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    Trump administration doubles reward for arrest of Venezuela’s president to $50m

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    The Trump administration is doubling to $50m a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narcotraffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Thursday in a video statement announcing the reward.Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15m reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25m – the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11attacks.Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.The prisoner swap sparked controversy, as one of the Americans freed in the exchange is an ex-US soldier who was convicted of killing three people in Spain in 2016. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, found guilty in Venezuela last year, was flown to Texas alongside the other nine freed Americans, whom rights groups had deemed “political prisoners”.Bondi said the justice department has seized more than $700m in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7m tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.In her announcement, Bondi repeated claims linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Venezuelan gang, saying: “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA … to bring deadly violence to our country … He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”Some experts have cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims that TdA is “invading America”. The narrative that TdA is a state-sponsored terrorist group wreaking havoc on the US has been used to fuel the president’s aggressive and broad attacks on Venezuelan immigrants, with policies that advocates say have trampled on people’s due-process rights. In one high-profile case, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker, was expelled to El Salvador after the US claimed his tattoos were proof he was a TdA member and “security threat”.Experts have noted that the Venezuelan government had previously protected TdA, but it was unlikely the gang was acting “at the direction” of the Maduro regime, as the White House has claimed.The Washington Post reported in April that a National Intelligence Council assessment concluded there were some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and TdA, but said the gang was not commanded by Venezuela’s leader.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      ‘People are scared to go out’: fear of Ice agents forces cancellation of US summer festivals

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      For Orlando Gutierrez in Kansas City, the thought of cancelling his community’s summer Colombian Independence Day festival first surfaced “the week after the inauguration” in January, “when the raids started happening”. The decision was rooted in “trying to be safe”, Gutierrez said. “We’re not talking about folks that are irregular in terms of their immigration status. You only have to look a certain way and speak a certain language and then you’re in danger.”For decades prior to 2025, the event had gone on interrupted – “in rain, in extreme heat” – and hosted thousands of Colombians and non-Colombians alike, Gutierrez said. “Our mission is to share our culture with people that don’t know it,” he added. “To not have the opportunity – that’s where it hurts the most.”In Donald Trump’s second term as president, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been historically expansionist: it now aims for an unprecedented 3,000 minimum arrests a day. Its agents have thrown undocumented people, residents with protected legal status, and even American citizens into a deportation system that increasingly does not respect due process.Out of fear of being targeted indiscriminately, cultural and musical events from coast to coast – block parties and summer concerts in California; Mexican heritage celebrations in Chicago; soccer fan watch parties in Massachusetts – have been postponed or canceled altogether. Even religious gatherings are no longer perceived as safe from Ice. In San Bernardino, California, Bishop Alberto Rojas has dispensed his congregation from the obligation to attend mass out of fear of deportation raids.Every decision to cancel is heartbreaking. In Philadelphia, Carnaval de Puebla, which was scheduled for April, made the call to cancel in February, said organizer Olga Rentería. “We believe this is not a time to celebrate,” Rentería explained, “but a time to remain united, informed, and strong.” In Los Angeles, organizers of Festival Chapín, a celebration of Guatemalan culture, have postponed the event from this August to October. “It was really hard to take that decision,” Walter Rosales, a restaurateur and one of the event’s organizers, told the Guardian. “We have a lot of attendees; more than 50,000 people every year. People have hotels, they have flights. We hire people to be there. But I think it was the best [choice.] The first thing we want is the security of the people.”View image in fullscreenRosales said he hopes that by waiting a few months, Festival Chapín can take place amid a different political climate, one in which Ice sticks to promises made by Trump to target primarily undocumented people with criminal records.But mass raids are likely to get more frequent: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, legislation forced through Congress by Republicans and signed into law by Trump on the Fourth of July, will slash social programs while funding Ice at levels comparable to the budget of the US army.It means that even huge stars are questioning whether concerts are safe for their fans. When the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny announced a recent tour that skips the continental US altogether, social media speculation centered on the notion that the artist did not want to put his fans in Ice’s crosshairs. That theorizing was in part fueled by Bad Bunny’s own dips into the wider political conversation: he’s called Ice agents “sons of bitches” on social media and his “NUEVAYoL” video – in which the Statue of Liberty is garlanded with the Puerto Rican flag – is a lovely and grand ode to New York’s immigrants.View image in fullscreenOf avoiding the US on his upcoming tour, the artist himself has only said that, after touring regularly in the US in recent years, more dates at this time were “unnecessary”. (A representative for Bad Bunny did not respond to a request for comment.)Gabriel Gonzales, the bandleader of the Los Angeles Latin music ensemble La Verdad, said some of their gigs have had to be cancelled this summer. “A lot of people are very scared to go out,” he said. “It’s kind of like the pandemic all over again.”But as La Verdad continue to perform around Los Angeles and elsewhere, Gonzales is finding new meaning in playing live amid the Trump administration’s policies.“It’s not like a rebellion,” he said. “It’s more like a resistance. As musicians, we are there to take people away for a few moments. I see communities pulling together and I feel like everything is going to be OK.”For Joyas Mestizas, a Seattle-based Mexican folk dance youth group, which cancelled their annual festival this year, the plan is to be “more creative” going forward. “But we’re not going anywhere,” said the group’s co-director, Luna Garcia. “If I have to teach kids out of my basement, I’ll do it. The kids are going to dance.”For some organizers of cultural events for Latino communities, pushing through and executing their plans despite fears of raids has become its own kind of crusade.In July, federal agents were spotted on the premises of Chicago’s National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture just days before the institution was scheduled to hold its annual Barrio Arts Festival. The museum said the agents entered the property, “refused multiple requests to present a warrant, badge, or identification”, and “informed museum staff that they were assessing entry and exit points for upcoming events that may draw undocumented attendees”.(In a statement, homeland security said agents “staged and held a quick briefing in the Museum’s parking lot in advance of an enforcement action related to a narcotics investigation”.)In response to the presence of the federal agents, the museum decided not to cancel the festival – but, rather, to ensure it would go forward without endangering its attendees. Veronica Ocasio, the museum’s director of education and programming, said that in the days before Barrio Arts, she and her team “met non-stop” in order to create “as tight a security plan as we could”. The museum is located inside Chicago’s Humboldt Park; in order to cover the park’s 200 acres, Ocasio and her co-organizers assembled a group of volunteer immigration advocates who created a trigger warning and stood guard on rotation for the entirety of the two-day festival. If Ice agents were spotted, the museum was ready to shut down the event, close the gates, and bunker in place – holding attendees inside until the agents left. The plan then called for Ocasio and other museum employees to stand out front with immigration attorneys, holding the fort.View image in fullscreenDelia Ramirez, an Illinois congresswoman, was also a key part of the museum’s plan. In order to head off potential Ice raids, Ramirez as well as other elected officials were on the premises “around the clock”, she said. “State representatives, city council folks, the mayor. All to protect constituents from homeland security.”“The president has taken away people’s healthcare so he can hire more Ice agents to terrorize communities,” added Ramirez, but that doesn’t mean “there’s no oversight or accountability. At a time where the federal government wants to harm you, we will keep each other safe”. For Ramirez, Barrio Arts Festival was “a beautiful showing of people saying to Ice, ‘not here, not now, not ever’.”Beyond her support for local cultural events, Ramirez is attempting to push back on Ice action more broadly: she’s a co-sponsor of the No Anonymity in Immigration Enforcement Act which would prohibit Ice from the now-common practice of carrying out their deportation actions while masked. “People are freaking the hell out,” she said. “They don’t know whether it’s an Ice agent who is going to criminalize them with no due process or it’s someone who wants to rob them. No other law enforcement agency does this.”Ultimately, not only did the Puerto Rican event in Chicago go on without interruption, but it was “our largest, most well attended Barrio Fest in our twenty-five year history”, Ocasio said. “We stood against intimidation and we created a blueprint for festivals in the city of Chicago.” The museum has already shared the safety plan it developed on the fly with organizers of upcoming events representing the local Colombian and Mexican communities.Ahead of New York’s Colombia Independence Day festival – held in July in Corona, a working class neighborhood in Queens – organizers were similarly concerned about the possibility of Ice raids. They took precautions by bordering off the event, marking it as private, and creating a single entrance point where they would have stopped Ice agents operating without a warrant, organizers told the Guardian. Like Chicago’s Barrio Arts Festival, they had lawyers on hand from a local legal services organization. Ultimately, like Barrio Arts, they too set a new attendance record, with around 20,000 festival goers.View image in fullscreenCatalina Cruz, a New York state assembly member who helped plan the Colombian festival, said that all the precautions she and her fellow organizers took “doesn’t explain why so many people came out – from all over the city and beyond”. She credited attendees with a certain kind of mental fortitude: “I’m not in their minds, but I don’t think they were giving a fuck about the president.”Of course, that fuzzy feeling of having put on a successful mass event for the Latino community in the era of all-pervading fear of Ice isn’t a panacea. As Cruz put it: “What would have really stopped [Ice] if they wanted to get in? As we have seen in the case of California” – where federal agents have forcefully and en masse raided parks and working farms – “not a goddam thing.”Newly flush with cash thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, Ice is now actively recruiting waves of new agents – to, in their words, “defend the homeland” – by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, has promised to “flood the zone” with Ice agents in New York and other sanctuary cities.But on that Sunday in Queens, the Colombian festival ticked along beautifully with no sight or sound of the federal government’s aggressive deportation machine. Vendors pushed street-cart ceviche and plastic pouches full of high-octane primary-color beverages: “Coctelitos, coctelitos!” Seemingly every other person wore the powerful yellow jersey of the Colombian national soccer team. Twentysomethings salsa’d next to older family members grooving in their wheelchairs.When a performer with serious pipes sang the Star Spangled Banner, everybody perked up. When she followed it up with the national anthem of Colombia, throat-bursting singalongs broke out. After she wrapped up, the DJ smashed the ehh-ehh-EHH horns and, all together, folks chanted: “Viva Colombia! Viva Colombia!” More

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      in US Politics

      What will the AI revolution mean for the global south?

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      View image in fullscreenI come from Trinidad and Tobago. As a country that was once colonized by the British, I am wary of the ways that inequalities between the global north and global south risk being perpetuated in the digital age.When we consider the lack of inclusion of the global south in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), I think about how this translates to an eventual lack of economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology that has captivated academics within the industrialised country I reside, the United States.As a scientist, I experienced an early rite of passage into the world of Silicon Valley, the land of techno-utopianism, and the promise of AI as a net positive for all. But, as an academic attending my first academic AI conference in 2019, I began to notice inconsistencies in the audience to whom the promise of AI was directed. AI researchers can often identify consistent choices for locations where such conferences are hosted, and where they are not. NeurIPS, one of the top AI conferences, has highlighted annual issues for obtaining visas for academic attendees and citizens from the African continent. Attending such a prestigious conference in the field grants one the opportunity to gain access to peers in the field, new collaborations and feedback on one’s work.I often hear the word “democratisation” within the AI community, an implication of equity in access, opportunity and merit for contribution regardless of one’s country of origin. Associate professor of economics Fadhel Kaboub talks about how “a lack of vision for oneself results in being a part of someone else’s vision”, reflecting on how systematically lacking an access to infrastructure results in local trade deficits in economies.As in the time of Nafta’s promise of “free trade”, promises of “AI democratisation” today still exist and benefit mainly countries with access to tech hubs not located in the global south. While the United States and other industrialized countries dominate in access to computational power and research activity, much of the low-paid manual labour involved in labelling data and the global underclass in artificial intelligence still exists in the global south.Much like coffee, cocoa, bauxite and sugar cane are produced in the global south, exported cheaply and sold at a premium in more industrialized countries, over the past few years we have seen influence in AI inextricably tied to energy consumption. Countries that can afford to consume more energy have more leverage in reinforcing power to shape the future direction of AI and what is considered valuable within the AI academic community.In 2019, Mary L Gray and Siddharth Suri published Ghost Work, which exposed the invisible labour of technology today, and at the beginning of my tenure at graduate school, the heavily cited paper Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence was published. It has been five years since these seminal works. What would an AI community inspired by the Brics organisation, which united major emerging economies to advocate for themselves in a system dominated by western countries, look like for the global south?I often ask myself how AI has contributed to our legacy, and whose stories it won’t tell. Has AI mitigated issues of mistrust and corruption in less-resourced countries? Has it benefited our civic communities or narrowed educational gaps between less-resourced regions? How will it make society better, and whose society will it make better? Who will be included in that future?A historical mistrust can impede adoption by developing countries. Furthermore, many developing countries have weak institutional infrastructures, poor or nonexistent laws and regulatory frameworks for data projection and cybersecurity. Therefore, even with an improved information infrastructure, they are likely to function at a disadvantage in the global information marketplace.A currency is only as good as its perceived global trust. When thinking about the democratization in AI and a vision of what it could be in years to come, AI’s survival requires including more perspectives from regions such as the global south. Countries from the global south should work together to build their own markets and have a model of sovereignty for their data and data labour.Economic models often consider a definition of development that includes a measure of improvement in the quality of life of the most marginalized of its people. It is my hope that in the future that will extend to our evaluation of AI.

      Krystal Maughan is a PhD student at the University of Vermont studying differential privacy and machine learning More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s first-term labor statistics chief denounces ‘groundless firing’ of successor – live

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      Bill Beach, a former Heritage foundation economist who was picked by Donald Trump in 2018 to oversee labor statistics, denounced on Friday what he called the “totally groundless firing of Dr Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS”.Beach added that Trump’s order to remove the bearer of bad news on jobs “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau”.He also co-signed a statement with Erica Groshen, who served as the commissioner before him, from 2013 to 2017, which began:
      Today, President Trump called into question the integrity of the Employment Situation report that the BLS released this morning. He accused BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer of deliberately reporting false numbers to reflect poorly on this administration. This baseless, damaging claim undermines the valuable work and dedication of BLS staff who produce the reports each month. This escalates the President’s unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system.
      The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information.
      This rationale for firing Dr McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers. US official statistics are the gold standard globally. When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.
      Other experts and elected officials were equally scathing in their response to Trump’s move.“This will make it difficult to trust government sources on economic and financial data,” Rohit Chopra, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wrote. “Many businesses and investors use these data sets to determine where they want to launch or grow, so this will have real costs.”“Instead of helping people get good jobs, Donald Trump just fired the statistician who reported bad jobs data that the wanna-be king doesn’t like,” Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and bankruptcy law expert, posted.“No. Mr. President,” Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, wrote. “In America, you do not fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for releasing a jobs report that you don’t like. That’s what authoritarians do. We need serious economists in these positions, not hacks who will only tell you what you want to hear.”US stocks slumped on Friday, with the S&P on track for its biggest daily percentage decline in more than three months as Donald Trump unveiled new import tariffs on dozens of trading partners and a surprisingly weak jobs report spurred selling pressure.Shares in Amazon also fell after the company failed to meet expectations for its Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit.Just hours before Trump’s latest self-imposed tariff deadline on Friday, the president signed executive orders imposing import taxes on goods imported from around the globe, including key trading partners such as Canada, Brazil, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the 27-nation European Union.Investor confidence was also hit by new data showing that US job growth slowed more than expected in July, and was significantly lower than previously reported in May and June. Those job numbers prompted Trump to fire the messenger, commissioner of labor statistics Erika McEntarfer.The jobs report significantly pushed up expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its next meeting in September.According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 101.60 points, or 1.60%, to end at 6,237.79 points, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 472.78 points, or 2.24%, to 20,649.67. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 543.97 points, or 1.23%, to close at 43,587.01.

      Donald Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative statements” from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who said yesterday that the US president should remember Moscow had Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities. It comes amid a spiralling war of words with Medvedev as tensions rise over Trump’s efforts to get Russia to end its war in Ukraine or face economic sanctions. Medvedev had earlier said that Trump’s threats to sanction Russia and a recent ultimatum were “a threat and a step towards war”.

      Leaders of more than 60 countries were plunged into a fresh race to secure trade deals with the US after Trump unleashed global chaos with sweeping new tariff rates last night. Our story is here and a table of all the tariff rates for each country is here.

      Trump ordered the firing of the federal government official in charge of labor statistics, hours after data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that he is “firing the messenger”. In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed (with no evidence) that Erika McEntarfer had “faked” employment figures in the run-up to last year’s election, in a bid to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of victory, and implied she “manipulated” today’s numbers for political reasons. “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” Trump wrote.

      The Bureau of Labor Statistics released revised job stats today which showed the US economy added only 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns with Trump’s escalating trade war. In the report, the BLS also slashed the number of jobs added in May, revising the figure down by 125,000, from 144,000 to only 19,000, and in June, which was revised down by 133,000, from 147,000 to just 14,000 – a combined 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

      Trump also said once again that Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, should also be “put out to pasture”, as he continued to insist the US economy is booming on his watch and implore the Fed to lower interest rates. The Fed later announced that Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler will resign from the central bank’s board as of 8 August, leaving a key vacancy for Trump to fill ahead of schedule.

      Ghislaine Maxwell was “routinely moved” to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, a senior administration official has told NBC News, due to safety concerns. “Any false assertion this individual was given preferential treatment is absurd. Prisoners are routinely moved in some instances due to significant safety and danger concerns,” the official said of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes. She has appealed to the supreme court to overturn her conviction.
      Continuing his attacks and baseless claims that the employment figures released today were “manipulated” for political reasons, Trump said the numbers were “rigged” to make him and his party look bad.He wrote on Truth Social:
      In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad – Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were ‘taken away’ on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM. Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell is no better! But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!
      The Federal Reserve has announced that Adriana D Kugler will step down early from her position as governor of the Federal Reserve Board on 8 August.Her term was due to expire in January, but her early resignation gives Donald Trump an opportunity to more quickly appoint someone who could eventually replace Jerome Powell as chair.In a speech earlier this month, the New York Times notes that Kugler said the Fed should not cut interest rates “for some time” as tariffs trickle through to consumer prices.Responding to Ghislaine Maxwell’s move to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, a senior administration official has told NBC News that prisoners are “routinely moved” due to safety concerns.“Any false assertion this individual was given preferential treatment is absurd. Prisoners are routinely moved in some instances due to significant safety and danger concerns,” the official said of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice.In a statement earlier today responding to Maxwell’s move from a Florida facility to the one in Texas, the family of Virginia Giuffre, along with Maxwell and Epstein accusers Annie and Maria Farmer, said:
      It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received.
      The New York Times (paywall) notes that the Senate confirmed Erika McEntarfer to the post of commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2024 in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. Among her supporters at the time was then senator and now vice-president JD Vance.Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s labor secretary, has said she “wholeheartedly” supports the president’s firing of Erika McEntarfer to “ensure the American People can trust the important and influential data coming from [the Bureau of Labor Statistics]”.Trump ordered McEntarfer’s firing hours after data revealed that jobs growth had stalled this summer and administration officials scrambled to explain the lackluster report.“A recent string of major revisions have come to light and raised concerns about decisions being made by the Biden-appointed Labor Commissioner,” Chavez-DeRemer wrote in a post on X.She said William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as acting commissioner during the search for McEntarfer’s replacement.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, may call a special election in November to begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans to change their own maps to help Republicans keep their majority in the House of Representatives.Donald Trump is pushing Texas and other Republican-dominated states to carry out mid-decade redistricting that will favor the GOP and potentially stop Democrats from retaking control of the House in next year’s midterm elections. Governors in Democratic-led states have responded by warning they will move to redo their own maps if Texas goes ahead with its plans, which could create an additional five Republican-leaning districts.California is viewed as the best opportunity for Democrats to pick up seats through gerrymandering, but voters will first have to approve changes to an independent redistricting commission that was given the power to draw congressional districts in 2010.Speaking at a Thursday press conference, Newsom said “a special election would be called, likely to be the first week of November” to approve the changes.“We will go to the people of this state in a transparent way and ask them to consider the new circumstances, to consider these new realities,” the governor added.The party out of power typically regains control of the House in a president’s first midterm election, as the Republicans did under Biden in 2022 and Obama in 2010, and Democrats did during Trump’s first term in 2018.Newsom argued that another two years of unified Republican control of Congress would be especially harmful for California, noting that Los Angeles residents were still waiting for lawmakers to approve aid from the wildfires that ravaged the region earlier this year.“They’re doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, an act that we could criticize from the sideline, or an act that we can respond to in kind – fight fire with fire,” Newsom said.While Republicans could gain the most seats by redrawing Texas’s maps, Ohio, another red state, must also redraw its maps before next year’s election, and there’s talk of redistricting to the GOP’s advantage in Missouri and Indiana.Democrats are seen as having a more difficult path to improving their odds of winning the House majority through redistricting, often due to their states’ embrace of independent commissions intended to draw fair congressional amps.Voters created the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2008 to draw its legislative maps, and in 2010 expanded its powers to congressional districts. Newsom said, “We’re not here to eliminate the commission,” but rather to respond to what he described as “the rigging of the system by the president of the United States.“And it won’t just happen in Texas. I imagine he’s making similar calls all across this country. It’s a big deal. I don’t think it gets much bigger,” Newsom said.In the same Truth Social post, Trump said Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell should also be “put out to pasture”, as he continued to insist the US economy is booming on his watch.
      The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected – How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture’.
      Donald Trump has said he’s ordered the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after data showed US employment growth was weaker than expected for the last few months.McEntarfer was nominated by former president Joe Biden to serve in the role in 2023 and was confirmed by the US Senate the following year.In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested (with no evidence) McEntarfer had “faked” the employment figures in the run-up to last year’s election, in a bid to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of victory, and implied she “manipulated” the numbers for political reasons.“We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” Trump wrote.“Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”The bureau released revised job stats today which showed the US economy added only 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns with Trump’s escalating trade war.In the report, the BLS also slashed the number of jobs added in May, revising the figure down by 125,000, from 144,000 to only 19,000, and June, which was revised down by 133,000, from 147,000 to just 14,000 – a combined 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.Here is my colleague Andrew Roth’s report:Donald Trump has said that he has deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump wrote that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines because of “highly provocative statements” by Medvedev, noting he is now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.Medvedev had earlier said that Trump’s threats to sanction Russia and a recent ultimatum were “a threat and a step towards war”.Donald Trump also continues to voice his frustration over the war Russia continues to wage in Ukraine, writing on Truth Social earlier (before the submarine announcement):
      I have just been informed that almost 20,000 Russian soldiers died this month in the ridiculous War with Ukraine. Russia has lost 112,500 soldiers since the beginning of the year. That is a lot of unnecessary DEATH! Ukraine, however, has also suffered greatly. They have lost approximately 8,000 soldiers since January 1, 2025, and that number does not include their missing. Ukraine has also lost civilians, but in smaller numbers, as Russian rockets crash into Kyiv, and other Ukrainian locales. This is a War that should have never happened — This is Biden’s War, not ‘TRUMP’s.’ I’m just here to see if I can stop it!
      As Trump and Medvedev have traded taunts in recent days following Trump saying on Tuesday that Russia had “10 days from today” to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine or be hit, along with its oil buyers, with tariffs, Moscow has shown no sign that it will comply with Trump’s deadline.As my colleague Shaun Walker reports from Kyiv, Vladimir Putin has not responded to Trump’s ultimatum. He has claimed he wants a “lasting and stable peace” in Ukraine but has given no indication that he is willing to make any concessions to achieve it, after a week in which Russian missiles and drones again caused death and destruction across Ukraine.“We need a lasting and stable peace on solid foundations that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine, and would ensure the security of both countries,” said Putin, speaking to journalists on Friday, a week before Trump’s new deadline for hostilities to cease.Trump has said if Russia and Ukraine do not come to an agreement to end the war by next Friday, 8 August, he will impose a package of economic sanctions on Russia.Per my last post, Medvedev on Monday accused Trump of engaging in a “game of ultimatums” and reminded him that Russia possessed Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities of last resort after Trump told Medvedev to “watch his words”.Medvedev has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s most outspoken anti-western hawks since Putin sent tens of thousands of troops to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Reuters notes that while Kremlin critics deride him as an irresponsible loose cannon, some western diplomats say his statements illustrate the thinking in senior Kremlin policymaking circles.The Associated Press also notes that with his frequently wielded nuclear threats and lobbing of insults at western leaders on social media, some observers have argued that Medvedev is seeking to score political points with Putin and Russian military hawks with his extravagant rhetoric.The escalation from Trump comes amid a spiralling war of words with the former Russian president over Trump’s efforts to get Russia to end its war in Ukraine.Trump yesterday called Medvedev a “failed former president”, writing on Truth Social that he should “watch his words” and is “entering very dangerous territory”.
      Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!
      Medvedev, who was prime minister of Russia from 2012 to 2020 and is a very vocal supporter of its invasion of Ukraine, has ridiculed Trump’s ultimatum to the Kremlin to reach a peace deal. He wrote on X earlier this week:
      Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10 … He should remember 2 things:
      1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran.
      2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war.
      Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!
      In another post on X, Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, called US senator Lindsey Graham “gramps”, after he told him to “get to the peace table”.
      It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!
      The jabs continued on Telegram, where Medvedev threatened Trump with a cold war-era doomsday weapon known as the “Dead Hand” – a Russian nuclear system designed to automatically launch a retaliatory strike.
      If a few words from a former Russian president can cause such a nervous reaction from the supposedly powerful President of the United States, then clearly Russia is right about everything and will continue its own way.
      And as for the ‘dead economies’ of India and Russia and ‘stepping into dangerous territory’ – well, let him recall his favorite movies about the ‘walking dead,’ as well as how dangerous the supposedly non-existent ‘Dead Hand’ can be.
      Donald Trump has said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “appropriate regions” in response to threats from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who said on Thursday that Trump should remember Moscow had Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities.Trump said in a post on Truth Social:
      Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter! More

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      Canada braces as tariff deadline looms and talks with US ‘chaos machine’ drag

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      After months of tariff threats from the US and escalating trade tensions that have sowed anger in Canada and fractured a once-close alliance, the country is now fast approaching a 1 August deadline to reach a deal with the Trump administration – which has shown no signs of backing down.And observers are keeping a close eye on negotiations this week to determine whether too large a chasm has grown between the countries, resulting in what could be an explosive end to what was decades of free-flowing trade.Canada is also in a highly vulnerable position, as it has closely intertwined its economy with the US’s, and is extremely reliant on a low-barrier trade environment, said William Huggins, an assistant professor in economics at McMaster University in Ontario.“Canada has tried to negotiate sort of forcefully from a position of not acquiescing to every demand, but by the same token, has also realised it’s not in the strongest position to do so … We’ve had to navigate carefully,” said Huggins.The Canadian public is also anxiously awaiting the deadline to strike up a deal. Economists and political scientists say the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, was elected on the belief that he’s the right person to be at the helm of negotiations and lead Canada through a tenuous period with their southern neighbour.His successes or failures in this arena could affect public perception – as he has characterised his government as being the most adept in the crisis around its sovereignty due to the tariffs and Donald Trump’s persistent claims that he’d like to make Canada the 51st state.“[Carney] is in a situation where he doesn’t hold all the cards and whoever we put in was going to have to figure out a way through this … [His] ability to plan is severely limited by the chaos machine that is operating south of the border,” said Dennis Pilon, the chair of the politics department at York University in Ontario.On Monday, Carney said at a news conference on Prince Edward Island that the trade negotiations are at an “intense pace” and that they are “complex”. But he projected tentative optimism, stating that the negotiations are “tough” because the government is standing up for Canadian interests.“There is a landing zone that’s possible but we have to get there. We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters.But Trump spoke of the negotiations flippantly when asked by reporters outside the White House last Friday. “We haven’t really had a lot of luck with Canada … Canada could be one where there’s just a tariff, not really a negotiation,” he said.So far, much of the talks have happened behind closed doors. There was a glimpse into what could be the dynamic between Carney and Trump when the prime minister had his first meeting with the president in the Oval Office in early May. There were positive tones in both initially offering praise for each other, but the encounter quickly grew tense as Trump repeated his annexation claims, which were subsequently rebuffed by Carney.Since March, Trump has imposed several tariffs on Canadian goods and energy resources. There is a 25% tariff on all goods, excluding potash and energy products. But there’s separately a 10% tariff on energy resources, including potash. Additionally, there’s a further 50% tariff on steel and aluminum imports and a 25% tariff on autos and auto parts.At this stage, the tariffs have seemingly not delivered a significant blow to Canada’s economy, but that could change quickly. The Royal Bank of Canada noted in its June forecast that nearly 90% of Canadian goods are exempt from tariffs under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the free trade deal that replaced Nafta in 2020 and which provides a degree of insulation.In an assessment published by the Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) on Tuesday, it reported that energy exports have not been significantly affected by the tariffs, as most exports are compliant under the USMCA, and are therefore exempt from tariffs.Some of the insulation so far from tariffs could be from opening Canada up to other markets. TD said that in the past four months, Canadian businesses rapidly moved to reorient supply chains and export to non-US markets. Now about 30% of exports go outside the US – a level not seen since the pandemic, when TD notes there was disorientation in trade.But TD also warned that the negative effects of the tariffs might be beginning to emerge. It said that Canadian exports to the US are “generally underperforming” in tariff-targeted industries, particularly steel and automaking. Canada’s auto exports fell to levels not seen since late 2022, following the April imposition of tariffs. Automakers have also “slashed” production in response, it said.Andrea Lawlor, an associate professor of political science at McMaster University, said that while there haven’t been many layoffs or a complete reorientation of production lines yet, industries targeted by tariffs are preparing to do so.Lawlor also said that Carney has been prudent in his negotiation strategy so far, and right in waiting for deals to be brokered between the US and other nations, as they were this month with Japan and the EU, to help inform Canada’s strategy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd despite concerns about marred relationships with First Nations people, pushing forward controversial infrastructure legislation and his quick scrapping of Canada’s digital services tax – which many, including top former diplomats, viewed as fawning capitulation toward Trump – the prime minister is still enjoying fairly positive polling in his term’s infancy.Abacus Data reported at the end of June that 52% of Canadians surveyed approve of the Carney government. The research firm states it shows that his post-election honeymoon period is “far from over”.Lawlor said the best outcome for Carney in the negotiations is a favourable trade deal – however, there has been signalling from Carney, in his discussion of “tough” talks so far, that Canadians may have to accept a baseline of tariffs.“Many Canadians just simply will not be satisfied if that is the outcome,” she said. But due to Carney facing limited criticism of his interactions with the Americans so far, Lawlor said she believes the prime minister will not face extreme negative blowback if he doesn’t trounce tariffs for good this week.But he will be more vulnerable if the tariffs start to place downward pressure on multiple industries, she said.As Canadians are waiting and watching for the Friday deal deadline, the real fears are around the cementing of a new world order and whether long-term business and consumer decisions need to be made in response, said Preetika Joshi, an assistant professor at McGill University in Quebec that specialises in taxation.“If you were a business owner and you knew Trump is going to be in power for only three, four years, would you necessarily make big, significant changes in your supply chain … or would you just wait it out?” she said.But given some grim messaging from those close to Carney – Canadians might be facing tough decisions. Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for Canada-US trade, said last week there’s a lot of work ahead of them and minimised the 1 August deadline.“We’re going to continue to work toward the 1 August deadline,” said LeBlanc to reporters in Washington. “But all of these deadlines are with the understanding that we’ll take the time necessary to get the best deal,” he said.Deal or no deal, the negotiations might reveal that there isn’t a best-case scenario, said Joshi.“What we were used to before Trump, where there were very little tariffs, that reality is slightly over,” she said. “We’ll have to wait and see … but the reality is that there are going to be some tariffs.” More

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

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

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      Rubio moves to strip US visas from eight Brazilian judges in Bolsonaro battle

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      The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years.As the day of judgment nears, Trump has been increasing pressure on the court and President Lula’s administration. On 9 July, the US president announced he would impose 50% tariffs on all Brazilian imports as of 1 August, partly as a result of the supposed persecution of his ally. The move triggered an outpouring of nationalist anger in the South American country, with Lula describing it as “unacceptable blackmail”.On Friday, after federal police raided Bolsonaro’s house and fitted him with an electronic tag to stop him absconding, Rubio announced further moves in support of the defendant, who he claimed was the victim of a “political witch hunt”.Writing on X, Rubio said he had ordered visa revocations for the judge leading the investigation into Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, as well as “his allies on the court” and their family members. Rubio did not name his other targets but the Brazilian newspaper O Globo identified them as Luís Roberto Barroso, José Antonio Dias Toffoli, Cristiano Zanin, Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, Luiz Edson Fachin and Gilmar Ferreira Mendes.Two other judges who were nominated to the court during Bolsonaro’s 2019-23 presidency, André Mendonça and Kassio Nunes Marques, reportedly avoided the sanction, as did a third judge, Luiz Fux.Lula denounced what he called “another arbitrary and completely groundless measure from the US government”.“Interference in another country’s justice system is unacceptable and offends the basic principles of national sovereignty and respect between nations,” the president said on Saturday, adding: “I’m certain that no kind of intimidation or threat – from whoever it may be – will compromise the most important mission of our nation’s powers and institutions, which is to act permanently to defend and safeguard the democratic rule of law.”The Trump strategist Alex Bruesewitz welcomed Rubio’s announcement, calling Bolsonaro’s treatment “sick and wrong”.Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, thanked Rubio for his decision. “Thank you very much for this fight in favor of free speech, we do believe in the same values,” tweeted Eduardo, who has been living in the US since February and has reportedly been lobbying officials there over his father’s plight.Trump’s interventions have appalled millions of Brazilians who hope to see their former leader held responsible for the alleged coup attempt, which culminated in the 8 January riots in Brasília.Lula’s institutional relations minister, Gleisi Hoffmann, called the visa cancellations “an aggressive and petty retaliation” and “an affront to the Brazilian judiciary and national sovereignty”.Even influential rightwing voices have criticised the US’s attempt to meddle in one of the world’s most populous democracies by imposing 50% tariffs.On Saturday, the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper described Trump’s behaviour as “unacceptable external interference in Brazil’s domestic matters”. “Trump has not only attacked our national sovereignty … [but also] stained the history of diplomatic relations between the two largest democracies in the Americas,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.While the Bolsonaros have hailed Trump’s actions, they also appear to have grasped how the announcement of tariffs has backfired, allowing Lula to pose as a nationalist defender of Brazilian interests and paint the Bolsonaro clan as self-serving “traitors”.Lula, who had been facing growing public disillusionment and an uphill battle to win re-election next year, has enjoyed a bounce in the polls since Trump launched his trade war, the brunt of which will be borne by coffee producers and cattle ranchers in Bolsonaro-voting regions, such as São Paulo.Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist, said he suspected the Bolsonaros had been blindsided by the scale of Trump’s attack.“I think [Bolsonaro] wanted some kind of penalty – something he could use to say: ‘Look, Brazil’s being punished because of Bolsonaro’s persecution. But [the tariffs] went far too far … [they] screwed Bolsonaro’s base,” said Rocha de Barros, pointing to their potential impact on agribusiness.On Friday night, Bolsonaro’s senator son, Flávio, post on X, calling on Trump to suspend the tariffs and replace them with individual sanctions. Soon after, however, he deleted the post. More

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      Trump’s latest tariffs ‘are real’ unless deals improve, economic adviser says

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      Donald Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said on Sunday, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico, the European Union and other countries if they don’t improve.“Well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough,” Hassett told ABC’s This Week program. “But you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.“Hassett told ABC’s This Week program that Trump’s threatened 50% tariff on goods from Brazil reflect Trump’s frustration with the South American country’s actions as well as its trade negotiations with the US.On Thursday, Brazil threatened to retaliate against Trump’s plan with its own 50% tariff on US goods. “If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods.Hassett’s comments come one day after Trump announced on his Truth Social social media platform that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% tariff rate starting on 1 August, angering European capitals who had thought they had previously reached a deal with Trump. The prior deal would have involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Sunday said he will work intensively with French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to resolve the escalating trade war with the United States.“I discussed this intensively over the weekend with both Macron and Ursula von der Leyen,” Merz told German broadcaster ARD, adding he had also spoken with Trump about the matter.“We want to use this time now, the two and half weeks until August 1 to find a solution. I am really committed to this,” Merz said.Merz said the German economy would be hit hard by the tariffs, and he was doing his best to make sure US tariffs of 30% were not imposed.Unity in Europe and a sensible dialogue with the US president were now needed, Merz said, although countermeasures should not be ruled out. “But not before August 1,” he said.EU trade ministers are scheduled to meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to implement €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which are now paused until 1 August, the same day as Trump’s new deadline.Macron has called on the EU to “defend European interests resolutely” in response to Trump’s threats.French cheese and wine producers have warned of the damaging impact that Trump’s threatened 30% tariffs on imports from the EU would have on the country’s agriculture industry.A 30% duty would be “disastrous” for France’s food industry, said Jean-François Loiseau, the president of food lobby group ANIA, while Francois Xavier Huard, the CEO of dairy association FNIL, said: “It’s a real shock for milk and cheese producers – this is an important market for us.”In the interview with ABC News on Sunday, Hassett also said that Trump has the authority to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for cause if evidence supports that, adding that the Fed “has a lot to answer for” on renovation cost overruns at its Washington headquarters.Any decision by Trump to try to fire Powell over what the Trump administration calls a $700bn cost overrun “is going to depend a lot on the answers that we get to the questions that Russ Vought sent to the Fed”, Hassett said.Vought, the White House budget director, last week slammed Powell over an “ostentatious overhaul” of the Fed’s buildings and answers to a series of questions. Trump has repeatedly said that Powell should resign because he has not lowered interest rates, and the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing anonymous sources, that Hassett is vying to succeed him as the Fed chair. More

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      Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More