Obama said ‘the future looks a little bit brighter’ while the House speaker lied about New York mayor-elect’s policies

Left-leaning Americans awoke to a rare recent moment of political celebration with Democratic victories in several elections across the country, led by the election of Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York, while Republicans breathlessly predicted the end of the country.

“The future looks a little bit brighter,” Barack Obama wrote on X about Democratic victories on Tuesday. “It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win.”

Democrats celebrate while Republicans stew over Mamdani’s historic win and others

^{George Chidi (The Guardian)}

A Spanish-language immersion daycare in a leafy residential neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago was raided by federal immigration agents on Wednesday and a teacher was taken away, panicking school administrators and parents of infants, toddlers and pre-kindergarten children at the center, a staff worker at the daycare told Reuters.

Footage obtained by local WGN-TV showed two men, one in a balaclava, dragging a woman out of the colorfully decorated front doors of Rayito de Sol daycare center as she screamed. The men wore vests that said "Police" but no other agency markings were visible.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chicago-immigration-crackdown-agents-raid-daycare-senior-living-center-2025-11-05/

https://time.com/7331119/zohran-mamdani-billionaires-ackman-bloomberg/

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-foreign-ai-chips-state-funded-data-centres-sources-say-2025-11-05/

But, but, but ... that's my ball. You can't play with my ball!

Republicans in California on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a high-stakes redistricting measure that could help flip up to five congressional seats for Democrats.

The suit, filed by David Tangipa, a Republican assembly member, 18 California voters and the state Republican party in the US district court for the central district of California, argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.

The measure, Proposition 50, was approved by voters on Tuesday evening, in a decisive victory for Democrats. The plan temporarily gives the power to draw congressional districts to the California legislature, allowing it to adopt maps that will help Democrats pick up five seats in the US House of Representatives.

Obviously, if you represent the people, you can't let them vote on anything themselves.

Republicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measure

Prop 50, passed by voters yesterday, allows legislature to redraw congressional maps to benefit Democrats in House

^{Lauren Gambino (The Guardian)}

Drought is set to pose a greater risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market than floods, hurricanes, and wildfires combined.

Drought is quietly pushing American cities toward a fiscal cliff

^{Tik Root (Grist)}

"White House press briefings engage the American people on important issues affecting their daily lives — in recent months, war, the economy, and healthcare, and in recent years, a global pandemic," U.S. District Judge Amir Ali wrote in issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday. "The exclusion of deaf Americans from that programming, in addition to likely violating the Rehabilitation Act, is clear and present harm that the court cannot meaningfully remedy after the fact."

The White House stopped using live ASL interpreters at briefings and other public events when President Trump began his second term in January.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and two deaf men filed the lawsuit against Trump and Leavitt in May. The suit also names White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, along with the offices for president and vice president. It alleges the White House's failure to provide ASL violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in programs conducted by the federal government. The suit also claims the White House is in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments, which protect free speech and provide for due process, respectively.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

Flock Safety—the surveillance company behind the country’s largest network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs)—currently faces attacks on multiple fronts seeking to tear down the invasive and error-prone cameras across the US.

This week, two lawmakers, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), called for a federal investigation, alleging that Flock has been “negligently handling Americans’ personal data” by failing to use cybersecurity best practices. The month prior, Wyden wrote a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, alleging that Flock’s security failures mean that “abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable” and that they threaten to expose billions of people’s harvested data should a catastrophic breach occur.

“In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities,” Wyden wrote.

Read full article

Flock haters cross political divides to remove error-prone cameras

Lawmakers’ calls for Flock probe may help kill local contracts, expert says.

^{Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)}

Customs and Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore told the jury the snack "exploded all over him" and he "could smell the onions and mustard" on his uniform.

Neither side disputes that Sean Dunn, 37, did in fact lob obscenities and a deli-style sandwich at officers deployed by President Donald Trump to patrol the nation's capital in August. But Mr Dunn's lawyer argues it was not a criminal act.

The incident was captured on video and went viral, making Mr Dunn a symbol of opposition in Washington DC to Trump.

Government prosecutors initially tried to secure felony charges against Mr Dunn, but a grand jury declined to indict him. Prosecutors have instead charged him with a lower-level misdemeanour assault.

Sandwich thrown by protester 'exploded' and left mustard stain on border agent, court hears

Sean Dunn's attorney acknowledged he threw the sandwich, but argued it was a "harmless gesture".

^{Kayla Epstein (BBC News)}

Customs and Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore told the jury the snack "exploded all over him" and he "could smell the onions and mustard" on his uniform.

Neither side disputes that Sean Dunn, 37, did in fact lob obscenities and a deli-style sandwich at officers deployed by President Donald Trump to patrol the nation's capital in August. But Mr Dunn's lawyer argues it was not a criminal act.

The incident was captured on video and went viral, making Mr Dunn a symbol of opposition in Washington DC to Trump.

Government prosecutors initially tried to secure felony charges against Mr Dunn, but a grand jury declined to indict him. Prosecutors have instead charged him with a lower-level misdemeanour assault.

Sandwich thrown by protester 'exploded' and left mustard stain on border agent, court hears

Sean Dunn's attorney acknowledged he threw the sandwich, but argued it was a "harmless gesture".

^{Kayla Epstein (BBC News)}

Republicans asked a federal court to block newly approved maps in California that were designed to flip as many as five House seats for Democrats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/us/republicans-lawsuit-california-redistricting-maps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.y08.cBnv.IS-iLPi2RafZ

During the past month, we've been working rapidly on adding features to lemmy-ui. We also finished up the last major backend changes. This means we can soon go to the beta phase for 1.0, which will focus on testing, bug fixing and helping Lemmy clients to start updating for the new API. After that will be the release candidate phase when version 1.0 will be live tested on lemmy.ml.

You can see the changes in action on the test server voyager.lemmy.ml (which was recently wiped). Registration is open, you are welcome to try things out. To stay up to date with our progress look at the lemmy-ui 1.0 and lemmy 1.0 milestone issues.

The major changes during October were:
- Speeding up migrations for 1.0 and reducing database size
- Notify users about moderation actions
- Default data for new instances (welcome post and popular communities)
- Card views for post listing
- Showing community sidebar on create post page
- Blurhash for images

::: spoiler Full list of changes by user

matc-pub

• Pick date-fns based on translation description (fixes #3483)

dullbananas

• Shrink things that are rewritten in slow migrations

SleeplessOne1917

• Re-export PersonResponse from lemmy-api-common

MV-GH

• Reduce recompositions in the comments

dessalines

• Remove special BanFromCommunityResponse in favor of PersonResponse.
• Multi-community-feeds should be at /m/ , not /c/
• Fixing a few issues with federation-view exports.
• Fix release builds by remove space in platforms.
• Add comment for is_upvote API fields.
• Make sure creator_banned uses item_creator for ReportCombinedView
• Make all the serde tagged types snake_case
• Adding read bool to mark_many_as_read API.
• Make sure create_multi_community_entry returns the community.
• Fixing admin instance block expires_at to use a unix timestamp, with a check.
• Making multi-community follow and edit return a MultiCommunityResponse.
• Add wait after delete user to fix federation CI tests.
• Changing NotePerson response from SuccessResponse to PersonView
• Adding follow_state to MultiCommunityView
• Adding creator and community indexes for post_aggregates.
• Clean up post and comment actions bars
• Adding enable_animated_images, and hide_media setting.
• Adding support for stay_logged_in to login and signup fields
• Adding community description to form and community sidebar.
• Add blurhash image using unlazy.
• Adding collapse_bot_comments setting, and doing that action.
• Upgrading for new API updates
• Adding card and small card views
• In instance settings move admin list to users tab
• Fixup instance_blocks.tsx
• Add more settings
• Fix link-dark issues
• Remove tables in favor of bootstrap columns
• Use btn-sm for post and comment actions buttons.

Nutomic

• Remove some unused code
• Small compile speed optimizations
• Revert changes to crud trait which slowed down compilation (ref #5874)
• Retry tests in ci on failure (ref #5925)
• Handle plain identifiers in markdown
• Setup default data for new instance
• Fix wrong federation error and simplify code (fixes #4363)
• Implemente federated instances view (fixes #6063)
• Expire logins after one week by default, add param stay_logged_in
• Create plugin hook for new notifications and reports (fixes #1027, fixes #5349)
• Fix for NodeBB compat and updated test assets
• Include caller information in error logs
• Include id for CommunityHasNoFollowers
• Auto-follow community when enabling notifications (fixes #6081)
• Serialize enum variants in snake_case (fixes #6062)
• Dont send duplicate notification in case of reply with mention
• Include keyword blocks and discussion languages in backup (fixes #5811)
• Use proper title for replies and mentions in RSS feed (fixes #5357)
• Private community fixes
• Add build.rs to update db migrations macro (fixes #6005)
• Allow users to view comments of deleted posts (fixes #6044)
• Multi-community fixes
• Proper error message for image upload (fixes #6042)
• Case insensitive comparison for read_from_apub_id (fixes #6037)
• Move some errors to not be translated
• ReportCombined: add missing column creator_ban_expires_at
• Allow mods to resolve removed posts (fixes #6018)
• Split apub code into multiple crates, other changes for faster building
• Notify mod actions
• Remove env var LEMMY_UI_HTTPS (fixes #3573)
• Check for untranslated error messages (fixes #3478)
• Use localhost as testhost
• Private community
• Use upstream status code for error responses (fixes #3085)
• Change format for inserted person/community links (fixes #1743)
• Consistent size for action buttons (ref #3503)
• Disable comment form if post is removed or deleted
• Revert "Add button to expand all images"
• Enable some lint rules for jsx
• Block community from context menu (fixes #3306)
• In comment search results show post and community (fixes #1959)
• Open link for markdown help in new tab (fixes #2129)
• Add rel=nofollow to markdown links (fixes #542)
• Show sidebar on create post page (fixes #1522)
• Add audio player for direct links to audio files (fixes #2529)
• Fix "show context" (fixes #3496)
• Indicate removed/deleted comments (fixes #1144)
• Use lint to disallow console.log
• Filter community selection for posting (fixes #2604)

:::

Or see the full list of changes at the links below:

• Backend
• Frontend
• Jerboa

An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and Nutomic work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. The only available option are user donations.

To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached we can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.

Donate

LemmyNet/lemmy-ui

The official web app for lemmy. Contribute to LemmyNet/lemmy-ui development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

Andrew Cuomo, an elderly has-been, the lesser son of a greater sire, who as governor literally conspired with Republicans to hand them control of the New York state Senate for half a decade; who resigned from office in disgrace after he was credibly accused of 13 instances of sexual harassment; and whose campaign quite obviously had no purpose other than satisfying his own lust for accumulating personal power, along with that of his billionaire donors.

As the campaign progressed and Mamdani’s victory became ever more likely, Cuomo descended into vindictive gutter racism. He did not disagree with a right-wing radio host who said that Mamdani would be “cheering” another 9/11, suggested that Mamdani would have Muslim women “completely covered up,” and that he “doesn’t understand New York culture” because he’s a “citizen of Uganda.”

Cuomo happily took Donald Trump’s endorsement and went on Fox News to tout it. His closing campaign message, as The Nation’s Jeet Heer pointed out on Bluesky, smacked of Vidkun Quisling—implicitly threatening New Yorkers with a Trumpian occupation if they voted for anyone but Cuomo.

It was disgusting stuff. But it also was palpably desperate, and coming from one of the worst candidates imaginable...

...

What we see, I think, are a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X and in various group chats. It’s why they got so worked up about Mamdani in the first place—the New York City mayoralty is not some omnipotent office, and there are a dozen ways to hem it in at the state and local level if they so wished. What these oligarchs spent to stop Mamdani feels like less on an annual basis than he wants them to pay for a better future for all New Yorkers, a joke Mamdani himself has made.

In any case, his slight tax increase on rich people, free buses, and city-run grocery stores are pretty far from a communist revolution. But that’s not how it appears to rich people, surrounded on all sides by yes-men and toadies, who spend several hours a day marinating in an online Nazi sewer.

America’s Dumbest Billionaires Fail to Stop Zohran Mamdani

It’s encouraging on many levels: New York City didn’t submit to a campaign of flagrant bigotry from disgraced two-time loser Andrew Cuomo, and Americans, particularly young ones, can still be politically inspired by a good candidate with a good messa…

^{Ryan Cooper (The American Prospect)}

From the desert of Phoenix in the United States to the humid streets of Quezon City in the Philippines, mayors are facing the same new reality: Heat is here to stay, and it is impacting every element of city life. That’s why we — along with more than 30 other mayors from C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 of the world’s biggest cities tackling the climate emergency — are joining forces to protect our people today and prepare our communities for a hotter tomorrow. Through the new C40 Cool Cities Accelerator, we’ll work together to speed up bold and inclusive climate action that meets the urgency of this growing threat.

Why cities around the world are uniting to keep cool

A new global initiative is helping cities from Phoenix to Quezon City address extreme heat with shared solutions and local action.

^{Grist Creative (Grist)}