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    US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise

    “Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.”The staff at representative Swalwell’s California district office had heard the man’s voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday.“So, I’m fine with anything at this point. I’m tired of it. I’ll just set up behind my .308 and I’ll do my job,” he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. “You want a war? Get your war started.”Swalwell’s staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime.As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security.The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents.“I’m not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,” Swalwell told the Guardian. “This guy’s terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.”Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts.“When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you’re dipping into your campaign resources,” Swalwell said. “You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it’s been costly to do both.”The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness.“I push the envelope,” Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. “If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I’m really a threat, oh well, so be it.”View image in fullscreenGiglio’s made his last call to Swalwell’s office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier.Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road.“We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,” said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year.“It’s hard to know whether there’s an increase in threats to public officials or there’s an increase in the level of enforcement that’s producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,” Simi said.But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats.In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, “substantial numbers” said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.“Lawmakers are reporting that it’s kind of getting worse, the severity of what’s being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,” Ramachandran said.Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. “A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn’t even know who they’re supposed to report these things to,” she said.Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats.“The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,” she said. “There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.”But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance.At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee’s chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators.Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, “so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value”. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel.Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota.Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security.California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that.Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security.Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers’ homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023.Restricting public information about lawmaker’s residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public.“It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,” said Ramachandran. “It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?”Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada’s secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers’ residential information without interfering in election challenges.“Political violence has no place in our country,” he said in a statement. “People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.”The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat.“The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don’t support political violence,” Simi said. “So those that do are an outlier. But there’s some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don’t have great data over time, so that’s a hard question to answer.” More

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    Tributes paid to police officer after gunman kills four in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper – US politics live

    Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

    Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

    Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

    An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

    The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
    US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed his concern over the “horrific shooting”, and said he was “praying hard” for the NYPD officer.“May God watch over our city during this challenging moment,” Jeffries wrote in a post.A large police presence converged on the area around the tower, according to Reuters journalists near the scene.“I just saw a lot of commotion and cops and people screaming,” said Russ McGee, a 31-year-old sports bettor who was working out in a gym adjacent to the skyscraper, told Reuters in an interview near the scene.The office building at 345 Park Avenue occupies an entire city block and houses the corporate offices for the National Football League and the headquarters of investment firm Blackstone. It also holds offices for JP Morgan Chase.According to an ESPN reporter, Jeff Darlington, an NFL security alert was sent to employees: “Do not exit the building. Secure your location and hide until law enforcement clears your floor. Please switch phones to silent.”This shooting is the 254th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun-related violence, who defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured by firearms.President Donald Trump has met with the Scottish first minister John Swinney at his Aberdeenshire golf club.The president is opening a second course at his Menie Estate property on Tuesday and it is understood the first minister met with Trump shortly before the ceremony.The leaders spoke for around 15 minutes, before posing together for pictures in front of a US flag and the saltire of Scotland ahead of the opening of a second course at the president’s golf club in Aberdeenshire.Swinney has previously said he would push the president on an exemption to tariffs for Scotch whisky and raise the situation in Gaza, which also came up in the meeting between Trump and prime minister Keir Starmer on Monday.Meanwhile, Trump was spotted on the driving range of his golf club during a delay in the opening ceremony for a new course.Trump could be seen hitting shots from the driving range just yards where the first tee of the new course, where he is expected to be the first to tee off.President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr, are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland, AP reported.The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the case of Jeffrey Epstein.It was mostly built around golf – and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on 13 August, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers on to the correct road.Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump’s arrival.Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing golf shoes, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start.Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

    Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

    Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

    An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

    The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication. More

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    ‘Cemetery of the living dead’: Venezuelans recall 125 days in notorious El Salvador prison

    Arturo Suárez struggles to pinpoint the worst moment of his incarceration inside a prison the warden boasted was “a cemetery of the living dead”.Was it the day inmates became so exasperated at being beaten by guards that they threatened to hang themselves with their sheets? “The only weapon we had was our own lives,” recalled the Venezuelan former detainee.Was it when prisoners staged a “blood strike”, cutting their arms with broken pipes and smearing their bedclothes with crimson messages of despair? “SOS!” they wrote.Or was rock bottom for Suárez when he turned 34 while stranded in a Central American penitentiary prison officers had claimed he would only leave in a body bag?Suárez, a reggaeton musician known by the stage name SuarezVzla, was one of 252 Venezuelans who found themselves trapped inside El Salvador’s notorious “Cecot” terrorism confinement centre after becoming embroiled in Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade.After 125 days behind bars, Suárez and the other detainees were freed on 18 July after a prisoner swap deal between Washington and Caracas. Since flying home to Venezuela, they have started to open up about their torment, offering a rare and disturbing glimpse of the human toll of President Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crackdown in El Salvador and Trump’s campaign against immigration.View image in fullscreenSuárez said conditions inside the maximum security prison were so dire he and other inmates considered killing themselves. “My daughter’s really little and she needs me. But we’d made up our minds. We decided to put an end to this nightmare,” he said, although the prisoners stepped back from the brink.Another detainee, Neiyerver Rengel, 27, described his panic after guards claimed he would probably spend 90 years there. “I felt shattered, destroyed,” said the Venezuelan barber, who was deported to Cecot after being captured in Irving, Texas.Trump officials called the Venezuelans – many of whom had no criminal background – “heinous monsters” and “terrorists” but largely failed to produce proof, with many seemingly targeted simply for being Venezuelan and having tattoos.Norman Eisen, the executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is helping Rengel sue the US government for $1.3m, called the “abduction” of scores of Venezuelans a stain on his country’s reputation. “It is shocking and shameful and every patriotic American should be disgusted by it,” said Eisen, who expected other freed prisoners to take legal action.Suárez’s journey to one of the world’s harshest prisons began in Chile’s capital, Santiago, where the singer had moved after fleeing Venezuela’s economic collapse in 2016.One day early last year, before deciding to migrate to the US, Suárez watched a viral YouTube video about the “mega-prison” by the Mexican influencer Luisito Comunica.Bukele officials had invited Comunica to film inside Cecot as part of propaganda efforts to promote an anti-gang offensive that has seen 2%of the country’s adult population jailed since 2022. Suárez, then a fan of El Salvador’s social media-savvy president, was gripped. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could afford a package tour to go and visit Cecot?” he recalled joking to his wife. Little did the couple know that Suárez would soon be languishing in Cecot’s cage-like cells, sleeping on a metal bunk bed.View image in fullscreenAfter entering the US in September 2024, Suárez worked odd jobs in North Carolina. In February, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, he was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents and, in mid-March, put on a deportation flight, the destination of which was not revealed. When the plane landed, its passengers – who were instructed to keep its blinds closed – had no idea where they were. The penny dropped when one detainee disobeyed the order and spotted El Salvador’s flag outside. “That’s when we understood … where we were heading – to Cecot,” he said.Suárez described the hours that followed as a blur of verbal abuse and beatings, as disoriented prisoners were frogmarched on to buses that took them to Cecot’s cell block eight.Suárez said the men were forced to shave their heads and told by the warden: “Welcome to hell! Welcome to the cemetery of the living dead! You’ll leave here dead!”As he was dragged off the bus, Suárez, who is shortsighted, said he asked a guard for help because his spectacles were falling off: “He told me to shut up, punched me [in the face] and broke my glasses.”“What am I doing in Cecot?” Suárez recalled thinking. “I’m not a terrorist. I’ve never killed anyone. I make music.”Rengel had almost identical memories of his arrival: “The police officers started saying we were going to die in El Salvador – that it was likely we’d spend 90 years there.”Noah Bullock, the head of the El Salvador-focused human rights group Cristosal, said activists had heard very similar accounts from prisoners in other Salvadoran jails, suggesting such terror tactics were not merely the behaviour of “bad apple prison guards”. “There’s clearly a culture coming from the leadership of the prison system to inculcate the guards into operating this way, [into] using dehumanising and physical abuse in a systematic way.”View image in fullscreenSuárez said the Venezuelans spent the next 16 weeks being woken at 4am, moved between cells holding between 10 and 19 people, and enduring a relentless campaign of physical and psychological abuse. “There’s no life in there,” he said. “The only good thing they did for us was give us a Bible. We sought solace in God and that’s why nobody took their own life.”The musician tried to lift spirits by composing upbeat songs, such as Cell 31, which describes a message from God. “Be patient, my son. Your blessing will soon arrive,” its lyrics say.The song became a prison anthem and Suárez said inmates sang it, one day in March, when the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, visited Cecot to pose by its packed cells. “We aren’t terrorists! We aren’t criminals! Help!” the Venezuelans bellowed. But their pleas were ignored and the mood grew increasingly desperate, as the inmates were deprived of contact with relatives, lawyers and even the sun. “There came a point where we had no motivation, no strength left,” Rengel said.Only in mid-June was there a glimmer of hope when prisoners were given shampoo, razors and soap and measured for clothes. “They obviously wanted to hide what had happened from the world,” said Suárez, who sensed release might be close. One month later the men were free.Suárez said he was determined to speak out now he was safely back in his home town of Caracas. “The truth must be … heard all over the world. Otherwise what they did to us will be ignored,” said the musician, who admitted he had once been an admirer of Bukele’s populist campaigns against political corruption and gangs. “Now I realise it’s just a complete farce because how can you negotiate with human lives? How can you use human beings as bargaining chips?” Suárez said.A spokesperson for El Salvador’s government did not respond to questions about the prisoners’ allegations. Last week, the homeland security department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, dismissed prisoners’ claims of abuses as “false sob stories”.Suárez hoped never to set foot in El Salvador or the US again but said he forgave his captors. “And I hope they can forgive themselves,” he added. “And realise that while they might escape the justice of man they will never be able to escape divine justice.” More

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    As Trump’s tariff regime becomes clear, Americans may start to foot the bill

    Burying the hatchet with Brussels, Donald Trump – flanked by the leader of the European Commission – hailed a bold new era of transatlantic relations, an ambitious economic pact, and declared: “This was a very big day for free and fair trade.”That was seven years ago. And then on Sunday, the US president – flanked by a different leader of the European Commission – hailed another new era of transatlantic relations, another economic pact and declared: “I think it’s the biggest deal ever made.”Trumpian hyperbole can typically be relied upon as long as he’s in the room, at the lectern or typing into Truth Social. What matters after that is the underlying detail – and we have very little, beyond a handful of big numbers designed to grab headlines.What we do know, as a result of this deal, is that European exports to the US will face a blanket 15% tariff: a tax expected, at least in part, to be passed along to US consumers. The price of key products shipped from the EU, from cars to medicine and wine, is about to come into sharp focus.This pact is not unique. Trump’s agreement with Japan also hits Japanese exports to the US with a 15% tariff. Most British exports to the US face a 10% tariff under his deal with the UK.A string of countries without such accords, including Brazil, Canada and South Korea, are set to face even higher US tariffs from Friday. The Trump administration currently has a blanket 10% levy in place for US imports, although the president threatened to raise this to “somewhere in the 15 to 20% range” earlier this week.Ignore, for a moment, the chaos and the noise. Put to one side the unpredictable stewardship of the world’s largest economy, and its ties with the world. And forget the many U-turns, pauses and reprieves which have followed bold pronouncements, again and again and again.If you, like many businesses in the US and across the world, are struggling to keep up, take a step back and look at a single number. Since Trump took office, the average effective US tariff rate on all goods from overseas has soared to its highest level in almost a century: 18.2%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.Trump argues this extraordinary jump in tariffs will bring in trillions of dollars to the US federal government. On his watch, tariffs have so far brought in tens of billions of dollars more in revenue this year than at the same point in 2024.But who picks up the bill? The president and his allies have position this fundamental shift in economic policy as a historic move away from taxing Americans toward taxing the world. But in reality, everyone pays.Tariffs are typically paid at the border, by the importer of the product affected. If the tariff on that product suddenly goes from 0% to 15%, the importer – as you’d expected – will try to pass it on. Every company at every stage of the supply chain will quite literally try to pass the buck, as much as possible.And the very end of the chain, economists expect prices will ultimately rise for consumers. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the short-term impact of Trump’s tariffs so far is a 1.8% rise in US prices: equivalent to an average income loss of $2,400 per US household.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBig firms that have so far done their best to hold prices steady amid the blizzard of tariff uncertainty are now starting to warn of increases. Inflation, which Trump claims is very low in the US, picked up in June.The president appeared to reluctantly reckon with the reality that Americans may start to foot the bill for his tariffs before setting off for Scotland late last week.Asked about the prospect of using revenue from tariffs to distribute “rebate” checks to US consumers, Trump said: “We’re thinking about that, actually … We’re thinking about a rebate, because we have so much money coming in, from tariffs, that a little rebate for people of a certain income level might be very nice.”Given what inflation did to Joe Biden’s electoral fortunes, and Trump’s keen eye for populist policies, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine those cheques – signed by Donald J Trump – landing in bank accounts in time for the midterm elections next November.And such a move would, indeed, be very nice. Especially as it appears increasingly likely that, after this week, Americans will probably be paying more for almost everything. More

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    Trump news at a glance: president wants Murdoch deposed in Epstein libel case within two weeks

    Donald Trump has asked a US court to order a swift deposition for billionaire Rupert Murdoch in the president’s defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.The US president sued the publication and its owner over a 17 July article asserting that Trump’s name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein, who was later a convicted sex offender.Trump’s lawsuit called the alleged birthday greeting “fake” and said the Journal published its article to harm the president’s reputation. In a court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said Trump told Murdoch before the article was published that the letter referenced in the story was fake, and Murdoch told Trump he would “take care of it”.“Murdoch’s direct involvement further underscores Defendants’ actual malice,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, referring to the legal standard Trump must clear to prevail in his lawsuit.His lawyers asked US district judge Darrin Gayles in Miami to compel Murdoch, 94, to testify within 15 days. Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher, has previously said the paper stood by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the lawsuit.Here are the key Trump stories of the day:Ghislaine Maxwell asks US supreme court to overturn convictionGhislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, has requested that the US supreme court overturn her conviction, saying she was unjustly prosecuted.Maxwell’s submission to the supreme court comes days after she met justice department officials, as discussions began to see whether she would turn into a US government cooperator. Observers have suggested Maxwell may be able to expose new information about Epstein’s sex trafficking and the wealthy individuals who may have also been involved. It is not clear if Maxwell will become a US government cooperator and what she may receive in return.Read the full storyTrump acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza Donald Trump told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is “real starvation” in the region.During a visit to Britain, the US president contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister claimed it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza.Trump is under increasing pressure to intervene in the humanitarian crisis, with dozens of Palestinians having died of hunger in recent weeks in a crisis attributed by the UN and other humanitarian organisations to Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory.Read the full storyJustice department sued over legal memo on Qatar’s luxury jet giftThe US Department of Justice is facing a federal lawsuit for refusing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly cleared the way for Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m luxury aircraft from Qatar’s government.Read the full storyTrump’s tariffs to face major court test from US small business ownersDonald Trump’s strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s main trading partners will face a major test in the US courts on Thursday, four days after the president hailed the “powerful deal” reached with the EU and just hours before a new round of punishing import duties is set to come into effect.Trump has underpinned his tariff policy with an emergency power that is now being challenged as unlawful in the federal courts. On Thursday the US court of appeals for the federal circuit will hear oral arguments in the case, VOS Selections v Trump.Read the full storyUS-EU trade deal is a ‘dark day’ for Europe, says French PMThe French prime minister, François Bayrou, said the EU had capitulated to Donald Trump’s threats of ever-increasing tariffs, as he labelled the framework deal struck in Scotland on Sunday as a “dark day” for the EU.“It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission,” Bayrou wrote on X on Monday.Read the full story Trump cuts deadline for Putin to reach Ukraine peace deal to ‘10 or 12 days’Donald Trump’s timeline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has sped up, the president said while visiting Nato ally Great Britain on Monday.“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump said in response to a question while sitting with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.Read the full storyTrump told to keep funding Planned Parenthood with Medicaid moneyThe Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to “defund” Planned Parenthood.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    The US cannot sell any Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia without doubling its production rate, because it is making too few for its own defence, the navy’s nominee for chief of operations has told Congress.

    Twenty-one Senate Democrats are demanding Donald Trump immediately cut funding to a controversial Gaza aid organization they say has resulted in the killings of more than 700 civilians seeking food and violated decades of humanitarian law.

    Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace has claimed she cruises the web for videos of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents dragging people into custody, saying she “can think of nothing more American”.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened 27 July 2025. More

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    Democrats demand Trump cut funding for controversial Gaza aid organization

    Twenty-one Senate Democrats are demanding Donald Trump immediately cut funding to a controversial Gaza aid organization they say has resulted in the killings of more than 700 civilians seeking food and violated decades of humanitarian law.The letter, led by senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Peter Welch of Vermont, comes as international criticism mounts over the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s operations, arguing that its model “shatters well-established norms that have governed distribution of humanitarian aid since the ratification of the Geneva conventions in 1949” by blurring the lines between aid delivery and military security operations.“According to reports and eyewitness accounts, civilians have been fired at by tanks, drones, and helicopters, as well as soldiers on the ground, as they attempt to get food and humanitarian supplies,” the senators wrote.The Trump administration authorized a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in late June, with $7m already disbursed according to documents seen by the Guardian. The organization, which is backed by both Israeli and US interests, has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza through coordination with the Israeli military and private US security contractors.However, the rollout of the new scheme has been marked by death and destruction from the outset. Jake Wood, the founding executive director and former US marine, resigned on 25 May, saying: “It is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”Boston Consulting Group, the US firm handling some of the foundation’s logistics, also withdrew shortly after.Since launching in May, the foundation’s four distribution sites have become killing fields. UN human rights officials report 766 people were killed trying to reach GHF sites specifically, with nearly 5,000 more injured in the chaos. More than 1,000 have been killed trying to go to food aid sites in general, according to UN figures, and 100 are believed to have died of starvation.The senators also highlighted concerns about the US security contractors involved in the operation. Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions have reportedly been contracted to provide security at distribution sites, with Associated Press reporting: “American contractors guarding aid distribution sites in Gaza are using live ammunition and stun grenades as hungry Palestinians scramble for food.”According to the AP report they cite, “bullets, stun grenades and pepper spray were used at nearly every distribution, even if there was no threat,” despite many contractors lacking combat experience or proper weapons training.UG Solutions, one of the North Carolina-based contractors, is reported to have recently hired the crisis communications firm Seven Letter, whose leadership includes former Biden and Obama administration spokespersons, bringing in former Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh in June, according to a press release on a now taken-down website.Anthony Aguilar, a US Army veteran and former contractor for the foundation, told BBC News over the weekend that he witnessed Israeli forces “shooting at the crowds of Palestinians” and firing “a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people”. He described the operation as “amateur” and said he had “never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population”.The senators criticized the Trump administration for exempting the foundation from standard oversight procedures, including comprehensive audits usually required for first-time USAID grant recipients. They noted that USAID officials had raised “critical concerns” about the proposal, citing “operational and reputational risks and lack of oversight”.The foundation has maintained that it has distributed more than 95m meals to civilians across Gaza and denies that violence has occurred at its sites, attributing reports to Hamas misinformation.While on a presidential visit to Scotland, Trump on Sunday claimed that Hamas was stealing food aid sent to Gaza, parroting a similar allegation by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu which is being used to justify restrictions on humanitarian deliveries, despite Israel’s own military officials admitted to not having any evidence to substantiate it..In recent weeks, the organization has become increasingly aggressive in its social media responses, with posts claiming the UN “can’t successfully move their aid to Palestinians” and that “they’ve simply stopped trying.” The foundation’s executive chairperson, the Rev Johnnie Moore, also dug in, publishing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal proposing to take over delivery of all UN aid sitting idle in Gaza. Moore wrote that there were hundreds of UN trucks loaded with food in Gaza, and offered to “deliver all of this aid, for free, on behalf of the U.N”.However, the senators argue that the foundation’s model, with only four militarized distribution sites, cannot replace the UN-led network that previously operated more than 400 aid distribution points during temporary ceasefires.The letter also lands as two prominent Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, declared on Monday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Their assessment, citing “coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society”, marks the first time major Israeli rights organizations have publicly reached this conclusion.The senators gave Secretary Rubio two weeks to respond to a series of detailed questions about civilian casualties, funding mechanisms, contractor operations, and compliance with humanitarian principles.“There should be no American taxpayer dollars contributing to this scheme,” the senators wrote.Also on Monday, independent senator Angus King from Maine said he would oppose providing additional US support to Israel until the country addresses the humanitarian crisis, saying Israel’s conduct has been “an affront to human decency”.King, who caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement: “I am through supporting the actions of the current Israeli government and will advocate – and vote – for an end to any United States support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.“My litmus test will be simple: no aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government.” More

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    Judge orders Trump administration to continue Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood

    The Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to “defund” Planned Parenthood.Days after Donald Trump signed his sweeping tax bill, Planned Parenthood sued over a provision in the bill that ended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, such as Planned Parenthood. The new court order, from US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston, will protect Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide while litigation in the case continues.The order also replaces and expands a previous edict handed down by Talwani, which initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments only to Planned Parenthood affiliates that did not provide abortions or did not receive at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order.“In particular, restricting members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”More than 80 million people rely on Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people.It is already illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, but Planned Parenthood clinics – which treat a disproportionate number of people who use Medicaid – rely on the program to reimburse it for services such as birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings.In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood had argued that it would be at risk of closing nearly 200 clinics in 24 states if it is cut off from Medicaid funds. These closures would probably be felt most strongly in blue states, since they are home to larger numbers of people who use Medicaid. A Planned Parenthood affiliate in California has already been forced to close five clinics as a result of the “defunding” provision.Planned Parenthood estimated that, in all, more than 1 million patients could lose care.“We will keep fighting this cruel law so that everyone can get birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings and other critical healthcare, no matter their insurance,” the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement after the Monday ruling.Planned Parenthood is battling overwhelming political and economic headwinds. Even if it prevails against the Trump administration, its affiliates could still be removed from Medicaid in red states, thanks to a June decision by the US supreme court in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program.  On Monday, the state of Missouri also sued the Planned Parenthood Federation of America – the mothership organization that knits together Planned Parenthood’s network of regional affiliates – over accusations that the organization downplayed the medical risks of a common abortion pill, mifepristone, “to cut costs and boost revenue”. The lawsuit, which asks for more than $1m in damages, is part of an ongoing campaign by anti-abortion activists to cut off access to mifepristone.More than 100 studies, conducted across dozens of countries and over more than three decades, have concluded that mifepristone is a safe way to end a pregnancy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Project 2025’s Paul Dans will challenge Lindsey Graham in South Carolina Republican primary

    Paul Dans, one of the main forces behind the conservative blueprint Project 2025, will run against Lindsey Graham in the South Carolina Republican primary next year.News outlets reported on Monday that Dans will join a crowded field of Republican contenders looking to unseat the senator. Dans is planning a formal announcement for Wednesday in Charleston.Dans served as the director for Project 2025 until July 2024, when sustained criticism of the project threatened Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Dans left the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, as the project became a liability last year.Since then, though, as Trump has put in place or introduced many elements of the project, Dans has reveled in it. Dans, who served as chief of staff in the office of personnel management (OPM) in the first Trump administration, told Politico earlier this year that the second Trump administration has been “actually way beyond my wildest dreams”.In the 900-plus page manifesto, Project 2025 called for dismantling the US government’s so-called “deep state” of career employees, replacing them with political appointees beholden to the president’s agenda. It also detailed a host of policy changes, from cracking down on immigration to eliminating programs and protections for LGTBQ+ people. Dozens of conservative groups helped create the project, and some of its key proponents have gotten spots in the second Trump administration.“To be clear, I believe that there is a ‘deep state’ out there, and I’m the single one who stepped forward at the end of the first term of Trump and really started to drain the swamp,” Dans told the Associated Press. He said the US Senate is the “headwaters of the swamp”.In an interview with the Post and Courier, Dans said “the top swamp critter is none other than Lindsey Graham”.Graham, a Republican, has served as a South Carolina senator since 2003 and is running for his fifth term. Others already declared for the Republican primary include Andre Bauer, the state’s former lieutenant governor, and businessman Mark Lynch.The primary will serve as a litmus test for Trump’s Make America great again (Maga) coalition. Dans says Graham doesn’t align with the Maga base, according to the Post and Courier, citing a 2023 Trump rally in the state where Graham was booed. “There is no amount of lipstick that you can put on Lindsey to make Maga fall for him, OK? That show is over. The jig is up. And it’s essentially ‘Sunset Boulevard’ for Lindsey at this stage,” he told the paper.Trump has already endorsed Graham for re-election, but the president has occasionally changed course on endorsements. In some elections, including the current Arizona contest for governor, Trump has endorsed more than one candidate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Graham’s campaign and the co-manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, panned Dans’s run for the seat.“After being unceremoniously dumped in 2024 while trying to torpedo Donald Trump’s historic campaign, Paul Dans has parachuted himself into the state of South Carolina in direct opposition to President Trump’s longtime friend and ally in the Senate, Lindsey Graham,” LaCivita said. “Like everything Paul Dans starts, this too will end prematurely.” More