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Congressman Latimer: ending government shutdown depends on GOP willingness to negotiate

CNN Newsource on October 5, 2025

By BY Peter Katz, Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal

White Plains, NY (westfaironline.com) — “We don’t know if we’re in for a long haul or not,” Congressman George Latimer, a Democrat whose New York 16th Congressional District covers parts of Westchester and the Bronx, told Westfair’s Westchester Business Journal about the government shutdown, which goes into its sixth day on Oct. 6. “There was a 35-day shutdown a number of years ago during the first Trump administration.”

He said that so far most of what has been coming from the administration during the shutdown has been aimed at hurting Democratic-controlled states such as when White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought cut billions of dollars in funding for federal programs for them, including $18 billion for two infrastructure projects in New York.

“The administration is going to tell blue (Democrat-controlled) states that things that you might have expected to happen are not going to happen during the shutdown as a way to pressure blue state senators to go along with the Republican plan for a stopgap spending measure,” Latimer said. “This administration has been breaking all sorts of traditional norms. No past Republican or past Democratic president has ever gone in the direction that the Trump folks are. It was laid out in Project 2025.”

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation book that contains detailed plans for fundamentally changing the U.S. government and democracy.

Latimer said that the position that the Democrats have taken is very simple and straightforward.

“The Republicans have not needed Democratic votes in things they have done up to now but in this particular case they need Democratic votes in the Senate in order to accomplish what they want,” Latimer said. “The Democratic demand is very simple: sit down and negotiate with us. We have some issues that we want to see changes on in the health care area. The Republicans are taking their orders directly from Donald Trump: ‘do not negotiate.'”

Latimer explained that the Democrats want to undo changes made by Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that will result in millions of Americans either losing health care insurance or seeing the premiums that they pay for the Affordable Care Act insurance just about double, meaning millions will no longer be able to afford it.

“The history of the Congress has been negotiations between the two parties,” Latimer said. “What the Democrats are saying is ‘sit down, negotiate with us, try to get to a place where we can have a bipartisan agreement of what would keep the government going forward.’ Right now the Republicans are saying ‘no, we want it this way, our way, the only way, that’s it.'”

Latimer said that despite claims from the GOP, they do not have a mandate for what is being done under the Trump administration.

“They won the House by the thinnest of margins — they actually lost a net seat — and they have the Senate by well under the 60-vote threshold and yet they want to dictate as if they had gotten a tremendous mandate,” Latimer said. “They didn’t get a mandate. They have control but that control is leavened in a system of checks and balances. Since when do all the checks and balances fall aside? Since when do we say that if you win by 2%, as Trump did, you can now drive the direction of the country 100% your way when you know that about half of the country is not with you on it.”

Latimer noted that many people in the New York area have seen Donald Trump in action for decades as a real estate developer, TV personality and in newspaper gossip columns.

“This is how he is. This is how he handled his business dealings,” Latimer said. “He wants absolute power and the Republicans in Congress, I think, are afraid of him because he threatens them with primaries so publicly. He said openly at the Charlie Kirk memorial that he hates his enemies and he’s going to get them. When he spoke at the United Nations he was very clear in the way he talked to the other nations of the world; he talked down to them, insultingly. This is how he’s operating now in the shutdown by canceling projects and withholding projects for New York and California. This is who he is.”

Latimer emphasized that Democrats as a group are willing to sit down and discuss what a continuation of government operations would look like with some concessions and the Republicans have to make some concessions but they want to make no concessions.

“If they don’t make any concessions and at the end of the day get their way people are going to get hurt,” Latimer, who previously served as Westchester County Executive, said. “You’re going to watch country property taxes all across the state go up, not just in Democratic counties, but in Republican counties as well. There are going to be big jumps in property taxes. Why? Because of what the federal government has done to cut funding to counties.”

Latimer said that the Republicans believe they can put terrible policies into effect and market their way out of being blamed for anything by convincing people that an apple is a banana.

“They’ve asserted that Medicaid is funding illegal aliens,” Latimer said. “It does not happen. We don’t give direct aid to people who are undocumented. But, they say it and they say it over and over again and I have people coming up to me and asserting that it’s true because they’ve heard it repeatedly. Their game isn’t to solve the problem. The game is to blame the other guys. The shutdown is just one skirmish in a much bigger battle to change America.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Peter Katz
pkatz@westfairinc.com

Several earthquakes strike near Big Bear overnight, USGS says

CNN Newsource on October 5, 2025

By Dean Fioresi, Austin Turner

Click here for updates on this story

California (KCAL, KCBS) — A series of earthquakes struck the Big Bear area in San Bernardino County from late Saturday night into Sunday morning, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The first of which, a 3.5-magnitude earthquake, happened at around 11:15 p.m., a little over four miles north of Big Bear and its lake. The earthquake struck at a geological depth of approximately four miles.

Over the next several hours, four more quakes struck the same area.

At 2:51 a.m., a 3.4 magnitude quake was reported at the same epicenter. Less than one hour later, a 3.5 earthquake struck at 3:41 a.m., according to the USGS.

Later in the morning, 2.5 and 2.7 quakes were reported at 5:54 a.m. and 6:20 a.m., respectively, according to the USGS.

There were no reports of injury or damage from the temblors.

According to the USGS’ “Did You Feel It?” tracker, Southern California residents in the immediate area reported feeling shaking. Some people, as far west as Ontario, also reported feeling the earthquakes.

There have not been any notable earthquakes in the area in recent weeks, with the largest reported earthquake registering at 2.0 on Friday near Borrego Springs, the USGS reported.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Artist Jim Hautman wins Federal Duck Stamp Contest for seventh time

CNN Newsource on October 5, 2025

By Joe Van Ryn

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Minnesota (WCCO) — In his Chaska, Minnesota, studio, Jim Hautman added a few finishing touches to his latest painting of a bobcat in the wilderness.

“The scene of this one is in southwestern Montana,” he said, while painting some moss onto a tree.

The painting is small, but the detail is substantial. It’s just one of thousands of paintings Jim Hautman has created in his lifetime, nearly all of them centered on wildlife and the outdoors.

“I like to fish, I like to hunt, I like to bird watch,” Jim Hautman said when talking about his inspirations. “Everything I like to do seems to happen outdoors, so painting nature was just kind of natural for me.”

Jim Hautman’s artistic ability was first recognized at a young age. He recalled a painting assignment in kindergarten. He impressed his teacher. He impressed himself.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I’m good at something,'” he said.

Jim Hautman grew up in an artistic family.

“My mom was an artist and my dad did some painting, too, so we had the materials around and the encouragement,” he said.

Today, his subjects range widely.

“A lot of mammals, songbirds, just anything that I see,” he said.

But it’s his duck paintings that brought him national recognition. This year, Jim Hautman won the Federal Duck Stamp Contest for the seventh time.

“Can’t believe it’s still happening, but it’s been quite a ride,” he said.

He first won in 1989, a victory that changed his life.

“I mean, the phone did not stop ringing for it seemed like a week,” he said. “They called me that day and told me to come meet the president the next day in the Oval Office. And I was just thrown into a whirlwind of PR and excitement.”

The Hautman family is well known in the competition. Both of Jim’s brothers are also painters.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of competition between us,” he said.

Joe Hautman has won five times and Bob Hautman has won three.

“For now, I’m in the lead,” Jim Hautman said. “But it really helps us because we compare our paintings to each others’ and then we help each other with suggestions.”

For Jim Hautman, the work doesn’t stop with one painting or one victory.

“I feel like it’s something I have to do. It’s a lot of hard work and it kind of drives you crazy. But as soon as you finish your painting, you get the itch to try to do a better one on the next painting,” he said.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Bar partners with artists nationwide to take a stand against AI-generated art

CNN Newsource on October 5, 2025

By Sara Donchey

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California (KPIX) — Bay Area visual artist Pemex, who prefers to be referred to by his graffiti writer moniker, has spent plenty of time pondering the use of AI in creative spaces.

He doesn’t feel threatened by it exactly, but he acknowledges the threat it poses to artists like himself, whose lived experiences he feels are being ripped off and repurposed.

If AI can generate what looks like a painting, he says, that image will have been generated from countless other references from real-life artists who may not have consented to their work being used as “inspiration.”

In fact, Pemex takes issue with the word being used in the context of AI-generated art.

“It’s in fact the opposite of inspiration,” he said. “It’s theft. If anyone else did that, it would be theft.”

Pemex is known for his prolific graffiti art, massive murals, and colorful oil paintings. But early on in his career, he got started taking odd jobs like drawing up promotional flyers for bands that were trying to spread the word about an upcoming gig.

“You’d get a list of bands. You’d get the date, the location and depending on the band and the music that they played, you’d create a scene around that,” he said.

It sounds simple enough, but if you run a venue like Billy Joe Agan does, you would know these flyers are a part of the culture. They are quite literally plastered all over his Oakland bar, Thee Stork Club.

Agan noticed recently that the flyers that promoters and managers were giving him ahead of their bands’ shows seemed a bit off.

“There would be just glaring inconsistencies in someone’s hand, teeth, a character’s hair. The background would be the same texture as a character. Just things that a human illustrator would have never done,” Agan said.

The promoters had been using AI to make the posters, instead of hiring an artist to draw something up.

“It started with a few, maybe smaller artists that were sending us, using cheaper generative AI software, and so it was easy to spot,” Agan said.

This didn’t sit well with Agan, who caused a stir on social media when he announced he was banning the use of AI to promote his club.

He went a step further, though, and announced a partnership with artists across the country to get promoters the best possible rate on using a living, breathing human artist.

“I pre-negotiated the rate with these artists,” he said. “The rate is as cheap as they can go and we’re talking about people normally get ten times what they’re quoting us.”

Now, a band that is operating on a shoestring budget can pay one of dozens of artists fifty dollars for a poster that might have cost hundreds of dollars to create.

Agan has since received a groundswell of support and estimates that more than 100 artists are participating in his program.

If you are interested in being considered, you can email your resume to Agan here: theestorkclub@gmail.com

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Bar partners with artists nationwide to take a stand against AI-generated art

CNN on October 5, 2025

KPIX