the ones who remain as coercive leverage while refusing to come to the table and hold serious government funding negotiations with Democratic leadership. Trump has spent his time in office dismantling the federal civil service and destroying the critical programs that Americans rely on. His lawyers should tell him that a shutdown gives the administration no additional legal authority to justify the lawless dismissal of federal workers.
“Democrats won’t be intimidated into supporting MAGA’s government funding proposal which does nothing to protect the health care millions of Americans need. If Trump is truly the greatest negotiator in the world, then he should have no objections to joining with Democrats, who are ready to talk, to keep the government open. What’s the president afraid of?”
There are no words.
Trump and Netanyahu Tell Hamas to Accept Their Peace Plan, or Else.
President Trump said Israel would have a green light to “finish the job” if Hamas refused to agree to the cease-fire deal.
President Trump on Monday cast his plan for a cease-fire in Gaza as a landmark deal to bring peace after two years of catastrophic violence. But in reality, it was more like an ultimatum to Hamas.
Standing alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Trump unveiled a proposal to which both men had agreed. If Hamas refuses to do the same, Mr. Trump said, the United States will let Israel “do what you would have to do.”
“Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” said Mr. Trump, who under the plan would become the temporary chairman of a board in charge of the redevelopment of Gaza.
The joint appearance by Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu at the White House was a clear display of unity at a moment when Mr. Trump has shown signs of frustration with the Israeli prime minister, and when much of the world has grown horrified at Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
But it was far from assured that Hamas would agree to their demands.
The U.S. plan contains provisions that Hamas has said publicly it will not accept, such as its removal from power and disarmament, leaving the proposal’s future uncertain and increasing the possibility that Israel will intensify its military campaign in the enclave, with the full support of the United States.
“When it comes to this plan, no one contacted us, nor were we part of the negotiations around it,” Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas official, said in a televised interview.
The proposal calls for an immediate cease-fire, after which Hamas would have 72 hours to return all Israel hostages, both dead and alive. In return, Israel would release 250 prisoners sentenced to life, plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who decommission their weapons would be given amnesty.
Notably, the proposal says nothing concrete about a pathway to Palestinian statehood. While it recognizes statehood “as the aspiration of the Palestinian people,” it says only that while Gaza is rebuilt and when an overhaul program by the authority “is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway” to statehood.
Hamas would have to agree to play no role in governing Gaza in the future. And while Israel would pull back its forces by degrees within the Gaza Strip, it would maintain a sizable buffer zone inside Gaza’s borders “for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked for three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, said the Israel military campaign had put Hamas in such a weakened position that its leaders might have to accept the deal to save their own lives.
“It would have been a reasonable calculation for Hamas to say, ‘Look at the increasing isolation and condemnation of Israel. They will have to stop soon,’” Mr. Abrams said. “But Trump eliminated that possibility today. Now they won’t have to stop. This really corners them.”
Mr. Netanyahu proclaimed that the proposal “achieves our war aims.” And he said he would determine whether or not Hamas was complying with the agreement.
“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accepted and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way.”
The two leaders originally had planned to take questions from reporters, but in the end they did not. The moment was reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s appearance with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month in Alaska, where he sought a peace deal in the war in Ukraine. Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin appeared before reporters without an agreement and declined to take questions.
While the U.S. plan gives Mr. Netanyahu much of what he wants, it also shows that Mr. Trump has moved away from his proposal earlier this year to force Palestinians out of Gaza as part of a redevelopment plan.
Under the latest proposal, Mr. Trump said, Palestinians would be encouraged to stay in the Gaza Strip and offered “the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
“No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return,” the proposal states. “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Still, the plan — even if Hamas were to agree to it — leaves many question marks and would deeply involve the United States.
Gaza would be governed by a committee called the “Board of Peace,” of which Mr. Trump would be the chairman and which would undertake its redevelopment.
Such an arrangement would constitute “some extra work to do,” Mr. Trump said, “but it’s so important that I’m willing to do it.”
Mr. Trump has long remarked on the potential value of the waterfront property of Gaza, and he did so again on Monday, lamenting the fact that Israel allowed the Palestinians to have control of the land.
“As a real estate person, I mean, they gave up the ocean,” he said, adding: “They gave up the ocean. I said ‘Who would do this deal?’”
Other members of the “Board of Peace” would include former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. That board would govern Gaza until it determined that the Palestinian Authority had reformed itself enough to take over, the plan states.
“He has created a peace plan that, if in fact Hamas accepted it in principle, would require an extraordinary lift by the United States,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department official who is now a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Every single point is going to be negotiated to death.”
Mr. Miller said he was struck by how the peace proposal seemed to hinge so much on the president personally playing a role. “Trump signed up for something that I think is going to require an extraordinary amount of American involvement and monitoring, and he’s made himself the key monitor,” Mr. Miller said.
“This is not a throwaway cease-fire agreement,” he added. “This is the full monty here, and at the top of this full monty sits one Donald Trump.” (New York Times).