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The dominant force in Serbian politics for over 14 years, Aleksandar Vucic, who conceded defeat in a snap parliamentary poll on Sunday, rose from the wreckage of strongman Slobodan Milosevic's cabinet to the centre of power using his brand of populist nationalism.
For supporters, the 56-year-old represented stability, development and patriotism in a country scarred by the bloody wars of the 1990s and ensuing international isolation.
But opponents saw him as an increasingly authoritarian figure, twisting between the Kremlin and Brussels and leading a government accused of endemic corruption.
Vucic conceded his party had lost after voters cast ballots in record numbers in Sunday's vote, defeated by a new political force that emerged from a years-long protest movement.
'Based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we lost these elections,' Vucic told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade.
- Political turnaround -
Vucic rose to prominence in the 1990s as an ultra-nationalist ally of Milosevic, serving as his information minister in 1998.
After protests ousted the Yugoslav strongman in 2000, Vucic became a senior figure in the far-right Serbian Radical Party.
He was then a vocal supporter of Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both later sentenced to life for genocide and other crimes committed during the Bosnian war.
But Vucic underwent a dramatic rebrand in 2008, co-founding the conservative, pro-European Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which won parliamentary elections in 2012 and has dominated Serbian politics since.
He served as deputy prime minister, defence minister and prime minister before becoming president in 2017.
Even after polishing his image, Vucic has been reluctant to distance himself from nationalist leanings and far-right associates.
He has stopped short of condemning Serbs convicted of atrocities during the 1990s conflicts and looked the other way as pro-government media and political allies openly praised war criminals.
Despite trying to deny state involvement in a large funeral gathering for Mladic in the Serbian capital last month, several of his ministers attended, drawing sharp criticism from Brussels.
- 'Land of cranes' -
A relentless campaigner, he maintained a near-constant presence on pro-government television channels, embracing locals in tiny rural villages and chastising critics during lengthy news conferences.
He has cultivated the image of a tireless leader criss-crossing Serbia, attracting investment and creating jobs.
At the same time, he has juggled the competing interests of European Union aspirations and Serbia's close ties to Russia.
Supporters praised him as a brave defender of Serbian sovereignty, spending billions of euros on defence -- as he warned of foreign influence and pressure from NATO-member neighbours.
He often cited Serbia's infrastructure and improved living standards as proof of his success, once pledging to make the country a 'land of cranes'.
From the gleaming waterfront district to the numerous projects unfolding in preparation for Expo 2027, his party's slogan 'United Serbia' is plastered on billboards across the capital.
- Rail station tragedy -
But when a concrete canopy collapsed at a newly renovated train station in 2024 killing 16 people, the accusations of corruption which had dogged many of his signature projects caused an outpouring of anger.
Student-led demonstrations calling for transparent investigations drew hundreds of thousands to the streets in the largest protests since the Milosevic era.
As demands grew into calls for snap elections, Vucic and his supporters pushed back.
Students manning university blockades were labelled tools of foreign powers.
In September, nearly two years into the protests, Vucic finally called snap elections for October, citing 'major turbulence on the domestic political scene', thus meeting a key student demand.
'All of this will end on October 25,' Vucic said, referring to the protests, at a major pre-election rally in Novi Sad, the city where the canopy had collapsed.
oz/al/yad/jj
This article originally appeared on AFP at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/aleksandar-vucic-serbias-veteran-ruler-212043564.html
One of the men sued by a former Cornell University student identified as Jane Doe has asked a judge to dismiss the claims against him, arguing that her allegations do not support her broader accusations of rape and sexual assault.
Diego Sarabia filed the motion Friday seeking dismissal of all claims against him in the lawsuit Doe filed Sept. 16 in New York state court. Sarabia, who was a member of the Chi Phi fraternity, was one of seven men originally sued by Doe for allegedly participating in a gang rape at the Chi Phi house from Oct. 19 to 20, 2024.
Sarabia denies the allegations against him, according to the filing. His attorneys argue that even if the complaint’s factual allegations are accepted as true for the purposes of the motion, the claims against him were filed too late, are legally insufficient, or both.
James C. Knox, an attorney for Sarabia, wrote in the motion that as far as the allegations against his client, “this is essentially a lawsuit about a forced kiss.” Knox argued that the conduct Doe attributed to Sarabia did not qualify for the extended statute of limitations she cited for certain sexual offenses.
Doe accused Sarabia of grabbing her face, kissing her and snorting ketamine off her body with other fraternity members during a drug- and alcohol-fueled encounter in what was known as the “alumni room” of the fraternity house.
“Throughout a sprawling complaint approaching 600 paragraphs, plaintiff repeatedly, collectively and without differentiation accuses seven student defendants of ‘sexual assault and rape,’” Knox wrote in his filing. “Those legally conclusory statements do not substitute for pleaded facts.”
Knox argued that the complaint did not allege that Sarabia “supplied her with drugs or alcohol, participated in any of the alleged sexual encounters described elsewhere in the complaint, or was even present for most of the conduct that forms the basis of plaintiff’s broader allegations.”
The attorney said that the assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims were barred by a one-year statute of limitations and the allegations against Sarabia did not qualify for extensions cited in the complaint.
Doe’s attorney Thomas Giuffra declined to comment on Sunday. Giuffra previously agreed to withdraw claims against the acting president of the fraternity’s chapter at the time.
The lawsuit inspired calls for a reckoning at the Ivy League institution, where past and current students and community members have accused the administration of not doing enough to protect women from sexual assault.
Cornell’s Board of Trustees hired former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “to lead a comprehensive independent review of how the University prevents and responds to sexual harassment, sexual assault and related misconduct on campus.”
Doe’s allegations were investigated by Cornell University Police. An internal civil rights investigation led to the expulsion of two students and disciplinary action against others. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to bring charges in November 2024 based on a six-page statement in which Doe described some of the sexual conduct that night as consensual.
Van Houten declined to evaluate other investigative materials that had been gathered by investigators, including other witness statements.
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the evaluation inadequate and recently appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate the allegations. James’ office has started that process. The attorney general is expected to hire outside investigators to assist with the effort.
Two of the accused men are seeking to disqualify James from overseeing the investigation based on a comment she made on social media about the case before she was tapped to run the probe. They argued the state’s top law enforcement official had prejudged the case. Both challenges are still pending.
James has deflected calls to step down from the case and has said she is “committed to leading a comprehensive investigation they can trust, guided only by the facts, the evidence, and the law.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
This article originally appeared on NBC News at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cornell-fraternity-diego-sarabia-jane-doe-rcna605519
Voters will pick the winners of next month’s midterm elections, but it is the conservative Supreme Court that has set the rules.
Long before early voting got underway to decide control of Congress, the court exerted an unusually profound impact on the election with a series of decisions that have reshaped redistricting, campaign finance regulations, efforts to identify noncitizen voters and mail voting – frequently in a way that has benefited Republicans.
Some of those decisions received little attention, like the court’s ruling this month that cleared the way for political parties – and particularly, Republicans – to pour millions more into television advertising in tight races. Others were more notable, like the 6-3 ruling in April that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act’s power to protect minority voters, and prompted a new round of redistricting in Republican-led states.
Various rulings have exposed tensions among the justices that spilled into public view.
“The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works and has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should,” Justice Elena Kagan said at an event on Tuesday in a remarkably frank critique of the court’s actions.
Not all of the court’s decisions have backed the Republican position. Both conservative and liberal justices have been skeptical of efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to alter mail ballot systems, for instance.
Despite Trump’s evidence-free claims of widespread voter fraud, the court in September notably rejected the president’s push to give the US Postal Service the unprecedented power to withhold potentially millions of mail ballots. In June, a 5-4 majority upheld state laws that permit mail ballots to be received a few days after Election Day. Even as he has fixated on alleged problems with mail voting, Trump himself has frequently cast a ballot by mail.
Trump nominated three of the court’s nine justices during his first term. None of the three dissented from the court’s USPS decision.
“Justice Kagan is wildly off base, as are claims that the Supreme Court’s recent record in election cases has favored Republicans,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told CNN. “Her claims that the court has somehow undermined democracy are little more than political spin.”
If polls indicating that Democrats are poised for a victory next month are correct, then many of the Supreme Court’s recent election rulings may have only a negligible impact on the bottom line. But those following the long game say the impact of the Supreme Court’s decisions over the past year will be felt far beyond November.
“It’s critical to look beyond the partisan implications of the court’s decisions related to voting rights and to focus on how the court has undermined the very foundations of our multi-racial democracy,” said Samuel Spital, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “In a series of decisions over the last 13 years … a majority of unelected judges on the Supreme Court have dismantled the heart of the Voting Rights Act and put our multi-racial democracy in serious danger.”
What Snead described as “wildly off base,” Spital called “clear eyed.”
The timing of Kagan’s warning, just two weeks before the November 3 election, was notable.
“The people of America look around at this political system and think that all this money chasing all these political candidates is a nightmare,” Kagan said at the Catholic University law event last week. “And they’re right.”
Named to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama more than 16 years ago, Kagan is often viewed as the member of its three-justice liberal wing who is most receptive to compromise with her conservative colleagues. That often manifests in subtle ways, such as her decision not to join particularly pointed dissents written by the court’s other two liberals.
But when it comes to election disputes, Kagan has been unsparing both in her dissents and in public appearances.
Earlier this year, it was Kagan who wrote the dissent in the hugely important 6-3 decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, warning that the consequences would be “far-reaching and grave.” Asked last year about her favorite opinion she has authored, Kagan pointed to her dissent in another high-profile redistricting case from seven years ago.
Speaking at Princeton University in early 2025, Kagan used similarly stark terms to describe that case, in which the court’s 5-4 decision took federal courts out of the business of deciding challenges to partisan gerrymanders. In that decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court concluded even extreme line drawing for political advantage is “beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
“What the court did in that case, I thought, was just a real mistake,” Kagan told her alma mater last year. “The foundation of our democracy is voting, and if the voting rights aren’t equal then how does a system of democracy work?”
Kagan noted then that she had written “a lot of voting rights dissents” and that it is “an area that I really care about.”
The court’s most significant election decision this year came in April in a case called Louisiana v. Callais. With the conservatives aligned against the liberals, the court held that Louisiana’s decision to draw a second Black and Democratic district into the state’s overwhelmingly Republican delegation amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
That decision set off a series of subsequent emergency rulings in which the court allowed both Louisiana and Alabama to quickly redraw their maps for this election in a way that targeted Democratic-held seats. Those decisions boosted Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting drive. When the dust settled, Republicans had gained an advantage in nine seats.
When Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, suggested in May that the court was rolling over its “principles” in pursuit of influencing the November election, conservative Justice Samuel Alito called the insinuation “insulting.”
“What principle has the court violated?” Alito wrote. “The principle that we should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as partisan?”
Not all of the redistricting decisions went Republicans’ way. The court three times rejected an effort by Missouri Republicans to draw a Democratic congressman out of his seat. And back in February, with no noted dissent, the court allowed California to use a Democrat-friendly map for this year’s election.
Some of the court’s other election decisions have drawn less fire but will nevertheless have an impact.
Over a dissent from the three liberal justices, the court last month allowed the Department of Homeland Security to provide citizenship verification to states based on a database critics say is riddled with errors. Trump has fixated on unfounded claims of widespread voting by noncitizens. The administration’s latest litigation on that front, challenging votes cast by some 20,000 Californians the administration believes could be noncitizens, is potentially on a path to Supreme Court review before the election.
And the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire officials to limit when voters may use a student ID to receive a ballot, agreeing that a lower court ruling that blocked enforcement of the policy was too close to Election Day. A recent CNN poll found that Democrats enjoy a 31-point advantage over Republicans among younger adults.
The court last week backed a Republican effort to lower television campaign ad rates for political parties, rejecting an appeals court decision that would have subjected the Federal Communications Commission to faster judicial review of its decision making. In a related decision in June, the court erased limits on how much political parties could coordinate with federal candidates.
Together, the decisions likely incentivized a move this week by the Republican National Committee to unload over $50 million to help midterm candidates. Kagan blasted the decision in June, noting in dissent that it overruled a 2001 precedent and predicting it would flood more money into campaigns.
“For those who think there is too much of it in this country — for those who would prefer even more money to be pumped even more easily into politics despite the danger of corruption,” she wrote, “this overruling is for you.”
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This article originally appeared on CNN at https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/25/politics/supreme-court-midterm-rules
When footage of a man being hit by federal immigration officers’ SUV in Northern California became public, the Department of Homeland Security responded by saying the man had jumped on the vehicle’s hood.
Local police raised doubts about federal officials’ account as they announced a criminal investigation into Tuesday morning’s incident involving the pedestrian, 37-year-old Antonio Moreida, citing video footage that contradicted DHS’ statement.
Footage from a nearby surveillance camera, a bystander’s cellphone recording and Moreida’s GoPro, which had already been made public at the time of the agency’s statement, told a different story of what happened on a residential street in Woodland, an agricultural city just outside of Sacramento. The incident is the latest in which DHS’ account has been contradicted by officials and video evidence amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
In a statement Wednesday morning, DHS said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers didn’t hit a pedestrian.
“An agitator jumped onto the hood of an ICE vehicle and the officer driving applied the brakes,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement in response to CNN’s request for information. “The agitator slid off the hood. ICE immediately contacted EMS and the Woodland Police Department. Flopping for the camera is dangerous, especially when it interferes with a federal law enforcement operation,” apparently accusing the man of faking his injuries.
After the incident on Tuesday, Woodland Police Chief Ryan Kinnan said in a statement he found footage of the incident troubling. Investigators were working to gather evidence and statements and to review available audio and video related to the incident, including video taken from multiple perspectives, police said in a Facebook post. Woodland Police didn’t take part in the ICE operation the agents were involved in that morning, police said.
The following day, Woodland Police called DHS’ account “inconsistent.”
“Certain claims made in the DHS statement are inconsistent with the video evidence obtained and reviewed by Woodland Police investigators,” Kinnan said in an update Wednesday. The update said investigators had established, based on video evidence, the pedestrian had been hit by the vehicle driven by ICE agents and that he had not jumped onto the vehicle.
The local police department is conducting a criminal investigation into the events leading up to the collision and the actions of those involved, Kinnan said Wednesday.
By Thursday, in response to follow-up questions about the video footage, federal officials no longer said the person jumped on the hood.
“This individual chose to directly impede a law enforcement action and stand in the middle of an active road,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “Our officers deliberately attempted to avoid making contact with this anti-ice protestor and drive around him, while also braking. We strongly urge individuals to not stand in the middle of active roadways while a law enforcement vehicle is approaching.”
Footage reviewed by CNN shows Moreida, a Woodland resident, in the middle of the street at around 9:40 a.m. Tuesday. Moreida said he had responded to a call that morning by NorCal Resist, a group which monitors immigration operations, about ICE activity in Woodland, he told CNN on Tuesday, hours after the incident.
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-He said he was trying to record agents’ unmarked vehicles. He had been recording one vehicle, standing on the car’s driver’s side, when it turned left and drove off, which he said pushed him into the middle of the street.
Video from Moreida’s GoPro shows him following a black Dodge Durango with tinted windows as it drives down the street.
Then, he said he heard a loud engine before seeing the agents’ black Chevy Tahoe drive toward him, which is shown in his GoPro footage, though the video has no audio.
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-Down the street, the bystander’s cellphone video shows the Durango pass the Tahoe, which has tinted windows, on a residential street. In the video’s background, people can be heard blowing whistles, presumably to alert people nearby of ICE’s presence in the neighborhood.
The ICE agent driving the Tahoe moves toward Moreida and between the cars with its brake lights on, footage shows. In the bystander’s video, Moreida isn’t yet visible.
The SUV’s wheels begin to turn to the left only a few feet from Moreida, a wider angle of surveillance footage from a home shows.
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-“The individual was standing in the street long enough that a reasonable person should be able to see them and recognize that they were there,” said Ryan Schwank, a former ICE attorney and training instructor who reviewed the videos provided by CNN.
Schwank also took issue with ICE’s characterization that Moreida was standing in the middle of an active road and impeding law enforcement’s actions.
“When we’re looking at Antonio’s actions, he’s not impeding. He’s not standing blocking the vehicle from moving,” he said. “He’s standing and filming, and that’s well within his bounds to do. He’s well within his rights to do what he was doing.”
Moreida’s GoPro appears to show when he’s struck by the front-right side of the vehicle before he drops his camera.
“Before I knew it, it just drove straight into me,” he said. “I took the hood of the car straight to the chest. It initially took the wind out of me and I couldn’t breathe.”
The surveillance footage shows Moreida take a step back when he appears to make contact with the car. He is then seen falling toward the ground, off the front-right side of the car, the footage shows.
In the bystander’s footage from behind, a screeching noise is heard before the Tahoe jolts forward. The SUV veers left before straightening out, the video shows.
The bystander’s angle shows the Tahoe brake lights turn off. Moreida is then visible in the bystander’s video, falling to the ground and rolling, first on his back with his legs swinging above him. He then appears seated upright in the nearby surveillance footage, this time facing the sidewalk.
The SUV’s brake lights turn back on briefly before it drives farther down the street, the surveillance footage shows.
The driver, an ICE agent, stayed near the scene and called local dispatch, Woodland Police said. The agent cooperated with police during the initial investigation, the local agency said.
Moreida said an off-duty EMT provided him aid at the scene before Woodland Police officers arrived. Federal agents didn’t approach him after he was hit by the SUV, he said.
Moreida said he was eventually transported to the hospital. He said he had X-rays taken of his swollen knees, where he said he had the most damage. In addition, he said he has bruises and cuts from the road.
ICE has reduced the amount of training for officers, including in vehicle operations and how to deal with confrontations, said Schwank, who is now an agency whistleblower after resigning in February.
On Saturday, ICE said it is instituting additional training for officers.
“ICE training will now be extending to 72 days. The change, effective June 2, 2026, will apply to all new academy classes beginning July 1, 2026. All graduates of the previous academy curriculum will attend follow-on training at the Advanced Field Officer Training Program,” an ICE spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNN. “As we have said all along, ICE training does not end when recruits graduate from the academy. ICE officers go through a rigorous on-the-job training and mentorship. This additional training is tracked online and monitored closely.”
Soon after it became public, local officials expressed dismay over the incident, which occurred in a rural Northern California community that’s about half Latino. More than a fifth of the population is foreign-born, according to US Census estimates.
“The lack of truth in the Department of Homeland Security’s statement is evidenced by video taken at the scene,” Woodland Mayor Tom Stallard said in a statement issued Wednesday. “All of us can be assured that the Police Department’s investigation into this disturbing incident will continue to be speedy, fair, and impartial.”
US Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes Woodland, said ICE’s statements about the facts surrounding the incident were disappointing but not surprising.
“ICE has a history of trying to hide the facts and mislead the public,” he told CNN. “And this is another example of that happening.”
On the day of the operation, Thompson called on Acting ICE Director David Venturella to investigate the collision, including by preserving evidence and cooperating with local authorities. As of Friday, the congressman had yet to receive a response to his letter, his office told CNN.
CNN’s Taylor Galgano contributed to this report.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
This article originally appeared on CNN at https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/25/us/woodland-man-struck-by-ice-vehicleThe elevator dinged open. A year ago in this building, surgeons removed Banda’s right breast, and she still didn't know whether treatment had expunged the cancer from her body. Doctors had told her it would be tough to beat.
“I’m more of a positive person myself,” Banda said, now sitting with a white wristband in a dim waiting room. But the bills are harder to dismiss, and the single mother with six children in her care repeated something like a mantra. “Keep the house. Keep the cars. And just keep the kids stable.”
That’s true for many Americans, as rising healthcare costs leave more families with a sinking feeling after seeing the bill for surgery or medication. Heading into the Nov. 3 midterm elections, about half of registered voters said healthcare costs are a major problem for them and their families, up from a little more than one-third four years ago, according to a Fox News poll from September.
With party control of Congress at stake, registered voters are nearly twice as likely to say they trust Democrats over Republicans to handle healthcare, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from the same month. Those frustrations, combined with broader concerns over rising prices, have sapped support for President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
Banda knows how that feels. She backed Trump in each of his three campaigns, motivated by her opposition to abortion. But when cancer came, the ensuing scramble to make ends meet was painful enough to rearrange her priorities, and she started to think about voting Democratic for the first time.
The 46-year-old was ushered into a sterile room for her appointment, her phone lit up with a text. “Please contact TD Auto Finance.”
“This one’s $1,300,” she said of the car payment bill. “I have to go back to work.”
She had been on sick leave from her job selling internet service for one year, and she needed the income to support her three kids and three more she had taken in after her sister's death.
The doctor said her reconstruction surgery could be scheduled early next year. “I was hoping for maybe December,” Banda said, “only because I've met my deductibles.” Come January, she would have to pay down the $7,500 again. Earlier may be possible, the doctor replied, if the skin around her surgical scar loosens.
The evening had cooled slightly by the time she walked back through the rows of parked cars, their ebb and flow marking the tide of sickness, survival and death in a small corner of a colossal healthcare industry that saves lives while taking in over $5 trillion every year.
Banda paid $8 for parking as she left.
Two weeks later, Banda was back at work, making door-to-door rounds to sell Spectrum's Wi-Fi in McAllen, her city along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. Banda, holding blue flyers, walked along a row of storefronts, some that shuttered since she last was in the area.
She hadn't had a sale and commission since October of last year, after the biopsy and diagnosis.
The doctor who gave her the news had hugged Banda, and she sobbed even though she never really sobs in front of other people. During chemo, her children took turns buzzing off her wispy hair. When her 9-year-old daughter's hand quivered, a teenage cousin helped guide the clipper over her mother’s scalp.
Banda’s first impulse was to maintain normalcy, stability, for the children.
But that requires roughly $7,000 a month for utilities, mortgage, car payments and groceries, along with the two water leaks. Then, even with insurance through her job, the surgeries, chemo and radiation added up to over $25,000 that she's been paying off, making Banda one of tens of millions of other people in the United States in medical debt.
Banda tries not to dwell on death and debt.
“It’ll consume you,” she says. She smothers those thoughts beneath her bubbly demeanor and avoids being alone. But that truce, between her insistence on positivity and the fears that it covers, is brittle.
Certain thoughts still arrive uninvited. Banda’s late sister, Melissa, didn’t have life insurance. Banda makes sure it's a payment she never misses.
“Sometimes I think, and I shouldn’t think like this, but I’m worth more gone than here,” she said one day. “Obviously, the goal is not that, the goal is to beat it,” she continued, “to keep the house and keep the cars.”
So far she has, with the help of others.
On top of child support, the father of Banda's 9-year-old often pays $400 a week for a nanny to help with the kids. Banda’s own father sent her $700 before for her recent Houston appointment, one of his many cash infusions. Her high school classmates, who she hadn’t been in close touch with in decades, fundraised by selling grilled chicken, rice and beans from a roadside tent. Two GoFundMe fundraisers raised nearly $30,000 and Banda rented her late sister’s house while putting her own in forbearance.
But months of insecurity takes its own, sleepless toll. She needed to sell some internet services to catch up.
After sticking the Spectrum Wi-Fi flyers onto empty storefronts, she drove to pick up her kids from school. The following day she had a morning meeting at a barbershop for what would be her first sale back at work.
A lifelong Christian, Banda had voted her anti-abortion stance in past elections. When her sister was kidnapped and murdered by her ex-husband in 2020, Banda retreated from religion. The cancer brought her back to church with an apology to God, but it also made her rethink her politics.
She voted for Trump in 2016, and his first four years seemed steady, so she voted for him again in 2020. Democratic President Joe Biden's tenure, including the tail end of a global pandemic and rising inflation, felt like bedlam, so she voted for Trump to return to the White House in 2024.
But two years later and fighting an expensive disease, she had found no respite from high prices.
So when James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminary student running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, visited one of Banda’s fundraisers — speaking about his diabetes and his work in the Texas Statehouse to lower the price of insulin — it moved her. “Imagine if he can do that for the cancer,” she said.
Talarico and his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have different approaches to healthcare. Talarico wants all Americans to be able to join Medicare; Paxton proposed a $25,000 tax deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Talarico also supports a law guaranteeing abortion access nationwide, which Banda has voted against for years. But after she slid into debt to stay alive, after her grocery bills mounted and the high school had to comp the kids' soccer gear she couldn't afford, Banda’s anti-abortion concerns have been superseded by costs.
“Because it’s what I’m living,” she said. “I'm living it.'
Banda cast an early ballot for Talarico. “Never voted Democrat before today!!” she wrote in a text with blue heart emoji.
Banda had just started a new cancer-targeting medication that cost $16,000 a month, reduced to $500 by insurance. By the afternoon, she was nauseous and fatigued, unable to eat. The malaise would keep her home the next day. She would miss the meeting with the barbershop to close her first deal since getting sick, though she felt confident it was in the bag.
But Banda pushed through the discomfort one evening to join her family as they replaced the flowers at her sister's tomb.
She drove past the headstones and oak trees in the evening’s slanting light, and the family gathered around Melissa Banda's tomb in an open-air mausoleum. There was no speech. Their eulogy was her father, Fidel Banda, methodically clipping and arranging the flowers for his daughter.
Banda walked along the wall of tombs. She will find out on Election Day whether the cancer is in remission or whether it's spread to her organs.
“This one’s for me,” she said, pointing to a blank tomb next to her sister's.
“Mom!” said her daughter with the huffiness of a 9-year-old. “Why would you say that?”
Banda smiled and added, “in a hundred years.'
This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/she-voted-trump-every-time-123400184.html
One way or another, LIV Golf is in its final days as originally created. The tour began life as a PGA Tour breakaway funded by Saudi Arabia's virtually limitless Public Investment Fund, but now is working to both line up financing and hold onto players in preparation for what league officials have termed 'LIV 2.0.' With a self-imposed go/no-go deadline nearing, several recent developments have complicated plans for a new version of the league.
For players, LIV's chief drawing card was the paychecks with astounding numbers of zeroes. Stars, former stars and non-stars alike all cashed in during LIV's run, earning many millions more than they would have been able to on the PGA Tour or the Europe-based DP World Tour. But when Saudi Arabia cut off funding for LIV in April, the pipeline for those paychecks dried up, and now player after player has decided to take their chances elsewhere.
The most notable defection came several weeks ago, when Jon Rahm decided he'd had enough of LIV. Rahm's jump to LIV in late 2023 was a seismic moment in golf history, a declaration that the league was capable of enticing even one of the world's best players. But after three years of absolute domination on LIV and underperformance in majors, Rahm opted to walk away from millions — perhaps even tens of millions — owed to him under his initial contract. Rahm's future plans aren't yet known, but the fact that he was willing to forgo the remainder of his contract is a stark statement on his belief in LIV 2.0.
Several other notable players have followed Rahm out the door. In recent days, Ian Poulter announced he would be ending his LIV tenure, expressing gratitude on X for the opportunity:
Life update…✍🏼 pic.twitter.com/kdSQIOmxZ0
— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) October 23, 2026
Rahm's Legion XIII teammate Tyrrell Hatton also announced he wouldn't be playing in LIV 2.0. Like Rahm, his next event will be the DP World Tour's Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship in early November. Major winners Sergio Garcia and Louis Oosthuizen, among many others, have declared that they intend to pursue other opportunities outside LIV Golf.
The defection of so many notable players — in name if not necessarily in current skill — makes the challenge of bringing LIV Golf 2.0 to light that much more difficult. Professional golf on an international scale is a star-driven system, and having notable names in the field is the fastest way to draw attention to an event.
Accordingly, LIV's new investor, BC Partners Credit, had set a deadline of Sunday, Oct. 25, for players to commit to the league, though BC has the ability to move that deadline. LIV's own attorneys have suggested in recent bankruptcy hearings that the league would make a decision on its future existence by the end of this month.
Several players aren't simply walking away from LIV, however; they're seeking what they claim they're still owed. On Sunday, The Athletic reported that more than 10 players, led by Masters champions Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson, are seeking more favorable severance deals from the Public Investment Fund. The unpaid terms of their contracts reportedly total more than $100 million.
Johnson's attorney David Cornwell suggested that the players are reluctant to sign on with LIV 2.0 until the remaining obligations of LIV 1.0 reach a satisfactory conclusion. The Athletic reported that the PIF had offered the players two cents on the dollar for the remainder of those contracts, and Cornwell indicated that the PIF's decision to cut off funding for LIV ought to give other sports entities pause.
'The PIF was an honorable business partner until what we regard as its abandonment of LIV golfers,' Cornwell told The Athletic. 'Professional sports leagues and their player unions in the United States, along with sports organizations worldwide, should take notice: the PIF's treatment of LIV golfers may signal how it will treat professional athletes in other sports. How you do one thing is usually how you do everything.'
At the same time, court documents indicated that many LIV executives were paid hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in retention payments and bonuses prior to the league's bankruptcy filing this summer. While retention payments aren't uncommon during bankruptcy proceedings, the fact that LIV was paying significant amounts to executives while vendors went unpaid raised questions and opened up the league to external criticism.
LIV and BC Partners have developed a plan that could bring in up to $300 million in financing for LIV 2.0, and players would hold a majority ownership stake in the new entity. However, as of the deadline date of Sunday only four players — Richard Bland, Ben Campbell, Brendan Steele and Cameron Tringale — had formally committed to the next iteration of the league. Bryson DeChambeau, a free agent who has been linked to the LIV restructuring in the last few months, has not formally committed to the next version of the league just yet.
This article originally appeared on Yahoo Sports at https://sports.yahoo.com/golf/article/as-liv-golf-deadline-nears-players-are-departing-demanding-payment-171817228.htmlWhy are major Democrats and Republicans flocking to Mississippi in recent weeks?
In a climate where polls show President Donald Trump's approval ratings cratering, Democrats are unusually optimistic about Scott Colom's chances of flipping the Senate seat held by incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith -- even in deep-red Mississippi.
'We got to have a senator that looks out for Mississippi, that puts Mississippi farmers first, Mississippi small businesses first, represent our values by not allowing corruption to ruin our country and actually delivers on the commitments to put America first,' Colom told ABC News in an interview earlier this week.
The incumbent's campaign dismisses the Democratic push as the last-ditch effort of a campaign that will fall short.
Gov. Wes Moore says key races in South 'in play,' Democrats 'made mistakes' not investing earlierColom is a district attorney for four counties along the Mississippi-Alabama border and a former nominee to become a U.S. district judge. He would be Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
Democrats have argued that Colom's prominent credentials, as well as voter pushback against Republican incumbents and motivation among Democratic-leaning Black voters, could help boost him. Mississippi's population is around 36% Black, according to U.S. Census data.
Colom faces an uphill battle, as Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982 and voted for Donald Trump in 2024 by around 20 points. ABC News rates the race solid Republican.
But he has gotten the attention of national Democrats; major party figures such as former former Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock have campaigned with him. Former President Barack Obama also recorded an ad for him released earlier this month.
Harris, during a rally with Colom on Thursday, told attendees, 'I've been in those rooms where there's no cameras, it's senators talking to each other... When you have a voice like his in that room, just think about the impact that's going to have on the decisions coming out of that room. Think about that. This is no ordinary time, and this is no ordinary man.'
Colom also went viral online last week after a social video he posted showed Hyde-Smith, during a local news interview from February, saying 'You have so many proteins to choose from' while discussing how to deal with higher prices on meat and other goods. In the interview, Hyde-Smith also spoke about working on regulations that would help energy production, and tax incentives to help development.
But it was the proteins part that Colom's campaign seized on, with a punchy video that featured voters mocking the senator's words, with one saying, 'Pick another protein ... I'd rather pick another Senator instead.' (The campaign has confirmed to ABC News that the video has been turned into a campaign ad.)
One concrete sign of confidence among Democrats over Colom's chances came on Tuesday, when the Senate Majority PAC, an outside group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, announced it would spend $1.2 million on an ad campaign across broadcast TV and digital for ads for Colom.
Asked what signs the group sees in Mississippi that makes it worth investing in, spokesperson Lauren French wrote, 'Cindy Hyde-Smith has spent a decade in Washington without passing a single piece of legislation, and Mississippians have noticed.'
Hyde-Smith has cosponsored legislation that has passed into law but legislation she initially sponsored or reintroduced has not become law, according to congressional records. Asked to respond to Senate Majority PAC, Hyde-Smith's campaign pointed to how bills from lawmakers 'are often passed as part of larger legislative packages,' and that has been true for some of Hyde-Smith's bills, including the first one she introduced. The campaign also pointed out that she is running for only her second full term.
French said Colom is running a 'disciplined campaign' with messages resonating with voters.
Colom and Hyde-Smith have some history, as she blocked his nomination for federal judge in 2023. She cited his support for transgender rights and having previously been boosted by a George Soros-linked PAC, according to the Mississippi Free Press.
He insists his bid for Senate is not motivated by a desire to get back at her.
'It has nothing to do with the run for me ... as a Christian, I forgive her. It's about the people in Mississippi,' Colom told ABC News.
Hyde-Smith dismissed Colom's chances.
'We are confident that Mississippians will once again send Cindy Hyde-Smith back to the U.S. Senate on November 3rd. This is simply Washington insiders making a last ditch effort to give life to Scott Colom's failing campaign,' campaign manager Jake Monssen told ABC News in a statement.
Hyde-Smith's supporters may be more motivated after a boost from President Donald Trump, who's set to hold a rally in Mississippi on Monday as part of a swing of campaign rallies mostly in red states.
The Republican National Committee announced the rally around a week after Colom's social video went viral, although Trump and the group have not indicated why they are doing the rally there and Trump has expressed confidence in Hyde-Smith.
'Cindy Hyde-Smith's very popular ... So if I need to get her over the top, I would go there [to Mississippi]. She's great. Cindy Hyde-Smith is great,' Trump told reporters when asked Thursday about the Senate election.
Hyde-Smith will be attending the rally, according to her campaign.
This article originally appeared on ABC News at https://abcnews.com/Politics/democrats-aim-deep-red-mississippi-senate-seat-scott/story?id=137484924
