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    Blood and bravado: the Trump shooting upended an election and shook the US

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    Blake Marnell was standing in the front row, about 10 yards from Donald Trump, when the shots rang out. He watched the Secret Service pile on the former US president. “I was able to see him standing and I could see the blood on his ear,” Marnell recalls. “When he put his fist up, I remember yelling, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’”Sunday marks one year since the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a week that changed US politics. Eight days later then-president Joe Biden, 81, dropped out of the election race amid concerns over his mental and physical decline.The twin shocks to the system of July 2024 continue to echo. Trump’s supporters hailed his survival as proof of divine intervention. He declared in his inaugural address in January: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He has governed with a zealous self-belief that earns comparisons with authoritarians from history.Democrats, meanwhile, continue to wrestle the fallout of Biden’s late withdrawal. Some argue that he could have pushed on and won; most believe that he left the race too late and paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House. Younger voters accuse the party establishment of betrayal and beat the drum of generational change.What few dispute is that the shooting of Trump was indicative of a culture of political violence that has taken hold over the past decade, with recent examples including the murder of a Minnesota politician and her husband. It also set in motion a news cycle that has barely drawn breath over the past year as the most unconventional president of modern times dominates the national consciousness.View image in fullscreenFor Marnell, who lives in San Diego, California, that hot summer’s day in Butler began like dozens of the other Trump rallies he has been to before and since. He was wearing a “brick suit” that symbolises the president’s border wall and looked up at a giant screen that displayed a chart detailing US-Mexico border crossings.Trump had his head turned to the right to review the graphic when the gunfire began and nicked his right ear. “I didn’t even recognise them as gunshots,” 60-year-old Marnell said in a phone interview. “I thought they might be firecrackers.”For several long seconds there was pandemonium. Firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while David Dutch and James Copenhaver were both hospitalised with injuries. Secret Service agents killed the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, whose motives remain a mystery, and rushed on top of Trump, whose fate was initially uncertain.“There was every range of emotion in the crowd. There was anger. There were people who turned around and were yelling at the TV cameras. There were people who were in prayer. There were people crying. There were people who were in disbelief. It was just an incredible gamut and range of reactions.”But what happened next became the stuff of political legend. Trump rose, pumped his fist and beseeched his followers to “Fight! Fight! Fight” even as blood streaked his face. The resulting image flashed around the world and is still displayed in the West Wing and worn on T-shirts by his “Make America great again” (Maga) acolytes.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “He showed courage and determination when you’d think the first thing somebody wants to do is slink away and save themselves. His response was to be the medieval chieftain who was rallying his troops round the banner and showing that he was undeterred to fight, to use his word. It was incredibly moving.”Biden was quick to call Trump and express sympathy. On 17 July, Biden tested positive for Covid-19. On 19 July, Trump, wearing a patch on his ear, delivered a 90-minute address at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where some delegates wore ear patches in solidarity.Then, on 21 July, Biden suddenly announced that he was stepping aside and would not be the Democratic nominee for president. The writing had been on the wall since his disastrous debate performance against Trump the previous month. Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had urged him to withdraw. Finally, he yielded.View image in fullscreenEven by the standards of the Trump era, it had been a jaw-dropping eight days. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “There have been dramatic weeks and months but, in an election campaign, there’s just nothing like it in all of American history.”Journalist Chris Whipple was working on a different project when he heard the news of Biden’s exit, “realised this was the political story of the century”, and pivoted to writing a book that would become Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.“It created that devastating split screen between the strengths of Trump and the weakness of Biden,” Whipple said. “The image of Trump rising off that stage with blood on his cheeks and his fist in the air mouthing ‘fight, fight, fight’ was devastating in comparison to the image of Biden shortly thereafter climbing off Air Force One with Covid headed to his bunker in Rehoboth Beach, standing on those steps, looking lost and gripping the handrail.”In their new book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf write how Trump’s future chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told him after the assassination attempt: “You do know this is God.” At first Trump was silent, they write, but by the next day he was telling everyone: “If anyone ever doubted there was a God, that proved there was.”Numerous speakers at the Republican convention insisted that Trump had been spared by God so that he could pursue his mission. The Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell refers to it as a “millimetre miracle”.Whipple added: “To this day the true believers think this was God’s plan and maybe – without playing armchair psychologist – it’s contributed to a kind of fearlessness in Trump that I’m not sure we saw in the first term. Some might say recklessness. It changed Trump. It changed the country.”Conversely, the Democrats have still not recovered from the debacle of Biden’s late departure. His anointed successor, Kamala Harris, had only 107 days to campaign and ignited a burst of Democratic enthusiasm, notably at the party convention and when she debated Trump. But it was too little too late and she lost both the electoral college and the national popular vote.Whipple commented: “It was a seismic political event and the reverberations continue to this day. His 11th-hour abdication, leaving Kamala Harris with too short a runway to mount a winning campaign, obviously is historic and there is to this day a lot of anger among Democrats about the fact that Biden should have stepped away a year earlier or more.View image in fullscreen“That has real political ramifications. We’re seeing it in the popularity of ZohranMamdani in New York and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. It’s not just their message which is appealing to so many but also the fact that they’re anti-establishment. Biden and his gang have come to represent the corrupt Democratic establishment because of his last-minute abdication. You’re seeing an anti-establishment revolt.”Biden’s determination to cling on has been the subject of Democratic hand-wringing – and several books – though he insists he has no regrets. Many in the party wish he had stepped aside after the 2022 midterm elections so it could have held an open primary contest to find an heir apparent. Now Democrats find themselves leaderless and, according to a March poll, at a record low approval rating of 29%.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and political commentator, said: “The real fallout was the lack of a clear successor to President Biden.“Had there been a real primary process that would have been able to unfold over the course of a year and a half, it would have weeded out the contenders and pretenders and would have put forward a ticket that, even if they ended up losing, could still have been very much part of the conversation heading into 2028. Instead, we’re starting 2028 already behind.”How elections are won and lost is always complex. With inflation and immigration looming large, there is no guarantee that another Democratic candidate would have beaten Trump. Nor will it ever be known how determinative his made-for-TV response to the assassination attempt was. But it did have some important consequences.Within minutes of the shooting, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, announced his endorsement of the former president. Musk would go on to spend a record of about $280m in backing Trump and Republican candidates, then lead the president’s assault on the federal bureaucracy until their spectacular falling-out.The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, also praised Trump’s reaction, calling his raised fist “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”. Zuckerberg went on to attend Trump’s inauguration and make changes to Meta such as ending third-party fact-checking, removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity and bringing political content back to users’ feeds.The events of one year ago may also have shaped Trump’s psychology, fuelling an impatient, seize-the-day approach to the presidency that sets the news agenda at breakneck speed, knocks opponents back on their heels and brooks no compromise.Olsen said: “Trump dialed it up to 11 on his inauguration. A lot of that is the indirect influence of his survival of the assassination attempt. This is a man who is going with his instincts and going to do what he’s going to do and not going to prioritise – he’s going to push everything everywhere all at once.”Trump has survived legal troubles and taken on the elites and won, at least in his own mind, Olsen added. “I don’t think he thinks he’s invincible but he feels vindicated. Coupled with a sense of vulnerability means this is a guy who knows that everything could end tomorrow and believes he’s been proven right, so he’s darn well going to use the time that he has left to him to move forward to do even more that he believes is right.” More

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      David Gergen, ex-adviser to Republican and Democratic presidents, dies aged 83

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      David Gergen, a veteran of Washington politics and an adviser to four presidents, Republican and Democrat, in a career spanning decades in government, academia and media, has died. He was 83.Gergen was perhaps best known for a line he summoned for then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a TV debate with Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”The question hit a nerve in a nation wracked by inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The answer came back no, and Reagan won the White House.Gergen later reflected that “rhetorical questions have great power. It’s one of those things that you sometimes strike gold. When you’re out there panhandling in the river, occasionally you get a gold nugget.”Gergen served in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan and Bill Clinton, racking up stints as speechwriter, communications director and counselor to the president, among other roles.He entered politics after serving in the US navy in the 1960s, taking a job as a speechwriting assistant for Nixon in 1971 and rising rapidly to become director of speechwriting two years later. He later served as director of communications for both Ford and Reagan, and as a senior adviser to Clinton and secretary of state Warren Christopher.Between stints in government, he managed a successful media career, working variously as an editor at US News & World Report, on the PBS show the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and with CNN and CBS.In 2000, he published Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership: Nixon to Clinton, a memoir of his time in government. Reflecting on his time in the White House, he wrote of several essential elements a leader should possess.They included inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; an ability to work within the system; a sure, quick start; strong, prudent advisers; and a passion that inspires others to carry on the mission.In a second book, Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders are Made, published two years later, he wrote: “Our greatest leaders have emerged from both good times and, more often, challenging ones. … The very finest among them make the difficult calls, that can ultimately alter the course of history.”Gergen, a North Carolina native, was a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, and returned there after his political career to establish the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He received 27 honorary degrees over the course of his career.After his passing was announced late Friday, former colleagues remarked on his capacity for bipartisanship and collaboration.Al Gore, who served as Clinton’s vice-president, posted on X: “Of the countless ways that David Gergen contributed to our great country, what I will remember him for most was his kindness to everyone he worked with, his sound judgment, and his devotion to doing good in the world.”Dean Jeremy Weinstein of the Harvard Kennedy School, said Gergen “devoted decades of his life to serving those who sought to serve”.Gergen reportedly told his daughter Katherine Gergen Barnett after the November 2024 election that “we are going through a period of fear. We have been tested, we are being tested now, but we must recognize that politics in our country is like a pendulum,” CNN said.A month later, when Gergen’s dementia diagnosis was disclosed, she penned his thoughts in a column for the Boston Globe.“‘As awful as life is currently in the public sphere, there is still reason to believe in our country and its leadership and to go into service,’” she quoted Gergen as saying. “‘Americans can endure any crisis, but they need to continue to take a sense of responsibility for their country.’” More

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      2024 book review: the what-ifs of an election that took US closer to autocracy

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      Donald Trump is on a roll. The “big, beautiful bill” is law. Ice, his paramilitary immigration force, rivals foreign armies for size and funding. Democrats stand demoralized and divided. 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, is a book for these times: aptly named, deeply sourced.Kamala Harris declined to speak. Joe Biden criticized his successor in a brief phone call, then balked. Trump talked, of course.“If that didn’t happen … I think I would’ve won, but it might have been a little bit closer,” he says of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which set the race alight.Yet 2024 is about more than the horse race. It also chronicles how the elites unintentionally made Trump’s restoration possible, despite a torrent of criminal charges against him, 34 resulting in convictions, and civil lawsuits that saw him fined hundreds of millions of dollars.“Trump always drew his strength from decades of pent-up frustration with the American democratic system’s failures to address the hardships and problems the people experienced in their daily lives,” Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf write.“In 2024, [Trump’s] supporters saw institutions stacked against them … leading them to identify viscerally with his legal ordeal, even though they had not experienced anything like it before.”Dawsey is a Pulitzer prize winner, working political investigations and enterprise for the Wall Street Journal. Pager covers the White House for the New York Times. Arnsdorf was part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer for coverage of the assassination attempt.Dawsey and Pager are Post alumni. With Arnsdorf, they capture the aspirations and delusions of Trump and the pretenders to his Republican throne, of Biden and Harris too.“In the weeks after the election, Biden repeatedly told allies that he could have won if he’d stayed in the race,” 2024 reports, “even as he publicly questioned whether he could have served another four years.”Really? Biden’s approval rating fell below 50% in August 2021 and never recovered. From October 2023, he trailed Trump. A year out, the authors reveal, Barack Obama warned his former vice-president’s staff: “Your campaign is a mess.”Biden’s aides privately derided Obama as “a prick”.“They thought he and his inner circle had constantly disrespected and mistreated Biden, despite his loyal service as vice-president.”As for Harris, Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf report that she “knew that the race would be close, but she really thought she would win”.Despite that, David Plouffe, a senior Harris adviser, admitted post-election that internal polls never showed her leading.“I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” he said. Harris’s debate win never moved the needle.Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf contend that the outcome was not foreordained. Rather, they raise a series of plausible-enough “what-ifs”. One is: “If the Democrats got clobbered, as expected, in the 2022 midterms, and Joe Biden never ran for re-election.”Except, by early 2022, according to This Shall Not Pass, a campaign book published that year, Biden saw himself as a cross between FDR and Obama.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman now the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, captures Biden’s self-perception.“This is President Roosevelt,” Biden begins, before thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Back to 2024. Biden bristled at being challenged. Pushback risked being equated with disloyalty. His closest advisers were either family members or dependent on him for their livelihoods. He lacked social peers with incomes and personages of their own.Mike Donilon, a longtime aide, tells the authors: “It was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership to have forced Biden out.“Tell me why you walked away from a guy with 81m votes … A native of [swing-state] Pennsylvania. Why do that?”Because Biden’s debate performance was a gobsmacking disaster. He also found navigating the stairs of Air Force One difficult and needed prompts to find the podium. In May 2025, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer – a disclosure that came after 2024 went to press.The authors of 2024 pose Republican hypotheticals too. One: “If Trump never got indicted, or if Republicans didn’t respond by rallying to him, or if the prosecutions were more successful.”Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, demonstrated a lack of nerve. Glaringly, he failed to use the initial E Jean Carroll trial, over the writer’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her, to bolster his presidential ambitions. DeSantis didn’t dispatch his wife, Casey DeSantis, to Manhattan to offer daily thoughts and prayers for the plaintiff, or for Melania Trump. If you want to be the man, first you’ve got to beat the man.Another hypothetical: “If Trump and Biden didn’t agree to an early debate …”That question hangs over everything.Trump’s pronouncements leave Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf anxious. After the 2022 midterms, he mused about terminating the constitution. Later, on the campaign trail, he spoke openly of being a “dictator for a day”. When he was back in the West Wing, reporters asked: “Are you a dictator on day one?” “No,” he replied. “I can’t imagine even being called that.”Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf then catalog Trump’s unilateral actions on that first day, including stripping political opponents of security clearances. Later that month, he commenced his vendetta against law firms he deemed to be enemies. In February, Trump barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool unless the news agency referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.2024 contains no mention of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Perhaps it should have made space. Hungary’s leader is an autocrat in all but name, an elected leader who has removed freedoms regardless. Republicans adore him.

      2024 is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Zohran Mamdani’s videos are a masterclass. Eric Adams’ posts are getting more bizarre | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Eric Adams, possible resident of New Jersey and mayor of New York City, is a man of many talents. He is the city’s “most famous vegan”, albeit one who eats fish. He has a knack for scoring freebies from foreign governments. He managed the great feat of being the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted while in office. And, on top of all that, he may well be the most unintentionally hilarious man on the internet.Please see, as exhibit one, a classic piece of Adams surrealism from 2011, shot when the mayor was just a humble state senator. Dressed like an undertaker, Adams instructs viewers to search their child’s room for contraband. Per Adams, a jewelry box may have a gun in it, and the bullets may be behind a picture frame. Unappreciated for many years, the video finally found an audience when it went viral during Adams’s indictment.More recently, the mayor posted a very weird Instagram video of him listening to Katy Perry, and another one captioned, “Make an important call with me,” in which he fake chats to Usher to announce a free concert series in New York City. And, of course, there was his famous “trash revolution” press conference where he helpfully demonstrated how to use a wheelie bin. You open the lid and then you close it: magic!In another Instagram video, Adam shares his morning routine. The mayor once told an audience: “I get out of the shower sometimes and I say: ‘Damn!’” This little bit of the routine, alas, did not make it into the cut. Instead he irons a shirt, munches a carrot stick in his bizarre industrial kitchen, and rants about how he is being guided by his GPS (“God positioning satellite”). The video was posted a month ago but it really took off this week after internet detectives pointed out that a clock in the footage tells a completely different time than the purported time on the screen. In other words, the whole “routine” was about as natural as a ski slope in Dubai.One glaring reason for Adams suddenly trying to up his Instagram game is the rise of Zohran Mamdani, the Queens assemblyman whose socialist ideas and (admittedly elite) TikTok strategy recently propelled him to victory in New York City’s mayoral primary. Adams is currently slated to run as an independent in the general election against Mamdani, and he’s clearly running scared.Adams is not the only Democrat making headlines this week for attempting to make waves on the internet. There’s an influential web series called Subway Takes in which the New York-based comedian Kareem Rahma solicits hot takes from strangers, and the occasional celebrity, on the train. Kamala Harris was on it last year, but you wouldn’t have seen the segment because it was reportedly so bad that it didn’t run. “Her take was really confusing and weird, not good, and so [we] mutually agreed we shouldn’t publish it,” Rahma told Forbes. One day it may fall out of a coconut tree, but right now it is hidden from scrutiny.Then there’s the Democratic house minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who was recently mocked for posting what appeared to be a badly photoshopped picture of himself, altered to make his waist thinner, on Instagram. (He seems to have deleted the photo on Thursday.)Jeffries was also just ridiculed (mainly by conservatives) for an Instagram photo in which he holds a baseball bat in metaphoric opposition to Donald Trump’s “One Big Ugly Bill”. The 82-year-old congresswoman Virginia Foxx was not impressed by this; Foxx tweeted the photo with the caption “low energy”.Jeffries certainly does seem to have a few energy issues. He can give record-breaking long speeches but he, along with other senior Democratic figures, can’t seem to summon up the energy to endorse Mamdani. Democrats love saying “vote blue no matter who” – except in situations where they have got a charismatic candidate who resonates with ordinary people.Meanwhile, Mamdani has no trouble with social media: his TikTok videos are one of the reasons the Queens assemblyman has surged from relative obscurity to mayoral frontrunner. Some of his rivals seem to think they are the cause for his success. “I regret not running for mayor in 2021,” state senator Jessica Ramos said during the mayoral primary debate. “I had been in the senate for two years. I’d already passed over a dozen bills. I thought I needed more experience. But turns out you just need to make good videos.”Of course, Mamdani doesn’t resonate with so many people because he’s studied vertical videos strategies. He’s successful because his core messaging connects with the needs of normal New Yorkers rather than the 1%. He’s been successful because he seems to genuinely want to fight for people rather than just collect a paycheck and then head off for a cushy job at whatever lobbying company donates the most to him. He’s relatable and authentic and those are two things that are very hard to manufacture. Although that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from trying: they have discussed throwing millions of dollars into creating a “Joe Rogan of the left”.This isn’t to say that you can’t buy yourself a great social media strategy. John Fetterman, the soulless ghoul who is senator of Pennsylvania, certainly did. He made some brilliant hires, who ran a very entertaining campaign against Dr Oz in 2022. Now that Fetterman seems more obsessed with bombing Gaza than serving his constituents, many of those staffers have left, however. I doubt he’ll be able to pull off another campaign like his first.Speaking of pulling things off, now that Adams has posted his morning routine I wouldn’t mind seeing other politicians post theirs. Please Cuomo, and every other establishment politician: stream the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People over TikTok. I can’t wait to see Cuomo walk to a bagel shop and order an English muffin before telling passersby “I’m not perverted, I’m just Italian.” Surely that will convince New Yorkers to Pokémon Go to the polls. More

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      Trump reportedly backing away from abolition of FEMA after Texas flooding – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next couple of hours.We start with news that president Donald Trump has backed away from abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Washington Post reported on Friday.No official action is being taken to wind down FEMA, and changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response, the newspaper said, citing a senior White House official.It comes as Trump heads to Texas on Friday for a firsthand look at the devastation caused by catastrophic flooding.Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that’s been popular with Trump’s core supporters.“Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming,” Trump told NBC News on Thursday, adding, “This is a once-in-every-200-year deal.” He’s also suggested he’d have been ready to visit Texas within hours but didn’t want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.The president is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas. The White House also says he will visit the state emergency operations center to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.Trump will also get a briefing from officials. Republican governor Greg Abbott, senator John Cornyn and senator Ted Cruz are joining the visit, with the GOP senators expected to fly to their state with Trump aboard Air Force One.In other developments:

      Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned

      A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

      Police in Scotland are bracing for protests against Trump before an expected visit later this month to his immigrant mother’s homeland, where he is spectacularly unpopular.

      The US state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades.

      Senator Ruben Gallego introduced a one-page bill to codify into law the Federal Trade Commission’s “click to cancel” rule, one day after a federal appeals court blocked the rule.

      Federal immigration officers, supported by national guard troops, used force against protesters, firing chemical munitions, during raids on two cannabis farms in California’s central coast area.

      Trump nominated a far-right influencer to serve as US ambassador to Malaysia. More

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      Mahmoud Khalil says he filed $20m claim against Trump officials ‘because they think they are untouchable’ – US politics live

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      Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly voted to adopt an amendment on Thursday that blocks the Trump administration from changing the site of a new FBI headquarters building.Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, cast the deciding vote on the amendment introduced by Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, which bars the Trump administration from spending any of the previously appropriated $1.4 billion in funds to move the FBI anywhere but the site in Greenbelt, Maryland which was chosen in a competetive process.Last week the administration notified congress that it intended to permanently relocate the FBI to the Ronald Reagan building in Washignton, DC instead of proceeding with the planned building in suburban Maryland.Such an “unauthorized use of funds” Van Hollen said in a statement, would have been “directly at odds with what has been passed by the Congress on a bipartisan basis” and would have set “a dangerous precedent for executive overreach into Congress’s power of the purse.”The measure passed 15-14.In her comments before the vote, Murkowski said that she had no information on how the administration had determined that the Reagan building was a secure enough location.“I, for one, would like to know”, Murkowski said, “this is the right place and it’s the right place, not for a Trump administration, not for a Biden administration, not for a Jon Ossoff administration, but this is the right place for the FBI”.Murkowski paused after her reference to the possibility that the Democratic senator from Georgia could be the next president.“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start any rumors”, she added to laughter from her colleagues.Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, has reportedly accepted an invitation to visit Donald Trump during the US president’s expected trip to Scotland this month, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Thursday.There is, as yet, no word on the details of the rumored visit to the homeland of Trump’s mother, but Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, reports that police in Scotland are gearing up for a possible visit to his golf resort in Aberdeenshire.“It is thought Trump will officially open a new 18-hole golf course at his resort on the North Sea coast at Menie, north of Aberdeen, being named in honour of his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump”, Severin reported on Wednesday.“Planning is under way for a potential visit to Scotland later this month by the president of the United States” , assistant chief constable Emma Bond said. Police are bracing for likely large-scale protests, given Trump’s deep unpopularity in his mother’s homeland. There were demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen during Trump’s last official visit as president in 2018.That year, Trump was greeted at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland by a Greenpeace activist who paraglided directly over his head trailing a banner that read: “Trump: Well Below Par.” The scene was captured on video by the activist group and journalists.Trump’s first visit to Scotland as a politician came the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He hailed the result that morning, despite the fact that Brexit was opposed by nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters.Trump, whose mother was from a remote part of Scotland (the Western Isles, where 55 percent of voters opposed leaving the EU), seemed oblivious to nationalist sentiment there that day, telling reporters the vote meant, “Basically, they took back their country.”During his first official state visit to the UK as president in 2018, Trump started to claim, falsely, that his 2016 visit had been “the day before” the Brexit referendum, not the day after it, and took credit for having “predicted” the outcome. Trump’s obviously false claim about the date of a foreign visit baffled reporters who accompanied him on the trip.In an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s leader in 2019, as Brexit negotiations stalled, in part over the issue of the Irish border with the North of Ireland, Trump again repeated his fictional account of having visited Scotland ahead of the Brexit vote, claiming that he had “predicted it” at a news conference at one of his golf courses in Scotland which actually took place the day after the vote.Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley, announced on Thursday that he is running for re-election next year, citing the threat posed by “Donald Trump and his Maga cronies”.Merkley, a liberal Democrat, will turn 70 before election day in 2026, and his decision to run for a fourth term will not please party activists who are concerned that there are too many older Democrats in Congress. He was first elected to the senate in 2008.Oregon’s senior senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, who is 76, was elected to a fifth term in 2022.In an interview with the Washington Post in 2023, Merkley said that while he did not support calls for a mandatory retirement age for senators: “I do say to my team, when I am at that point, that pivot in my life, where you start to see the changes in my abilities, don’t let me run for re-election.”The Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a claim against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned. The suit comes as Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, is out on bail and the administration continues to actively seek his removal from the US. The Thursday filing is a precusor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said in a statement.Here’s what’s also happened so far today:

      A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pushed back against new evidence from a whistleblower suggesting Department of Justice lawyers were instructed to ignore court orders.

      US senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to flooding in Texas.
      Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced on Thursday they were getting divorced.The Texas radio station KUT obtained the petition for divorce filed in Collin county. The petition accuses the attorney general of adultery and says the couple hasn’t lived together since June 2024.Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, said on X:
      After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
      Angela Paxton said on X:
      Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
      The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July 2024 shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.The state department said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law.Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The AP has more on the filing. It says the Trump administration smeared Mahmoud Khalil as an antisemite while it sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.Citing the CNN report about bureaucratic hurdles at Fema, US senator Ron Wyden said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to the flooding.“Kids in Texas died as a direct result of Kristi Noem’s negligence. She should be removed from office before her incompetence gets Oregonians killed in a wildfire,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, posted on the social media network Bluesky.New cost-cutting measures at FEMA may have slowed the agency’s response to the Texas floods, CNN reported on Thursday.
      Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
      For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
      In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
      “We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
      For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
      In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
      But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
      Read the full story here.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is pushing back amid new disclosures from a fired DoJ lawyer suggesting justice department attorneys were instructed to defy court orders.“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote in a post on X. “As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order.”“And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.At Macy’s, signs advertising sales of as much as 60% off original prices were sprinkled around the store – even next to diamond-encrusted necklaces locked inside display cases in the jewelry department. But for some customers, the prices are still too high.The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian replicated the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. More

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      Bhutan tried to erase us. Now, Trump’s America is helping | Lok Darjee

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      In mid-March 2025, I sat quietly in the back of a small, crowded room at the Asian Refugees United center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, surrounded by members of the Bhutanese diaspora. The silence was heavy, thick with fear and uncertainty. This modest office, once a vibrant hub for refugee youth, cultural celebrations, and literary competitions, had become an impromptu crisis center, where community leaders scrambled to make sense of the Trump administration’s escalatingimmigration crackdown on Bhutanese refugees across the country.Robin Gurung, the organization’s executive director, briefly outlined our legal rights. Another organizer then read aloud the names of those detained, awaiting deportation – or worse, already deported to Bhutan, the very country that once expelled them.As their names echoed through the room, an elderly man, a former student activist who had protested Bhutan’s repressive monarchy decades ago, stood. His voice trembled as he asked: “Where are we supposed to go?”This question of belonging has haunted my entire life. I was born stateless in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal after Bhutan forcibly expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese citizens in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Our language was banned, our citizenship revoked, and our books burned in an ethnic cleansing campaign Bhutan still denies. Nepal refused us citizenship, asserting children born behind barbed wire weren’t its responsibility. Even now, Bhutan maintains its pristine global image, recently praised by 60 Minutes for “zero-carbon cities”, with no mention of the atrocities that cleared land for these “mindfulness cities”.My childhood unfolded behind fences and military checkpoints, in a hut occasionally set on fire by local mobs who viewed refugees as threats to their livelihood. I was a child no country wanted. For years, I lived in limbo – stateless, invisible, expendable. I believed I had finally found a home in 2011, when, after rigorous vetting, my family was resettled in a small town in Idaho.Since then, I’ve navigated the complexities of belonging as a former refugee turned new American. My work at the non-profit Refugee Civic Action now focuses on empowering former refugees through civic education and engagement, echoing Frederick Douglass’s belief that voting rights carry an obligation to build an inclusive democracy for “unborn and unnumbered generations”.Yet no moment revealed the fragility of American citizenship more starkly than the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. What unfolded was not merely a shift in policy, but the emergence of a constitutional crisis – one in which due process, equal protection, and the rule of law became contingent upon a person’s immigration status, background or national origin. Refugee communities, legal immigrants and even naturalized citizens suddenly found their rights precarious and their sense of belonging under threat.This crisis, while alarming, is hardly unprecedented. It echoes America’s historical pattern – visible in the failure of Reconstruction after the American civil war, when the nation struggled over defining citizenship, often through violence and exclusion. It is the same logic that incarcerated Japanese Americans during the second world war, denied Black Americans civil rights for generations, and justified the surveillance of Muslim communities after September 11. Today, cloaked in the language of national security, that same impulse returns, driven by politics intent on reshaping US identity through exclusion rather than constitutional principles.For my Bhutanese community, these recent crackdowns on legal residents have felt like a haunting repetition of history. Trauma we thought we had left behind in Bhutan now replays in Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Rochester and so many other towns, including relatively quiet suburbs of Boise, Idaho. Ice raids targeting legally resettled Bhutanese refugees have rekindled deep, collective fear. More than two dozen refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, the very country that violently expelled us. While some deportees had minor offenses from years ago, their punishments – exile to a regime that once tortured them – are grotesquely disproportionate. Raids have reopened wounds we spent decades healing. These are legal residents, thoroughly vetted through one of the world’s strictest refugee resettlement programs. Yet their deportation has shattered the fragile sense of safety we once believed America guaranteed.America is not Bhutan; their histories, cultures and institutions differ profoundly. Yet I see troubling echoes emerging here. In Bhutan, exclusion began subtly with slogans promoting national unity – “One nation, one language, one people” – initially appearing patriotic, even benign. Soon, our Nepali language was banned, books burned and cultural practices outlawed. Families like mine were categorized arbitrarily to divide and destabilize. People were disappeared, tortured and jailed. Citizenship became conditional, a prize easily revoked. I see shadows of this pattern now emerging in the US as the president erodes checks and balances, attacks public institutions, and scapegoats vulnerable immigrant communities.But when it comes to Bhutanese refugees, Democratic leaders have remained troublingly silent.While Pennsylvania’s senator John Fetterman and governor Josh Shapiro have acknowledged the concerns of Bhutanese refugees through public statements and tweets, their engagement has fallen short. What’s needed now is not just words, but action: oversight, hearings and direct intervention. Democrats must speak up for the likes of Santosh Darji, a Bhutanese refugee quietly deported to a regime that once tried to erase him. Failing to do so risks eroding public trust in the party’s moral commitments.The Republican party, once a vocal supporter of refugee resettlement, has largely aligned itself with Trumpism – a politics rooted in fear, exclusion and racial hierarchy. During Trump’s first term, a few Republican governors resisted efforts to suspend refugee admissions by calling for more legal refugees. Today, that resistance is utterly gone; no single Republican governor resists nor demands that the president reverse his decision on refugee admission. The party that once embraced Ronald Reagan and George Bush can no longer credibly claim their legacies. Those presidents, whatever their flaws, understood that America’s greatness was built on its openness to refugees and immigrants.The Trump administration’s actions aren’t merely cruel; they may violate international law. Deporting refugees back to the country that ethnically cleansed them breaches the principle of non-refoulement – enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention – which prohibits returning refugees to countries where their lives or freedoms are threatened. Now, some deportees find themselves stateless once again, rejected by Bhutan, detained by Nepal police and trapped in legal limbo.America’s moral and constitutional credibility hinges on defending not just those who command headlines or electoral power but precisely those who do not. If legal refugees can be quietly deported to countries from which they fled persecution, America’s claim as a beacon of freedom is dangerously hollow. The haunting question “Where are we supposed to go?” must be answered by American institutions, unequivocally affirming that due process and human dignity apply universally.

      Lok Darjee is a former refugee, columnist and founder of Refugee Civic Action, who writes on immigration, identity and democracy More

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      Democrats and climate groups ‘too polite’ in fight against ‘malevolent’ fossil fuel giants, says key senator

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      The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening, he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate.He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph”.While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior “has been downright evil”, he said. “To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts – if that’s not a good definition of evil, I don’t know what is.”The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s trade association, says on its website that “API and its members commit to delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change while meeting society’s growing energy needs”.Long before Donald Trump reportedly told oil company CEOs he would repeal Joe Biden’s climate policies if they contributed $1bn to his 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans went silent on climate change in return for oil industry money, Whitehouse asserted. The key shift came after the supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on campaign spending. Before that, some GOP senators had sponsored climate bills, and John McCain urged climate action during his 2008 presidential campaign.But Citizens United, Whitehouse said, “told the fossil fuel industry: ‘The door’s wide open – spend any money you want in our elections’”. The industry, he said, promised the Republican party “unlimited amounts of money” in return for stepping away from bipartisan climate action: “And since 2010, there has not been a single serious bipartisan measure in the Senate.”Whitehouse said that after delivering 300 climate speeches on the Senate floor, he has learned to shift from talking about the “facts of climate science and the effects on human beings to calling out the fossil fuels’ massive climate denial operation”.He said: “Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is controlling things in Congress. I could take facts from colleagues’ home states right to them, and it would make no difference because of this enormous, multibillion-dollar political club that can [punish] anyone who crosses them.”Most Republicans even stay silent despite climate change’s threat to property values and other traditional GOP priorities, Whitehouse said. He noted that even the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell – who is not known for climate bona fides, he said – testified before the Senate in February that in 10-15 years there will be whole regions of the country where nobody can get a mortgage because extreme weather will make it impossible to afford or even obtain insurance.Democrats can turn all this to their advantage if they get “more vocal and aggressive”, Whitehouse argued. “The good news is that the American people hate dark money with a passion, and they hate it just as much, if not more, in districts that went for Trump as in districts that went for Biden.”Democrats also need to recognize “how much [public] support there is for climate action”, he said. “How do you have an issue that you win 74 [percent] to 12 [percent] and you don’t ride that horse as hard as you can?”Whitehouse said he was only estimating that 74% figure, but that’s exactly the percentage of Americans who want their government to take stronger climate action, according to the scientific studies informing the 89 Percent Project, the Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partner news outlets began reporting in April. Globally, the percentage ranges from 80% to 89%. Yet this overwhelming climate majority does not realize it is the majority, partly because that fact has been absent from most news coverage, social media and politicians’ statements.Democrats keep “getting caught in this stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: ‘Well, climate’s not one of the top issues that voters care about, so then we don’t talk about it’,” said Whitehouse. “So it never becomes one of the top issues that voters care about. [But] if you actually go ask [voters] and engage on the issue, it explodes in enthusiasm. It has huge numbers when you bother to engage, and we just haven’t.”Nevertheless, Whitehouse is optimistic that climate denial won’t prevail forever. “Once this comes home to roost in people’s homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven’t seen before around this issue,” he said. “And if we’re effective at communicating what a massive fraud has been pulled on the American public by the fossil fuel industry denial groups, then I think that’s a powerful combination.”This story is part of the 89% Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now More

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      Netanyahu vows to combat what he calls ‘vilification against Israel’ online

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      Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he’s vowed to combat an orchestrated social media campaign of “vilification and demonization” that he says is responsible for a drop in support for Israel among US voters, especially Democrats.“I think there’s been a concerted effort to spread vilification and demonization against Israel on social media,” the Israeli prime minister told journalists on Capitol Hill after being asked to respond to opinion polls showing a move away from the historic trend of strong backing for Israel.“It’s directed, it’s funded. It is malignant. We intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see once people are exposed to the facts, we win hands down. That’s what we intend to do in the coming months and years.”Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to Congress, where he met the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.They also followed the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary race for the mayor of New York, which commentators believe was partly fueled by the candidate’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.A range of surveys have shows a marked decline in support for Israel among Democratic-leaning voters amid rising disquiet about the impact of the war in the now devastated coastal territory. The ongoing war has killed about 60,000 people – most of them Palestinians – and has seen much of the population threatened with starvation.A Gallup poll in March showed less than half of the US public sympathized with Israel’s position, the lowest figure recorded since the organization started taking surveys on the issue. Among Democrat voters, 38% sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis, a reversal of a 2013 Gallup survey, which saw Democrats sympathizing with Israelis by a margin of 36%.Other polls have shown similar trends, raising concerns for the future of the traditional strong bipartisan US support for Israel.The Israeli leader said his government had accepted a proposal from Qatari mediators for a fresh ceasefire with Hamas, saying it matched what had been proposed by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWitkoff, speaking at a cabinet meeting earlier on Tuesday, had spelled out the terms of a proposed deal to broker a 60-day ceasefire he hoped would be in place by the end of the week, saying it would involve the release of Israeli hostages.“Ten live hostages will be released, nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff said. “We’re meeting at the president’s direction with all the hostage families to let them know, and we think that this will lead to a lasting peace.”Netanyahu said: “We accepted a proposal that came from the mediators. It’s a good proposal. It matches Steve Witkoff’s original idea and we think that we’ve gotten closer to it, and I hope we can cross the line.”He also said he expected to meet the US president again during his current visit, his third to Washington since Trump was inaugurated in January. The two met at the White House on Monday evening, when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter nominating him for a Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu said the the military coordination with Washington during Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran, which resulted in repeated strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, was unprecedented.“In the entire 77 years of Israeli history, there has never been the degree of coordination of cooperation and trust between America and Israel as we have today,” he said. “And I credit President Trump with this extraordinary achievement.” More