More stories

  • in

    Trump plans to sign executive order to rename Pentagon to ‘Department of War’ – as it happened

    Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US department of defense to refer to itself as to the “Department of War”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian on Thursday.The move, to use a name Trump called “much more appropriate” in remarks last week, would restore a name used until 1947, when Congress merged the previously independent war department and navy department with the air force into a single organization, known as the National Military Establishment. In 1949, Congress changed the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense, and made the army, navy and air force secretaries subordinate to a single, cabinet-level secretary of defense.A draft White House fact sheet on Trump’s rebranding initiative implicitly acknowledges that only Congress can formally change the department’s name, saying that the order would authorize the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to propose legislation that would make the change permanent. In the meantime, the order instructs Hegseth and the department to start using “Department of War” as a secondary title in official correspondence, public communications and executive branch documents. The order also authorizes Hegseth to refer to himself as the “secretary of war”.When Trump was asked by a reporter last week how he plans to rename the department, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that.”“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate,” he added. “The other is, ‘defense’ is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better.”Trump’s embrace of the old name, which seems to put to rest longstanding claims that he was ever the “antiwar candidate” for the presidency, comes days after he ordered the military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of 11 suspected drug smugglers.During his 2015 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump himself rejected the perception that he was anti-war by proclaiming that he was, in fact, “much more militaristic” than even George W Bush.Four years earlier, when he was flirting with a run for the presidency against Barack Obama, Trump had demanded US military intervention in Libya.“I can’t believe what our country is doing,” Trump told viewers of his YouTube video blog on 28 February 2011, two weeks before the Obama administration got US security council authorization “to protect civilians” in Libya. “Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all have the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: it’s a carnage.”Five months later, after the US-led air campaign had forced Gaddafi from power in Libya – and Trump had decided not to challenge Obama for the presidency – the star of The Apprentice posted another YouTube clip, complaining that the administration should have waited longer to aid the Libyan rebels, to force them to agree to surrender half of the country’s oil reserves.“What we should’ve done is we should’ve asked the rebels when they came to us – and they came to us, they were being routed by Qaddafi, they were being decimated – we should’ve said, ‘We’ll help you, but we want 50% of your oil,’” Trump had said. “They would’ve said, ‘How about 75%?’”This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day, but we will return on Friday. Among the day’s developments:

    The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, fended off calls for his resignation and spread vaccine misinformation during a contentious Senate hearing.

    Susan Monarez, the ousted CDC director, rejected Kennedy’s claim that she had lied about having been pressured to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel of his anti-vaccine allies, and offered to repeat her claim under oath.

    Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US Department of Defense to refer to itself as the “department of war”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian.

    Trump hosted an array of tech industry leaders for dinner in the White House state dinning room on Thursday night, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Sergey Brin, but his former first buddy, Elon Musk, was a notable absence.

    As Trump accuses Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook of criminal mortgage fraud, for allegedly obtaining more than one mortgage on a home designated as her primary residence, at least three members of his cabinet have multiple primary-residence mortgages, ProPublica reports.

    The justice department has launched a criminal mortgage fraud inquiry into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and issued grand jury subpoenas out of both Georgia and Michigan.

    New York’s attorney general moved to have the state’s highest court reinstate Trump’s staggering civil fraud penalty, appealing a lower court decision that slashed the potential half-billion dollar penalty to zero.
    As we reported earlier, during a contentious Senate hearing on Thursday, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, was asked twice whether he agreed with Retsef Levi, an MIT professor the secretary appointed to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), who has said that mRNA Covid vaccines “cause serious harm including death, especially among young people”.Kennedy said that he did agree with that statement, which Levi made in a video he posted on his X account in 2023, and has pinned at the top to this day.“I am filming this video to share my strong conviction that at this point in time all Covid mRNA vaccination program[s] should stop immediately,” Levi said in the video, “because of the mounting and indisputable evidence that they cause unprecedented level[s] of harm, including the death of young people and children.”Levi, who is Israeli, cited what he called evidence for this conclusion based on his reading of statistics from Israel’s EMS during its vaccination program in 2021. But he offered no scientific or medical evidence to support his claim, which is a fringe view not shared by the overwhelming majority or vaccine experts and medical doctors.It is worth stressing that both of the senators who asked Kennedy about that expert’s claim – Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator, and Thom Tillis, a Republican senator – referred to the new vaccine advisory board member as “Dr Levi”. That might have led some viewers to assume that Levi is a medical doctor, but he is not. He is a professor at MIT’s school of management, with a doctorate in operations research and no expertise in the science of infectious diseases or vaccines.It is unclear how Levi’s background qualifies him for a position on a vaccine panel responsible for making vaccine recommendations and whose members are supposed to be “medical and public health experts”.Donald Trump hosted an array of tech industry leaders for dinner in the White House state dinning room on Thursday night, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Sergey Brin, but his former first buddy, Elon Musk, was a notable absence.The event, which was to have been held on the newly paved-over Rose Garden, until a forecast of thunderstorms forced the event indoors, began with televised words of praise for the president from several of the assembled tech leaders, and a brief series of questions from reporters.On his social network X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk responded to a question about why he was not at the White House by writing: “I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there.”Musk did not say who his representative was, but one of the guests was Jared Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut who had been Musk’s pick to lead Nasa, until his nomination was withdrawn as Musk’s relations with Trump frayed.Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US department of defense to refer to itself as to the “Department of War”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian on Thursday.The move, to use a name Trump called “much more appropriate” in remarks last week, would restore a name used until 1947, when Congress merged the previously independent war department and navy department with the air force into a single organization, known as the National Military Establishment. In 1949, Congress changed the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense, and made the army, navy and air force secretaries subordinate to a single, cabinet-level secretary of defense.A draft White House fact sheet on Trump’s rebranding initiative implicitly acknowledges that only Congress can formally change the department’s name, saying that the order would authorize the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to propose legislation that would make the change permanent. In the meantime, the order instructs Hegseth and the department to start using “Department of War” as a secondary title in official correspondence, public communications and executive branch documents. The order also authorizes Hegseth to refer to himself as the “secretary of war”.When Trump was asked by a reporter last week how he plans to rename the department, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that.”“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate,” he added. “The other is, ‘defense’ is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better.”Trump’s embrace of the old name, which seems to put to rest longstanding claims that he was ever the “antiwar candidate” for the presidency, comes days after he ordered the military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of 11 suspected drug smugglers.During his 2015 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump himself rejected the perception that he was anti-war by proclaiming that he was, in fact, “much more militaristic” than even George W Bush.Four years earlier, when he was flirting with a run for the presidency against Barack Obama, Trump had demanded US military intervention in Libya.“I can’t believe what our country is doing,” Trump told viewers of his YouTube video blog on 28 February 2011, two weeks before the Obama administration got US security council authorization “to protect civilians” in Libya. “Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all have the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: it’s a carnage.”Five months later, after the US-led air campaign had forced Gaddafi from power in Libya – and Trump had decided not to challenge Obama for the presidency – the star of The Apprentice posted another YouTube clip, complaining that the administration should have waited longer to aid the Libyan rebels, to force them to agree to surrender half of the country’s oil reserves.“What we should’ve done is we should’ve asked the rebels when they came to us – and they came to us, they were being routed by Qaddafi, they were being decimated – we should’ve said, ‘We’ll help you, but we want 50% of your oil,’” Trump had said. “They would’ve said, ‘How about 75%?’”As Donald Trump accuses Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook of criminal mortgage fraud, for allegedly obtaining more than one mortgage on a home designated her primary residence, at least three members of his cabinet have multiple primary-residence mortgages, ProPublica reports.Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, his labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, all have primary-residence mortgages on at least two properties, according to financial disclosure forms, real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media to ProPublica.Real estate experts told the non-profit investigative outlet that claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.But Trump has called for the prosecution of Cook, the Biden-nominated central banker, for allegedly having multiple primary-residence mortgages, and leveled the same charge against Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator who led his first impeachment, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general who brought a successful civil fraud case against Trump.Two days after an appeals court reinstated a Democratic member of Federal Trade Commission, ruling that her attempted firing by Donald Trump was unlikely to survive her legal challenge, the justice department asked the supreme court to let Trump remove her again as the legal battle continues.The commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, posted an image of herself back at work on Thursday, with the caption: “Back at my desk, back online, and have already moved to reinstitute the Click to Cancel Rule. Hope a majority of the Commission will join me – all Americans deserve to be protected from abusive subscription traps.”The FTC’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, was adopted in October after the agency received more than 16,000 comments from consumers enraged about having to jump through hoops to cancel their enrollments.Implementation of the rule was delayed by the FTC in May, two months after Trump removed Slaughter and another Democratic commissioner.A federal appeals court vacated the rule on procedural grounds in July, just days before it was set to go into effect. Seven Democratic senators wrote to the new FTC chair that month, urging him to have the commission fix the procedural flaws identified by the court and reissue the rule.Susan Monarez, the ousted CDC director, just rejected Robert F Kennedy Jr’s claim, during a contentious senate hearing on Thursday, that she had lied about having been pressured to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel of his anti-vaccine allies.In an account of her firing published on the Wall Street Journal opinion page, Monarez wrote that, at a meeting with Kennedy on 25 August:
    I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric. That panel’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 18-19. It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.
    When Kennedy was confronted with that accusation by Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, at the Senate hearing, he denied that he gave Monarez that order.“No, I did not say that to her, Kennedy said. “And I never had a private meeting with her”, he added. “So there are witnesses to every meeting that we had, and all of those witnesses will say I never said that.”Kennedy was not asked if anyone else at the meeting did issue such an order to Monarez, which would be consistent with her account.Instead, Wyden asked Kennedy if Monarez was “lying today to the Wall Street Journal and the American people”.“Yes sir”, Kennedy replied.In a statement responding to Kennedy’s testimony, Monarez’s lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, wrote: “Secretary Kennedy’s claims are false, and at times, patently ridiculous. Dr. Monarez stands by what she wrote in her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, would repeat it all under oath and continues to support the vision she outlined at her confirmation hearing that science will control her decisions.”Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already called for Monarez to be called to testify before the senate, which would be under oath.Hawaii announced today that it would join a new public health alliance formed by a trio of west coast states in response to the turmoil at the CDC.On Wednesday, the California governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state had partnered with Washington and Oregon to form the West Coast Health Alliance, which they said would provide residents with science-based immunization guidance as the nation’s top public health agency – and a slew of red states – roll back long-standing recommendations medical experts and researchers have credited with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.“By joining the West Coast Health Alliance, we’re giving Hawaii’s people the same consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust to keep their families and neighbors safe,”Josh Green, theDemocratic governor of Hawaii, said in a statement.Green, an emergency room physician, said a science-driven approach was “critical as we all go forward into an era with severe threats from infectious diseases”.The Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Washington unveiled the new alliance on the same day that Florida’s Republican surgeon general said the state would end all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.The justice department has launched a criminal mortgage fraud inquiry into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and issued grand jury subpoenas out of both Georgia and Michigan, according to documents seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter.The investigation, which followed a criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, is being conducted by Ed Martin, who was tapped by attorney general Pam Bondi as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud investigations involving public officials, along with the US attorneys’ offices in the northern district of Georgia and the eastern district of Michigan, according to the person, who spoke anonymously since the matter is not public.Pulte, who was appointed by Trump, has accused Cook of committing fraud by listing more than one property as a primary residence when she applied for mortgages, potentially to secure lower interest rates. Cook owns properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts.Trump terminated Cook over Pulte’s allegations, prompting her to file a lawsuit challenging his effort to oust her. Cook’s lawyer, prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, said the DoJ was scrambling to invent new justifications for Trump’s overreach in firing the Fed governor.“He wants cover, and they are providing it. The questions over how Governor Cook described her properties from time to time, which we have started to address in the pending case and will continue to do so, are not fraud, but it takes nothing for this DOJ to undertake a new politicized investigation, and they appear to have just done it again,” Lowell said.The case, which will likely end up before the supreme court, has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rate policy without regard to politicians’ wishes, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to keep inflation under control.Trump has demanded that the US central bank cut rates immediately and aggressively, berating Fed chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship of monetary policy. The central bank is expected to deliver a rate cut at its 16-17 September meeting.In one of her recent legal filings challenging Trump’s actions, Cook said she listed mortgages on three properties on forms submitted to the White House and Senate in the vetting process for her appointment to the Fed in 2022. Any inconsistencies were known when she was confirmed and cannot give Trump grounds to fire her now.Cook is the third public official to be targeted in a criminal investigation over mortgage fraud allegations. Martin, who also presides over the “Weaponization Working Group” and serves as pardon attorney, is also pursuing criminal investigations into Democratic senator Adam Schiff as well as New York attorney general Letitia James.There are also grand juries convened in those two cases, which started prior to Martin’s new appointment as a special assistant US attorney, according to the source and documents seen by Reuters.The United States will phase out some security assistance for European countries near the border with Russia, two sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.The plan comes in the broader context of Donald Trump’s so-called “America First” foreign policy, in which his administration has slashed foreign aid and is pushing European countries to cover more of the cost of their own security.The move, first reported by the Financial Times (paywall), comes as Russia’s war with Ukraine has heightened concerns in Europe about regional instability and the possibility of further aggression from Moscow. Key recipients of the funding include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.Congress has approved funding for the assistance plan, which comes under the Department of Defense, but only through the end of September 2026. Trump’s administration has not asked that the program be extended, according to the FT report and confirmed to Reuters by one of its sources.Asked for comment, a White House official referred to an order Trump signed shortly after beginning his second term in January.“On day one of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order to reevaluate and realign United States foreign aid,” the official said.“This action has been coordinated with European countries in line with the executive order and the president’s longstanding emphasis on ensuring Europe takes more responsibility for its own defense,” the official said.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the decision misguided.“It makes no sense at all to undercut our allies’ defense readiness at the same time that we’re asking them to step up their own capabilities, and it puts American troops at risk when we slash the training of the allied soldiers they would fight alongside,” she said in a statement. More

  • in

    Trump set to host US tech leaders at Rose Garden – minus Elon Musk

    When Donald Trump hosts leaders from the US’ biggest tech companies at a lavish Rose Garden dinner on Thursday night, there will be one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, will not be in attendance.The dinner, which will include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump’s right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he was invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative. He spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people.The White House did not respond for comment on why Musk would not be at the dinner.Musk’s absence, even if voluntary, is a stark turnaround from when Trump repeatedly joked following the election that “Elon won’t go home, I can’t get rid of him.” The vacant seat highlights a divide that has emerged between the two men since their very public falling out earlier this year, one that has seen Musk’s influence over the government wane despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to reelect Trump during the 2024 election.Musk’s omission from the list of attendees also echoes one of the seminal moments of his political evolution, another White House event. In 2022, then-president Joe Biden failed to invite the Tesla CEO to a summit on electric vehicles over concerns it would draw backlash from autoworkers unions. Musk, who had not yet publicly aligned himself with the Republican party, lashed out at the White House for the snub and declared that he would not vote for Biden. The move proved enormously costly for Democrats.The incident clearly stuck with Musk, who like Trump has shown a tendency to harbor longterm grudges. Even on the day of Trump’s Rose Garden dinner, he reserved his ire for Biden rather than Trump, retweeting a clip of himself from 2023 addressing Biden’s snub with the post “I try not to start fights, but I do finish them.”In the ensuing years, Musk has taken a hard turn to the political right. He has turned X into a bastion of far-right influencers, whom he frequently retweets to his over 200 million followers. He has promoted false theories about Democrats conspiring to get immigrants to illegally vote en masse and embraced far-right political parties around the world. He also became Trump’s most vocal and deep pocketed supporter, contributing nearly $300m to the reelection campaign and Republican causes.Musk’s support for Trump placed him in a position of immense power after the president’s inauguration as the tech mogul established and led the so-called “department of government efficiency’s” (Doge) sweeping dismantling of federal agencies. It also turned him into a prominent guest at political dinners and events, only a year after the British government did not invite him to a major tech summit as he made inflammatory anti-immigrant posts that claimed a “civil war” would take place in the UK.Since Musk and Trump’s relationship imploded in May over policy differences – Musk railed against Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill – which then snowballed into Musk accusing Trump of being in the files pertaining to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the xAI CEO has all but vanished from high-profile government events. Although Trump still praises Musk as a “genius”, he told reporters on Wednesday night that Musk has “got some problems” and the two have not been seen together since their public spat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Musk has feuded with Trump and ceded his place in the White House, however, rival tech moguls have grown closer with the administration and filled some of the vacuum. Earlier this month, Trump hosted Cook, the Apple CEO, at the White House, who gifted him a 24-karat gold souvenir. Meanwhile, Trump aides have discussed cutting Musk’s government contracts, according to the Wall Street Journal, only to find upon review that doing so would endanger too many key operations.If Musk were to attend Thursday’s dinner, it would create an awkward arrangement as he is suing two of the companies in attendance – Apple and OpenAI, helmed by his former collaborator and now nemesis Altman. As with Trump, Musk has also attacked Gates for his ties to Epstein after Gates accused him of “killing children” through Doge’s cuts to foreign aid. More

  • in

    US justice department reportedly opens criminal inquiry into Fed governor Lisa Cook

    The US justice department has initiated a criminal investigation into mortgage fraud claims against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, according to new reports, as a lawsuit she filed against Donald Trump over her firing makes its way through court.Lawyers with the justice department have issued subpoenas for the investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal.Last month, Trump moved to fire Cook over unconfirmed claims that she listed two properties as her primary residence. Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency and a close ally of Trump, alleged Cook had lied on bank documents and records to obtain a better mortgage rate.Cook, a voting member of the Fed board that sets interest rates, said she has “no intention of being bullied to step down” and that she would “take any questions about my financial history seriously”.In response to Trump’s bid to dismiss her, Cook filed a lawsuit against the president arguing that her removal was unconstitutional and threatened the independence of the Fed. Cook’s lawyers say the firing was “unprecedented and illegal” and that federal law requires showing “cause” for a Fed governor’s removal.“An unsubstantiated allegation about private mortgage applications submitted by Governor Cook prior to her Senate confirmation is not [cause],” her lawyers said in court documents.In court documents, lawyers for Cook suggested that a “clerical error” may be behind the discrepancies found in her mortgage records.Cook was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022 for a 14-year term on the board that was set to end in 2038. She is the first Black woman to be appointed to the board.US district court judge Jia Cobb heard arguments for the lawsuit last week and said she will expedite the case, which is ultimately expected to be taken up by the US supreme court.Trump’s attacks against Cook come against the backdrop of a long fight the White House has waged against the Fed, which has historically been treated as nonpartisan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarlier in the year, Trump threatened to fire the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering interest rates, but ultimately walked back his threats after negative responses from investors. Trump also tried to accuse Powell of fraud over renovations at the Fed’s headquarters, which have cost more than anticipated.Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, told the Journal that “it takes nothing for this DoJ to undertake a new politicized investigation”. The justice department did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.This is the third mortgage fraud inquiry the justice department has launched against Democrats and Democratic-appointed officials. Experts have called the pattern a type of “lawfare” as Trump and his allies use their roles to take down other officials.Last month, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, appointed a special attorney to investigate similar mortgage fraud allegations the White House has levied against California senator Adam Schiff and the New York attorney general, Letitia James. More

  • in

    RFK Jr accused of ‘reckless disregard for science and the truth’ in Senate hearing

    The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, faced the Senate finance committee in a tense and combative hearing on Thursday, during which lawmakers questioned his remarks expressing vaccine skepticism, claims that the scientific community is deeply politicized and the ongoing turmoil plaguing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).In a hearing lasting more than three hours and ostensibly about the Trump administration’s healthcare agenda, Kennedy defended his leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), claiming that his time at the agency will be focused on “unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evidence-based science in the public interest”.Senate Democrats on the committee began the hearing calling for Kennedy’s resignation. “Robert Kennedy’s primary interest is taking vaccines away from Americans,” ranking member Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, said in his opening remarks. “People are hurt by his reckless disregard for science and the truth in this effort. I hope the very least, Robert Kennedy has the decency to tell the truth this morning.”Raphael Warnock, also a Democrat, called Kennedy a “hazard to the health of the American people”, repeating calls for him to step down or for Donald Trump to fire him.Last week, Kennedy fired the CDC director, Susan Monarez, less than a month after she was confirmed to her position. She is now mounting a legal case challenging her removal.Shortly after Monarez’s termination, several leading public health officials at the CDC resigned from their positions, citing frustration with Kennedy’s approach to vaccines and his management style.Kennedy said Monarez was “lying” about her claims that she was fired for refusing to sign off on the secretary’s new vaccine policies. Instead, Kennedy said that she was removed after admitting to being untrustworthy.The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, was unconvinced – citing Kennedy’s prior characterization of the former CDC director as “unimpeachable”.“You had full confidence in her and you had full confidence in her scientific credentials, and in a month she became a liar?” she asked. Thom Tillis, the outgoing Republican senator of North Carolina, asked about the same contradiction in his questioning.Monarez’s lawyers responded in a statement to Kennedy’s comments, calling them “false” and “at times, patently ridiculous”. They added that Monarez would repeat her published claims “under oath”.Kennedy also justified wider firings at the CDC , calling them “absolutely necessary”.“We are the sickest country in the world,” he said. “That’s why we need to fire people at CDC. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy.”In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee – a move that defied a promise he made during his confirmation hearing to Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee. Many of Kennedy’s replacements for the advisory panel have a history of vaccine skepticism.When asked about the changes to the advisory committee, and how that will change vaccine recommendations and scheduling, Kennedy said he didn’t anticipate changes to the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.In an exchange with Kennedy, Cassidy noted the possible conflict of interest with some of the panel’s new members who are involved in ongoing litigation with vaccine manufacturers.Cassidy cast a critical vote to confirm Kennedy earlier this year. He had previously expressed a number of concerns about the health secretary’s historic comments that undermined vaccine efficacy. The senator has since been critical of a number of Kennedy’s policies, including his decision to cut half a billion dollars worth of mRNA vaccine funding – calling the move “unfortunate”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new batch of Covid-19 vaccines, but placed restrictions on who would be able to access them. The agency has authorized shots for people 65 and older, who are known to be more at risk from serious illnesses from Covid infections. Younger people will only be eligible if they have an underlying medical condition that makes them vulnerable. Infectious disease experts say that this policy could prove extremely dangerous, particularly for young children.On Tuesday, Kennedy defended HHS’s handling of the measles outbreak that affected several states in an opinion piece. While the secretary branded his agency’s response as effective, public health experts said Kennedy’s own messaging around vaccines was muddied and confusing.Cassidy concluded his remarks at the hearing by telling Kennedy that his policies were “effectively denying people the vaccine”, sharing an email from a doctor friend who expressed confusion about Covid inoculation eligibility given the FDA’s new recommendation policies.Kennedy snapped back: “You’re wrong.”The Republican senator John Barrasso, of Wyoming, also a doctor, expressed similar concerns about Kennedy’s policies. “In your confirmation hearing you promised to uphold the highest standard for vaccines,” Barrasso said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”During a back and forth with the Virginia senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, Kennedy falsely claimed that there are “no cuts to Medicaid” under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Trump’s hallmark domestic policy legislation that was signed into law in July.The congressional budget office estimates that around 7.8 million people stand to lose their health insurance over a decade, due to Medicaid changes under the law.Multiple Democrats on the committee had heated exchanges with the health secretary. Many of them pointed out the inconsistency between Kennedy’s recent support for the president’s “Operation Warp Speed” and his disparagement of the Covid-19 shot. He has previously called it the “deadliest” vaccine ever manufactured.At the hearing, Kennedy refused to acknowledge the wealth of data that shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has saved lives.“Trump has said the vaccine works, and has saved millions of lives. Your own process, on the other hand, has not been transparent,” said the Democratic senator Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire. “You repeatedly choose to ignore data because it doesn’t match your preconceived notions and lies.” More

  • in

    Trump’s domestic troop deployments aren’t about crime – they’re about intimidation | Moira Donegan

    “We’re going in,” Donald Trump said on Tuesday, when asked whether national guard troops would be sent to invade Chicago. The comment came as reports emerged that national guard troops from Texas – not yet federalized under direct presidential control – were preparing to deploy to Chicago in the coming days, in defiance of the opposition repeatedly and forcefully expressed by the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, both Democrats.The White House and the president’s allies have claimed that the deployment is a response to violent crime in Chicago. This is a lie. Crime in Chicago has dropped dramatically over the past decades, as it has in every major American city – including Los Angeles, where Trump deployed the national guard and the marines earlier this year, and Washington DC, where armed federal agents have patrolled the streets for much of the past month. The deployment of armed forces to American cities – serving at his pleasure even when they are not officially under his direct command – has nothing to do with “crime”, except insofar as the administration has sought to redefine the term to mean Democratic governance, racial pluralism or the presence of immigrants. There is no violent crime in Chicago, or in any of these cities, that federal troops can be usefully deployed to quell.Instead, the federal agents who will probably invade Chicago in the coming days are there to serve a very different purpose. They are there to assert Trump’s personal authority over government actions, to intimidate populations that did not vote for him, to terrorize and kidnap immigrants and destroy their families, and to make sure that every American knows that even if they succeed in electing Democrats to run their cities and states, the Trump regime can send armed men to their neighborhoods who answer to Republicans.As Trump expands his military occupation of opposition-controlled cities, the chances of a violent confrontation between armed agents of the regime and ordinary Americans rise dramatically. American city dwellers have not yet been terrified into silent submission; many of us still retain the self-respect that has been engendered by a lifetime of democratic citizenship. These people will inevitably, and righteously, protest the Trump administration’s incursions. They will shout with outrage when they see their neighbors dragged into vans by masked men; they will jeer and mock the jackboots sent to terrorize them. Eventually, it seems inevitable that someone will throw a rock, or slam a door too loudly, or frighten one of the masked, armed men who knows he has been deployed by an unpopular ruler to suppress a once-free public. And one of those men, terrified and hate-filled and ashamed, might, in that moment, fire his gun. By sending troops into cities that do not support him, the Trump administration is assembling kindling in neat stacks around a frayed and fragile civic peace; they are pouring lighter fluid, and lighting a match. They are hoping for a conflagration that will provide an excuse for even more brutality.It seems almost naive to ask if any of this is legal. The supreme court has made it clear that the president – or, at least, this president – has virtually no limits on his authority under conditions of an “emergency”. That no emergency is in evidence in Chicago or any of the other opposition-controlled cities that Trump-aligned forces are invading is irrelevant: an “emergency”, like a “crime”, can be whatever Trump wants it to be. The supreme court will, eventually, either greenlight Trump’s actions or delay intervening against him for long enough that he will be able to accomplish his aims anyway.But lower courts are showing more willingness to check Trump’s more flagrantly illegal conduct – at least temporarily. In California on Tuesday, a court ruled that Trump’s deployment of the marines and the federalized California national guard into Los Angeles earlier this year violated the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that prohibits the use of federal armed services to enforce domestic law. But in Chicago, the Trump administration is trying a workaround: according to Pritzker, the troops that are amassing are un-federalized members of the Texas national guard – technically under the command of Greg Abbott, the governor, though unambiguously serving the president’s aims. If Pritzker’s claim – which Abbott’s office has disputed – is true, then the theory is apparently that Republican-controlled states have the authority to send their own troops into Democratic- controlled states – against the wishes and without the permission of the local authorities – to enforce partisan policy preferences.Pritzker, in an attempt to calm his people and prevent needless violence, implored Chicagoans to “not take the bait”. And certainly the ground forces will create some viral video moments that the president will enjoy posting to his followers. But the line between what is a mere performative display of power and what is an actual seizure of power is no longer quite clear. The boots and the guns, at any rate, are real.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

  • in

    Trump’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers sets a dangerous precedent | Kenneth Roth

    The US military’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers traveling by boat in international waters in the Caribbean is an illegal use of war powers to address what should have been a situation of law enforcement. Unless this dangerous precedent is condemned and curtailed, it will enable US authorities to summarily shoot anyone they choose by simply declaring a “war” against them.Last month, it was reported that Donald Trump had signed a secret decree authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against certain designated Latin American drug cartels, claiming that they were “terrorist” organizations. On Tuesday, Trump wrote that on his orders the military had targeted Tren de Aragua “narcoterrorists”, accusing them of “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro”, the Venezuelan leader, and being “responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere”.No reported attempt was made to interdict and detain the boatload of people. The video accompanying Trump’s statement suggests that the boat was simply blown up. When asked why the boat wasn’t stopped and its occupants arrested, Trump ducked the question and suggested that the killings would force traffickers to think twice before trying to move drugs to the United States.Under international standards for law enforcement, lethal force can be used solely as a last resort to meet an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. That rule makes sense because law-enforcement officials should ordinarily seek to arrest and prosecute criminal suspects. That is the best way to ensure they have committed the offense in question. It also respects the fact that for most crimes, the penalty upon conviction is a prison sentence, not the death penalty – let alone summary killing without trial.Trump has sought to evade those standards by in effect declaring war against Venezuelan drug cartels. Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1971, US presidents have repeatedly referred to a “war on drugs”, but that was a metaphoric war, a rhetorical claim that the effort was important, not a literal war. The distinction is important, because in genuine armed conflicts, opposing combatants can be summarily shot unless they are surrendering or in custody. There is ordinarily no duty to try to capture or arrest them.There was nothing in the encounter in the Caribbean Sea that is indicative of a war. There has been no suggestion that the alleged drug traffickers were firing at US forces or otherwise engaged in what could fairly be described as combat. The US military simply blew them out the water. It wrongly applied wartime rules in what should have been a law-enforcement situation.That Trump calls drug-trafficking suspects “terrorists” doesn’t change the rules for law enforcement. Terrorists are criminals, not combatants. Absent an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, they must be arrested, not shot.That illicit drugs such as fentanyl cause enormous harm also does not alter the rules governing law-enforcement operations. Much criminal activity causes serious harm, but unless that harm constitutes an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury and cannot be stopped by other means, law-enforcement standards require arrest and prosecution, not the use of lethal force.Nor does it matter that the people killed may have been hardened criminals. Even despicable individuals are entitled to arrest and prosecution rather than summary killing.If war rules could be applied to suspected terrorists or drug traffickers by a mere declaration of “war”, the risks would be enormous. Law-enforcement officers could shoot anyone anywhere on the mere assertion, never proved in court, that they were part of the group against which a “war” had been declared. What just happened at sea in the Caribbean could be replicated on the streets of New York, London or Paris.Until now, the most visible example of a leader treating a “war on drugs” as a genuine armed conflict has been the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Under his direction, Filipino security forces summarily killed thousands of poor young men. The international criminal court charged him for these executions, and he is now in custody in The Hague awaiting trial.Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and a Republican leader on foreign policy, met the killing of the 11 with callous bravado: “I hope America’s adversaries are watching & now understand there’s a new sheriff in town.” But even a new sheriff must abide by policing rules. Trump did not.We have every reason to worry that the Trump administration intends to continue this lawless behavior. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that such operations “will happen again”.To avoid normalizing such flouting of law-enforcement rules, the Trump administration’s killing of the alleged drug traffickers must be broadly and firmly criticized. If we close our eyes to this instance of misapplied war rules because of dislike for Venezuelan drug cartels or fear of illicit drugs, we risk setting a precedent in which our most basic right to life is suddenly dependent on whether Trump or other leaders decide in effect to declare a war against us.

    Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February. More