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    How two blond suburban moms gave Democrats an answer to the rightwing media ecosystem

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    View image in fullscreenWhen Donald Trump scheduled a press conference after a weekend in which rumors about his health swirled, two women in red-state Oklahoma launched a livestream for their more than 1 million followers on YouTube to speculate about the condition of “Cankles McTacoTits”, shortened to Canks “for expediency and spite”.It was fitting for the profanity-laced, straight talking liberal podcast I’ve Had It that quipped, after interviewing Barack Obama, that the former president has “big dick energy”.Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan have risen up the podcast charts, buoyed by Democrats looking to commiserate and find their party’s answer to the bro-filled atmosphere that helped propel Trump’s victory in 2024.In Oklahoma City, in the upstairs of Welch’s design studio, the self-described “two middle-aged women in the buckle of the bible belt trying to stand up for democracy” pivot between recording their podcast – in early September, that meant interviewing the mayor of Los Angeles, promoting their new co-authored book, and catching up on life like the old friends they are. Welch tells Sullivan to get that vape out of her mouth. They talk about their kids, the ones who originally brought them together in the trenches of motherhood years ago.This purple city in a deep red state is an unlikely spot for a rising voice on the left in new media. But as the left grapples for its counter to the rightwing media ecosystem, the two blonde suburban moms – who admit they look “Fox-coded” – offer one inroad. Across all platforms, they have several million followers, including 1.3m on YouTube and nearly 1m on Instagram. On the weekly Apple podcast charts in early October, they ranked as the second-most listened to among society and culture shows. On YouTube’s charts, their news show, IHIP news, ranked 18th among podcasts. They regularly chart as one of the fastest-growing podcasts.“Everyone always talking about we need to find the Joe Rogan of the left when they’re right here!” Gibson Johns, a podcaster and pop culture aficionado wrote on X with a photo of Welch and Sullivan.Trying to find a singular Joe Rogan on the left is the wrong question, Welch said. It’s “too myopic” – the left isn’t devout to a leader, like the right is to Trump. “The left needs to have a very large, diverse tent.” Their “cult,” as they often call their community, brings in “some of the gays, some of these white ladies that are getting radicalized”. They see other liberal podcasts as allies, with the more people consuming liberal media, whoever it is, the better.“Liberals have hobbies,” said the 51-year-old Welch. “Our whole identity isn’t hating conservatives … the Republican party presents the enemy, and they can just feast on it.”The show launched in 2022 as an entertainment podcast, drawing followers who remembered their Bravo reality TV show. Its first episode, “Toddlers are Assholes,” focused on how toddlers are, well, assholes. They went viral for their funny rants soon after, but quickly blended politics into the show. Their political content caught the eyes of big-name Democrats, and they snagged guests including Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, in 2023, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in early 2024, then Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom and Bernie Sanders.They’re quick with salty language and nicknames. Trump looked “puffed up like a bubble tick”. JD Vance is “Lil Smokey,” a shorter version of “Smokey Eye Failed Drag Queen”. Childish people are “titty babies”.View image in fullscreen“You want to go low, we’re gonna go lower,” Welch said. “The integrity politics of being perfect as a liberal needs to stop, and we need to bully the shit out of these guys, because they respond to it.”Their language and commentary elicits pushback and vitriol from liberals at times, said Sullivan, who is 55. But, Welch added, while they don’t want to punch down, they are “still going to play a brand of fuck-you politics”, something she wishes elected Democrats would do more often.Their pivot from entertainment to politics happened naturally. Welch is a lifelong Democrat and atheist who grew up defending her beliefs in Oklahoma. For Sullivan, a former Republican who shed religion in recent years, the supreme court’s Dobbs decision, overturning the right to an abortion across the US, made her “so fucking mad at white women”.In early episodes, listeners wrote in to tell them to stay out of politics and use fewer swear words. The president of a company they partnered with to sell ads told them not to talk about politics. In turn, they started talking about politics more and more. They dropped the “dead weight” of people who only came for entertainment, Welch said.“And it turns out, when you believe in something and you defend it vigorously, some people are going to dislike you for your beliefs, and that’s fine, but the people who like you, that turns into love, and you create a community,” she said.••Welch’s first child and Sullivan’s second child were each other’s first best friends. They wanted to be together all the time, so Welch and Sullivan were together all the time while their husbands were “crazier than shithouse rats”. Welch’s husband, who Sullivan met in law school, was battling addiction, while Sullivan’s husband was frequenting sex workers and spending through their money. They’d pile into Sullivan’s three-row white suburban and cart the kids to gymnastics or pizza buffets.Welch became Sullivan’s “lifeline,” Sullivan said, “like the only person on the planet that I could trust with what was going on with me, so that made her safe no matter what.”Sullivan described their bond in their book Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches: “The reason Jennifer and I banter so well is that we’ve been through a lot together. We have an Olympic-sized pool of combined tears, but there’s also been a lot of laughter.“We’ve traded in Jen’s porch for the podcast studio these days, and we’ve both quit smoking, but it’s basically the same idea: we talk through everything, even the scary stuff.”Religion at times stood between them, when Sullivan was still religious and right-leaning. At lunch, over chips and queso, Sullivan asked Welch: “Religion didn’t always come up with us, did it?” Welch responded: “You were always trying to get me to go to Bible study.” Sullivan described a “gradual evolution” away from her faith, which she told Welch about in 2020. “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Welch said of the big reveal.Now, their podcast often includes laments against the conservative Christians seeking to use their religion to govern. “Once you get out of it, you become more turned off by it,” Sullivan said. Welch quipped: “She’s gotten worse than me.”Welch and Sullivan’s Bravo show, Sweet Home Oklahoma, ran for two seasons from 2017-2018, which gave them a small but dedicated built-in audience when they launched the podcast. Welch still works as an interior designer on high-end homes, though she’s more selective in what she takes on. Sullivan recently left her job as a divorce attorney because juggling a court schedule and clients with the growing podcast became too much.View image in fullscreenWelch financed the podcast, paying herself back over the course of a year. They use her building as a studio. She bought all the equipment. She didn’t want to be beholden to anyone or feel hesitant to dish out criticisms to whomever she chose. They can say what people are thinking, in terms they choose, because they are “untethered to anybody”.Clips of them taking Democrats to task have gone viral this year, including a heated interview in which Welch went after Rahm Emanuel for abandoning trans people. Emanuel said of Democratic messaging: “The only room we were doing really well was the bathroom, and that’s the smallest room in the house.” Welch reacted with “pure, unadulterated anger,” enraged that Emanuel would throw trans people under the bus. At one point, Emanuel suggested people in red states with harsh anti-trans or anti-gay laws could move somewhere else if they wanted. Welch’s only regret about the interview is that she “didn’t chew his ass out over that”.In a recent episode, she repeatedly asks a Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia whether he will take donations from the pro-Israel AIPac, a clip of which spread widely with the comment “Damn this is intense.” In another, she ran down a list of Democrats who took AIPac money. They regularly call for the party to embrace “moral clarity” on the Gaza war.Other clips in which they bashed Republicans sometimes make it into rightwing media. One rant where Welch said she’s had it with Trump voters who go to Mexican or Chinese restaurants while supporting deportations drew a comment from the White House: “Rich liberal white women love to pretend to be champions of diversity.”When their clips have ended up on rightwing media, they’ve received threats and harassing messages. “We voluntarily get up every day, we choose to do our podcast, so we’re not victims of any of what the commentary in the aftermath is,” Welch said. Comments will focus on their appearances or intellect. But what goes too far, Welch said, is receiving wishes of sexual violence, both against her and her children. She shut down email inquiries to her design firm. She doesn’t read her direct messages anymore.View image in fullscreen“Are my feelings hurt? Do I live in fear? No. Is it helpful for me to read all of this shit? No,” she said.The life of the podcastI’ve Had It gets big-name guests through a combination of the politicians reaching out to pitch them and them seeking out people they want to talk to.Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, joined an episode in September, to talk about her city under federal occupation. At the start of I’ve Had It, the hosts and guest say one thing they’ve “had it” with, and for Bass, it’s false depictions of Los Angeles. At one point, when they refer to Trump as “Canks,” Welch notes, “I know it’s probably beneath you, mayor.” They also play a game called “had it or hit it,” where guests weigh in on what they are cool with or sick of.Welch’s younger son is now in college in Los Angeles, she tells the mayor, and she’ll be there soon to visit. She’d love to meet in person, she says. Bass warmly agrees.In addition to I’ve Had It, their flagship, they do a regular news video series called IHIP News for YouTube. In September,View image in fullscreenWhen rumors of Trump’s demise were rampant, they launched a “Canks Watch”, volleying over how much longer they expected the president to live and how they’d feel once he was gone. “Straight-up elated,” Sullivan said.Tens of thousands tuned in live to hear their banter, and the video netted more than 400,000 views. The president, though, looked pretty normal. “He sounds almost coherent for him,” Sullivan said. “Goddamn it, he’s doing a lot better than I thought,” Welch said.Their podcasts are not really for moderates – in an episode with Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, where Mamdani talks about his strategy of not browbeating voters who went for Trump, Welch responds with “guilty”.They also run a Patreon and host a livestream with their Patreon subscribers weekly. They thank their “patriots, gay-triots, Black-triots, brown-triots” of about 100 people who sign on for an open Q&A-style conversation about their views on political topics and updates on their lives.Groups of their most ardent fans have met up to go for cocktails before their live shows. During meet-and-greets, they have had young queer people come up to them crying because they stand up strongly for the LGBTQIA+ community. Some have told them they see them as the mothers they wish had.“You go from an 18-year-old marginalized kid all the way to a Boomer, and there’s a unity in the messaging of being irritated about something, petty shit-talking, fighting for what’s right, and not giving a fuck what anybody thinks about it,” Welch said of their supporters.View image in fullscreenAfter one day of recordings, I jump in the car with Sullivan, who has some errands to run. We hit up a vape shop, where she restocks on cartridges and spearmint chapsticks. We then pick up her dogs – two French bulldogs and a Siberian husky, her divorce dog. “I’d much rather have the Siberian husky than the husband. It’s not even a close second,” she said. We chat a bit about her dating life, which sometimes comes up in their podcast, too. “My picker is so bad. Serial killer is the bar, and I continue to fall under it every time.”I then hang out with Welch, going to tennis lessons where she engages in friendly shit-talking with the instructor. Some journalists embed in warzones, she joked, and “we’re about to have a war right here”. She started playing tennis daily to combat long Covid after her doctor recommended a sport that included hand-eye coordination. We pick up her two Frenchies, one of which has his own Instagram page.They both, on separate occasions, refer to the “yin and yang” of their relationship. Sullivan said she will defer to Welch on decisions if they’re on the fence. While it’s hard to be around anybody all the time, she said, they know how to communicate. “We rarely have disagreements,” Sullivan said. “When we do, we’re able to rationally talk about them. So overall, I would say far more positive than negative. But to say, oh, it’s easy, it’s all unicorns and rainbows, no.”Decamping to New YorkThey’ve grown their podcast in a a state that boasts how every county voted for Trump in 2024. Around Oklahoma City, which remains purple, they’re sometimes recognized loudly and proudly, or via whispers from “Democrats in the closet” afraid to outwardly show their politics.View image in fullscreenAt the tennis club recently, an older woman who Welch thought for sure was a Republican squeezed her hand and said “keep doing what you’re doing,” she recounted. “This is anecdotal, but if this is happening to rich white women in Oklahoma City, I can’t help but think that this isn’t happening all over the place,” she said.When Welch talked about these events in the Patreon stream, Sullivan said they gave her hope. But, she added, “I just found hope to be dangerous in these times.”They want to keep expanding the podcast. Welch has become a frequent guest on TV news and commentary shows. The more she appears on these shows, the more requests she gets for others. But, she added, “we’re at an interesting intersection where our YouTube gets as many views as nighttime television does.”Still, the time is right for a big move – Welch is heading to New York City, renting an apartment starting in October and planning to spend most of her time there now that her kids have graduated from high school. Sullivan plans to do the same, looking for an apartment to rent there later this year. The podcast will continue.Welch has always felt like an outsider in Oklahoma as a progressive and an atheist. She’s found community there, building a group of like-minded friends, but still is bothered by the “hypocrisy” she sees among mutual friends who vote against their gay or lesbian friends.She’s giving the New York experiment a year to decide whether it’s a good fit, with no expectations. It’s been a lifelong dream of hers, and she’s able to realize it now.“I’ve always been stuck here, and I’ve always felt like an outsider. I’ve always been harassed and ridiculed for my belief system, and it’s going to be nice to be around people where it’s not a big deal that I’m an atheist.” More

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    Why Trump’s speech to US military top brass was such a disaster | Sidney Blumenthal

    No dictator or would-be dictator on day one has ever assembled before him in one room the entire senior officer corps of his armed forces in order to have them belittled as failures and humiliated for their slovenly personal appearance, while degrading whole classes serving in the army, navy and air force degraded as inferior and unworthy. No dictator has ever pleaded for generals and admirals to applaud his remarks, followed by deafening silence.Donald Trump is used to entering to the din of a mob jazzed up with YMCA. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” Trump said when he addressed the country’s highest-ranking military leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. “Don’t laugh. Don’t know if you’re allowed to do that.” He was trying to force some tittering, an old lounge act gag to rouse a dead audience. “You know what? Just have a good time.” The comedian who felt his routine was bombing before he even began sought to relax the room. Then Trump instinctively replaced the ingratiating gestures with threats. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”Trump’s syllogism perfectly encapsulated his psychology of victimhood and politics of retribution. If you do not bend the knee to him, he is personally wounded. Your failure to worship him must be punished. Your slight of his majesty condemns you to ruin.Trump cannot grasp that the silence of the commanders during his unprecedented address to them demonstrated their highest duty. Their discipline showed fidelity to uphold their oath to the constitution. By their stillness they presented themselves as models for the rest of the officer corps and the troops. They are not loyal to Trump or any cult of personality, but to his constitutional role. They were being used as a backdrop for a campaign-like rally, but they were resistant to serving as partisan players.Trump’s inability to understand their stolidity in the face of his provocations showed his incomprehension not only of the military but the presidency under the law. When he took offense at their stoney silence his rebuke disclosed that he saw them merely as his pawns. They were to his mind no different from his personal attorneys he had installed at the Department of Justice to do his bidding, including the suppression of the Epstein files.Trump had come on an urgent mission for them to carry out. He was there to tell the military chiefs they were to be his unquestioning agents for the greatest reversal of military strategy since the “war on terror” –a new war to be waged against his perceived political opponents at home in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the domestic deployment of the US military as a police force.All the senior generals in all the world had been gathered for the unprecedented event at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on the order of secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. They had no inkling for what momentous occasion they were being summoned. They dared not speculate that Hegseth brought them to be his captive audience for his self-referential vanity Ted talk attempting to rehabilitate his image and assert his authority. That would have seemed too stupid for words.But the commanders could have gotten more than a hint that they were being rounded up for the latest episode of It Can’t Happen Here, by reading Trump’s executive order of 22 September, Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization, an “organization” that does not exist. This was followed by a National Security Presidential Memorandum No 7 on 25 September citing the murder of Charlie Kirk and a series of disparate events as pretexts: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns … ”According to NSPM-7, a new “national strategy” would be implemented against an ideology of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Jimmy Kimmel was not mentioned.These vapors were not a description of an ideology so much as a hodgepodge of Maga shibboleths. If there were any ideology expressed it was an inchoate fascism based on a repressive impulse that conjured up an all-purpose enemy called “Antifa”. Any sense of irony, of course, was completely missing. In fact, January 6 was the last attempt to overthrow the US government, incited by Donald Trump. The leadership of Trump as a paragon of “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” defies satire and only underscores the recurrent demand for the release of the Epstein files.The theatrical presentation at Quantico began with Hegseth darting back and forth on the stage. He was a motivational speaker as a drill sergeant with a book to hawk – and a warm-up act for the headliner. Observing him was like seeing the negative of a photograph. The darkest parts were reflections of his own grievances at the criticism and censure provoked by his past behavior.The former national guard major said he had been been “deemed an extremist”; he was flagged as a possible “insider threat” by fellow officers. (Hegseth has denied that he is an extremist). Despite numerous accounts of his alcoholism, he told Megyn Kelly in an interview: “I never had a drinking problem,” but then reportedly promised a senator that he would “not touch alcohol while I have this position”. Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017, and settled a lawsuit brought by the woman who had accused him. (The settlement terms were confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false).As a Fox News host, Hegseth had been a prominent advocate for pardoning or granting clemency to service members accused or convicted of war crimes. Hegseth described them as “warriors” rather than “war criminals”. “If he committed premeditated murder, then I did as well … Put us all in jail,” he said about one of them. Hegseth voiced support for members of his own unit in Iraq killing three unarmed detainees who were told to run and then shot. Once Hegseth was confirmed, he purged the top-rank judge advocate general. He’s pushing a plan to send many of the rest to work in immigration courts.Hegseth said that the military should not “fight with stupid rules of engagement”, his long-time complaint against rules designed to protect civilians and enforce military law against war crimes.Now, in his speech, Hegseth declared he was clearing away “the debris”. He encouraged loosening regulations aimed at preventing forbidden violence within the armed forces. He announced the “overhauling” of the inspector general and whistleblower complaint process, which would undermine legal protections and shield violent or reckless offenders from accountability. He would, he said, impose discriminatory measures of “gender-neutral” or “male level” physical standards for combat roles, stating: “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.” (In 2023, more than 17% of the military force was composed of women, with thousands in combat roles.)Hegseth swaggered in front of the commanders, barking obscenities – “Fafo”, or Fuck Around and Find Out. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”The generals sat expressionless at his vulgarity that could be charged under the Uniform Military Code of Justice as a violation against indecent language that “neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline”.According to Pete, it was the flabby generals who needed to work out like Pete. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” he said. “No more beardos.” That means you, Gen Grant.Hegseth, at last, was seemingly getting his revenge for being tagged as an “insider threat”. He shouted: “No more side-tracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.” He accused the brass of harming the military by evaluating the mental stability of officers: “We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double-blind psychology assessments, promoting risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along conformists instead.” Then he plugged his book: “You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” The title of his book was The War on Warriors.Not once did Hegseth mention “Russia” or “Ukraine”. He made not the slightest reference to Russia’s huge missile attacks bombarding Ukraine, Russia’s drones over Romania, Estonia and Denmark, the tensions over US wavering within the western alliance, or utter anything that might be construed as a strategic thought.After his menacing speech, Hegseth made way for Donald Trump. Trump displayed his usual contempt for the military by baiting them with an array of partisan barbs to which they remained rigidly motionless. He slipped into a whirlpool of self-celebration followed by anxiety. There were bits about the “Gulf of America”, calling Joe “the autopen” and watching the 1950s TV series Victory At Sea, before Trump came to his worry of falling down stairs. “Every day, the guy is falling downstairs,” Trump said about Biden. “We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs,like, I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly.” He could not contain his envy of Barack Obama. “So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it.”In the middle of his stream of consciousness, he dropped his new mission for the military against the “enemy from within”, with major American cities as the “training grounds … the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats … And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” Silence.The next day, 1 October, in Memphis, Hegseth appeared as a member of a posse with attorney general Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to speak before a rally of Ice agents and federal marshals in anticipation of the arrival of a contingent of national guard troops. Miller delivered his imitation of Patton. “The gangbangers that you deal with – they think they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they’re hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are.” Miller, not any mere general, gave the order. “You are unleashed.”You could tell Stephen Miller embodied the new “warrior ethos”. No beard. Shaved head, too. And lawless.

    Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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    Trump news at a glance: President authorizes sending national guard into Chicago as judge blocks Portland deployment

    Donald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard to Chicago, the White House confirmed on Saturday, even as a federal judge blocked his administration from deploying troops to Portland, Oregon.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president had authorized using Illinois national guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.In Oregon meanwhile, US district judge Karin Immergut concurred with the state’s assertion that Trump deploying federalized national guard troops to Portland would likely inflame rather than calm protests.“Today’s ruling validates what Oregonians already know: justice has been served, and the truth has prevailed,” Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said after the restraining order was granted. “There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. No fires, no bombs, no fatalities due to civil unrest.Trump authorizes national guard deployment to Chicago, White House saysDonald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard in another city by authorizing 300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, where the government said border patrol agents shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over.The Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker called the move unnecessary and “a manufactured performance – not a serious effort to protect public safety.”Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump administration from deploying national guard to PortlandDonald Trump has suffered a setback to his strategy of dispatching the military to Democrat-led cities he describes as lawless, after a US district judge blocked his administration’s attempt to deploy the national guard to Portland, Oregon.Trump had announced on 27 September that he would deploy troops to Portland, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation. A coalition of 17 mayors in the state had opposed the deployment.Read the full storyWhite House official inadvertently reveals plans to send elite army unit to PortlandA senior White House official accidentally leaked details of plans to send an elite army unit to Portland, in the latest intelligence leak by the Trump administration.Anthony Salisbury, a top deputy to Stephen Miller, the influential White House policy adviser, was observed using Signal in a public place to discuss a plan to deploy the army’s 82nd airborne division to the Democratic-run Oregon city.Read the full storyUS envoys head to Egypt for Gaza ceasefire talks as Trump says ‘we are very close’ to dealDonald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior envoy are heading to Egypt to begin ceasefire negotiations, the White House has said, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he hoped to bring all remaining hostages home in the coming days.Read the full storyPete Hegseth fires US navy chief of staffPete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, abruptly fired the navy chief of staff on Friday, removing an aide who had been key to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the Pentagon.Jon Harrison, who was appointed in January, had been key to broad changes made to the navy’s policy and budgeting offices.Read the full storyJudge halts Trump administration from detaining immigrant children after they turn 18A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.Read the full storyA ‘hostile takeover’: ousted CDC official raises alarm over RFK Jr approach to infectious diseaseRobert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has avoided meetings with top health officials, even as deadly outbreaks unfolded, and pushed to make unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, according to a recently ousted leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, has said that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event.

    A federal judge has concluded that the justice department’s prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García on human-smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 October 2025. More

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    Judge halts Trump administration from detaining immigrant children after they turn 18

    A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.On Saturday, US district judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington DC issued a temporary restraining order directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to stop placing unaccompanied immigrant children into adult detention once they reached legal adulthood, reported the Associated Press.Contreras ruled that automatically detaining these individuals violates an earlier 2021 court order that explicitly prohibited such actions. The ruling adds to a growing list of federal clashes over Trump’s controversial immigration policies, particularly those involving minors.Just a day earlier, it was reported by the Guardian that the Trump administration has plans to offer immigrant children $2,500 to self-deport, with a “one-time resettlement support stipend” given to children in exchange for their voluntary departure.“This policy pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “The chaos built into this policy will devastate families and communities – and it is targeted to hurt children.”Under federal law, unaccompanied minors are housed in facilities overseen by the office of refugee resettlement, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, not Ice.Contreras’s 2021 ruling required that when these children turn 18, they must be released to “the least restrictive setting available”, provided they aren’t considered a danger to themselves or others and aren’t likely to flee. Many are placed with relatives or foster families.Despite the ruling, attorneys representing immigrant youth have also reported receiving alerts that Ice had instructed shelters to stop releasing soon-to-be 18-year-olds, even those with approved release plans, and instead prepare to send them to adult detention, according to the AP.The Trump administration is also facing accusations of reviving the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, as attorneys and former immigration officials have spoken out against the practice.In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.It was also reported earlier this year that Ice officials are actively seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US.Over the past several years, the government has imposed stricter screening before releasing children to relatives or sponsors in the US, extending the average time minors spend in custody. That process, which now involves fingerprinting, DNA tests and home visits, has slowed releases considerably.Data released last month also revealed that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group held in US immigration detention, surpassing the number of detainees who have been charged with crimes. More

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    Trump says Gaza peace deal ‘very close’ as Israel continues airstrikes

    Donald Trump said in an interview on Saturday that “we are very close” to a peace deal in Gaza, even as Israel continued bombing the territory.Speaking to Axios, Trump said he would push to finalize a deal between Israel and Hamas in the coming days. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a 20-point plan this week. Hamas has accepted part of the deal but is pushing to negotiate other aspects.The US president recounted a conversation he had with the Israeli prime minister as the proposal took place.“I said: ‘Bibi, this is your chance for victory.’ He was fine with it,” Trump told Axios. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”On Friday, Trump ordered Israel to “immediately” stop bombing Gaza after Hamas agreed to release all hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. On Saturday, Israeli army radio reported that the Israeli military had been ordered to halt its campaign in Gaza City. However, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel had continued to carry out dozens of airstrikes and artillery shelling on the area.Trump told Axios: “We had great receptivity for our plan – every country of the world in favor. Bibi is in favor. Hamas went a long way – they want to do it. Now we will need to close it.”He said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had been “very helpful” in pressing Hamas to agree to release hostages.“Erdoğan helped a lot. He is a tough guy, but he is a friend of mine and he was great,” Trump said.The White House plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas disarmament and a transitional government led by an international body.Trump said he intended to help rehabilitate Israel’s global image, which has suffered as its military intervention has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza.“Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world. Now I am gonna get all that support back,” Trump said. More

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    How Democrats are trying to bust Republican lies about healthcare for undocumented immigrants

    Leading up to the government shutdown on Wednesday, congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have repeated misleading claims that Democrats were trying to pass a resolution that would provide “free healthcare for illegals”. It’s become a well-rehearsed refrain fueling GOP lawmakers as government funding lapsed this week.At the White House on Wednesday, the vice-president JD Vance said the Democrats’ spending plan “would have undone” the work of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) – which ended the eligibility of many types of lawfully present immigrants to access federally funded health coverage, like Medicaid, Medicare and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for private health insurance.Meanwhile Republican leadership on Capitol Hill has maintained their colleagues across the aisle are holding the government “hostage”, while dueling funding bills continue to fail in the Senate.“They have made a decision that they would rather give taxpayer funded benefits to illegal aliens, than to keep the doors open for the American people,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, in a news conference on Thursday.Democrats have lambasted Republicans’ claims.“Not a single federal dollar goes to providing health insurance for undocumented immigrants. NOT. ONE. PENNY,” said the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer. “Republicans would rather lie and shut down the government down than protect your healthcare.”In an interview with ABC News, on the first day of the government shutdown, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries fact-checked Republican claims. “Federal law prohibits the use of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance in any way, shape or form, to undocumented immigrants. Period, full stop,” he said. “And Democrats aren’t trying to change that.”By framing the issue as being about illegal immigration, it shifts the debate to ground that is politically “friendlier” for the GOP, according to Jonathan Oberlander, professor of healthcare policy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.“[Republicans] absolutely do not want to talk about the healthcare provisions,” Oberlander said. “Whereas Democrats, in general, don’t want to talk a lot about immigration. They do want to talk a lot about healthcare and people losing health insurance, and so that’s exactly what they’re doing.”Undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for federally funded health insurance, and are only able to receive emergency Medicaid treatment, according to longstanding US laws. Instead, Democrats’ funding patch seeks to reverse many of the cuts to Medicaid that are set to take effect after Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda passed earlier this year.View image in fullscreenThis includes allowing lawfully present noncitizens – which includes several groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and survivors of domestic abuse and human trafficking who are awaiting visas or documentation – to still enroll in certain federal health care programs. All of these immigrants have entered the country legally and are accounted for by the federal government.The congressional budget office (CBO) estimates that the impact of the OBBBA will leave around 1.4 million lawfully present noncitizens without coverage.While the impasse in Washington continues, vocalizing any of this nuance seems futile, says Oberlander. “These are all groups that potentially could command political sympathy, but I’m not sure they can break through the misinformation, the toxic environment and the restrictive era we’re living in right now,” he added.“I think what they [Democrats] are going to do, and what they have been doing, is simply to say this has nothing to do with undocumented immigrants. This is not about them. You’re taking health insurance away from Americans.”According to Michael Trujillo, a veteran Democratic strategist, Republicans have been able to land their messaging around the government shutdown by playing “offense”, mainly because Democrats’ language of preservation is harder to sell.“What we’re trying to do is keep what people have today,” Trujillo said.Trujillo noted that Democrats also have to “repeat the lie” in order to dismantle Republicans’ rapid and spurious claims that their funding bill will provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants.“If their [Republicans’] debate is, we’re accusing you of liking sour milk. And then our response is, ‘we in fact do not like sour milk’. Well, guess what, sour milk just became the issue,” Trujillo said.This week, Karoline Leavitt said that programs like TPS are a “complete abuse of the immigration system” that allow “illegals from all over the world to get free benefits”, while speaking to reporters. Since returning to office, Trump has attempted to end temporary protections for several countries through a series of lawsuits with varying degrees of success.Notably, the White House press secretary was unclear when answering a question from a reporter, who asked whether doctors should treat patients in emergency rooms regardless of their immigration status – which is required under federal law. “I don’t speak for emergency rooms across the country, I speak for the president of the United States,” she replied.Through their continuing resolution, Democrats are also trying to remedy the OBBBA’s cuts to Medicaid dollars hospitals receive from the federal government – for emergency care they are mandated to provide to individuals who do not have an eligible immigration status, but would otherwise qualify for Medicaid. According to a recent analysis by KFF, this kind of emergency Medicaid spending accounted for less than 1% of the program’s total expenditure between 2017-2023.Larry Levitt, executive vice-president for health policy at KFF, said the false claim about who is getting access to healthcare has been the “biggest effort at misinformation on a health policy issue since Republicans claimed that the Affordable Care Act included ‘death panels’”.“I’m sure it’s an effective talking point to say the Democrats want to expand health care for undocumented immigrants, but it’s just not true,” he said.A key aspect of the Democrats’ funding bill, and one they have emphasized more than the reversal of the cuts in the Republican budget law, is a permanent extension of the widely popular ACA premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of this year. KFF estimates that healthcare costs are set to double for the vast majority of enrollees when these subsidies lapse. Meanwhile, the CBO has projected that around 4 million people stand to lose their health insurance if enhanced tax credits expire at the end of 2025.“My sense is that they [Democratic leadership] would take a deal if they just get the subsidies extended,” Oberlander said. He also underscored that Democrats’ push to reverse the wider healthcare cuts in the president’s sweeping tax legislation may be more of a statement than a demand: “They want to call attention to the fact that Republicans enacted them and what the consequences are, but they know, realistically, there’s no chance that they’re going to reverse what they just passed.” More

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    Kristi Noem warns immigrants away from Super Bowl: ‘We’ll be all over that place’

    Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, has said that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event.Speaking to the rightwing podcaster Benny Johnson on Friday, Noem also said the NFL will “not be able to sleep at night” over its decision to choose Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper who has criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies, as its half-time performer.Asked whether “there will be Ice enforcement at the Super Bowl”, Noem said: “There will be, because the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for keeping it safe, so I have the responsibility for making sure everybody goes to the Super Bowl, has the opportunity to enjoy it and to leave, and that’s what America is about.”She added: “So yeah, we’ll be all over that place … We’re going to enforce the law. So I think people should not be coming to the Super Bowl unless they’re law-abiding Americans who love this country.”Bad Bunny was confirmed as the headline act at the Super Bowl last week. In September, the musician said he had excluded the US from his upcoming world tour due to concerns over potential immigration raids.“There was the issue of – like, fucking Ice could be outside [my concert],” he told i-D magazine. “And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”The selection of the Puerto Rican has upset several conservatives, with Johnson complaining this week that Bad Bunny has “no songs in English”.Asked about the NFL choosing Bad Bunny, Noem said: “Well, they suck, and we’ll win, and God will bless us, and we’ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won’t be able to sleep at night, because they don’t know what they believe, and they’re so weak, we’ll fix it.”Noem’s insistence that Ice agents will be “all over” the Super Bowl appeared to clash slightly with the White House.On Friday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters: “As far as Ice being at the Super Bowl, as far as I’m aware there’s no tangible plan for that in store right now.”She added: “However, of course this administration is always going to arrest and deport illegal immigrants when we find them if they are criminals. We’re going to do the right thing by our country.” More

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    Judge says prosecution against Kilmar Ábrego García for human smuggling may be illegal retaliation

    A federal judge has concluded that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García on human-smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.The case of Ábrego, a Salvadorian national who was a construction worker in Maryland, has become a proxy for the partisan struggle over Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration policy and mass deportation agenda.US district court judge Waverly Crenshaw granted a request late on Friday by lawyers for Ábrego and ordered discovery and an evidentiary hearing in Ábrego’s effort to show that the federal human-smuggling case against him in Tennessee is illegally retaliatory.Crenshaw said Ábrego had shown that there is “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive”. That evidence included statements by various Trump administration officials and the timeline of the charges being filed.The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to inquiries about the case on Saturday.In his 16-page ruling, Crenshaw said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern”, but one stood out.That statement, by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, on a Fox News program after Ábrego was charged in June, seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged him because he won his wrongful deportation case, Crenshaw wrote.Blanche’s ”remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Ábrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights” to sue over his deportation “rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct”, Crenshaw wrote.Likewise, Crenshaw noted that the Department of Homeland Security reopened an investigation into Ábrego days after the US supreme court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring him back.Ábrego was indicted on 21 May and charged on 6 June, the day the US returned him from a prison in El Salvador. He pleaded not guilty and is now being held in Pennsylvania.If convicted in the Tennessee case, Ábrego will be deported, federal officials have said. A US immigration judge has denied Ábrego’s bid for asylum, although he can appeal.The Salvadorian national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the United States illegally as a teenager.In 2019, he was arrested by immigration agents. He requested asylum but was not eligible because he had been in the US for more than a year. But the judge ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador, where he faced danger from a gang that targeted his family.The human-smuggling charges in Tennessee stem from a 2022 traffic stop. He was not charged at the time.Trump administration officials have waged a relentless public relations campaign against Ábrego, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang, among other things, despite the fact he has not been convicted of any crimes.Ábrego’s attorneys have denounced the criminal charges and the deportation efforts, saying they are an attempt to punish him for standing up to the administration.Ábrego contends that, while imprisoned in El Salvador, he suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and psychological torture. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has denied those allegations. More