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Hopes for a quick end to the government shutdown were fading Friday as Republicans and Democrats dug in for a prolonged fight and President Donald Trump readied plans to unleash layoffs and cuts across the federal government. Senators were headed back to the Capitol for another vote on government funding on the third day of the shutdown, but there has been no sign of any real progress toward ending their standoff. Democrats are demanding that Congress extend health care benefits, while Republicans are trying to wear them down with day after day of voting on a House-passed bill that would reopen the government temporarily, mostly at current spending levels. I dont know how many times youre going to give them a chance to vote no, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at a news conference Friday. He added that he would give Democratic senators the weekend to think it over. Although Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Senate’s filibuster rules make it necessary for the government funding legislation to gain support from at least 60 of the 100 senators. That’s given Democrats a rare opportunity to use their 47 Senate seats to hold out in exchange for policy concessions. The party has chosen to rally on the issue of health care, believing it could be key to their path back to power in Washington. Their primary demand is that Congress extend tax credits that were boosted during the COVID-19 pandemic for health care plans offered under the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said, Understand this, over the last few days and over the next few days, what youre going to see is more than 20 million Americans experience dramatically increased health care premiums, co-pays and deductibles because of the Republican unwillingness to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. The shutdown gamble Democrats are running the high-risk strategy of effectively voting for a government shutdown to make their stand. Trump has vowed to make it as painful as possible for them. The Republican president has called the government funding lapse an unprecedented opportunity to make vast cuts to federal agencies and potentially lay off federal workers, rather than the typical practice of furloughing them. White House budget director Russ Vought has already announced that he is withholding billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in states with Democratic senators. On Friday morning, Vought said he would withhold another $2.1 billion for Chicago infrastructure projects to extend its train system to the city’s South Side. Jeffries has displayed no signs of budging under those threats. The cruelty that they might unleash on everyday Americans using the pretense of a shutdown is only going to backfire against them, he said during an interview with The Associated Press and other outlets at the Capitol. Still, the shutdown, no matter how long it lasts, could have far-reaching effects on the economy. Roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and they could lose out on $400 million in daily wages. That loss in wages until after the government reopens could drive down wider demand for goods and services. “All around the country right now, real pain is being endured by real people because the Democrats have decided to play politics,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday. Who will take the blame? The American public usually spreads the blame around to both major political parties when it comes to a government shutdown. While Trump took a significant portion of the blame during the last partial government shutdown in 2018 as he demanded funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, this standoff could end differently because now it is Democrats making the policy demands. Still, lawmakers were relentlessly trying to make their case to the American public with a constant beat of news conferences, social media videos and livestreams. Congressional leaders have been especially active. Both sides expressed confidence that the other would ultimately be found at fault. And in the House, party leaders seemed to be moving farther apart rather than closer to making a deal to end the shutdown. Jeffries on Thursday called for a permanent extension to the ACA tax credits. Meanwhile, Johnson and Thune told reporters that they would not negotiate on the tax credits until the government is reopened. Talks in the Senate A few senators have engaged in bipartisan talks about launching negotiations on extending the ACA tax credits for one year while the Senate votes to reopen the government for several weeks. But those discussions are in their early stages and appear to have little involvement from leadership. As senators prepared for their last scheduled vote for the week on Friday, they appeared resigned to allow the shutdown to continue at least into next week. Thune said that if the vote failed, he would give them the weekend to think about it before holding more votes. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, in a floor speech, called for Republicans to work with her and fellow Democrats to find common ground on the ACA subsidies, saying their expiration would impact plenty of people in states with GOP senators especially in rural areas where farmers, ranchers and small business owners purchase their own health insurance. Unfortunately, right now our Republican colleagues are not working with us to find a bipartisan agreement to prevent the government shutdown and address the health care crisis, she said. We know that even hen they float ideas which we surely do appreciate in the end the president appears to make the call. Stephen Groves and Matt Brown, Associated Press Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, and Joey Cappelletti contributed.
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On Monday evening at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York Citys last-standing mayoral candidatesZohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwatook the stage to address their plans to meet the needs of Black women in New York should they take on the role. New Yorks mayoral election has captured global attention, with an international audience deeply invested in the outcome after newcomer and current state Assembly member Mamdani beat former Gov. Cuomo as the Democratic nominee in June. Noticeably absent was the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams. The forum took place on the heels of Adams dropping his bid for mayoral reelection just one day prior, bringing renewed interest in the battle to win the hearts of New Yorkersor at least their votes. The event was organized by The Links Inc., an international service nonprofit for African American women; the Higher Heights Leadership Fund; the National Action Network; the National Urban League; and the New York Urban League, and it took place at the Apollo Stages at the Victoria, where it was open to the public. The importance of our voices in todays world is crucial,” said Jamila Beckford, president of the Greater Bronx chapter of The Links. The group tapped NY1 news anchor Cheryl Wills to interview each mayoral candidate on how they intended to address various issues that are uniquely experienced by Black womenparticularly topics related to healthcare, domestic violence, entrepreneurial efforts, and the workforce. Interestingly, the forum was devoid of face-to-face contact between the candidates: They were individually brought before the audience to participate in a series of 20-minute-long interviews. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for the Apollo] On housing Housing insecurity is a major challenge experienced by Black women. When asked about his plans to secure safe and affordable housing, Sliwa suggested opening the 8,000 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) apartments that are currently unoccupiedan idea Wills was quick to shut down, pointing out how the empty apartments are dilapidated and therefore unhabitable. Sliwa replied by stating that he would devise plans for New Yorkers to become homeowners, particularly for apartments they had resided in for years. I think I know what can be done, and the fiscal limitations for what cant be done, he said. Mamdani, whose mayoral campaign has championed a rent freeze for two million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, reiterated these plans and points to how such a tactic would impact Black families. The previous mayoral admin did it three times, he said. We know its a question of political will. He added that affordability isnt just about tenants, but landlords and homeowners, pointing to the issue of deed thefts and his plans to protect homeowners. Cuomos solution was to build more housing, though Wills clarified that new housing was usually priced at market rate What we are doing now is destroying historically Black communities with gentrifiers, where people have to move out because they are being priced out of their neighborhoods, Cuomo said. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for The Apollo] On the workplace and leadership Wills pressed each candidate about their take on the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies by the Trump administration, as well as the purging of government jobs, which, among other factors, has reportedly led to an exodus of 300,000 Black women from the U.S. workforce. A concern for many in the room was the visibility of Black women in senior leadership positions. Mamdani, often critical of Eric Adamss tenure as mayor, made a positive observation about his former opponent’s staff: His leadership team looks like the city. When we speak about the necessity of excellence and diversity and a team that looks like the city that it serves, that its intentional, Mamdani added. Emphasizing the need for vocational school and training, Sliwa said, Obviously, qualified Black women have to be prioritized. Theyre raising families for a future generation. Wills rebutted by mentioning that many Black women are highly educated beyond vocational school. As for Cuomo, he stressed that his administration would look like New York City. I believe deeply in the power of Black women, he said. In response to a question about widening pay gaps between white men and Black women, he insisted that lawsuits were the answer. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for The Apollo] On mental health Wills mentioned that domestic and intimate partner violence against women are especially high among Black women. When asked what he would do to protect this vulnerable population, Sliwa stated that sending social workers is not the answeran apparent dig at Mamdani, who has previously shared this strategy as part of his public safety plans. You team up police with social workersif a man is continually abusive, he has to be out of the house, he has to go through therapy, Sliwa said, citing his experience as founder of the Guardian Angels. The volunteer-based organization enlists people to defend against crime on the city’s public transit system and, most recently, perform wellness checks on homeless people. Mamdani, in his response, stated plainly, One of my primary responsibilities is to uplift the existing agendas. The Trump administrations deliberate takedown of DEI efforts and its subsequent impact on the Black community was a charged topic, and one that the candidates appeared aligned on pushing back against. When asked how he would deal with Trumps attempts to meddle in local politics, Mamdani said, I would remind them who I work for, which is the people of New York City. Cuomo, who has dealt with Trumps many threats during his prior tenure as New York State governor, said Let him come with his demands, and well say hell no, we won’t go. New York’s mayoral election is on November 4. Most polls show Mamdani in the lead by a significant margin.
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E-Commerce
Hello there, and welcome once again to Fast Companys Plugged In. For something that continues to suck up so much of the worlds attention, social networking has not exactly been a font of wild innovation in recent years. Its big names are all up there in years and showing their age: Facebook is 21, Twitter is 19. Instagram is 15, Snapchat is 14. Newer entrants, such as BeReal, rarely live up to their early great expectations. Even Bluesky, where many of us have found a home after fleeing the Elon Muskified version of Twitter, isnt growing at its old clip. So I was intrigued when two new social networking experiences debuted in rapid succession in late September: Metas Vibes and OpenAIs Sora. Thanks to the fact that both focus on letting people share AI-generated imagery, they compete directly with each other. But their all-AI format also sets them apart from existing social networks, where generative AI is most often a distraction from human contact, not the main attraction. Personally, I like the idea of AI being cordoned off into its own social app. Most examples of the technology showing up in other social feeds have a dystopian tinge, from Twitters Grok bot going full Hitler to the maudlin deepfakes that have recently become an unwelcome element of my Facebook time. (For some reason, Paul McCartney stars in many of the newest onesin one instance shown dolefully strumming a guitar at Charlie Kirks funeral.) Plenty of my friends get downright surly when they encounter AI on their feeds; to avoid making them unhappy, I have gone cold turkey on sharing it. Isolated in its own apps, however, AI imagery only gets exposed to people who want to see it. And everyone who does see it will understand that its syntheticor so I hope. While I was waiting to snag an invite code for the Sora appa requirement to try it at the momentI dived into Vibes, which is not an app unto itself. Instead, its an element of the Meta AI app, which also includes a general-purpose chatbot and serves as a companion for the Meta-powered smart glasses from Ray-Ban and Oakley. Meta is billing Vibes as an early preview and says additional personalization and creation tools are in the works. In its debut incarnation, Vibes doesnt do all that much. You can enter prompts to create brief AI videos, add music, and then post them to the Vibes feed (or Instagram or Facebookalthough I kind of hope you wont). A Discover feed lets you flip through clips posted by other users, TikTok style, and theres a remix option that enables you to modify those clips and reshare them. I cheerfully admit that I found thumbing my way through Vibes mildly entertaining in a hypnotic, untaxing way. Ultimately, though, it felt a little like snacking on Chex Mixunrelenting sameness, packaged as variety. Little about the videos I saw felt like an expression of individual creativity: I lost track of the number of buttery-smooth tracking shots of obsessively detailed, Pixar-esque orange monsters I saw. The image-generating algorithmsnot the humans typing the promptsare the stars here. Which brings us back to Sora. Its biggest differentiator from Vibes is that you can create a cameo digitized version of yourself and make it the main character of your AI clips. You can also make your cameo available for incorporation into your friends videos, or even ones credited by the entire Sora community. Moreover, cameos and other characters in Sora videos talk; in Vibes, audio is limited to music you pick from its library. Once I got into Sora, it took only a minute or two of exposure to realize that the experience it offers is vastly richer than Vibes. Its clips arent just demos of what the technology can dotheyre wacky 10-second mini-movies, sometimes with multiple shots, that occasionally provoked me to literally LOL. Thanks to cameos and OpenAIs decision to allow depiction of copyrighted property unless its owners explicitly request otherwise, the cast of characters is dazzling: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Pikachu, SpongeBob, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Betty White, Mister Rogers, and several tech journalists of my acquaintance all made multiple appearances in my feed. Just in its first few days, Sora seems to have spawned a billion memes, such as a dog being pulled over for speeding, that users riff on by remixing them. In remixes I saw, the driver was a fish, a cow, a giraffe, and Dora the Explorer. No equivalent kindling of community-based humor seemed to be going on over at Vibes. In other words, Sora feels far more like a killer app with a truly social angle than Vibes. Its hard to imagine that Metawhich turned imitating (and sometimes improving upon) Snapchat into Instagrams entire modus operandiisnt working furiously on similar functionality. But even if it catches up, OpenAI got there first. Which means that it also has to worry about its app causing problems that the current, more anodyne Vibes probably wont. To its credit, OpenAI has clearly done a lot of thinking on that topic. When I signed into Sora for the first time, I got a full-screen disclaimer: You are about to enter a creative world of AI-generated content. Some videos may depict people you recognize, but the actions and events shown are not real. I wasnt able to create videos of living celebritiesI tried Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, and Bad Bunnyexcept for Altman, who created a cameo of himself and set it to allow open usage. Some baseline of good taste is being imposed: My attempt to create a clip of my own cameo punching out people resulted in an odd effect where the blows didnt quite land. The most worrisome misuse of Sora might involve it being used as a tool for deepfake-assisted bullying. OpenAI says its putting limits on teenagers use of the app, including tighter rules for cameo appearances. You can even see other peoples unpublished draft videos if they depict your cameo, a pretty important measure given that its possible to download Sora videos for use elsewhere without ever posting them in the app. (They carry Sora watermarks, indicating their provenance and fictional nature.) No matter how hard OpenAI works to keep Sora healthy, its tough to imagine there wont be instances of users with bad intent successfully jumping over its guardrails. Sora-generated slop could also overwhelm other social networks where AI is less welcome. Or maybe the app will simply grow tiresome once its novelty has worn off. For now, Sora is easily the most interesting consumer product that OpenAI has come up with since ChatGPT. More significantly, its the rare new social network that feels like it might have legs. Im @harrymccracken thereand hope it remains a silly ingredient in my social-media diet for the foreeeable future. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company ChatGPT can now spend your money for youIt’s a huge deal for users, brands, and the future of agentic AI. Read More How the White House redesigned its website to blame Democrats for the shutdownWH.gov transformed into a billboard for a government shutdown publicity moment. Read More One in five Americans now regularly get news on TikTok, up sharply from 2020‘No social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption.’ Read More Peloton is pivoting to AI. Here’s how it’s using custom-built models to improve your workoutThe embattled at-home fitness company is raising its prices and using machine learning to personalize members’ workouts. Read More Why Amazon went all-in on balls for its new line of speakersThree years in the making, Amazon’s new spherical Echo Studio and Echo Dot Max are built to raise the bar of Amazon’s audio quality and usher in the next generation of smart home. Read More Who controls the machines that control Artificial Intelligence?The hidden arms race of AI supercomputers. Read More
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