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      How Trump’s assault on US wind industry threatens jobs and power for nearly 5m homes

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      Donald Trump has jettisoned Republicans’ long-standing “all of the above” approach to energy by using the US government to aggressively stamp out clean energy projects – particularly offshore wind turbines.The scale of the intervention is remarkable – a total of nine already permitted offshore wind projects that were set to provide electricity to nearly 5m households and create around 9,000 jobs in the US are under investigation or have already been paused by the Trump administration.Trump has barred any new solar and wind projects from federal land and waters, eliminated incentives for clean energy and, almost uniquely for a US president, called for an entire industry to be stopped in its tracks.“Windmills – we’re just not gonna allow them, they are ruining the country,” Trump said last month. On Tuesday, Trump told the United Nations, without evidence, that “countries are on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda.”The president has a long distaste for wind turbines, calling them “ugly”, “disgusting” and “garbage” and calling any support for wind and solar to help ameliorate the climate crisis “the scam of the century.”This grudge has been aimed most pointedly at the US’s nascent offshore wind sector, with the Trump administration currently halting, delaying or investigating nine already permitted projects off the east coast – five of which are already under construction. In the past two weeks alone, officials have filed a legal motion to stop a wind project off Maryland and review another off Massachusetts.Officials also halted Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, which is 80% complete, although work was allowed to resume by a federal judge on Monday.“Under this administration, there is not a future for offshore wind because it is too expensive and not reliable enough,” Doug Burgum, Trump’s interior secretary, told a conference in Italy this month.The interior department, Burgum said at the conference, is “taking a deep look” at the five under-construction offshore wind farms – Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off New York.Officials have taken additional steps to impede certain projects. In a court filing this month, lawyers for the administration asked a federal judge to cancel the approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, saying they had identified an error.Last week, they moved to block the SouthCoast Wind project off Massachusetts, and earlier they also announced they are reconsidering approvals for another wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, called New England Wind.In order to squash projects that had already been approved, the Trump administration has variously claimed offshore wind turbines disturb whales, pose national security risks and impede search and rescue efforts, despite presenting little to no evidence of such harms.A Department of Interior spokesperson said that work on Revolution Wind will resume but it will still be investigated over “possible impacts by the project to national security”.The department ‘“remains committed to ensuring that prior decisions are legally and factually sound”, the spokesperson added.This crackdown has rattled businesses and imperiled a sizable amount of power that was to flow from the offshore wind farms.In total, the nine wind projects were set to deliver around 12.5GW of energy capacity, enough to provide power to almost 5m households. More than 9,000 direct and indirect jobs flowing from the projects are also at risk should they be halted, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.“At least a third or maybe 40%, of building trade members, we are pretty sure, voted for this President and his administration … now thousands are losing work,” said David Langlais, who leads the Ironworkers Local 37, whose members were among the more than 1,000 workers whose jobs were threatened by the attempt to halt Revolution Wind in Rhode Island.“The administration came out saying they’re supportive of working people, working Americans, but they just continue to show the opposite of that.”The administration’s war on wind has had spurred chaos among developers. In June, the company behind a planned wind farm off New Jersey’s coast, Atlantic Shores, asked the state to cancel its contract after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency yanked a necessary air permit for the project. The firms behind Empire Wind 2 off New York in January also cancelled their contract, citing economic concerns and supply chain issues.It is unusual for the US government to attempt to shut down a project it has previously approved, even under a different administration. A further six offshore wind projects, promising a further 11.6GW of power, are still in the permitting phase and so will be even more vulnerable to being scrapped by the administration.Experts have pointed out that renewables like wind and solar are often the cheapest sources of electricity, with a slowdown in US deployment set to further raise energy costs for American households. In New England, the grid operator has warned of potential power shortfalls, too, if the targeted offshore wind projects are scrapped.“Halting construction and revoking permits on approved projects after years of thorough agency review will raise electricity prices for millions across the country, jeopardize billions of dollars in private investment, threaten our national shipbuilding, steel, and manufacturing supply chains, and undermine our nation’s energy security,” said Liz Burdock, CEO of Oceantic, the offshore renewable energy-focused organization formerly known as the Business Network for Maryland Offshore Wind.The attack on wind is especially concerning amid the rising demand for energy caused by the growth of AI data centers, said Michael Sabitoni, general secretary-treasurer of the Laborers International Union of North America.That strain has also raised energy prices, including for workers whose jobs are under threat. And no other power projects in New England are slated to bring more energy or jobs online, Sabitoni added.“If you said you wanted to bring, for instance, a new nuclear plant online, do you know how long it would take to site that? It would take years.”The fallout will take a major toll on local economies, said Sabitoni.The onslaught on wind power has bewildered some conservatives who still adhere to ‘all of the above’, a term widely used by Republicans, including the Trump administration in its first term, over the past decade to denote an agnostic, free-market approach to energy.Scientists have warned that fossil fuels must be steadily phased out to avert disastrous climate impacts. By contrast, Trump, who received large donations from the oil and gas industry during his election campaign, has invoked emergency powers, shredded regulations and boosted subsidies to force through more fossil fuel projects.“It’s different from the first term,” said Heather Reams, chief executive of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (Cres), a conservative group that advocates for clean energy. “There’s no real precedence for this and it’s having a chilling effect across energy projects in general.”Right-leaning Americans still overwhelmingly back the all of the above approach, polling released by Cres this week shows. A total of 85% of Republican voters support all of the above, the poll found, with nearly three-quarters wanting the US to use clean energy to help cut planet-heating pollution.“We are seeing a big difference between ordinary voters and what’s happening inside the Beltway,” said Reams. “There’s this harsh turn against renewable energy from the White House, particularly offshore wind. We haven’t heard an economic reason for this, although we know that President Trump has not liked wind for a long time. It sounds like it is personal.” More

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      The Democratic superlawyer Trump can’t silence: ‘We are in the break-glass moment of American history’

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      Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney, has not shied away from standing up to the Trump administration, and has been targeted for retribution this year multiple times as a result.He’s one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Donald Trump considers his opponents.There’s no shortage of reasons why the president would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic national committee (DNC). He hired the research group that investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, eventually becoming the Steele dossier. He specializes in election law and won 64 of the 65 cases he worked on in response to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.In one presidential memo, the Trump administration listed “examples of grossly unethical misconduct” by lawyers, singling out Elias for his involvement in the Steele dossier. The law firm Elias used to work for, Perkins Coie, got its own presidential action that cited the dossier. Trump mentioned Elias by name in March at a Department of Justice press conference, calling him a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country”.While a long list of big-name law firms have capitulated to Trump’s demands, Elias says his firm was built to withstand the pressure and its important to him to use his platform to fight back, though his outspokenness often comes with pushback.The presidential memo, which names Elias as an example of an attorney to target, directed the attorney general to “take all appropriate action to refer for disciplinary action” any attorney that violated ethical guidelines and to “review conduct by attorneys or their law firms in litigation against the Federal Government over the last 8 years”.Elias isn’t aware he’s under investigation, but said he thinks people not taking Trump literally is “one of the great failings” of his time in power.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”He didn’t escape scrutiny during Trump’s first term. He first came up on Trump’s radar, to his knowledge, when the president called him the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.Trump’s second term, though, is like “day and night” from his first, Elias said. The president is now “single-mindedly focused on going after his political opponents” and any walls between Trump and the Department of Justice have crumbled.“It’s a very different thing when he is not just unleashing the hordes of hate on social media, not just activating the rightwing echo chamber, but is talking to people who are in positions of power to actually do something about his obsessions,” Elias said.Despite not posting on X anymore – his decision to stop using the platform prompted conspiracy theories from the right – he is far from quiet about his work and his opinions on the Trump administration. He posts often on other platforms, runs a democracy-focused outlet and files lawsuits against the Trump administration on the regular.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”In response to questions about why the administration has targeted Elias, Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”Elias, Democratic superlawyerA lifelong Democrat, Elias helped build up election law to what it is today. When he was a young lawyer, it was a rare specialty – election disputes were typically seen as political issues, not legal ones. Now, post-election disputes are almost entirely legal issues.A 2008 Senate race in Minnesota in which Democrat Al Franken eventually won over Republican Norm Coleman turned the tide. Elias served as Franken’s counsel in what became the longest recount in US history. At the time, some in his party said Franken should concede since Democrats had a strong majority in the Senate and Barack Obama had just won the White House. Elias is always on “team fight”, he said, because “as long as there is a legal fight to be had, we are going to have it”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome have opined that his fighting posture can be counterproductive to voting rights, especially with the courts growing more conservative, because the cases can create bad precedent. He has argued for increased coordination between outside political action committees and political parties, a move that Trump capitalized on for his ground game in 2024. In 2023, Joe Biden parted ways with Elias, with sources saying at the time that Biden’s team had frustrations and discomfort with Elias’s hard charging and big legal bills. That year, he also stopped representing the DNC.“There was a time where there were people who would say: ‘Marc is too quick to litigate, and you can make bad law.’ And I would say then, and I would certainly say now, what are you saving these laws for, if it is not for this moment? … We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections.”He worked at Perkins Coie until 2021, heading up its political law work and counting a host of big-name Democratic groups and elected officials as his clients. He started his own firm, Elias Law Group, after that, and Democracy Docket, which documents attacks on democracy.The firm is built to “withstand the pressures of Donald Trump” and only takes on clients from Democratic campaigns, the party itself, clients associated with Democratic politics or groups advancing voting rights on a nonpartisan basis. It does not take on corporate clients or clients with government contracts. That stance is part of why Elias thinks his firm itself hasn’t been targeted in a Trump executive action. There are fewer ways to pressure him.Elias was initially surprised at the executive orders targeting law firms because he thought the firms would fight back and win, and Trump would look foolish in the process. He didn’t count on the “cowardice” of firms that instead struck up settlements with Trump, capitulating to the president’s demands by dropping cases and giving massive amounts of pro bono work to conservative causes. The firms that did fight back, including Perkins Coie, have won, but it’s hard to argue Trump didn’t achieve his goals by going after lawyers, he said.“I think he thought, if I can prevent big law from being that role, that’ll make it easier for me to run roughshod over people’s rights. And he’s not wrong about that,” Elias said. “He has actually intimidated a lot of law firms, I think, from taking on causes that they otherwise would have taken on.”When CBS’s 60 Minutes covered the crackdown on lawyers in May, host Scott Pelley noted that “it was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice”. Elias sat for an interview.Elias has grappled with whether and how to speak up. Over the years, he’s had threats against him and has at times needed to take extra security precautions. He receives a host of antisemitic commentary, including a writeup years ago in a neo-Nazi publication. He’s often listed as part of the “deep state” despite never working in the government, and called a “globalist”, a frequent antisemitic dog whistle, which he typically dismisses as trolling.He worries about his family. He worries about the people who work at his law firm every day, and about his clients, who have at times received blowback for their association with him.“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course you’re afraid. Literally the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.” More

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      Trump says he ‘can’t believe’ Kimmel back on ABC as he hints at action against network – US politics live

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      Good morning and welcome to our coverage of US politics as Donald Trump has made clear his displeasure at the return of late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Before Tuesday’s broadcast, Trump opined on his Truth Social online platform that he “can’t believe” ABC gave Kimmel back his show, and hinted at further action against the network.“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” Trump wrote.“He is yet another arm of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this.”He added: “Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit.In his show last night – the first since his suspension over comments about the shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk – Kimmel called government threats to silence comedians “anti-American”.Kimmel said he had not intended to make light of Kirk’s murder and he understood his comments could have been seen as “ill-timed or unclear”.Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”You can read our report here:Stay with us for more on this story, and in other developments:

      Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv. Writing on Truth Social after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the UN on Tuesday, the US president said “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.

      Donald Trump launched a full-on assault on the UN during his general assembly speech, describing it as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership. In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.

      Meanwhile, Trump was accused by a UK cabinet minister of “misreading” London after the US president claimed the city wants to “go to sharia law”. The president renewed his feud with London mayor Sadiq Khan, calling him a “terrible, terrible mayor”. The British work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden dismissed the president’s attack and said Trump had had “a beef” with Khan for years.

      The Secret Service said it had uncovered and dismantled a covert, hi-tech operation in the New York area, which had the capability to disrupt cellular networks. Authorities revealed that the hidden communications system included over 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers.

      The man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course two months before Trump clinched his second presidency in the 2024 White House election has been found guilty by a jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. Ryan Routh – who now faces up to life in prison at a later sentencing hearing – reportedly tried to use a pen to stab himself in the neck as the guilty verdict was read in court. Officers quickly swarmed him and dragged him out of the courthouse.

      After promising to meet with Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Thursday, 25 September, Trump shared in a social media post that he would no longer meet with the top Democratic lawmakers. The negotiations had been intended to secure a government funding measure, before it expires at the end of this month.

      Defense secretary Pete Hegseth decided to close a defense department advisory committee dedicated to recruiting and retaining women in the military. In a social media post announcing the closure of the defense advisory committee on women in the services a Pentagon spokesperson wrote: “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.” More

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      Adelita Grijalva wins her late father’s House seat in Arizona special election

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      Adelita Grijalva, the daughter of the late progressive congressman Raúl Grijalva, won a special election on Tuesday to fill the seat left open when her father died earlier this year.Grijalva faced Republican challenger Daniel Butierez in the heavily blue seventh district in Arizona, which covers the southern parts of the state and the borderland areas.Raúl Grijalva held the seat for more than two decades, until his death at 77 in March. His daughter will become the first Latina that Arizona has sent to Congress.Filling the seat narrows Republicans’ advantage in the House, where Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by only one vote.Adelita Grijalva, a longtime local elected official in southern Arizona, fended off Democratic challengers in a primary that attracted national attention amid an ongoing debate over the future of the Democratic party, and in particular its ageing candidates, as Raúl Grijalva was one of multiple Democratic lawmakers to die in office this year.The younger Grijalva, 54, faced criticisms from her main challenger, Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old influencer, over what Foxx called her “legacy last name”. Grijalva defended her own record in politics, but didn’t shy away from her family’s legacy in the district either. She served for 20 years on a Tucson school board and has been a Pima county supervisor since 2020. She also received endorsements from scores of heavyweight progressives and statewide elected officials.“I’m not using my dad’s last name,” Grijalva told the Guardian earlier this year. “It’s mine, too. I’ve worked in this community for a very long time – 26 years at a non-profit, 20 years on the school board, four years and four months on the board of supervisors. I’ve earned my last name, too.”Grijalva, a progressive, has said upholding democracy, standing up for immigrants’ rights, and protecting access to Medicaid and Medicare are among her top priorities. She said during the primary that, if elected, she wants to push for Medicaid for All and the Green New Deal. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel says silencing comedians is ‘anti American’, as his show returns to air after suspension

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      Jimmy Kimmel returned to air on Tuesday night, calling government threats to silence comedians “anti American”, as he broke his silence about the suspension from ABC which ignited a national debate over free speech and outcry over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration.“This show is not important” Kimmel said during his first monologue since Disney, which owns ABC, suspended his late-night show from the network last week under pressure from Trump officials over his comments on the shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”Kimmel’s comments come one day after Disney, facing backlash from Hollywood stars, unions, media hosts and even Republicans such as Ted Cruz, allowed Jimmy Kimmel Live! to resume production.The company had indefinitely suspended the show after right-wing outcry over Kimmel’s 15 September monologue, in which he said that “the Maga gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”On Tuesday night, Kimmel thanked his fellow late night hosts for their support and thanked his audience and supporters.“And most of all I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway” Kimmel added.“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual” he said. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”“One thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti American” he added.Kimmel closed his monologue by reflecting on remarks made by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, at her late husband’s memorial service over the weekend.“Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband” Kimmel said. “That is an example we should follow.”“It touched me deeply” he added. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that, not this.”Kimmel’s comments on the shooting of Kirk angered Trump supporters and officials who have vowed to avenge the death of the conservative activist. Last Wednesday, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, threatened ABC’s affiliate licenses if Disney did not “take action” against the host. Two broadcast groups that own hundreds of affiliate stations – Nexstar, which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger, and Sinclair – then refused to air the program, leading Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden to suspend production.The move drew intense backlash from the Hollywood community and free speech advocates and prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and Disney.Around an hour before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Kimmel and criticized ABC for allowing the comedian’s show back on air.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back” Trump wrote on Tuesday night. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network.On Monday, hours before Disney announced Kimmel’s return, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released an open letter signed by over 400 Hollywood stars condemning Disney’s decision as “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.” Signees included Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro.In a statement on Monday, the company said the decision to pre-empt Kimmel’s show was made “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement continued. “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”Although Kimmel’s show returned to ABC on Tuesday, it did not return to ABC affiliate networks owned by Sinclair. The company, which is known to promote conservative talking points, said it would not allow the late-night show to air until Kimmel apologized to Kirk’s family and made a donation to his conservative activist group Turning Point USA.“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said, which has the nation’s largest number of ABC affiliate stations.“Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return,” the group added in a statement late Monday.Nexstar also confirmed that it will continue to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations in 22 states. “We made a decision last week to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” the company said. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”The two companies’ continued pre-emption means that Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not air on almost a quarter of ABC affiliate stations. The show continues to be available online as well as on the streaming services Hulu and Disney+. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president backs Ukraine to ‘get their land back’ from Russia and lambasts UN

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      Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.Writing on Truth Social after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the UN on Tuesday, the US president said “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.Trump echoed those comments during a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron shortly after. Trump said Ukraine’s ability to fight back might prove that Russia is a “paper tiger”.“I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back,” the president added.Trump says Ukraine can get back all the land lost to Russia since 2022The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble, after meeting Zelenskyy in New York.He wrote: “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back.“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, Nato, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?”Read the full storyTrump calls for nations to expel foreigners in UN speechDonald Trump launched a full-on assault on the UN during his general assembly speech, describing it as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership.In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.The Guardian’s Andrew Roth said the speech was red meat for Trump’s supporters, and observers from across the aisle in the US quickly identified Trump’s likely audience as his own base.Read the full storyTV hosts celebrate return of Kimmel after backlash Late-night television hosts credited people who boycotted Disney for getting Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show back on the air after the corporation had indefinitely suspended Kimmel amid pressure from the Trump administration.“We got word that our long national late-nightmare is over,” Stephen Colbert said during his show on Monday night. “Once more, I am the only martyr in late night, unless … CBS, you want to announce anything?” Colbert joked, referencing CBS’s decision to cancel his show earlier this year. “Still no?”Read the full story‘Pay no attention’: global health agencies dismiss Trump’s claim on painkillersGlobal health agencies and regulators have dismissed unscientific advice from Donald Trump that made an unproven link between autism and the use of everyday painkillers and vaccines.In a sign of how worried foreign governments are about the US president’s comments, the health secretary of the UK, which is one the US’s closest allies, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”.Read the full storyTrump cancels Democrat meeting as federal shutdown loomsDonald Trump on Tuesday said he would not meet with top congressional Democrats to discuss their demands for keeping the federal government open, prompting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to accuse the president of “running away from the negotiating table before he even gets there”.Read the full storyMacron phones Trump over motorcade hold-up Emmanuel Macron had to walk half an hour by foot through New York after his speech to the United Nations on recognising Palestine as a state.Video footage shows him getting out of his car to talk to police officers after they stop his vehicle to make way for the expected arrival of the motorcade of Donald Trump.Read the full storyHegseth dissolves women’s military committee over ‘divisive feminist agenda’Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, ended an advisory committee on women in the armed services on Tuesday, saying it was putting forth a “divisive feminist agenda”.“The committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department,” said Kingsley Wilson, press secretary for the Pentagon.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A lawyer for 11 west Africans deported by the US to Ghana said they had been returned to their home countries despite many fearing for their safety. Under Donald Trump’s drive to ramp up expulsions, the US has sent migrants to third countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and El Salvador, prompting accusations that deportee rights have been violated.

      Jerome Powell pushed back hard against claims the US Federal Reserve allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence. Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration’s control over the Fed, has branded Powell “a very political guy” after he declined to bow to the president’s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.

      Keir Starmer is facing demands from Labour MPs to reprimand Donald Trump’s administrationafter the US president falsely claimed London wanted to “go to sharia law” under its “terrible mayor”, Sadiq Khan.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 September 2025. More

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      Trump says Ukraine could regain all territory lost to Russia since 2022 invasion after meeting Zelenskyy at UN – live

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      In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that Ukraine is in a position to “fight and win back” all of the territory it has lost since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion.“Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,” Trump wrote, in a rare full-throated endorsement of Ukraine’s potential.“Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said in his lengthy social media meditation. He added that the US will continue to supply Nato with weapons for purchase.Earlier, in a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that the “Russian economy is terrible right now” and Ukraine has done a “pretty amazing” job at staving off the Kremlin’s forces.Donald Trump’s meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders at the United Nations has concluded. The president did not answer any questions, but White House pool reporters noted that he said he had a “very good meeting” and teased his intention to follow up with a meeting with Israel.The Associated Press also noted that special envoy Steve Witkoff offered a thumbs-up in response to a question about how the meeting went.China’s representative to the Security Council criticized the use of sanctions, a strategy that the Trump administration has shown renewed interest in at this meeting of the UN General Assembly.“Abusing unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction under the pretext of the crisis does not contribute to a political settlement,” the representative said.The United States has previously levied sanctions against China, and Chinese companies, for supporting Russia.Secretary of state Marco Rubio touted Donald Trump’s role in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine during a meeting of the UN Security Council, while also noting that the president was open to levying “additional economic costs” on Russia and selling additional defensive weaponry and “potentially offensive weaponry” to Ukraine.“The president is a very patient man,” Rubio said, “but his patience is not infinite.”“The United States remains as committed as it has ever been to a peaceful resolution to this dangeorous conflict, but there will come a moment where we will have to conclude that perhaps there is no interest in a peaceful resolution,” he added.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has decided to close a Defense Department advisory committee dedicated to recruiting and retaining women in the military.In a social media post announcing the closure of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson wrote: “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”The advisory committee was founded in 1951 under Harry Truman’s presidency. The Military Times reported earlier this year that the committee was one of 14 defense advisory committees flagged for potential termination, though many of those would require congressional approval to be disbanded.Here’s more from my colleague Rachel Leingang:Speaking to the UN General Assembly today, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said that “trade is now being used as a weapon against a number of countries in the world.”The comment may have been a reference to Donald Trump’s tariffs – which include a 30% levy against South Africa. In May, Ramaphosa met Trump in the Oval Office, where the president played Ramaphosa a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people under “the opposite of apartheid”.Here’s more on the state of the US-South Africa relationship from my colleague David Smith:Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticized Donald Trump for canceling a meeting with top Congressional Democrats, scheduled for Thursday, ahead of an approaching government funding deadline at the end of the month.At a press conference, Schumer said Trump should “stop ranting” and that “time is of the essence” as the 30 September deadline approaches.“Mr. President, do your job,” Schumer said.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also speaking currently at a UN meeting of the Security Council. “One of the prominent members of this council is doing everything to prolong the largest war in Europe since World War II,” Zelenskyy said. “Russia does this with its veto power.”“China is also represented here, a powerful nation on which Russia relies completely,” he added. “Without China, Putin’s Russia is nothing.”Zelenskyy also nodded to his recent meeting with Donald Trump. “We expect America’s actions to push Moscow toward peace,” he said.Donald Trump’s multilateral meeting with several leaders of Arab and Muslim countries has begun.In brief remarks to reporters, Trump said, “We want to end the war in Gaza.”“This is my most important meeting,” he added. “We’re going to end something that should have probably never started.”During his pull aside with Macron, Donald Trump flagged that his next meeting – a multilateral sitdown with several leaders of Arab and Muslim countries – will be crucial to address the ongoing crisis in Gaza.“We’re going to see if we can do something about it. We want to stop that. We want to get our hostages back, or their hostages back.”Much like his address to the general assembly today, the president said that we can’t “forget” the October 7 attack by Hamas in his meeting with Macron. In response, the French president said “nobody forgets the seventh of October”.This week, France joined Britain, Canada, Portugal and Australia to formally recognize Palestinian statehood. For his part, Donald Trump has branded the move as a “reward to Hamas”.In a meeting with French president Emanuel Macron, Donald Trump reiterated his recent comments on Truth Social that Ukraine has the potential to win back all the territory it has lost to Russia in the three and a half years since the most recent war in the region began.Trump said that Ukraine’s ability to fight back might prove that Russia is a “paper tiger”.“I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back,” the president added.In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that Ukraine is in a position to “fight and win back” all of the territory it has lost since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion.“Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,” Trump wrote, in a rare full-throated endorsement of Ukraine’s potential.“Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said in his lengthy social media meditation. He added that the US will continue to supply Nato with weapons for purchase.Earlier, in a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that the “Russian economy is terrible right now” and Ukraine has done a “pretty amazing” job at staving off the Kremlin’s forces.Earlier, president of the EU commission Ursula von der Leyen said that Donald Trump was “absolutely right” about European countries continuing to buy Russian energy products. A move the president described as “inexcusable” in his address to the UN general assembly today.“We’re on it. We have reduced already massive gas supply from Russia, completely gotten out of Russian coal, and massively also reduced the oil supply. But there’s still some coming to the European continent,” von der Leyen said during a pull aside meeting with the presiden. “So what we do now? We put sanctions out to those ports where, for example, energy is coming from Russia. And we want to put tariffs on oil supplies that are still coming to the European Union.”Ryan Routh, the man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at the president’s Florida golf course last year, has been found guilty in federal court today.Routh, 59, was convicted on five counts, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. In September 2024, he was spotted with a rifle hiding in the bushes at the president’s West Palm Beach club as Trump’s golfing party approached. Routh represented himself in court, and prosecutors accused him of plotting for months to kill Donald Trump during his successful run to return to the White House.“Today’s guilty verdict against would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh illustrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence,” said attorney general Pam Bondi.Jurors deliberated for just a few hours before returning with a guilty verdict. According to reports from the courtroom, as the verdict was being read, Routh attempted to stab himself in the neck with a pen.Fox News reports that four marshals then dragged Routh out of the court room, shackled him, and brought him back. More

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      in US Politics

      Lawsuits, cancellations and bullying: Trump is systematically destroying press freedom

      by

      United States President Donald Trump is well advanced in his systematic campaign to undermine the American media and eviscerate its function of holding him and others in power to account.

      Since the late 18th century this function has often been called the fourth estate. It’s the idea the media is a watchdog over the other three estates which, in modern democracies, are parliament, the executive government and the judiciary.

      In the US, Trump has had considerable success in weakening the other three.

      His Republican Party controls both Houses of Congress, and they have shown no sign of wishing to restrain him.

      He has stacked the executive government with cronies and ideological fellow travellers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr (and his anti-vaccination agenda) as secretary of health, a brief stint by Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.

      He has secured the support of the Republican Party to stack the Supreme Court with politically aligned judges who have routinely struck down lower court decisions against Trump, most notably in the matter of deporting migrants to countries other than their homelands.

      Pulling funding, applying pressure

      The fourth estate’s turn started in March, when Trump stripped federal funding from Voice of America, a public broadcasting service with a global reach, because it was “anti-Trump” and “radical”.

      These cuts also hit two other projections of American soft power, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.

      In July, he cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in a move that ended all federal support for National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting service and their member stations.

      Now he has turned to the private sector media. He does not have the power to cut their funding, so he is taking a different approach: financial shake-downs and threats to the foundations of their business.

      In October 2024, even before he was elected, Trump sued the Paramount company for US$10 billion (about A$15 billion). He alleged an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign had been “deceptively edited” by the CBS television network, a Paramount subsidiary.

      In February 2025, after he had been sworn in as president, Trump upped the ante to US$20 billion (A$30 billion).

      The case was considered by lawyers to have no legal merit, but at that time, Paramount was anxious to merge with Skydance Media, and this was subject to regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

      So Paramount was vulnerable to, how shall we say? Blackmail? Extortion? Subornation?

      A busy, dangerous July

      On July 2, Paramount settled with Trump for US$16 million (A$24 million), which ostensibly is to go towards funding his presidential library.

      On July 17 Paramount’s CBS network announced its longtime Late Show would be cancelled from May 2026 after its presenter Stephen Colbert, an outspoken critic of Trump, condemned the corporate cave-in. The Trump administration approved the merger shortly after.

      Subsequently the House of Representatives Judiciary and Energy and Commerce committees announced an investigation into whether the $16 million settlement constituted a bribe.

      Also in July, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for defamation arising from an article linking Trump to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He claimed the now-familiar amount of US$10 billion (A$15 billion) in damages.

      Legal experts in the US say Trump has next to no chance of winning. In the US, public figures who sue for defamation have to prove that the publisher was motivated by malice, which means they published either knowing the material to be untrue, or not caring whether it was true or not.

      This case is never likely to end up in court, nor is it likely that Trump will see a red cent of Murdoch’s money. The two men need each other too much. To borrow a phrase from the Cold War, they are in a MAD relationship: Mutually Assured Destruction.

      Coming to heel, one by one

      Rupert Murdoch was a guest at Windsor Castle at the recent banquet given for Trump by King Charles.

      Considering Murdoch’s bitter history with the Royal Family, it is difficult to imagine Buckingham Palace inviting him without Trump’s urging. It may have been a sign of rapprochement between the two men.

      Meanwhile Trump has set his sights on The New York Times, suing it for defamation and claiming US$15 billion (A$27 billion).

      Referring to the Times’ endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, he said it had become a “mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party”.

      Despite lawsuit threats, the New York Times hasn’t capitulated to Trump – yet.
      Mary Altaffer/AP

      This case faces the same difficulties as his suit against the Wall Street Journal. The question is whether the Times will stand its ground or whether, like Paramount, it caves.

      Among the big three US newspapers, the Times is the only one so far not to have been intimidated by Trump. The other two, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, refused to endorse a candidate at the election on instructions from their owners, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong respectively, both of whose wider business interests are vulnerable to Trumpian retribution.

      Read more:
      Two of the US’s biggest newspapers have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is how democracy dies

      The Post’s decision was condemned as “spineless” by its celebrated former editor Marty Baron.

      Now Disney is in the firing line. It owns another of the big four US television networks, ABC. On September 17, it pulled its late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

      Kimmel had responded to White House accusations that leftists were responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, saying:

      we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.

      In what had all the hallmarks of a preemptive buckle, ABC and two of its affiliate networks took Kimmel off air indefinitely after Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said his agency might “take action” against the network because of Kimmel’s comments.

      Kimmel is returning to TV, but the damage is already done.

      Read more:
      Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is the latest sign we’re witnessing the end of US democracy

      Over at cable network MSNBC, its senior political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired after he had uttered on air the blindingly obvious statement that Kirk’s own radical rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him.

      This cable network is no longer part of the main NBC network, so it can’t be said that NBC itself has yet come to heel.

      Within 24 hours of Brendan Carr’s veiled threat, Trump stripped the veil away and made the threat explicit. Trump said of the national networks:

      All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed, they’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat party. I would think maybe their licence should be taken away.

      Whether cancelling a licence would breach the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, is a question that might ultimately come before the Supreme Court. Given the present ideological proclivities of that court, the outcome would be by no means certain.

      So Trump now has two out of three national newspapers, and two out of the big four national television networks, on the run.

      Only one national newspaper and two national networks to go, and one of those is Murdoch’s Fox News, Trump’s most reliable cheerleader. More