U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a close Republican ally of President Donald Trump, announced Friday that she’s running for governor of New York, a place she depicted in a campaign launch video as being “in ashes” because of lawlessness and a high cost of living.

In her video, a narrator declares “The Empire State has fallen” as it painted a grim picture of crime and economic crisis in New York City, though her message appeared to be aimed at other, more conservative parts of the state that she will need to win over next year.

“Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery prices crushing hardworking families,” Stefanik said in a statement.

Stefanik, who represents a conservative congressional district in upstate New York, has for months teased a run, leveling heavy criticism at incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul and more recently toward Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City.

Last year, Trump picked Stefanik to be the administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, but later rescinded the nomination over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.

Though any Republican faces long odds of winning the governor’s mansion in New York, Stefanik’s campaign will bring solid name recognition, fundraising prowess and deep ties to the White House. Her campaign announced Friday that she has received the backing of nearly three-quarters of the state’s county Republican chairs.

In a statement, Hochul campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika called Stefanik “Donald Trump’s number one cheerleader in Congress.”

“Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn’t enough — now she’s trying to bring Trump’s chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state,” Chitika said.

The Republican primary field remains unclear ahead of the 2026 race. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler had been contemplating a run and was considered a potentially strong candidate, but said earlier this year that he would instead seek reelection in his battleground House district in the New York Hudson Valley.

Hochul faces a contested primary, with her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, running against her.

Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, was 30 when she was first elected to the House in 2014. She entered Congress as a moderate Republican but soon attached herself to Trump, reshaping her persona into more of a brash, outspoken MAGA disciple.

Her national profile got a big boost after she aggressively questioned a group of university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses, leading to two of their resignations and winning praise from the Republican president.

Democrats have a major voter registration edge in New York. The last Republican governor in the state was former Gov. George Pataki, who left office about two decades ago. Still, Republican Lee Zeldin, a former Long Island congressman and current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a serious run for the office in 2022, coming within striking distance of upsetting Hochul.

The national battle to control the U.S. House shifts to California on Tuesday as voters consider a Democratic proposal that could erase as many as five Republican districts and blunt President Donald Trump’s moves to safeguard his party’s lock on Washington power.

The outcome will reverberate into next year’s midterm elections and beyond, with Democrats hoping a victory will set the stage for the party to regain control of the House in 2026. A shift in the majority would imperil Trump’s agenda for the remainder of his term at a time of deep partisan divisions over immigration, health care and the future direction of the nation.

“God help us if we lose in California,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom says.

Democrats need to gain just three seats in the 2026 elections to take control of the House.

Heavily Democratic California and its 52 congressional districts represent by far the Democrats’ best opportunity in an unprecedented state-by-state redistricting battle, which started when Texas Republicans heeded Trump’s demand that they redraw their boundaries to help the GOP retain its House majority. Democrats hold 43 of the state’s seats and hope to boost that to 48.

Trump is fighting not just the Democrats but history. Midterm elections typically punish the party in the White House, but four GOP-led states so far have adopted new district maps to pack more Republican voters into key districts.

Measure supported by Newsom, Obama

California’s Proposition 50 asks 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 has been spearheaded by Newsom, who has thrown 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 has urged voters to pass it as well.

Newsom has sought to nationalize the campaign, depicting the proposal as a counterweight to all things Trump.

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

Critics say two wrongs don’t make a right. They urge Californians to reject what they call a Democratic power grab, even if they have misgivings about Trump’s moves in Republican-led states.

Among the most prominent critics is 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 Norco in 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 have struggled to raise cash in a state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. Data compiled by advertising tracker AdImpact last week showed Democrats and other supporters with over $5 million in ad buys booked on broadcast TV, cable and radio. But opponents had virtually no time reserved, though the data didn’t include some popular streaming services like Hulu and YouTube or mail advertising.

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.

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 conflicts with that of top Republicans in the state who urged people to get their ballots in as soon as possible.

Democrats hope to pick up as many as five seats in California if voters approve the new boundaries, offsetting the five that Republicans hope to pick up through their new Texas maps. Republicans also expect to gain one seat each from new maps in Missouri and North Carolina, and potentially two more in Ohio.

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.

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.

Voters and leading contenders cast their ballots across the Netherlands on Wednesday in a close-run snap election called after anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders brought down the last four-party coalition in a dispute over a crackdown on immigration.

The campaign echoed issues that resonate across Europe, focusing on how to rein in migration and tackle chronic shortages of affordable housing.

But in a country where coalition governments are the norm, it’s unclear if parties will work with Wilders again, even if his Party for Freedom repeats its stunning victory from two years ago.

Mainstream parties have already ruled that out, arguing that his decision to torpedo the outgoing four-party coalition in June in a dispute over migration underscored that he is an untrustworthy partner.

“It’s up to the voters today,” Wilders said after voting in the cavernous atrium of The Hague City Hall, surrounded by security guards. “It’s a close call … four or five different parties. I’m confident.”

Voters and leading contenders cast their ballots across the Netherlands on Wednesday in a close-run snap election called after anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders brought down the last four-party coalition in a dispute over a crackdown on immigration.

The campaign echoed issues that resonate across Europe, focusing on how to rein in migration and tackle chronic shortages of affordable housing.

But in a country where coalition governments are the norm, it’s unclear if parties will work with Wilders again, even if his Party for Freedom repeats its stunning victory from two years ago.

Mainstream parties have already ruled that out, arguing that his decision to torpedo the outgoing four-party coalition in June in a dispute over migration underscored that he is an untrustworthy partner.

“It’s up to the voters today,” Wilders said after voting in the cavernous atrium of The Hague City Hall, surrounded by security guards. “It’s a close call … four or five different parties. I’m confident.”

Migration has divided the Netherlands

The vote comes against a backdrop of deep polarization in this nation of 18 million, violence at a recent anti-immigration rally in The Hague and protests against new asylum-seeker centers.

Voting was taking place at venues from city halls to schools, but also historic windmills, churches, a zoo, a former prison in Arnhem and the iconic Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam.

Olga van der Brandt, 32, said she thinks voters may turn their backs on parties that made up the last right-wing government led by Wilders.

Her hope is that “this time there will be a more progressive party who can take the lead.”

Christian Democrats leader Henri Bontenbal agreed that a fundamental shift in Dutch politics was at stake.

“What we have seen in the last two years is a political landscape with right-wing populism, and the question is, is it possible to beat populism by decent politics,” he said.

In-fighting between parties in the last coalition led to criticism that the Netherlands, long a prominent voice within the European Union, was sometimes seen as not fully engaging with the continent as it had done under longtime leader Mark Rutte, who is now NATO’s secretary-general.

The chief economist at the Center for European Reform think tank, Sander Tordoir, said that “Europe cannot afford another Dutch government that drifts and is absent in the European debate.”

Tordoir noted that the Netherlands is one of the biggest and better performing eurozone economies and that if it “remains missing in action, Europe’s single market, defense effort and economic security will suffer.”

Wilders’ party poised for a win

Polls suggest that Wilders’ party, which is calling for a total halt to asylum-seekers entering the Netherlands, remains on track to win the largest number of seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives. But other more moderate parties are closing the gap and pollsters caution that many people wait until the very last minute to decide who to vote for.

Among those first in line at the ornate former City Hall in the central city of Delft, wearing bathrobes and carrying mugs of coffee, was a group of students who live together and study at the local university.

“It’s a house tradition” to vote together, Lucas van Krimpen told The Associated Press.

Polls close at 9 p.m. followed by an initial exit poll.

The Dutch system of proportional representation all but guarantees that no single party can win a majority. Negotiations will likely begin Thursday into the makeup of the next governing coalition.

Rob Jetten, leader of the center-left D66 party that has risen in polls as the campaign wore on, said in a final televised debate that his party wants to rein in migration but also accommodate asylum-seekers fleeing war and violence.

And he told Wilders that voters can “choose again tomorrow to listen to your grumpy hatred for another 20 years, or choose, with positive energy, to simply get to work and tackle this problem and solve it.”

Wilders rejects arguments that he had failed to deliver on his 2023 campaign pledges despite being the largest party in parliament, blaming other parties for stymying his plans.

With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the Trump administration’s promised layoffs.

Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate.

“Luckily I was able to pay rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worker. “But for sure I am going to have bills that are going to go unpaid this month, and I really don’t have many options.”

The shutdown has a familiar feel for many federal employees who endured past stalemates — including during President Donald Trump’s first term — but this time, the stakes are higher. The Republican White House is leveraging federal workers’ jobs to pressure Democrats to soften their demands.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and other Republican leaders have said the government must reopen before they will negotiate with Democrats on the health subsidies.

Farruggia is the head of the American Federation of Government Employees local representing employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees who have been furloughed from the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online.

With the agency’s leadership in turmoil and still rattled from a shooting, the shutdown and new firings mean “people are scared, nervous, anxious, but also really just exasperated,” Farruggia said.

After Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said last week on social media that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, Vice President JD Vance doubled down on the threat Sunday, saying “the longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be.”

The layoffs have begun across federal agencies. Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the move by Trump’s budget office.

In a court filing on Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees from eight departments and agencies would be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

Jessica Sweet, an Albany, New York, Social Security claims specialist who is a union steward of AFGE Local 3343 in New York, said, “I, myself, have a backup plan” in case she is fired during the shutdown, “but I know most people don’t.”

She says the Social Security Administration is already so short-staffed from layoffs earlier this year brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency, she doesn’t fear a massive layoff during the shutdown.

Workers used as ‘political pawns’

National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald, which represents workers across dozens of federal agencies, said several of the union’s members had been laid off as of Friday. The Treasury Department would lose 1,446 workers, according to the filing.

Greenwald said it was unfortunate that the Trump administration was using “federal employees as political pawns by furloughing and proposing to fire them all to try to cause pressure in a political game of chicken.”

“This isn’t about one party or the other. It’s about real people,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

“The correction officer worrying about his next paycheck. The TSA officer who still shows up to work because he or she loves their country, even though they’re not getting paid. No American should ever have to choose between serving their country and feeding their family,” Kelley said.

Kelley and other major federal worker union leaders gathered blocks from the Capitol last week, urging congressional leaders to find a solution and put “people over politics.” The event grew emotional at times, with union heads outlining the difficulties facing their members and the stakes growing daily.

Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 workers nationwide, called on both sides of Congress to find a resolution. He said Trump appeared to aim to “degrade, frighten, antagonize hardworking federal employees.”

Chris Bartley, political program coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters, said thousands of firefighters were showing up for work without pay out of a sense of devotion but stressed that could have broader consequences.

“Families go without income,” Bartley said. “Morale and retention suffer. Public safety is compromised.”

Mexican authorities said they arrested former soccer player Omar Bravo, 45, on suspicion of child sexual abuse.

The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that investigations indicate Bravo allegedly abused a teenage girl on several occasions in recent months and may have committed similar acts before.

He was arrested during an operation in the municipality of Zapopan and was expected to appear in court soon.

Bravo rose to fame playing as a forward for Chivas de Guadalajara, where he became the club’s all-time leading goal scorer. He also played for Mexico’s national team in the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach a lawyer for Bravo.

On Bravo’s Instagram account, fans commented on his latest post from Sept. 8, which made no reference to the accusations. Some expressed sadness, while others said he was their idol and hoped the allegations were not true.

The prosecutor’s office said it will continue its investigation.

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions.

If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.

Trump, ahead of the meeting, made it clear he had no intention to negotiate on Democrats’ current terms.

“They’re going to have to do some things because their ideas are not very good ones,” the president said Monday.

Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats have held firm. They’re using one of their few points of leverage to demand Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits.

“We finally got our meeting. We hope they’re serious about getting something real done on health care,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said as he departed the Capitol for the White House.

Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week.

“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.”

The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in a funding lapse.

“Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Still, Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown.

Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have subsidized health insurance for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year.

At a Monday news conference, Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called health care cuts a “five-alarm fire” that is rippling across communities nationwide.

“We’re not going to simply go along to get along with a Republican bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans who are already living with this Trump economy, where costs aren’t going down but they’re going up,” he said.

The pandemic-era ACA subsidies are set to expire in a matter of months if Congress fails to act.

Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits but want changes. Thune said Sunday that the program is “desperately in need of reform” and Republicans want to address “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later.

It remains to be seen whether the White House meeting will help or hurt the chances for a resolution. Negotiations between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders have rarely gone well, and Trump has had little contact with the opposing party during his second term.

The most recent negotiation in August between Schumer and the president to speed the pace of Senate confirmation votes for administration officials ended with Trump telling Schumer to “go to hell” in a social media post.