Former US president Barack Obama hit the campaign trail Saturday for fellow Democrats ahead of closely-watched state elections, laying into Donald Trump over his “shambolic” policies and warning of the dangers facing American democracy.Obama, who remains a powerful figure in today’s Democratic Party, took the stage to robust applause in Virginia and then New Jersey to stump for two candidates in gubernatorial elections seen as critical bellwethers ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.The 64-year-old quickly noted how Americans frustrated with rising inflation, energy costs and home prices were “willing to take a chance” on a national candidate like Donald Trump who promised relief from such challenges. But nine months into Trump’s second term, “has any of that gotten better?” Obama asked in Norfolk, Virginia as the crowd responded: “No.””Is the economy working better for you? Because it sure has gotten better for Trump and his family,” he said.”For ordinary families, costs haven’t gone down, they’ve gone up — thanks to this shambolic tariff policy,” Obama added, refering to the import duties Trump has imposed on various nations.Four states hold off-year elections on November 4, including New York, where a dramatic mayoral race will determine who runs the country’s most populous city.Until this weekend, Obama had played a relatively subdued role in the campaigning.On Saturday he stumped for two female gubernatorial hopefuls: former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and current US House Democrat Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.Spanberger holds a roughly nine point lead over her Republican rival, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, while Sherrill is locked in a tighter race against businessman Jack Ciattarelli, according to poll averages.”New Jersey, it’s time to point America in a better direction,” Obama said in Newark.While Obama described himself as the “hope-and-change guy,” he stressed there was cause for deep concern.”We don’t need to speculate about the dangers to our democracy — they’re here,” he said.Obama also slammed congressional Republicans, whom he said “refuse to buck the president even when they know he is out of line.”And he expressed worry about a US Supreme Court that is showing “no willingness to check this administration’s excesses.”

Approximately one in eight Americans receive food stamp benefits from the US government, a program at risk of losing its funding as of Saturday due to the government shutdown.One such beneficiary is Eric Dunham, a 36-year-old man who became disabled after an accident and needs help from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to live.”If I don’t get food stamps I can’t eat,” Dunham told AFP, explaining that after all his expenses, he has just $24 left over per month.”That’s it,” the father of two teenagers said. “The rest goes to child support.”Since the federal government shuttered on October 1 due to ongoing budget disagreements between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, President Donald Trump’s administration has announced it would no longer be able to fund SNAP as of Saturday — the first cessation since the program began six decades ago.A federal judge stepped in Friday and ordered the government to use emergency funds to keep SNAP running, and Trump said he aimed to comply. But many recipients have had their aid disrupted amid the bureaucratic tug-of-war.Dunham — who works in the service industry, though in a reduced capacity since his accident — was able to receive some sandwiches and drinks on Saturday afternoon distributed by Petit Beignets and Tapioca, a restaurant in northwest Houston.”There’s a lot of layoffs going around, and on top of that, we have the government shutdown and the SNAP benefits — nobody knew what was going to happen, and I made sandwiches for someone who comes and has SNAP benefits, and at least can have one meal for sure,” the restaurant’s owner Nhan Ngo, 37, said.Though Dunham could not use his SNAP card to repay Ngo, he gave him a surprise hug as a show of thanks. – ‘Not something extraordinary or luxurious’ -Elsewhere in the city, thousands of people who did not receive their food stamps or fear they will not get them in the near future lined up in cars outside NRG Stadium, where the Houston Food Bank is distributing fruit and non-perishable food items.The food bank’s president Brian Greene told AFP that the SNAP stoppage affects “about 425,000 households just in the Houston area.””So every community is trying to step up to help these families get by in the meantime.”Despite the judicial order to resume funding SNAP during the shutdown, “it would take several days for the states to restart the program,” Greene explained. “They all had to stop because they were out of money.”The gap in benefits impacted Sandra Guzman, a 36-year-old mother of two, who had placed an order for her food stamps last week but was told there were none available. She had to seek food aid elsewhere in the meantime.”This is not something extraordinary or luxurious, this is something basic as getting food for my kids,” Guzman told AFP. “I’ll say food stamps represent 40 percent… of my expenses.”- Trump’s ballroom or food aid -Mary Willoughby, a 72-year-old Houston resident, waited in line outside the stadium with her granddaughter to receive food. She thinks if the aid freeze lasts, it could cause widespread chaos.”We need our food stamps. We need our social security. We need our Medicare… If you cut all that out, it’s going to be nothing but a big war right now because people are gonna start robbing,” she said. “We need the help.”Another person in line, Carolyn Guy, 51, said she found it absurd that the Trump administration was paying millions to build a new White House ballroom while claiming there was no money to fund SNAP benefits. “Why are you taking our stuff from us? We work hard,” she said. “You can take our food stamps, but here you’re getting ready to build a ballroom? Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Matt James has collected gold nuggets for years from the hills and riverbeds of California, but as the precious metal’s price soars, he has found an unexpected El Dorado: on social media.Though the value has fluctuated, it has effectively doubled in the last two years, reaching an all-time high of more than $4,380 an ounce in October.”My social media channels are definitely seeing an uptick in traffic right now,” James told AFP during one of his expeditions in northern California, where the Gold Rush first erupted in the mid-1800s.The rise in clicks on his posts — and the related increase in commissions he makes on sales of products he uses in his prospecting — has generated a new income source for James.”I’m not getting rich by it, from it, by any means. But I’m certainly paying for myself to maintain my hobby and my passion and pay for the equipment,” he said.The 34-year-old project manager is the host of the Mountaineer Matt channel on YouTube. His videos typically earn tens of thousands of views.”The question everybody always asks is ‘Where (does one) find gold?’ Unfortunately, that’s the question that nobody wants to answer,” James explained.”Gold is very, very hard to find, and everyone wants to kind of keep it to themselves.””Mountaineer Matt” has never lost hope of discovering “The Big Nugget” — the one that will make him rich.But he is well aware that today’s finds bear little resemblance to those in the early days of the Gold Rush in 1849, when men came to mine the Mother Lode in the Sierra Nevada mountains.James nevertheless says there is gold to be had — you just need very specialized equipment to find it.- ‘Tremendous growth’ –  Cody Blanchard is hoping his Heritage Gold Rush can serve the niche market — and help him turn a hobby into a thriving business.The store offers everything from basic tools to pan for gold in the river, such as pickaxes and scoops, to pinpointers and high-tech metal detectors that can cost thousands of dollars.The 35-year-old sanitation worker — who organizes paid gold-digging tours — says he had tripled his yearly average find from one ounce a year to three using the gadgets.”As a business, I’ve seen tremendous growth in a very short amount of time,” he said, referring to sales of top-priced items.For Blanchard, if people find more gold using his products, it is the best kind of advertising. – ‘Great hobby’ -The Gold Rush transformed California, known as the Golden State, and many towns in the Sierra Nevada are working to keep that moment in history alive.Columbia State Historic Park is a preserved Gold Rush settlement that allows local and foreign tourists to try and strike it rich at the Matelot Gulch Mining Company.Nikaila DeLorenzi, whose family has operated the attraction within the park for more than 60 years, says there has been an uptick in both visitors and equipment sales in recent weeks.”There’s a lot of burn scar areas from our local fires and surrounding areas which are good for erosion. There’s a lot of sediment that is falling down,” DeLorenzi explained.”So, all good opportunities to pan for gold — and now that gold’s at $4,000 an ounce, people are thinking this is a great hobby” that might pay off, she added.Charlene Hernandez, who was panning for gold with her family, says she hopes California is on the cusp of a modern-day Gold Rush.”With all the money changing and the currency changing, it seems like the gold is really something you can count on that’s been kind of solid,” Hernandez said.”When people are more educated and understand the importance and the security in gold, it could be a different kind of Gold Rush than what we actually read about in history, right?”

New Yorkers have a stark choice for their new mayor at the polls on Tuesday: a young leftist, a scandal-tainted former governor, and a Republican outsider.AFP looks at each candidate vying to run the most populous US city ahead of a vote being closely watched by President Donald Trump. – Zohran Mamdani: surprise favorite – The 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani was barely known to the public before his shock victory in the Democratic primary in June, which made him a firm favorite to become mayor. A self-proclaimed democratic socialist from an elite family, Mamdani was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent and has lived in the United States since he was seven, becoming a naturalized US citizen in 2018. He would be New York’s first-ever Muslim mayor if elected.Mamdani boasts a strong base of young and immigrant voters thanks largely to a campaign focused on the soaring cost of living in the city of some 8.5 million residents.He has promised more rent control, free day care and buses, and city-run neighborhood grocery stores. Mamdani has attracted scorn from President Donald Trump, who calls him a “little communist,” but the New York State assemblyman has brushed off the criticism.He is a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause but has also made a point of vocally denouncing antisemitism in recent months.Before entering politics, Mamdani had a brief venture into the world of rap: performing under the alias “Young Cardamom.” – Andrew Cuomo: old hand -A former governor of New York state, Andrew Cuomo is hoping for a comeback from sexual harassment allegations that led to his resignation in 2021. The 67-year-old Democrat running as an independent, has led a centrist campaign for mayor drawing on his decades of experience in politics — including a stint as New York attorney general and in president Bill Clinton’s administration. He has prioritized public safety with a pledge to hire 5,000 new officers for the New York Police Department. Cuomo has also proposed building new housing for residents of differing income levels, smaller classroom sizes and more access to affordable health care. Many New Yorkers will recall his ten-year spell as governor which covered the Covid-19 pandemic, during which his leadership was initially praised before he faced criticism for understating the number of deaths in state nursing homes.Cuomo was married to Kerry Kennedy, a scion of the famed US political family.- Curtis Sliwa: the outsider – As a Republican running in an avowedly Democratic megacity, Curtis Sliwa has virtually no chance of winning the mayoral seat. But the 71-year-old could still tip ballots for Mamdani or Cuomo given his sway with a small but significant proportion of voters. Sliwa — once a night manager of a McDonald’s restaurant in New York — made his name with the Guardian Angels subway patrol group, which still sees him routinely sport a red beret. He ran for mayor in 2021 but lost to the incumbent Eric Adams, who is not seeking reelection. Despite being the Republican nominee, Sliwa has refused to fall in line with Trump and has opposed elements of  the US president’s immigration crackdown. This year his campaign has focused on the cost of living, dismantling bureaucracy, more safety in public spaces, as well as support for the homeless and even animal welfare. Sliwa is reported to share his home with 16 cats. 

New Yorkers will pick a new mayor on Tuesday after an unpredictable race that has drawn attention from far beyond the largest city in the United States, with President Donald Trump branding frontrunner Zohran Mamdani “a communist.” Breakout Democratic Party candidate Mamdani, a naturalized Muslim American who represents Queens in the state legislature, leads former governor and sex assault-accused Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing his party’s primary contest to Mamdani.The Republican party candidate polling in third place is Curtis Sliwa, 71, who has a colorful past as founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group, a prolific broadcaster and cat lover.The latest Quinnipiac University poll conducted October 23 to 27 gives Mamdani 43 percent of the vote, followed by Cuomo on 33 percent and Sliwa on 14 percent.The race has centered on cost of living, crime and how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from the city.”Mamdani is an unusual political figure and really captures the spirit of the moment. This is a moment where a loud anti-Trump voice in America’s biggest city is going to get news,” Lincoln Mitchell, a politics professor at Columbia University, told AFP.”Frankly, a Muslim candidate for mayor of New York is an enormous story.”Mamdani, 34, has attacked his opponents for Islamophobic rhetoric and smears, calling out both Republicans and Democrats for “anti-Muslim sentiment that has grown so endemic in our city.”NYC Board of Elections data showed 275,006 registered Democrats had cast ballots, as had 46,115 Republicans, along with 42,383 voters unaffiliated with any party in the first five days of early voting, which ends November 2.Mamdani’s ascent has highlighted the gulf between the left and center-right of the Democratic Party.New York’s state governor Kathy Hochul, a centrist, appeared at a Mamdani rally on October 26 but was drowned out by “tax the rich” chants, an AFP correspondent saw.Hochul has been critical of Mamdani’s proposals to impose a two-percent income tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million.- Mamdani’s rise -Mamdani’s unlikely ascent has been fired by young New Yorkers canvassing for him, with his campaign claiming 90,000 people have volunteered.”It really comes back to people speaking to other New Yorkers about the city that we all love,” Mamdani told The Daily Show.Teenager Abid Mahdi, a Queens native who leads canvasses for Mamdani, told AFP that “when I think of Zohran, I think of what Bernie Sanders was to many Americans in 2016 and 2020. He is my Bernie Sanders in a lot of ways.”Mamdani appeared with leftist standard-bearer Senator Bernie Sanders at a Queens rally on October 26.”I’m 15 right now, I’ll be an adult and paying taxes at 18, right? The majority of laws will apply to me in about three years. So, why should I start caring then?” added Mahdi.Underscoring the importance of older voters who typically turn out in greater numbers than youngsters, Mamdani attended a “paint and pour” session at an elder care home in Brooklyn Thursday.Torrential rain at the end of the week slowed canvassing, with the three leading candidates touring TV studios in a final push to woo wavering voters.Ahead of the vote, Sliwa appeared in a surreal conservative rap video wearing a suit and his signature red beret.Cuomo, 67, sought Thursday to court Black and Muslim voters, campaigning in Harlem with current mayor Eric Adams, a corruption-accused Democrat who bowed out, eventually endorsing his former foe Cuomo.There was a stir in the week when a British newspaper published what claimed to be an interview with former mayor and Mamdani backer Bill de Blasio in which he appeared to question the affordability of the Democratic socialist’s spending plans.But the article was removed after the former mayor denied speaking to the journalist.