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      White House to end US tariff exemption for all low-value overseas packages

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      The United States is suspending a “de minimis” exemption that allowed low-value commercial shipments to be shipped to the United States without facing tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.Under an executive order signed by Donald Trump on Wednesday, packages valued at or under $800 sent to the US outside of the international postal network will now face “all applicable duties” starting on 29 August, the White House said.The US president earlier targeted packages from China and Hong Kong, and the White House said the recently signed tax and spending bill repealed the legal basis for the de minimis exemption worldwide starting on 1 July 2027.“Trump is acting more quickly to suspend the de minimis exemption than the OBBBA requires, to deal with national emergencies and save American lives and businesses now,” the White House said in a fact sheet, referring to the bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Goods shipped through the postal system will face one of two tariffs: either an “ad valorem duty” equal to the effective tariff rate of the package’s country of origin or, for six months, a specific tariff of $80 to $200 depending on the country of origin’s tariff rate. More

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      Trump backs Israel and rebukes Starmer over Palestinian state recognition

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      Donald Trump has doubled down on his backing for Israel after having appeared to give a green light to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to recognize a Palestinian state.Amid signs of mounting opposition among his Maga base to Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Trump criticized Starmer’s plan to grant recognition as “rewarding Hamas” even after having not taken issue with it when the pair met in Scotland this week.Talking to journalists onboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, Trump said the US was “not in that camp”, referring to Starmer’s pledge, which followed a similar declaration by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, days earlier that France would formally recognize Palestinian statehood.“We never did discuss it,” Trump said, in reference to Starmer’s announcement. He added: “You’re rewarding Hamas if you do that. I don’t think they should be rewarded.”His comments were in line with the US state department, whose spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, called the recognition decision “a slap in the face” to victims of Hamas’s deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the current war.But they contrasted with his restrained stance when he and Starmer met at Turnberry in Scotland on Monday, after the UK prime minister said Britain would give recognition by September unless Israel met certain conditions, including allowing for a ceasefire in Gaza and allowing UN food aid to enter the territory to feed its population.“I’m not going to take a position, I don’t mind him taking a position,” Trump told reporters when asked if he objected to Starmer’s move.The US president’s response to Starmer seemed markedly softer than his riposte after Macron’s statehood announcement last week, which angered Israel and its supporters.“What he says doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”The initial softer public posture toward Starmer came as Trump publicly contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over conditions in Gaza, which numerous international aid agencies have described as famine.Netanyahu had said that, in contrast to the aid group assessments and searing images of hungry children, no one was starving in Gaza.Asked if he agreed, Trump said: “Based on television, I would say ‘not particularly’, because those children look pretty hungry to me. There’s real starvation, you can’t fake that.”Some of Trump’s most prominent supporters have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of Israel’s conduct, amid polling evidence that Americans generally are losing sympathy for a country that has traditionally been viewed as one of the US’s closest allies.Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser and still one of his leading cheerleaders with his War Room podcast, told Politico that the president’s condemnation of the food situation in Gaza would hasten Israel’s loss of support among his base.“It seems that for the under-30-year-old Maga base, Israel has almost no support, and Netanyahu’s attempt to save himself politically by dragging America in deeper to another Middle East war has turned off a large swath of older Maga diehards,” Bannon said. “Now President Trump’s public repudiation of one of the central tenets of [Netanyahu’s] Gaza strategy – ‘starving’ Palestinians – will only hasten a collapse of support.”Another Trump supporter, the far-right Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, became the latest – and perhaps most surprising – public figure to label Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide”.“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” she posted on X.The comments came as a new Gallup poll showed support among Americans for Israel’s actions in Gaza down to 32%, the lowest since the organization began asking the question in November 2023 – a month after the murderous Hamas raid that killed almost 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians and led to another 250 to be taken hostage.Israel’s military response has led to about 60,000 Palestinians being killed, according to the Gaza health ministry.While Gallup’s poll showed support for Israel’s offensive still high, at 71%, among Republicans, Thom Tillis, a GOP senator for North Carolina who plans to step down at the next election, said Gaza could be a political problem for Trump, the Hill reported.“I think that the American people at the end of the day are a kind people. They don’t like seeing suffering, nor do I think the president does,” Tillis said. “If you see starvation, you try to fix it.”Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Fox News that Trump’s backing for Netanyahu remained unshaken. “Let me assure you that there is no break between the prime minister of Israel and the president,” he told Fox News. “Their relationship, I think, [is] stronger than it’s ever been, and I think the relationship between the US and Israel is as strong as it’s ever been.”Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit Israel on Thursday, where he will meet with officials “to discuss next steps in addressing the situation in Gaza”, a US official told AFP. More

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      US placed on rights watchlist over health of its civil society under Trump

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      A group of global civil society organizations have placed the US on a watchlist for urgent concern over the health of its civic society, alongside Turkey, Serbia, El Salvador, Indonesia and Kenya.On Wednesday, a new report released by the non-profit Civicus placed the US on its watchlist following “sustained attacks on civic freedoms” across the country, according to the group.Civicus pointed to three major issues including the deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society, as well as the aggressive targeting of anti-war advocates surrounding Palestine.At Civicus, countries are assigned a rating over their civic space conditions. The ratings include “open”, “narrowed”, “obstructed”, “repressed” and “closed”. The group has declared the US’s civic space as “narrowed”.According to the group, the “narrowed” rating is for countries that still allow for individuals and civil society organizations to exercise their rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression but where violations of these rights still take place.“People can form associations to pursue a wide range of interests, but full enjoyment of this right is impeded by occasional harassment, arrest or assault of people deemed critical of those in power,” the rating description says, adding: “Protests are conducted peacefully, although authorities sometimes deny permission, citing security concerns, and excessive force, which may include tear gas and rubber bullets, are sometimes used against peaceful demonstrators.”With regard to the media, countries with a “narrowed” rating allow for media to “disseminate a wide range of information, although the state undermines complete press freedom either through strict regulation or by exerting political pressure on media owners”.“The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism. Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back,” Mandeep Tiwana, Civicus’s secretary general, said in a statement.“Six months into Donald Trump’s second term, a bizarre assault on fundamental freedoms and constitutional safeguards has become the new normal,” he added.Pointing to Trump’s deployment of marines and national guard troops to California in June in response to the widespread protests against immigration raids, Tiwana said: “This level of militarisation sets a dangerous precedent. It’s a line that democratically elected leaders aren’t meant to cross.”Tiwana also pointed to the Trump administration’s latest attacks against media networks, including funding restrictions on public broadcast stations including PBS and NPR.“What they’re trying to do is actually defund critical news sources and deny American people the ability to receive truthful non-partisan reporting by pulling their funding,” Tiwana told the Guardian.In its report, Civicus also warned of the growing criminalisation of peaceful advocacy, adding that “authorities have continued reprisals against activists expressing solidarity with Palestinian rights.”Citing the Trump administration’s clampdown on foreign-born student activists including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the sanctioning of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, Tiwana said: “We are seeing a wide-ranging attack on civic space in the US by the federal and some state governments. Authorities in the US should reverse course from the present undemocratic path by guaranteeing everyone’s first amendment right to organise and dissent legitimately.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president wades back into Epstein debate with comments about Virginia Giuffre

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      Donald Trump has spoken about Jeffrey Epstein and his links to the president’s Mar-a-Lago club, saying that the late sex offender “stole” Virginia Giuffre and other young female staffers when he hired them while they were working at the Florida country club.Trump, who has faced an outcry over his administration’s refusal to release more records about Epstein after promises of transparency, made the comments on Air Force One while returning from a trip to Scotland. Trump has attempted to tamp down questions about the case, expressing annoyance that people are still talking about it six years after Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial, even though some of his own allies have promoted conspiracy theories about it.On Tuesday, a reporter asked Trump: “The workers that were taken from you – were some of them young women?”Trump replied: “The answer is yes, they were. People that worked in the spa.”Another reporter then asked Trump if one of the people he was referring to was Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers.“I think she worked at the spa,” Trump replied.Here are the key Trump stories of the day:Trump: Epstein ‘stole’ Virginia GiuffreDonald Trump suggested on Tuesday that Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for more than a decade, “stole” Virginia Giuffre and other young female staffers whom he hired away from the president’s Mar-a-Lago country club.Speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from Scotland, Trump was asked to elaborate on his earlier comments about falling out with Epstein because he took employees from his business. The president said on Monday that he had kicked Epstein out of his club “because he did something that was inappropriate” – specifically, that “he stole people that worked for me”.Read the full storyTrump lawyer Emil Bove confirmed to US appeals courtThe Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court, despite claims by whistleblowers that he advocated for ignoring court orders.The vote broke nearly along party lines, with 50 Republican senators voting for his confirmation to a seat on the third circuit court of appeals overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands.All Democrats opposed his nomination along with Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty missed the vote.Read the full storyUS and China poised to extend tariff truce after failing to find resolution at talksUS and Chinese negotiators have agreed in principle to push back the deadline for escalating tariffs, although America’s representatives said any extension would need Donald Trump’s approval.Officials from both sides said after two days of talks in Stockholm that they had failed to find a resolution across the many areas of dispute, but had agreed to extend a pause due to run out on 12 August.Beijing’s top trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, said the extension of a truce struck in mid-May would allow for further talks, without specifying when and for how long the latest pause would run.Read the full storyGhislaine Maxwell demands immunity before testifying to CongressGhislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, says that she is willing to testify before Congress but only if certain conditions are met, including being granted immunity, according to a new letter sent to the House oversight committee by her lawyer on Tuesday.Read the full storyDoJ asked California to give details of non-citizens on voter rollsExclusive: The Department of Justice has asked several large California counties to provide detailed personal information of non-citizens who got on to the state voter rolls, an unusual request that comes as the Trump administration has asked about a dozen states to provide wide swaths of information about voters and election practices.Read the full storyNew Orleans announces municipal ID card amid nationwide Ice crackdownThe city of New Orleans has announced a municipal identification program to provide ID cards to residents who may not be able to access such cards otherwise in a move seen as a positive step for the city’s migrant communities as the Trump administration continues targeting undocumented people.The municipal government of New Orleans launched the Crescent City ID program on Monday, which is “designed to promote inclusion” in the city.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

      A coalition of 20 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Trump administration’s demand that their states turn over personal data of people enrolled in a federally funded food assistance program, fearing the information will be used to aid mass deportations.

      Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is piling pressure on US factories, according to employees and union leaders, as veteran workers from overseas are forced to leave their jobs.

      Harvard University said on Tuesday that it will comply with the demands of Donald Trump’s administration to turn over employment forms for thousands of university staff, but for the time being was not sharing records for those employed in roles only available to students.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 28 July 2025. More

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      Ex-Trump lawyer Emil Bove confirmed to federal appeals court by US Senate

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      The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court, despite claims by whistleblowers that he advocated for ignoring court orders.The vote broke nearly along party lines, with 50 Republican senators voting for his confirmation to a seat on the third circuit court of appeals overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands.All Democrats opposed his nomination along with Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty missed the vote.Bove’s nomination for the lifetime position has faced strident opposition from Democrats, after Erez Reuveni, a former justice department official who was fired from his post, alleged that during his time at the justice department, Bove told lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador. In testimony before the committee last month, Bove denied the accusation, and Reuveni later provided text messages that supported his claim.Last week, another former justice department lawyer provided evidence to its inspector general corroborating Reuveni’s claim, according to Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit representing the person, who opted to remain anonymous.On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a third whistleblower alleged Bove misled Congress about his role in the dropping of corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams. Seven veteran prosecutors resigned rather than follow orders to end the prosecution, which Democrats allege was done to secure Adams’s cooperation with Trump’s immigration policies.“Like other individuals President Trump has installed in the highest positions of our government during his second term, Mr Bove’s primary qualification appears to be his blind loyalty to this president,” Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said in a speech before the vote.The senator said he was trying to get a copy of the complaint made by the anonymous whistleblower who corroborates Reuveni’s allegations, and accused the GOP of pushing Bove’s nomination forward without fully investigating his conduct.“It appears my Republican colleagues fear the answers. That is the only reason I can see for their insistence on forcing this nomination through at breakneck speed before all the facts are public,” Durbin said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn addition to the whistleblower complaint, Democrats have criticized Bove for his role, while serving as acting justice department deputy attorney general, in the firings of prosecutors who worked on cases connected to the January 6 insurrection, as well as for requesting a list of FBI agents who investigated the attack.During his June confirmation hearing, Bove denied suggesting justice department lawyers defy court orders, or that political considerations played a role in dropping the charges against Adams. “I am not anybody’s henchman,” he told the committee.Democrats walked out of the committee earlier this month when its Republican majority voted to advance his nomination, despite their pleas that the whistleblower complaints be further explored. More

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      ‘Shooting ourselves in the foot’: how Trump is fumbling geothermal energy

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      Geothermal is one of the most promising clean energy sources in the US, providing 24/7 renewable power that could meet rising energy demand from AI datacentres. But former Department of Energy officials are alarmed that Donald Trump is fumbling its potential.Compared with other clean energy sources such as solar and wind, geothermal enjoys rare bipartisan support. The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, has praised the technology, calling it “an awesome resource that’s under our feet”. And Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act preserved tax credits for geothermal.But the administration’s slashing of Department of Energy staff, delays in issuing low-interest loans, and tariffs are together creating uncertainty for the industry and investors.The US has an advantage on geothermal over China and must move urgently, said David Turk, who served as the deputy secretary of energy under former president Joe Biden. “Anything that stops our ability to execute on a plan – staffing, other funding – I think, is shooting ourselves in the foot,” Turk said.The White House and Department of Energy did not respond to questions about how their policies are affecting enhanced geothermal.The potential of geothermalGeothermal energy uses the heat from the Earth’s crust to transform water into steam that turns turbines and generates electricity. It has been used for more than a century, but has been limited to places where hot water reached the Earth’s surface, including hot springs.Now there’s a new technique that can generate energy anywhere, known as enhanced geothermal. The same horizontal drilling approach used in fracking can reach hot rock deep below the surface. “It opens up enhanced geothermal all over the country, all over the world,” Turk said. “That’s just tremendous.”So far, enhanced geothermal systems are located in the Western US. One of the most promising geothermal projects by Fervo Energy can be found in Utah. But the technology can also work in the east.The US is ahead of other countries on enhanced geothermal because of its shale gas boom over the past 15 years, said Eva Schill, a staff scientist who leads the Geothermal Systems Program at Berkeley Lab. “The reason is that we have a lot of experience here from oil and gas fracking,” she said.The enhanced geothermal industry is nascent, generating only 1% of the US’s electricity. And it’s still too expensive to compete with coal and natural gas.View image in fullscreenBut under the right conditions, it could evolve into a cheap source of power. A January article in the journal Nature Reviews found that it could be cost competitive with the national average cost of electricity generation by 2030.The US is the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, and although US emissions have trended downward for the past two decades, the country is still not on track to meet its climate targets. The rapid growth of AI datacentres is further threatening those targets by fueling rising energy demand; datacentres need to run 24/7, so they tend to rely on fossil fuels.Geothermal can potentially solve that problem. It could create 80,000 megawatts of new power, according to a liftoff report published by the Department of Energy.“To put that in perspective, that could meet 100% of all of the AI datacenter load growth for the next 10 years,” said Jigar Shah, a clean energy entrepreneur who served as the director of the loan programs office at the Department of Energy under Joe Biden. “That’s pretty impressive.”Already, Google and Meta have signed deals that would see geothermal companies power their datacentres.How the Trump administration is fumbling geothermalEnhanced geothermal accelerated under Biden-era policies. But several former energy department officials say the Trump administration is failing to provide the business certainty needed to get the fledgling industry off the ground.“The whole ball game right now is bringing down those costs, proving it for investors,” Turk said.“This is really about feelings,” Shah said. “Do the investors feel like this administration really has their back when it comes to investing in these new technologies? They felt like we actually had their back when I was running the loan programs office, and when secretary [Jennifer] Granholm was running energy. They’re unsure whether this administration has their back on these technologies.”View image in fullscreenUnder the Biden administration, the loan programs office was working on closing a low-interest loan for geothermal. Similar loans previously boosted Tesla and utility-scale solar. However, the Trump administration has yet to close a low-interest loan for geothermal, Shah said.The gutting of energy department staff has lowered its capacity to support geothermal, several former energy department officials said. Thousands of scientists, analysts, engineers and procurement officers took deferred resignation offers or were fired. Politico reported that the administration was considering cutting loan programs office staff by half.The Department of Energy has lost “absolutely indispensable” experts on geothermal and loans, Turk said. “So I would worry about, have we lost some of that capacity to actually execute?”Trump’s zeal for tariffs is adding to the industry’s anxiety. Steel tariffs, now at 50%, are hurting companies that use steel in wells. Enhanced geothermal wells require installing miles of steel pipes.Behind the scenes, geothermal companies are “freaking out” about the steel tariffs, Shah said. “They don’t want to say anything negative, lest the Eye of Sauron find them,” he added.The survival of the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for geothermal provides some certainty. Geothermal can still access the full tax credit, as long as they begin construction by 2033, when the value of the credit will begin phasing down.But geothermal projects now face strict restrictions on the involvement of “foreign entities of concern,” such as Chinese companies and individuals, known as FEOC requirements. Geothermal projects use rare earth elements in their drill bits, and China dominates the rare earth minerals market, said a former energy department official who requested anonymity.What Trump officials can do to boost geothermal“This is a good enough market opportunity that somewhere in the world is going to come true, and we are really well set up for it, if we’re not stupid,” the official said, talking generally about the industry. “But we’ve unfortunately been pretty stupid, and we’re making it harder on ourselves to win in an area that should be pretty easy to win.”There are actions the Trump administration can take immediately to bring down costs and boost the industry.The government can speed things along by “doing a lot of mapping of resources to make it cheaper and less risky for drilling in this area versus that area”, Turk said.“Close a loan,” Shah said, explaining that it would send a strong signal to investors.“We have the technology, we have the tools – the loan programs office and other tools – and I think now what we really need to do is establish the confidence,” Shah said. 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      Trump’s attempts at damage control on Epstein are just making things worse | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s evident panic over his intimate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is a case study in damage control gone haywire. If he is trying to keep a scandal clandestine, Trump has instead shined a klieg light on it. His changeable diversions constantly call attention to what he wishes to remain hidden. His prevarications, projections and protests have scrambled his allies and set them against each other. His inability to remain silent on the subject makes him appear as twitchy as a suspect in the glare of a third-degree police interrogation.The supine Republican Congress abruptly adjourned for the summer to flee the incessant demands for the release of files in the possession of the Department of Justice. But three Republicans broke to vote with Democrats on the House oversight committee to demand the Epstein files. The speaker, Mike Johnson, abandoning his assigned role as a Trump echo chamber, blurted, “This is not a hoax,” directly contradicting Trump. Johnson’s plain statement prompted widespread jaw dropping.With every rattled excuse, Trump throws his administration into further chaos. His cabinet members are pitted against each other – the attorney general, Pam Bondi, versus the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a pair of scorpions in a bottle.Trump has succeeded in driving Bondi from her regular perch on Fox News, as his reliable apologist, into virtual seclusion. She has reportedly engaged in a screaming match with the deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino, a former far-right talkshow jock who made his bones parroting that the Epstein files held the secrets of a vast conspiracy to blackmail deep state actors. After she issued a statement that there was no such “client list”, he apparently sulked at home, declining to come into the office, upset that his reputation was being sullied with his former Maga listeners. Bondi accused him of leaking unfavorable stories to the media that blamed her for the Maga backlash against her announcement. The manosphere bigmouth, sensitive about his hurt feelings, was in a tizzy, oh dear.“No, no, she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump said on 15 July about whether Bondi had told him his name was in the files. “I would say that, you know, these files were made up by [the former FBI director James] Comey, they were made up by [Barack] Obama, they were made up by the Biden administration.” The next day he posted on Truth Social that “Radical Left Democrats” and “the Fake News” were behind “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax”.A week later, on 23 July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi had briefed Trump in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files. Which also raised the question: what did Elon Musk know and from whom did he know it when he tweeted in June that Trump’s name was in the files, a tweet he quickly deleted after he had played arsonist? Did Bondi and the FBI director, Kash Patel, inform him about Trump’s presence in the Epstein documents? Where else would he have gotten the idea?Into the death valley of parched alibis stepped Tulsi Gabbard to win Trump’s affection with a press conference orchestrated at the White House on the same day the Journal punctured Trump’s lie about Bondi briefing him on the Epstein files. Gabbard was there to expose a “treasonous conspiracy” of Obama administration officials who supposedly plotted to manufacture the “Russiagate” scandal that Putin sought to help Trump in the 2016 election, which was a fact. Her presentation was a farrago of falsehoods. She conflated Russian interference with false claims that Obama fabricated information about Russian hacking of voting machines and other fairytales. Gabbard also triumphantly unveiled a report that Hillary Clinton was on a “daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers”, which was sheer propaganda concocted by Russian intelligence long debunked as “objectively false” by the FBI.Gabbard’s performance unselfconsciously portrayed herself as a useful idiot for Russian spies. Trump was ecstatic. “She’s, like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now,” he said. He posted that the Democrats “are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM”.Bondi was reportedly frustrated with Gabbard. Bondi had been given little warning that Gabbard’s work would be dumped in her lap “for criminal referral”, apparently in order to satisfy Trump’s appetite for revenge. Bondi had been the catalyst of the “client list” pseudo-scandal, claiming it was sitting on her desk. Always ready to gratify Trump’s whims, she was not prepared to be sideswiped by Gabbard. In the pursuit of Trump’s favor, one lackey lapped another.Bondi finessed the situation by appointing a special “strike force” to examine and undoubtedly dismiss yet again Trump’s attempt to blot out the conclusive official reports, from the Mueller report to the report by the Senate intelligence committee, chaired by then senator Marco Rubio, that had documented his campaign’s involvement with Russian agents in 2016. Bondi appeared to be seething in announcing the “strike force”, going out of her way to describe Gabbard as “my friend”. The grueling Trump cabinet dance marathon goes round and round until they drop.To demonstrate Obama’s supposed guilt, Trump posted an AI-generated video showing Obama forced to his knees and shackled in chains by federal agents before a seated and smiling Trump in the Oval Office to the soundtrack of the song YMCA. Trump apparently thinks that depicting himself as an enslaver, President Simon Legree, is a positive image that can deflect questions about his sexually predatory behavior and Epstein relationship.“He’s done criminal acts,” said Trump about Obama, and he mused, “There’s no question about it, but he has immunity. He owes me big.” Trump was referring to the supreme court’s ruling granting him “absolute” immunity for “official acts” that wound up relieving him of prosecution for the January 6 insurrection. As Trump explained it, he was responsible for the decision, at least through justices he had appointed, and Obama was indebted to him over “crimes” that Trump himself had made up to make the Epstein shadow disappear.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen, after Trump tried the certain loser of a gambit of requesting the release of the Epstein grand jury material, which would almost certainly contain nothing new and was inevitably denied by the judge, he turned to another tactic. Suddenly, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who had been Trump’s personal attorney in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, in which Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, was sent racing to Tallahassee to interview Epstein’s imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.No mere professional prosecutor would do for this high-level mission. Instead, in an unprecedented move, the deputy attorney general would conduct the interrogation. The case, in fact, was closed after Maxwell’s indictment for perjury, conviction for sex-trafficking minors and 20-year sentence. Yet Blanche stated, sloppily misspelling her first name in his haste, “If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.” He said that Maxwell can “finally say what really happened”, as if she would perhaps prove the existence of the fictional “client list” or some version of it to incriminate the enemies it contained, or clear Trump as a gentleman beyond reproach.Blanche’s remark seemed to dangle a pardon or clemency. Asked about the possibility, Trump said, “I’m allowed to do it.” Curiously, on 14 July, the solicitor general, D John Sauer, who was Trump’s lawyer in the presidential immunity case before the US court of appeals, had filed a brief to the supreme court opposing relief that Maxwell had requested. “From about 1994 to 2004, petitioner ‘coordinated, facilitated, and contributed to’ the multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of numerous young women and underage girls,” Sauer wrote. She could not be exempt from her conviction on the basis of Epstein’s first trial agreement as she claimed; she had been fairly tried, convicted and the matter was closed.But the acceleration of the Epstein backlash apparently flipped the administration’s position. Now, Blanche gave Maxwell a grant of limited immunity. Her attorney, David O Markus, was a good friend of Blanche’s. In the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, he had offered Blanche the advice that he should impeach Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, as a witness against him, by characterizing him as “GLOAT” –the “Greatest Liar of All Time”. In 2024, Blanche appeared twice on Markus’s little-watched podcast. “I consider you a friend,” said Blanche.Blanche asked Maxwell over two days about 100 people, according to Markus. Who those people might be, what she was asked and what she said remain unknown. One wonders, for example, if Blanche inquired about her knowledge of Trump’s adventures in the dressing rooms of underaged models and beyond.One prominent model agent, quoted in a 2023 story in Variety, “Inside the Fashion World’s Dark Underbelly of Sexual and Financial Exploitation: ‘Modeling Agencies Are Like Pimps for Rich People,’” said that Trump was “certainly” a “fixture”. “I would see Donald Trump backstage at [Fashion Week home] Bryant Park, and I’m like, ‘Why is he standing there when there’s a 13-year-old changing?” In 1992, Trump got George Houraney, a Florida businessman, to sponsor a “calendar girl” competition with 28 young models who were flown to Mar-a-Lago. But there were reportedly only two guests. “It was him and Epstein,” Houraney said to the New York Times. “I said, ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”One of those models, Karen Mulder, who had appeared on the cover of Vogue the year before and was considered among the most elite supermodels, described her experience with Trump and Epstein as “disgusting”, according to the Miami Herald.A year later, in 1993, Epstein brought a Sport Illustrated swimsuit model, Stacey Williams, to Trump Tower. She had met the future president at a Christmas party in 1992. “It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” Williams told the Guardian. “The second he was in front of me,” she recounted to CNN in 2024, “he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off. And then the hands started moving, and they were on the, you know, on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt, back up, sort of then, you know – they were just on me the whole time. And I froze. I couldn’t understand what was going on.” While Trump groped her, he kept talking to Epstein, and they were “looking at each other and smiling”.Markus said: “We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet.” Still, he added: “The president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.”The House oversight committee has subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition on 11 August, but she has not decided yet whether to cooperate, her lawyer said.While Blanche hurried back to Washington, Trump appeared to have depleted his armory of conspiracy theories, at least for the moment. He tried a novel tack, his most audacious projection yet. “I’m not focused on conspiracy theories that you are,” he admonished the White House press corps. Then he made a remark that he had never made before, something contrary to his entire character, which underscored the depth of his anxiety. “Don’t,” he said, “talk about Trump.”But Trump quickly recovered from the tension of his momentary reticence, and on the evening of 26 July, from Scotland, where he was touring his golf courses, he posted that Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton should be prosecuted for their endorsement of Kamala Harris in exchange for payments of millions of dollars. “They should all be prosecuted!” he demanded. Though a bogus accusation, it accurately reflected Trump’s crudely transactional worldview. A few hours later, in the early morning of Sunday 27 July, he posted a Fox News clip of the rightwing talker Mark Levin, writing in capital letters: “THIS IS A MASSIVE OBAMA SCANDAL!”

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

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      Tributes paid to police officer after gunman kills four in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

      Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

      Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

      An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

      The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
      US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed his concern over the “horrific shooting”, and said he was “praying hard” for the NYPD officer.“May God watch over our city during this challenging moment,” Jeffries wrote in a post.A large police presence converged on the area around the tower, according to Reuters journalists near the scene.“I just saw a lot of commotion and cops and people screaming,” said Russ McGee, a 31-year-old sports bettor who was working out in a gym adjacent to the skyscraper, told Reuters in an interview near the scene.The office building at 345 Park Avenue occupies an entire city block and houses the corporate offices for the National Football League and the headquarters of investment firm Blackstone. It also holds offices for JP Morgan Chase.According to an ESPN reporter, Jeff Darlington, an NFL security alert was sent to employees: “Do not exit the building. Secure your location and hide until law enforcement clears your floor. Please switch phones to silent.”This shooting is the 254th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun-related violence, who defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured by firearms.President Donald Trump has met with the Scottish first minister John Swinney at his Aberdeenshire golf club.The president is opening a second course at his Menie Estate property on Tuesday and it is understood the first minister met with Trump shortly before the ceremony.The leaders spoke for around 15 minutes, before posing together for pictures in front of a US flag and the saltire of Scotland ahead of the opening of a second course at the president’s golf club in Aberdeenshire.Swinney has previously said he would push the president on an exemption to tariffs for Scotch whisky and raise the situation in Gaza, which also came up in the meeting between Trump and prime minister Keir Starmer on Monday.Meanwhile, Trump was spotted on the driving range of his golf club during a delay in the opening ceremony for a new course.Trump could be seen hitting shots from the driving range just yards where the first tee of the new course, where he is expected to be the first to tee off.President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr, are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland, AP reported.The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the case of Jeffrey Epstein.It was mostly built around golf – and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on 13 August, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers on to the correct road.Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump’s arrival.Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing golf shoes, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start.Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

      Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

      Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

      An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

      The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication. More