Evelyn Reynolds

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    US to send 200 troops to Israel to support and monitor ceasefire deal, reports say

    US troops have been sent to Israel as part of the peace deal approved on Thursday to support and help monitor the ceasefire, according to multiple news reports.Senior US officials told reporters that 200 troops will initially be on the ground with a “civil-military coordination center” operated by US Central Command to help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid as well as logistical and security assistance into the territory wracked by two years of war, the Associated Press reported, citing two officials who confirmed the report on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not authorized for release.Reuters and ABC News also reported on military troops being sent to Israel.The troops are part of a broader team that also includes partner nations, non-governmental organizations and private-sector entities there to help monitor the peace deal and the transition to a civilian government in Gaza, US officials said.US service members have already begun arriving in the region from around the globe, according to one of the officials, and will continue to travel to the region over the weekend to begin planning and establishing the center. American troops will not be sent into Gaza, they said, and the coordination center will be staffed by about 200 US service members who have expertise in transportation, planning, security, logistics and engineering.Israel and Hamas agreed to pause hostilities in Gaza on Thursday, a deal Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social network, saying it was the first step to “Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace”. Many questions remain on next steps, including Hamas disarmament, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a future government in the territory.Both sides agreed to a hostage-prisoner exchange that would free about 20 Israeli hostages believed to still be alive and the remains of others who have died, and roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.Israeli bombs continued to land in Gaza, killing a reported 30 people after the deal was announced on Wednesday, but Palestinians celebrated in the rubble-strewn streets left devastated by the war, even as strikes continued.More than 2 million people have been displaced in Gaza, and humanitarian officials eagerly awaited permission from Israel to deliver badly needed aid there. From March to May this year, Israel imposed a total blockade of supplies into the area, and famine was declared in parts of Gaza in August. Only 20% of the aid needed has been delivered over the last several months, according to the UN, which said roughly 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other supplies is ready for distribution.After the announcement on Wednesday, the UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, called for all of Gaza’s entry points to open so aid could be delivered at “a much, much greater scale”.“Given the level of needs, the level of starvation, the level of misery and despair, will require a massive collective effort, and that’s what we’re mobilized for,” Fletcher told AP. “We are absolutely ready to roll and deliver at scale.”More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the war began, most of them civilians. Roughly another 169,000 have been injured. The collapse of health systems, schools and access to food has also taken a severe toll, with at least 400 additional deaths related to malnutrition, according to the UN, including more than 100 children. Only 1.5% of cropland in Gaza has been left able to be farmed, with water and soil left polluted by munitions and fires.As Israel’s forces withdraw, part of the agreed-upon process that will leave them 53% of the territory, according to an Israeli government spokesperson, questions remain about how the next steps to provide stabilization and reconstruction will unfold.The remarks from US officials provide some of the first details on how the ceasefire deal would be monitored and how the US military would have a role in that effort.Jason Burke and the Associated Press contributed to this story More

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    Arizona sheriff’s office misused millions set aside to remedy racial profiling

    The sheriff’s office for metro Phoenix spent millions of dollars budgeted for compliance costs in a racial profiling case over Joe Arpaio’s immigration crackdowns on things that had little or nothing to do with a court-ordered overhaul of the agency, according to an expert’s report.The report released on Wednesday criticized the use of compliance money by the Maricopa county sheriff’s office to fund personnel costs and tasks, either in part or in full, that are not connected to the overhaul.It also pointed out inappropriate spending: $2.8m for surplus body-worn camera licenses that went beyond the court’s orders; $1.5m in renovations in the relocation of an internal affairs office; over $1.3m to buy 42 vehicles; and an $11,000 golf cart to bring staff from headquarters to the internal affairs operation, even though the department was leasing parking space at the latter location.For over a decade, Maricopa county taxpayers have picked up the bill for remedying constitutional violations found in a 2013 profiling verdict over then sheriff Arpaio’s traffic patrols targeting immigrants.The racial profiling case centered on 20 large-scale traffic patrols launched by Arpaio that targeted immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. That led to the profiling verdict and expensive court-ordered overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.The county says $323m has been spent so far on legal expenditures, a staff that monitors the sheriff’s department’s progress and the agency’s compliance costs. The county has said the total is expected to reach $352m by July 2026.The federal judge presiding over the case expressed concerns about transparency in spending by the sheriff’s office and ordered a review, leading to the blistering report from budget analysts. The report was prepared by budget analysts picked by the case’s monitor.The report concluded 72% of the $226m in spending by the sheriff’s office from February 2014 to late September 2024 was either wrongly attributed or “improperly prorated” to a compliance fund.Budget analysts who reviewed hundreds of employee records over roughly that time period found an average of 70% of all positions funded by compliance money were “inappropriately assigned or only partially related to compliance.”Those expenditures were unrelated to or unnecessary for compliance, lacked appropriate justification or resulted from purposeful misrepresentation by the sheriff’s office, county leaders or both, the budget analysts wrote.Sheriff Jerry Sheridan’s office released a statement saying its attorneys are reviewing the report to identify areas of common concern and any findings it may dispute. Sheridan, who took office this year, is the fourth sheriff to grapple with the case.Raul Piña, a longtime member of a community advisory board created to help improve trust in the sheriff’s office, said the report opens up a broader conversation about the integrity of the sheriff’s office.“You will have to double-check now whenever the agency talks about statistics,” Piña said.Beginning earlier this year, county officials ramped up their criticism of the spending. They said the agency shouldn’t still be under the court’s supervision a dozen years after the verdict and shouldn’t still be paying such hefty bills, including about $30m to those who monitor the agency on behalf of the judge since around 2014.The report criticized Maricopa county and its governing board for a lack of oversight over the spending.Thomas Galvin, chairman of the county’s governing board and a leading critic of the continued court supervision, said the board’s legal counsel is reviewing the report. “The board has confidence in MCSO’s budgeting team and will respond accordingly,” Galvin said.Since the profiling verdict, the sheriff’s office has been criticized for disparate treatment of Hispanic and Black drivers in a series of studies of its traffic stops. The latest study, however, shows significant improvements. The agency’s also dogged by a backlog of internal affairs cases. While the agency has made progress on some fronts and garnered favorable compliance grades in certain areas, it hasn’t yet been deemed fully compliant with the court-ordered overhauls. More

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    Judge temporarily blocks Trump’s effort to deploy national guard in Chicago

    A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from federalizing or deploying the national guard in Illinois after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of troops to Chicago to help with immigration enforcement and to battle what the White House says are high crime rates in the city.US district judge April Perry issued her decision from the bench after more than two hours of arguments from lawyers for the federal government and the state of Illinois, which sued the Trump administration over the deployment. The order took effect on Thursday and will remain in place for two weeks.According to reporters present in the courtroom, Perry said she had “seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois”. On Thursday evening, around the time of Perry’s ruling, about half a dozen guard soldiers were milling around inside the gate at the Ice center in Broadview. A group of about 10 protesters were outside.Illinois governor JB Pritzker said in a statement: “Donald Trump is not a king – and his administration is not above the law.”Quoting the judge, he said: “Today, the court confirmed what we all know: there is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the national guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who attended the court hearing, called the decision a “win for the people of Chicago and the rule of law”. He vowed that the city would “continue to use all of the tools at our disposal to end the Trump administration’s war on Chicago”.Lawyers for the state of Illinois had called the sending of national guard soldiers to the city – which was opposed by Chicago and state political leaders – a constitutional crisis.The government “plowed ahead anyway”, attorney Christopher Wells said. “Now, troops are here.” Chicago and Illinois, run by Democratic elected leaders, say Trump has exceeded his authority and ignored their pleas to keep the national guard off the streets.Eric Hamilton, a justice department lawyer, said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness”.“Chicago is seeing a brazen new form of hostility from rioters targeting federal law enforcement,” Hamilton said. “They’re not protesters. There is enough that there is a danger of a rebellion here, which there is.”In handing down her order, Perry assailed the Department of Homeland Security for providing a version of events on the ground that was “simply unreliable”.Lawyers for Illinois and local officials have said the government is exaggerating and misrepresenting the situation in Chicago, which Trump has referred to as a “war zone”.Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said the president had “exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets” and “will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities”. She added that the president and his administration “expect to be vindicated by the court” upon appeal.National guard members from Texas and Illinois arrived this week at a US army reserve center in Elwood, south-west of Chicago. All 500 national guard members are under the US northern command and have been activated for 60 days.Earlier this week, Trump said Johnson and Pritzker should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor have signed an appeals court filing in support of the legal challenge by California – and also one in the Portland, Oregon, where a similar troop deployment is also being challenged.The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.In a separate ruling on Thursday, the US district judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction restricting agents’ use of force, including pepper balls, rubber bullets and physical force such as pulling, shoving or tackling against protesters and journalists who don’t pose a serious threat to law enforcement.Ellis’s order covers all of northern Illinois and also requires federal agents to wear “visible identification” such as badges, the subject of heated debate as viral footage has surfaced of masked, plainclothes officers carrying out immigration enforcements in several US cities.Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington DC. In Memphis, Tennessee, Paul Young, the city’s mayor, said national guard members would begin patrolling on Friday. Bill Lee, Tennessee’s Republican governor, supports using the troops.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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    Trump says ‘we’re only going to cut Democrat programs’ as Senate again fails to pass dueling funding bills – live

    New York state attorney general Letitia James sent out this statement on the news that she has been indicted by a federal grand jury for bank fraud after one of Trump’s US attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, personally presented the case to the grand jury.She also posted a video of her statement on X:“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties.“His decision to fire a United States Attorney who refused to bring charges against me – and replace them with someone who is blindly loyal not to the law, but to the president – is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country. This is the time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice.“I stand strongly behind my office’s litigation against the Trump Organization. We conducted a two-year investigation based on the facts and evidence – not politics. Judges have upheld the trial court’s finding that Donald Trump, his company, and his two sons are liable for fraud.“I am a proud woman of faith, and I know that faith and fear cannot share the same space. And so today I am not fearful, I am fearless, and as my faith teaches me, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights. And I will continue to do my job.”New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has also made a statement in support of New York attorney general Letitia James, accusing Trump of weaponizing his Justice Department who “punish those who hold the powerful accountable.”The American Civil Liberties Union is calling the Trump Justice Department’s indictment of New York attorney general Letitia James “the latest in a long list of brazen abuses of power by President Trump” and a “stunning violation.” “He has continued to weaponize our nation’s judicial system to settle personal vendettas, attack his political opponents, and silence his critics,” the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.“President Trump’s open interference in the Department of Justice’s investigation – demanding charges, forcing out the prosecutor, and installing a loyalist – is a stunning violation of our country’s long tradition of an independent judicial system. The indictment of Letitia James makes it clearer than ever that President Trump has prioritized retaliation over the rule of law.“Whether it’s targeting Jimmy Kimmel, James Comey, Letitia James, or the millions of everyday people exercising their rights to free speech, this administration’s efforts to prosecute, bully, and intimidate will only strengthen the People’s resolve to exercise our freedoms and defend our democracy.”New York state attorney general Letitia James sent out this statement on the news that she has been indicted by a federal grand jury for bank fraud after one of Trump’s US attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, personally presented the case to the grand jury.She also posted a video of her statement on X:“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties.“His decision to fire a United States Attorney who refused to bring charges against me – and replace them with someone who is blindly loyal not to the law, but to the president – is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country. This is the time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice.“I stand strongly behind my office’s litigation against the Trump Organization. We conducted a two-year investigation based on the facts and evidence – not politics. Judges have upheld the trial court’s finding that Donald Trump, his company, and his two sons are liable for fraud.“I am a proud woman of faith, and I know that faith and fear cannot share the same space. And so today I am not fearful, I am fearless, and as my faith teaches me, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights. And I will continue to do my job.”Letitia James fixated on Donald Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, branding the then-president a “con man” and ″carnival barker” and pledging to shine a “bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings,” the Associated Press reported in 2023.That year, James appeared to be on the verged of disrupting Trump’s real estate empire after a judge ruled Tuesday that he defrauded banks, insurers and others by exaggerating the value of assets on paperwork used for deals and securing loans.Her civil fraud lawsuit against Trump was not her only legal battle against a powerful and prominent opponent:

    In 2021, James oversaw an investigation of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. The inquiry led to a remarkable downfall for the once-rising star in the Democratic party. Lawyers hired by James concluded that 11 women were telling the truth when they said Cuomo touched them inappropriately, commented on their appearance or made suggestive comments about their sex lives. Cuomo alleged that James used the investigation to further her own political aspirations.

    James also led a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association in a case that accuses its leaders of financial mismanagement, which led to the resignation of powerful NRA leader Wayne LaPierre
    Video made public in 2023 showed Donald Trump personally answering questions from New York attorney general Letitia James in the civil fraud case she brought against him, and pleading the fifth more than 400 times.Now, James, one of the attorneys who succeeded in holding Trump legally accountable for his behavior, has been indicted for bank fraud by a federal grand jury, in what appears to be president’s latest effort to weaponize the federal Department of Justice to punish his political rivals.Here’s more background on Letitia James, the New York state attorney general who went after Trump, and has now been indicted by Trump administration-appointed federal prosecutors.James filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump in 2022, which alleged that he inflated his net worth by billions of dollars on his financial statements and habitually misled banks and others about the value of prized assets, including golf courses, hotels, the Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan and his Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida.In 2024, she won what she called a “tremendous victory” in the case, saying “Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law.”Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last year that James had proved Trump engaged in a years-long conspiracy with executives at his company to deceive banks and insurers.Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355m – payback of what the judge deemed “ill-gotten gains” from his puffed-up financial statements. That amount soared to more than $515m, including interest, by the time an appellate court ruled this year that the judgment was “excessive.”Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday night that Israel and Hamas had agreed the first phase of a new ceasefire deal in Gaza. We’ve been here before, but is it different this time? Has Trump proved the doubters wrong?Jonathan Freedland speaks to Julian Borger about the prospect for peace in the Middle East and the US president’s role in getting to this pointThe president also confirmed that he’ll head to the Middle East “sometime Sunday”.“Everybody I see is celebrating in Israel, but they’re celebrating in many other countries too. A lot of the Muslim and Arab countries, they’re celebrating,” he added.In response to a reporter’s question, Donald Trump also said that no one would be forced to leave Gaza as it’s being rebuilt. “It’s just the opposite. This is a great plan. This is a great peace plan,” he said. “We’re not looking to do that at all.”The president has called out Spain for not paying five per cent on defense spending that Donald Trump has urged.Spain is currently the only Nato member who has refused to pay more of its GDP on defense.”We had one laggard. It was Spain,” Trump said. “You have to call them and find why are they a laggard … they have no excuse not to do this. But that’s all right, maybe you should throw them Nato.”Trump said that he thought that brokering an end to the war in Ukraine would have been “one of the easier ones”, but is confident that a ceasefire will be on the horizon “hopefully soon”.“I think Russia is actually right now, both economically and militarily, not in a very strong place,” Stubb added, praising Donald Trump for pushing European allies to boycott sales of Russian oil and gas.Donald Trump and Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, are meeting now in the Oval Office. Stubb congratulated Trump on the first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
    If someone would have said a few weeks back that you and your team are able to push us to a position where there will be a cease fire, an exchange of prisoners, hostages, and then a pullback, I would not have believed it, but it’s this is what diplomacy is at its best.

    The Senate has rejected, for the seventh time, a House-passed bill to keep the government funded until 21 November – leaving no end in sight for shutdown as it enters its ninth day. The continuing resolution failed to pass the 60-vote threshold to advance. The upper chamber also failed to pass a Democratic alternative, replete with several health care provisions. Congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle continue to trade barbs, blaming the other party for the lapse in government funding.

    At his eight cabinet meeting, Donald Trump took a victory lap following the agreement of the first phase of a ceasefire deal by Israel and Hamas. The meeting lasted just over an hour, and the president said that the Gaza hostages should be released on Monday or Tuesday and that he hopes to attend a signing ceremony in Egypt. Trump also said that he had agreed to speak at the Knesset on his upcoming trip to the Middle East.

    Two federal courts heard arguments over the Trump administration’s deployment of national guard troops to Democratic-run cities. A three-panel judge on the ninth circuit court of appeals wrapped a hearing to decide whether to allow the president’s deployment of national guard troops to Portland, Oregon. Last week a lower court judge blocked the administration from federalizing troops. Meanwhile, in Chicago, April Perry, a district court judge, held a hearing in a very similar case, after protests erupted outside immigration facilities throughout the city and Trump deployed hundreds of national guard officers from Illinois and Texas to Chicago. After closing arguments, Perry asked lawyers to be back at the court in a few hours.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s homeland security secretary said that the department is buying buildings in Chicago and Portland where agents can operate. “We’re going to not back off,” Kristi Noem said at today’s cabinet meeting. “In fact, we’re doubling down, and we’re going to be in more parts of Chicago in response to the people there.”
    The president of Finland, Alexander Stubb, has arrived at the White House. Donald Trump will hold a bilateral meeting with the Finnish leader shortly. More

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    Nearly half of FBI agents in major offices reassigned to immigration enforcement

    Nearly half of the FBI agents working in the US’s major field offices have been reassigned to aid immigration enforcement, according to newly released data, a stunning shift in law enforcement priorities that has raised public safety concerns.Personnel data obtained by Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, and shared with the Guardian, suggests the Trump administration has moved 45% of FBI agents in the country’s 25 largest field offices to support the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration crackdown. Across all of the FBI’s offices, 23% of the roughly 13,000 total agents at the bureau are now working on immigration, according to Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.Warner’s office said the FBI agents now deployed alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent have been taken away from their work tackling cybercrimes, drug trafficking, terrorism, espionage, violent crimes, counterintelligence and other efforts that are part of the bureau’s mission – some areas that Trump has claimed are White House priorities.The data, first reported by the Washington Post, suggests the FBI is dramatically shifting its objectives in an effort to back Trump’s increasingly aggressive immigration raids, with the administration targeting 3,000 daily arrests and seeking to expand its detention capacity to detain more than 100,000 immigrants.The data is understating the scale of the reorganization, as the FBI only provided counts for agents who are now spending more than half of their job doing immigration enforcement, according to Warner. The senator’s office said it was likely that more than a quarter of FBI agents’ total hours were now dedicated to immigration, and that in some field offices, more than half of the agents had been redirected to DHS.“When you pull a quarter of the FBI’s top agents off the front lines of fighting terrorists, spies, drug traffickers, and violent criminals, the consequences are clear: critical national security work gets sidelined, and our country is put at greater risk,” Warner said in a statement.The transformation of the FBI has raised alarms about the potential consequences for communities targeted by immigration raids and the impact on the work the bureau is abandoning, experts said.Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was unprecedented for the bureau to redirect this many agents to a mission that is not part of the FBI’s mandate. Some agents might be eager to support the president’s immigration agenda while others likely oppose the redirection, he said: “Part of the reason FBI leadership would be doing this at such scale is to separate those two – to identify who are the loyalists and who are potential impediments to the administration’s goals.”The move is in line with FBI director Kash Patel’s efforts to purge the bureau of agents seen as disloyal to Trump, German said, noting reports of the termination of personnel involved in the January 6 investigation.FBI agents, he said, are generally trained as investigators who may make targeted arrests, a job that significantly differs from those of many immigration enforcement officers, which could lead to problems in the field during immigration raids. “Just jumping in an SUV with a bunch of armed men and rolling around the streets until you see someone running away is inherently a more dangerous type of activity they are not very well trained for,” German said.There has been extensive documentation of the violent and indiscriminate nature of the Ice raids, which have often been carried out by masked men and have at times led to the detention of US citizens, and adding FBI personnel to the mix could exacerbate the chaos and potential for abuses, the former agent said.The exact tasks and responsibilities of the FBI agents now working alongside Ice are unclear. Spokespeople for DHS, Ice, the FBI and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.German, an FBI whistleblower who has spoken out about the civil rights abuses of the bureau’s intelligence work, said he was most concerned about the agency shifting away from public corruption and white-collar crime, offenses state and local agencies don’t have capacity to tackle: “That’s where the real harm will come.”Current and former FBI agents told the Washington Post there were growing concerns about low morale within the agency and that agents were stretched thin, which could hamper national security investigations and complex cases.Kenneth Gray, a former FBI agent and professor of practice in the University of New Haven’s criminal justice department, said the shift in priorities resembled the post-9/11 reorganization at the FBI, when counterterrorism became the central focus.“The bureau can withstand a temporary change in its priorities, but in the long-term, if agents are continuing to work immigration matters, as opposed to counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence or cybercrimes, that may end up biting us big time,” said Gray, who worked at the bureau for 24 years, before leaving in 2012. “The next 9/11 might happen if agents who were working on counterterrorism have been diverted.”Gray, however, said he was not concerned about a temporary shift while DHS engages in rapid recruitment of new Ice officers.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, defended the redirection of FBI resources toward immigration enforcement at a tense Senate hearing earlier this week when she was accused by Democrats of weaponizing the justice department. FBI agents, she said, were working daily with DHS on “keeping Americans safe and getting illegal aliens out of our country”. More

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    Trump dreams of ‘everlasting peace’ as acolytes drop heavy hints to Nobel committee

    So to peace in our time. And why not? The Nobel committee is meeting in Oslo to divvy up its annual gongs and Donald Trump, convening his cabinet – and the media – in the White House had a good story to tell.After two years of death, destruction, starvation and captivity for Israeli hostages in Gaza, peace at last was at hand. Israel and Hamas were on the brink of a historic deal, brokered by the man in the Oval Office, who has made no secret of his desire to be known as the president of peace.The stakes in Gaza are so gravely baleful that it would be churlish to ascribe selfish motives to the cabinet meeting’s main theme.Yet the timing was, shall we say, serendipitous.Today is Thursday, tomorrow Friday – by coincidence, the day the winner of the Nobel will be announced.But Trump, whose previous expressions of desire for the same prize awarded to Barack Obama have bordered on the avaricious, was all decorum and restraint – at least on that narrow issue alone.In the course of a 70-minute meeting, the N word went unmentioned – apart from by one journalist near the end, whose question about Trump’s views on the prize went unanswered.There was going to be “peace in the Middle East”, he said portentously.“I think it’s going to be a lasting peace, hopefully an everlasting peace,” he added, no ambition being too great.“It will be a day of joy,” the president said, when the remaining living Israeli hostages – believed to be 20 in number – are released on Monday or Tuesday.“They’re dancing in the streets. They’re so happy. Everybody’s happy. They’re dancing in the streets of Arab countries, Muslim countries, I’ve never seen anything like it.”Everyone around him deserved credit, the president said magnanimously. “JD [Vance], you were fantastic. And Pete [Hegseth], you were great. Marco [Rubio] was fantastic. I mean, some of you were very much involved. I think almost everybody in this room was involved. Susie [Wiles, the White House chief of staff], I want to thank you very much. You were incredible … and then you have Steve Witkoff [his personal envoy].”But it fell to Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser, to supply the heavy hint to the Nobel committee in Norway.“I don’t know if the one day perhaps the entire story will be told about the events of yesterday, but suffice it to say – it’s not an exaggeration – that none of it would have been possible without the president. Without the president of the United States being involved,” enthused the man once disparaged by Trump as “little Marco”.That drew a round of applause from the cabinet – the second of the meeting, the first being for Trump’s announcement at the beginning that a national holiday on the second Monday of October would henceforth be known as Columbus Day.Rubio warmed to his theme. The achievement transcended dry geopolitics to encapsulate the person of Trump himself.“Yesterday was a human story,” he said. “And because of the work you put in. And honestly, not only is there no other leader in the world that could have put this together, Mr President, but frankly, I don’t know of any American president in the modern era that could have made this possible because of the actions you have taken unrelated to this, and because of who you are, and what you’ve done, and how you’re viewed.”But this was still a Trump cabinet meeting, and it would not have been complete without some dissonant notes.They were duly supplied by the jarring contrast between the promise of peace and harmony in the Middle East and the darkening prospect of war, or at least civil disharmony, in America.Trump only had good words to say about countries in the Middle East who were he said were on board with his peace deal – even Iran, a country which he recently bombed but now said he wanted to see rebuilt.But here at home an “enemy from within” had to be confronted. Troops were to be deployed onto the streets of US cities to show elected local Democratic mayors and governors who was boss.Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reported going to Portland and meeting the governor, mayor, chief of police and highway patrol superintendent.“They are all lying and disingenuous and dishonest people,” she declared, charitably, “because as soon as you leave the room, then they make the exact opposite response.” This presumably because the officials named depicted their city in somewhat more peaceful terms than the warzone of Noem et al’s fevered narrative.Yet taking the prize for low blows was JD Vance, who understood that the unifying theme of the meeting was Trump’s nascent success in ending bloodshed in the Middle East – yet failed to grasp that this call for a display of graciousness on his part.The vice-president has been known at cabinet gatherings to double up with contrived laughter at his boss’s jokes.This time he decided the best policy was to repurpose for his own use one of Trump’s tried-and-tested jibes – at the expense of Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate.“The one thing I would say is obviously the president of the United States, a New York real estate billionaire, one of the most famous New Yorkers in the world, has a lot of interaction with a lot of people who are very pro-Israel,” said Vance.Then, perhaps realizing that he could not reach the giddy heights of Rubio’s testimonial, he added: “He also, of course, knew one of the most famous Palestinians in the world, Chuck Schumer.”The crack provoked laughter. It is one of Trump’s cruelest taunts against Schumer, a fellow New Yorker who is proudly Jewish and a staunch supporter of Israel. Given the current backdrop, retreading it at this point struck a particularly discordant note.JD, it seems, has secret aspirations as a king of comedy. A calling missed, perhaps. But someone needs to tell him about timing – and context. More

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    News organizations hold out on signing Pentagon media policies ‘designed to stifle a free press’

    With days left before journalists covering the Pentagon must sign on to a new set of guidelines to retain physical access to the department, major US news companies – and organizations representing their interests – remain concerned about specific policies they fear will stifle independent reporting on the Pentagon.The Trump administration has been accused of preparing to impose severe limitations on the ability of journalists to cover the Pentagon and publish information that had not been officially approved for release.An “in-brief for Media Members” that updated an earlier set of policies, released last month, drew strong condemnation from media companies and groups advocating for press freedom. On Monday, the Pentagon sent out a revised version.On Wednesday, the Pentagon Press Association, which said it has been “cautious” in communicating about the policy as it worked behind the scenes, said the changes made – including an acknowledgment that signees may not “agree” with the policies – are not sufficient.In particular, the revised policy still prohibits journalists from the “solicitation” of information from Pentagon employees, “such as public advertisements or calls for tips encouraging [Department of War] employees to share non-public [Department of War] information”. Journalists fear that policy could infringe on their ability to seek information about the agency from employees.Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to change the name of the defense department to the Department of War. This would require approval from Congress to become official.“We acknowledge and appreciate that the Pentagon is no longer requiring reporters to express agreement with the new policy as a condition for obtaining press credentials,” the Pentagon Press Association said in a statement. “But the Pentagon is still asking us to affirm in writing our ‘understanding’ of policies that appear designed to stifle a free press and potentially expose us to prosecution for simply doing our jobs.”The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), which has worked behind the scenes to relax the policies, said the changes don’t go far enough.“The fact is we still have concerns with the updated language of the policy and expect that it will pose a significant impediment as journalists weigh with their employers whether or not to sign this revised version,” Gabe Rottman, the RCFP vice-president of policy said on Wednesday.PEN America, an organization that advocates for free expression, also said Thursday that the Pentagon should “revisit” its policies. “National security is strengthened, not threatened, when journalists can investigate and report without fear,” Tim Richardson, PEN America journalism and disinformation program director said.With the exception of CNN, which does not plan to sign the policy, most news organizations have been tight-lipped when asked whether they plan to sign by next week’s deadline or risk losing access to the Pentagon compound.The New York Times said in a statement that it “appreciates the Pentagon’s engagement, but problems remain with the policy and we and other news organizations believe further changes are needed”.A spokesperson for the Atlantic also said that it “[continues] to oppose the Pentagon’s proposed press policy”.Pentagon representatives have been steadfast in rebuffing the protests of media organizations.“Access to the Pentagon is a privilege, not a right and the Department is not only legally permitted, but morally obligated to impose reasonable regulations on the exercise of that privilege,” chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on X, denying that journalists will be forced to “clear stories” with the agency before publication.Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, said in her own post that “reporters would rather clutch their pearls on social media than stop trying to get warfighters and [Department of War] civilians to commit a crime by violating Department-wide policy.”In its statement on Wednesday, the Pentagon Press Association called on the agency to reconsider the policies in the remaining days before journalists are asked to sign them.“Limiting the media’s ability to report on the US military fails to honor the American families who have entrusted their sons and daughters to serve in it, or the taxpayers responsible for giving the department hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” the group said. “The American people deserve to know how their military is being run. They deserve more information from this administration, not less.” More

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    in US Politics

    National guard remains in Chicago area as judge to rule on Trump deployment

    Hundreds of national guard troops remained in the Chicago area as city and Illinois officials awaited a judge’s decision to stop Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city.It was still unclear where specifically the Trump administration would send the troops who reported to an army training site south-west of Chicago, which was laden with extra fencing and tarps put up to block the public’s view of the facility late on Wednesday evening.As they arrived this week, trucks marked Emergency Disaster Services pulled in and out, dropping off portable toilets and other supplies. Trailers were set up in rows.“The federal government has not communicated with us in any way about their troop movements,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, told reporters. “I can’t believe I have to say ‘troop movements’ in an American city, but that is what we’re talking about here.”Roughly 500 soldiers – 200 from the Texas national guard and 300 from the Illinois national guard – were mobilized to the city for an “initial period of 60 days”, according to statement issued from US Northern Command, part of the defense department, which called the operation a “federal protection mission”.The guard members are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command.A small number of troops have started protecting federal property in the Chicago area, officials told the Associated Press.Footage of uniformed troops arriving early on Thursday morning at an Ice processing facility in the suburban community of Broadview, which has become a focal point of protests. They carried shields and what appeared to be luggage.In a statement, the village of Broadview said three vans carrying 45 members of the Texas national guard had arrived at the federal building.“During their patrols, Broadview police officers observed the vans parked in the rear of 2000 25th Ave and all of the guards were sleeping. We let them sleep undisturbed. We hope that they will extend the same courtesy in the coming days to Broadview residents who deserve a good night’s sleep, too,” the statement said.While the deployment came as part of a crackdown threatened by Trump, in response to unsubstantiated claims that big cities run by Democrats are overwhelmed with crime, the stated mission says military would be “performing ground activities to protect federal functions, personnel, and property”.It marks Trump’s fourth deployment of national guard troops on to the streets of a major US city in as many months, following deployments in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Memphis. In all cases except Memphis, it has been against the wishes of state and city leaders.Trump repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hellhole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.A judge will also have a role in determining how many boots are on the streets: a court hearing was being held on Thursday after a request by Illinois and Chicago to declare the guard deployment illegal.The state of Illinois urged April Perry, a federal judge, to order the national guard to stand down, calling the deployment a constitutional crisis. The government “plowed ahead anyway”, attorney Christopher Wells said. “Now, troops are here.”Wells’ arguments opened an extraordinary hearing where heavy public turnout at the downtown Chicago courthouse caused officials to open an overflow room with a video feed of the hearing.Eric Hamilton, a justice department lawyer, said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness”. He discussed an incident last weekend in which a Border Patrol vehicle was reportedly boxed in and an agent shot a woman in response.But in a court filing, the city and state lawyers say protests at the Ice building in Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement”.“The president is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the president’s administration to target jurisdictions the president dislikes.”It’s one of several major court fights on the deployment of federal troops to American cities.Also Thursday, a federal appeals court heard arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon national guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an Ice building.US district judge Karin Immergut on Saturday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Oregon troops’ deployment, and on Sunday blocked the deployment of any national guard troops to the city.The case at the heart of Sunday’s decision was brought by the states of Oregon and California, whose national troops Trump had sent to Portland. Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed a court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon. Twenty others, led by Iowa, backed the Trump administration.The case centers around the nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.“This is about authoritarianism. It’s about stoking fear,” Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, said. “It’s about breaking the constitution that would give him that much more control over our American cities.”Trump, meanwhile, sent barbs from Washington, saying on social media that Pritzker and Johnson, both Democrats, “should be in jail” for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.Asked about Trump’s wish to jail him, Pritzker extended his arms and told MSNBC: “If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”Meanwhile, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said the department was “doubling down” by buying buildings in Chicago – and also Portland – for Ice personnel to operate from.“We’re purchasing more buildings in Chicago to operate out of. We’re going to not back off,” she said. “In fact, we’re doubling down, and we’re going to be in more parts of Chicago in response to the people there.”At the same time in Memphis, a small group of troops were helping on Wednesday with the Memphis Safe Task Force, said a state military department spokesperson who did not specify the exact role or number of the guard members. The taskforce is a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to fight crime.Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who has welcomed the guard, has said previously that he would not expect more than 150 guard members to be sent to the city.The Associated Press contributed to this report More