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      What is the White House East Wing and why has it been torn down in Trump’s renovation plans?

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      It was confirmed on Friday that the East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed, days after construction started on the planned $300m (£225m) ballroom that Donald Trump is adding to the historic building.The demolition marked a reversal of Trump’s earlier promise in July that none of the White House’s existing infrastructure would be torn down during construction of the ballroom.The rapid pace of the project, coupled with images of rubble at the president’s residence has elicited a chorus of disgust among White House alumni and presidential historians, while the Trump administration has dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage”.What is the East Wing?The East Wing was first known as the East Terrace and was built during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Franklin Roosevelt created the East Wing in its current form in 1942 to add working space during the war, but also to conceal an underground bunker that had been constructed for the president and staff.Over time it became the home base for the first lady and her staff. It was also the home of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.View image in fullscreenSitting across East Executive Avenue from the Treasury Department, it represented the social side of the White House and was where tourists and other guests entered for events.In the original plan for the ballroom, it would have remained untouched and, in Trump’s telling, become a space where guests would mingle, sip cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres until they were called into the ballroom for dinner. However, days after ground was broken on the new project, the White House confirmed the entire wing would be torn down and that process appeared to be completed by Friday.What can we expect from the new ballroom?Trump has complained that the White House needs a large entertaining space and that the East Room is too small, with capacity for only about 200 people.The 90,000-square-foot (27,400sqm) ballroom will dwarf the main White House, at nearly double the size, and Trump says it will accommodate 999 people.Renderings released by the White House suggest a strong resemblance to the gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida. The White House has said the ballroom will be ready for use well before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, an ambitious timeline.View image in fullscreenThe president has been adamant that the ballroom will not come at a cost to taxpayers, because it is being privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly”.Donors for the proposed ballroom include a slew of major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Defense contractors and communications companies have also pitched in, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile and Comcast.The president began construction despite the lack of signoff from the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency that has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.What has been the reaction to the bulldozing of the East Wing?The image of broken masonry, rubble and steel wires at America’s most famous address appeared to strike a chord even with people who have become accustomed to shrugging off Trump’s outrageous antics.David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, tweeted: “Something profoundly symbolic about Trump taking a wrecking ball to the White House … paying for the demolition with money from cronies and insiders seeking government favors … and the Republicans in Congress acquiescing as Trump treats public assets as private property.”View image in fullscreenThe National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tuesday asked the Trump administration to pause the demolition until the planning commission review was completed. Its letter expressed concern that the proposed ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself”.Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was quoted by WTOP News as saying: “Maybe it’s just the dislike of change on my part, but it seemed painful, almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting. Or defacing a Michelangelo sculpture.”In an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Trump adviser Stephen Miller defended the unannounced demolition of the entire East Wing, arguing that the extension was not really part of the White House.“It was a cheaply built add-on structure … [it] is badly in need of refurbishment, repair and renovation,” he said.What have other presidents done to change the White House?Presidents have added to the White House since construction began in 1792 for a host of reasons, and Trump aides say his decision to build a ballroom follows that long tradition.Thomas Jefferson added the east and west colonnades.Andrew Jackson built the North Portico on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House, aligning with the South Portico that James Monroe added after the original mansion was rebuilt after the British burned it during the war of 1812.Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing to provide dedicated space for the president and senior staff, while Franklin D Roosevelt added the East Wing.One of the most significant White House renovations happened under Harry Truman, when the mansion was found to be so structurally unsound that he ordered a complete gutting of the interior that lasted from 1948 to 1952. The project, including Truman’s addition of a balcony to the second floor of the South Portico, was highly controversial.Other changes include the creation of the Rose Garden during John F Kennedy’s administration and Richard Nixon’s decision to convert an indoor swimming pool that was built for FDR’s physical therapy into a workspace for the growing White House press corps.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

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      Trump news at a glance: Pentagon announces it is deploying US aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

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      The Pentagon said on Friday that it was deploying the United States’ most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, a serious escalation in the Trump administration’s war against drug cartels that provides the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground.The move will bring the USS Gerald Ford carrier, with dozens of stealth fighter jets and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other warships that accompany the carrier, to the coast of Venezuela as the carrier nears the end of its deployment in the Mediterranean.Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.Pentagon deploys top aircraft carrier as Trump militarisation of Caribbean ratchets upThe carrier strike group has dozens of F35 fighter jets, increasing the firepower and ability of the US to hit air-defense systems in Venezuela. That would clear the way for US special operations or drones to destroy land-based targets, current and former officials said.The expanded naval presence “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the western hemisphere,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.Read the full storyUS and Canada spar over ad of Reagan denouncing tariffs that led to derailed trade talksThe latest breakdown in relations between the US and Canada appears to stem from a one-minute television advertisement featuring former US president Ronald Reagan declaring “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Canadian prime minister Mark Carney says he is ready to resume trade talks with the US. However, Ontario premier Doug Ford – whose provincial government ran the ad earlier in the week – says it will run again during the first game of the World Series Friday night. Ford added that the campaign would end Monday.Read the full storyUS court rejects Trump officials’ effort to delay rulings on veterans benefitsA panel of US judges rejected an effort by the Trump administration to delay court rulings on claims by veterans who say they have been unfairly denied disability benefits and other compensation. The 9-0 ruling, handed down on Wednesday by the court of appeals for veterans claims, is the latest example of the growing number of federal judges pushing back against Trump administration moves.Read the full storyEast Wing of White House reduced to rubble as part of Trump’s ballroom constructionThe East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed to pave the way for Donald Trump’s $300m (£225m) planned gilded ballroom, just days after the administration announced it would happen and contradicting Trump’s earlier promise that the building would not be touched.Satellite images on Friday showed the historic building’s eastern section reduced to rubble, to the outrage of historians, former White House officials and much of the public.Read the full storyUkraine wants US to stay involved, says Zelenskyy after meeting western alliesVolodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine wants the US to stay involved in efforts to end the war after a meeting of western allies in London that took place without Donald Trump.The Ukrainian leader chose not to overtly lobby for the supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles at a meeting of more than 20 mainly European leaders from the “coalition of the willing” but instead emphasised the need for the west to work together.Read the full storyVirginia Democrats aim to redraw maps to help party gain seats in CongressVirginia has entered the national mid-cycle redistricting battle, with Democratic state lawmakers intent on redrawing the state’s congressional maps to deliver two or three additional Democrats to Washington.Read the full storyTrump officials to send election observers to California and New JerseyThe Department of Justice plans to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections after requests from state Republican parties. Election monitoring is routine but this move comes as both states are set to hold closely watched elections with national consequences on 4 November. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with unfounded allegations of fraud.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s top advisers during his first administration, said that the president will seek and likely win a third term in office, despite the fact that this would violate the 22nd amendment of the US constitution.

      The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges of bank fraud and false statements brought after Donald Trump publicly called for her to be prosecuted in a move widely seen as political retribution.

      The US will expand the use of facial recognition technology to track non-citizens entering and leaving the country to combat visa overstays and passport fraud, according to a government document published on Friday.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened Thursday 23 October. More

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      Pentagon deploys top aircraft carrier as Trump militarisation of Caribbean ratchets up

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      The Pentagon said on Friday that it was deploying the United States’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, a major escalation in the Trump administration’s war against drug cartels that provides the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground.The move will bring the USS Gerald Ford carrier, with dozens of stealth fighter jets and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other warships that accompany the carrier, to the coast of Venezuela as it nears the end of its current deployment in the Mediterranean.Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.The carrier strike group has dozens of F-35 fighter jets that increases the firepower and ability for the US to hit air-defense systems in Venezuela. That would clear the way for US special operations or drones to destroy land-based targets, current and former officials said.The expanded naval presence “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the western hemisphere”, a Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement.For weeks, the Trump administration has been eyeing escalating its campaign against the drug cartels – as well its effort to destabilize the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro’s government – after an initial campaign of strikes on at least nine alleged drug-trafficking boats.Donald Trump also confirmed to reporters at the White House on Thursday that the next stage of his military campaign was to hit targets on the ground. “The land is going to be next,” Trump said. “The land drugs are much more dangerous for them. It’s going to be much more dangerous. You’ll be seeing that soon.”Trump did not discuss which targets in which countries the US intended to strike. But he directed the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was seated beside him at the White House event to curb the flow of illegal drugs into the US, to notify Congress about the administration’s plans.Asked whether he would declare war against the cartels, Trump suggested he would continue with individual strikes. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” he said. “We’re going to kill them, you know they’re going to be, like, dead.”Trump announced what appears to have been the first strike on a boat on 3 September, releasing a brief video of the attack. In the weeks that followed, the administration announced more strikes without disclosing details other than the number of people killed and the claim that the boats carried drugs.Since the start of the military campaign, the administration has provided a dubious legal justification for the strikes, claiming the boats are affiliated with “designated terrorist organisations”, or DTOs, with which the US was now in a “non-international armed conflict”, the Guardian has reported.The administration has nevertheless provided no concrete evidence to date that those killed in the boat strikes were smuggling drugs to the US. In briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials in essence said the boats were legitimate targets because Trump had designated them as assets of cartels seen to be DTOs, people familiar with the matter said.The military campaign has also drawn in the Central Intelligence Agency. Trump confirmed on 15 October that he had authorized so-called “covert action” by the CIA in Venezuela. The Guardian has reported that the CIA has been providing a bulk of the intelligence used in the airstrikes. More

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      US and Canada spar over ad of Reagan denouncing tariffs that led to derailed trade talks

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      After the US suspended all trade negotiations with Canada over a 1987 speech by Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs that appeared to spark Donald Trump’s ire, the premier of Ontario said he planned to run an ad featuring the speech again during the World Series on Friday.Doug Ford, whose government ran the Reagan ad in US markets this week, first posted on X that the two nations were “stronger together”, while Trump added his own string of social media posts trumpeting the supposed benefits of tariffs.“Canada and the United States are friends, neighbours and allies. President Ronald Reagan knew that we are stronger together,” Ford wrote on X alongside the Reagan video. “God bless Canada and God bless the United States.”Ford said the ad will run during the first game of the World Series, but, after speaking with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, Ford announced the campaign will end Monday.“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses,” Ford said. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached US audiences at the highest levels.”The quick breakdown in relationships apparently stems from a one-minute television advertisement featuring Reagan’s radio address declaring that “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Trump responded on Truth Social without evidence that Canada had somehow run a “fraudulent” and “fake” advertisement, and announced that “all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated”.Rubio, the secretary of state, told reporters on Friday that Ford had aired commercials in the US which “took President Reagan’s words out of context”, adding that the Reagan Foundation had criticized the effort, too. “The President made his announcement that he suspended any trade talks with Canada for now,” Rubio said.The Reagan Foundation said on Thursday that the Ontario government’s advertisement “misrepresents” Reagan’s address, without elaborating how. It added that officials “did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks” and added that the organization was reviewing its legal options.It also encouraged people to watch the video of Reagan’s speech on its YouTube channel.Ford’s office responded by reposting the longer, five-minute excerpt, and said that the commercial uses “an unedited excerpt from one of Reagan’s public addresses, which is available through public domain”.Democratic lawmakers on the House ways and means committee jumped in to defend the Ontario advertisement. “This is the ad that drove Trump to cancel all trade talks with Canada,” the committee posted on social media. “Unlike Trump’s AI slop, this is real and uses Reagan’s own words on tariffs.”The dispute comes as both countries face critical deadlines in the next few weeks. Next week marks the cutoff for public comments on the scheduled review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which faces its mandatory six-year assessment in July 2026. The following day, 4 November, Carney, will deliver a federal budget expected to focus on reducing reliance on US markets.Then on 5 November the US supreme court will hear constitutional challenges to Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under emergency powers. A federal appeals court ruled in August that such sweeping duties exceed presidential authority, potentially undermining the legal foundation for the 35% tariffs now applied to Canadian steel, aluminum, timber and automobiles.Chris Sands, the director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, suggested the collapse in talks simply formalizes a dead-end process.“Can we stop trade talks? Yes, you can stop talks about steel, aluminum, energy, all of it,” he said.“But there was no evidence we were going anywhere anyway.”Sands noted the irony of Trump citing Reagan while reversing his trade legacy. “Reagan loved the country – he loved free trade. Maybe Donald Trump believes that, but it’s not what he’s selling now.”Washington imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports this spring, prompting retaliation from Ottawa before Trump raised duties to 35% in August. Ontario, heavily dependent on cross-border manufacturing and automotive trade, has been particularly affected. The breakdown ultimately leaves Carney navigating domestic pressure with a minority government.“Carney’s trying to keep all the provinces together,” Sands said. “He’s walking a tightrope between angry Canadians, an angry Trump, and premiers who are going off-script.”Before departing for Asia on Friday morning, Carney acknowledged the changed reality. “We can’t control the trade policy of the United States,” he told reporters, noting that US policy had fundamentally shifted from previous decades.But he emphasized Canada’s readiness to resume detailed negotiations on steel, aluminum and energy sectors, “when the Americans are ready to have those discussions, because it will be for the benefit of workers in the United States, workers in Canada and families in both of our countries.”For now, Carney said, Canada will focus on what it can control: building at home and “developing new partnerships and opportunities, including with the economic giants of Asia”. More

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      Daniel Lurie: the millionaire mayor who got Trump to back off (for now)

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      Donald Trump rarely has kind words for Democrats, especially those who stand in his way. But on Thursday the president offered something unfamiliar: a compliment.As federal agents mobilized at a US Coast Guard base in the Bay Area, Trump credited San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for “very nicely” persuading him to stand down from a planned immigration enforcement “surge” in the city this weekend.“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” Trump wrote, without hurling an epithet or nickname. “I told him, ‘It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?’”Speaking later at a midday news conference at city hall, Lurie said it was the president who initiated the conversation: “He picked up the phone and called me.”Trump had conveyed “clearly” that he was calling off the deployment of federal troops, Lurie told reporters, clarifying that the president had “asked nothing of me” in return.It was not Lurie’s assurances alone that changed Trump’s mind. According to the president’s Truth Social post, “friends of mine who live in the area” called to vouch for the “substantial progress” San Francisco had made since Lurie took the helm in January. Trump specifically cited “great people” such as Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce who ignited a firestorm when he suggested the president should send national guard troops to his native San Francisco before apologizing and backtracking, as well as Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia.“They want to give it a ‘shot’,” Trump wrote, summarizing the feedback he had received. “Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”Lurie, the 48-year-old heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, swept into city hall promising a reset for a city that had struggled with both real post-pandemic challenges – an empty downtown, an enduring homelessness emergency, an addiction crisis, repeated reports of corruption – and a caricatured portrayal by Trump and his rightwing allies as a Democratic-run hellscape awash in decay and crime. His victory over incumbent London Breed last November was widely viewed as a rebuke of San Francisco’s political status quo, and a test of whether a political newcomer and centrist pragmatist could help the city overcome its woes – and the perception that it was worse off than it was.So far, the statistics have trended in the right direction. The California governor’s office said earlier this month that San Francisco saw a 45% decrease in homicides and 40% drop in robberies from 2019 to 2025. The city is on track to have the lowest number of homicides in more than 70 years, according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle analysis.Yet looming over Lurie’s early months in office were questions over how he would fare in a showdown with the mercurial president who has made his antagonism towards the city clear for years. It’s a calculation every Democratic mayor and blue state governor has made as Trump threatens a widening federal crackdown on major US cities.At a moment when Democrats across the country are yearning for a confrontational foil to Trump, Lurie stuck to a “heads down” approach, insisting his top priority was keeping residents safe. Lurie rarely, if ever, refers to the president by name, and even when criticizing the administration, he avoids attacking Trump in personal terms. It is a stark contrast to Gavin Newsom, the California governor (and a former San Francisco mayor), who has emerged as a leading figure in the anti-Trump resistance and pillories the president daily on social media.In recent days, as tensions rose and Trump signaled he was prepared to send troops into San Francisco, Lurie carried on as he had, “laser-focused” on boosting the “greatest city in the world”. While he was firm that the city opposed a federal deployment, he refrained from criticizing the president directly. The mayor kept residents informed with a series of video messages in his signature direct-to-camera style, promising to protect the city’s immigrant communities and urging residents to protest peacefully. “While we cannot control the federal government, here in San Francisco,” he said earlier this week, “we define who we are.”The ties he has forged with Silicon Valley’s prominent leaders, as part of his mission to keep tech companies in San Francisco, appeared to have also helped defuse the situation, at least for now.At the press conference on Thursday, Lurie said he welcomed San Francisco’s “continued partnership” with federal authorities to tackle drugs and crime. He touted the city’s progress, noting that crime was down – violent crime particularly. The city had added police officers, workers were returning to the office, and downtown buildings were being leased and purchased, Lurie said he impressed on the builder turned president. The mayor’s message, too, was clear: “San Francisco’s comeback is real.”Lurie’s management of the city – and the president – has earned glowing reviews. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who represents San Francisco, said Lurie had “demonstrated exceptional leadership in his steadfast commitment to the safety and wellbeing of San Franciscans”.“I salute Mayor Lurie for standing up for our City and reinforcing San Francisco’s strength, optimism and recovery,” she said on X.Yet much remained unclear – whether Trump was calling off the anticipated national guard deployment or a ramped-up immigration enforcement effort, or whether he might send troops elsewhere in the Bay Area. The president has mentioned Oakland as another possible target – and, as ever, reserved the right to change his mind. Unlike Lurie, Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, received no such call from the president, but said she was ready to “engage with anyone, at any level of government, to protect Oakland residents”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt his press conference, Lurie said he could only repeat what the president told him during their call.“Our city remains prepared for any scenario,” he said. “We have a plan in place that can be activated at any moment.”Trump’s sudden reversal came as a surprise to local leaders and advocates, as protests against the federal intervention amassed at the Coast Guard base in Alameda on Thursday morning.Rights groups and community activists have urged Lurie and other city officials to take bolder steps to defend immigrants, some calling for a state of emergency if a federal deployment takes place, a designation that could help quickly boost resources for targeted communities. Others have called on Lurie to establish “safe zones” that federal agents cannot enter and declare an eviction moratorium, since raids and fears of ICE enforcement can force people to hide out and miss work.Outside San Francisco’s city hall, local leaders and organizers were also grappling with the whiplash.“At this time, we do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the national guard. We don’t know if it’s ICE, if it’s border patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood. She said any federal agents deputized to help Trump “carry out his mass deportation plans” were “absolutely not welcome in San Francisco”.Newsom, who has made a sport of publicly clashing with Trump, said Trump’s decision to call off the deployment was proof of the president’s capriciousness and warned residents not to take the president at his word. “Business leaders made the phone call to Donald Trump – now we know who he listens to,” the governor said at an event in San Jose on Thursday, adding: “If you think this story just ended – that it’s got a period or exclamation point – you know better.”Even as Trump boasted of his own restraint, Lurie’s instinct was the opposite: deflect attention and press ahead. Asked on Thursday whether his approach could serve as a model for other Democratic mayors facing an unwanted federal intervention, Lurie demurred, suggesting the question was better left to the political chattering class.“Every day I’m focused on San Francisco,” he said. “Heads down. How do we keep our city safe?”Maanvi Singh in San Francisco and Sam Levin in Los Angeles contributed reporting More

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      San Francisco Bay Area mobilizes amid threats of Trump immigration crackdown: ‘We’re ready’

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      It was a whirlwind, disorienting 24 hours in the San Francisco Bay Area for local leaders and organizers, who were expecting a major immigration enforcement operation in the region on Thursday.But by mid-morning, Donald Trump announced he was calling off a federal “surge” – and telling residents to “stay tuned” for what would come next.In the uneasy lull, many residents carried on, preparing for the worst.Volunteers organized patrols in areas where day immigrant workers tended to congregate, and launched initiatives to help the children of undocumented workers get to and from school. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in San Francisco and across the bay in Oakland.“I think he’s just trying to mess with us, with our Bay Area,” said Jose Ramirez, 59. He was one of a few hundred people gathered in Fruitvale – a predominantly Latino community in east Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. “But we’re still out here to support.”Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, had initially said she was aware of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents being stationed at the local US Coast Guard based, but was unable clarify whether officers would be deployed in the city until Friday.“I spoke with Alameda county sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, who confirmed through her communications with Ice that border patrol operations are cancelled for the greater Bay Area – which includes Oakland – at this time,” Lee said.By Thursday night, it remained unclear whether agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP were still planning to ramp up enforcement in cities such as Oakland that border San Francisco.The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Guardian’s queries, and instead linked to Trump’s Truth Social post explaining that he had called off federal agents following a call with tech leaders including the Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff. “Friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” Trump wrote.Local officials and advocates condemned Silicon Valley billionaires, including Benioff, who had previously suggested that Trump should send the national guard troops to the city.“I condemn every tech billionaire who supported this,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood, home to a large Chicano and the Latino community. Standing at the steps of city hall – and directly facing the massive Salesforce tower looming over the city’s skyline – Fielder said: “We are here because Benioff of Salesforce put forth this idea.”Meanwhile, in Fielder’s district, volunteers from various community groups were geared up to respond to ramped-up raids.For weeks already, the local non-profit Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth (Homey) had been deploying street patrols, to observe and report ICE activity in the area. Patrollers have yet to intervene in any arrests, said José Luis Pavón, an organizer with the group. “But the patrols are also to build community, to make sure that people know their rights, to also reassure a lot of the people who are scared, to involve small-business owners, to involve neighbors, to really strengthen the community,” he said.View image in fullscreenFollowing months of threats from the Trump administration to ramp up law enforcement and immigration raids in the city, the neighborhood is now prepared to respond, Pavón said: “I feel like people are starting to lose their fear. People are getting a lot more practical.”Bay Resistance, a social justice non-profit, said it would continue to send volunteers to Home Depot stores and other areas where day laborers tend to congregate and work, to monitor for immigration agents and help inform workers about their legal rights. The Latino Task Force said it would drive students of undocumented parents to schools across the city.“We’re ready,” said Lisa Knox, co-executive director of California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, a non-profit that supports people in immigration detention. “We always say ‘power, not panic’. We’re focused on getting the message out to the community that they are not alone, people have rights if they encounter ICE or federal agents, and there are rapid response networks that can provide support if they are arrested. Yes, this is frightening, but communities can organize to defend themselves.”Groups were coordinating across the region to ensure they could mobilize wherever ICE shows up, and advocates had learned lessons from efforts in Los Angeles and Chicago, Knox said. The president’s announcement that he was calling off the troops did not alter preparations, she added: “We’re not taking Trump at his word. He’s equivocated before. We’re sticking with our plans.”In Fruitvale, which has one of the highest concentrations of immigrants and non–citizens in Oakland, street vendors said they had seen much less foot traffic than usual. The farmers’ market, held in the plaza outside the transit station, was quieter than usual.“We cannot let this happen – where people are afraid to get out of the house, where people are afraid to be seen,” said Rosemary, an 18-year-old community college student who joined the protest. She and her loved ones – almost all of whom are immigrants – created a group chat to check in with one another each hour, she said, to make sure they’re safe.Jaime, an English language development teacher who works with elementary and middle school students in the neighborhood, said she joined up to show solidarity with her students and their families – most of whom are immigrants. Earlier that day, teachers hosted a brown bag lunch for students who were worried about a major federal deployment in the region. A group of about 20 students strategized how to create fundraisers for the families most affected by immigration raids, and reviewed information about immigrants’ legal rights to share with friends and families.“Unfortunately … a lot of what is happening won’t feel new to our students,” said Nick, a fellow teacher. “It’s not the first time that their families have felt threatened by the presence of ICE or other immigration officials. It’s not the first time they’ve heard of members of our school community being threatened with deportation or being deported.” The Guardian is not using the teachers’ last names at their request, to protect their students.By Thursday evening as the sun set over the San Francisco Bay, hundreds of protesters walked from Fruitvale, along Oakland’s industrial corridors towards the entrance of the Coast Guard base.Gabriela DelaRiva, a retired nurse who lived in Alameda – the city where the base is located – began to tear up. Her grandmother, she said, had come to the US from Zacatecas, Mexico, as a child, and worked at canneries in California’s agricultural Central valley. And DelaRiva grew up to be an activist – she had marched for labor rights, and against various US military interventions and wars.“To see progress, and then to see these things going backwards, it’s very distressing, very painful,” she said. “But I’m so proud to be in the Bay Area where people do get activated.”Sam Levin contributed reporting More

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      Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.Since Patel’s alleged admission to Driscoll, the DoJ and the FBI have been gutted and repurposed for Trump’s retribution system. Six of the FBI’s senior executives were fired or forced out in the early weeks of the administration. About 4,500 professional attorneys at the DoJ have accepted a “deferred resignation program”. At least seven federal prosecutors, including those in the southern district of New York, resigned in protest over what they viewed as political interference in dropping the corruption case against the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, in exchange for his cooperation with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups of immigrants. The public integrity section of the DoJ, which handles corruption cases, has been reduced to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been decimated: 70% of its staff has left. One-third of senior leaders at the DoJ have quit. The section enforcing environmental law has lost half its leadership.In the Adams case, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest against what she described as “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, appeared as the enforcer with Adams on Fox News to declare: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City.” And Emil Bove, previously the acting deputy attorney general and a former Trump attorney, who arranged the deal, was awarded an appellate federal judgeship, a potential stepping stone to the supreme court.Trump’s immunity for crimes committed while in office, granted by the extraordinary ruling of the Republican majority on the supreme court, thus thwarting his prosecution over the January 6 insurrection and preserving his political viability for the 2024 election, is the foundation stone on which he stands to protect his stalwarts. With such immunity, he has been freed to authorize corruption. The effect of the supreme court decision permeates his administration and the Republican party down to its bones. Trump v United States has metastasized. As Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean said about the Watergate scandal, it has become “a cancer on the presidency”.The understanding that nobody significant who is working for or supporting Trump can ever expect to face the bar of justice for criminal behavior has been absorbed as an operating principle. In his service, they are released from following the rule of law in favor of obedience to the rule of the leader. As Trump stated in granting a commutation to former Republican congressman George Santos, convicted of stealing of Covid unemployment insurance benefits, credit card fraud, embezzlement of election funds and identity theft, among other crimes, “at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Santos is now able to attend the Kennedy Center Honors, when disco queen Gloria Gaynor is bestowed her award and belts I Will Survive – apparently one of his favorites.In his inside-out world, Santos the con is transformed into Trump’s projection of himself as a victim. Santos is washed clean; he is resurrected. The Santos commutation, after serving 84 days of an 87-month sentence, was a minor masterstroke for Trump to demonstrate even more than contempt for the law and his exultation of stupidity. Santos was not just the class clown of the House Republican conference. The fake descendant of Holocaust survivors, phony Goldman Sachs banker, bogus real estate tycoon, but real Brazilian drag queen, was an albatross for congressional Republicans. Trump’s commutation is another one of his gestures to demonstrate that House Republicans will swallow any embarrassment and insult with servility.Santos’s commutation represents the obverse but essential element of the retribution system – the rewards system. The favors began on his inauguration day, when Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 people involved in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, followed by pardons for 23 anti-abortion activists convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, 16 politicians as of June (including those from his first term), financial fraudsters and closely connected donors. One of the January 6 pardoned prisoners, Christopher Moynihan, was arrested on 20 October for attempted murder of the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. More than 10 of the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump have been rearrested, charged or sentenced on a variety of charges, including child sexual assault and plotting to kill FBI agents.Homan, the “border czar”, has no need for a pardon or commutation. He was exempted from prosecution by Trump’s justice department after having reportedly been taped in a sting operation by FBI agents in September 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag in exchange for promising to deliver federal contracts once he assumed his position under Trump.Homan has offered a series of conflicting explanations about the money. On Fox News, he insisted he did “nothing criminal”, a non-denial denial. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered a different explanation, announcing that Homan had never taken the cash. When the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, asked Bondi on 7 October, “what became of the $50,000?”, she did not answer, but spewed a falsehood that Whitehouse had taken a campaign donation from someone who had held meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. Apparently taking the cue, Homan went on the rightwing NewsNation to say: “I didn’t take $50,000 from anybody.” In short, he has claimed he has not done anything illegal in not doing it. If he were to write about it, Homan might borrow the title from OJ Simpson’s If I Did It.Trump’s pardons and grants of clemency often bypass the traditional review process of the pardon attorney at the justice department, even though he has replaced the professional Liz Oyer with the crackpot Ed Martin, who was an organizer of Stop the Steal rallies and attorney for January 6 defendants. As the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin led the purge of DoJ prosecutors of January 6 insurrectionists. But Martin’s tenure was abbreviated when it was clear his confirmation to hold the job permanently would be rejected by the Senate. Trump sent him to DoJ, where he is also the head of the new “weaponization working group”. Martin has overseen the cellophane-thin indictment of the Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud, which she denies. Trump has fired her, but the supreme court has allowed her to stay in her job until it hears the arguments in the case in January 2026.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s scheme of indicting “enemies within” on contrived mortgage application fraud charges extends to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial fraud, and targeting the California Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment. Trump has enlisted for this particular retribution campaign the enthusiastically thuggish Bill Pulte, like Trump another unworthy entitled heir, grandson to the billionaire founder of a home building empire, to dredge up the thin gruel to make the accusations. Pulte has a history of making belligerent insults, even to a family member who filed a lawsuit against him to stop his “degrading and threatening harassment”. In early September, at the new exclusive private club in Washington for Trump people, the Executive Branch, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, confronted Pulte for “trash-talking him” to Trump. “I’m going to punch you in your fucking face,” Bessent said, according to the New York Post. Yet Trump still apparently values Pulte for his utility as one of his loudmouth bullies.Martin peeked into the James case with a letter to her attorney Abbe Lowell on 12 August asking for her to resign as “an act of good faith”, adding that his letter was “confidential”. Lowell replied that given the letter’s obvious violation of the code of “professional responsibility” for justice department attorneys, “I was not sure it was actually from you.” Lowell also noted that Martin had staged a strange “photo opportunity”, standing in front of James’s brownstone in Brooklyn accompanied by a photographer from the New York Post, “outside the bounds of DoJ and ethics rules”. Even more bizarrely, Martin wore a trenchcoat, perhaps in homage to the character of Columbo, a fictional detective made famous in a TV series of the 1970s but earlier played by the actor Thomas Mitchell, Martin’s uncle. “One has no conceivable idea of any proper or legitimate reason you went to Ms James’ house, what you were doing, and for what actual purpose,” wrote Lowell.When Trump demanded the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, his recent appointee as the US attorney in the eastern district of Virginia, Erik Siebert, refused on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence for the allegation. He was promptly replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former beauty contestant and insurance lawyer from Florida, who had assisted in Trump’s documents case at Mar-a-Lago, and had been elevated to a senior associate staff secretary in his White House. Six top attorneys in the eastern district’s office either resigned in protest or were fired. One of the longtime professional prosecutors who was fired, Michael Ben’Ary, taped a letter to the door, stating: “Leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security.”Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York, was fired in July. She filed a lawsuit claiming her “politically motivated termination” was “unlawful and unconstitutional” and solely the result of her relationship to her father. Perhaps coincidentally, she was the prosecutor in the cases of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.Just when James Comey filed a motion for the judge to dismiss the case against him as a vindictive prosecution, a reporter at Lawfare, Anna Bower, revealed that Halligan had initiated text messages on Signal petulantly complaining to her about her stories on the Letitia James case and demanding corrections. In fact, Bower had only tweeted a New York Times article that cast doubt on the central contention of the prosecution that James used a second home as a rental property. Halligan demanded changes in the article that Bower did not write, but Halligan claimed she couldn’t discuss them because of grand jury secrecy, which she broadly hinted at. Then, when Bower informed her she would publish their exchange, Halligan belatedly insisted it was off the record. She noted that she erased her messages on Signal on a regular basis, which violates the Federal Records Act. In the world of yesterday, Halligan would have been instantly removed and under investigation from both the DoJ and congressional committees. A DoJ spokesperson responded to Bower with the department’s official statement: “Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts.”The sheer amateurishness of Halligan may make Trump’s system appear unprecedented, which it is certainly in American history. Nixon at his worst only aspired to what Trump is putting into practice. But aspects of it have had their parallels in the purges that were characteristic of authoritarian regimes of the past. “In other words, this system is the logical outgrowth of the Leader principle in its full implication and the best possible guarantee for loyalty,” wrote Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.The cranks, incompetents and ambitious losers recruited to carry out Trump’s vengeance invariably display a spectrum of quirks. His preference would be that they would all be a chorus line of former beauty queens. “It’s that face. It’s those lips. They move like a machine gun,” Trump has mused about his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Whoever the Trump misfit might be, beauties or Ed Martin, they are replaceable widgets that function within the system he has created. Trump wages war on the “enemies within” with the eccentrics at his disposal. They represent the revenge of the second-rate or less, taking positions once held by the most qualified and then wreaking havoc on their meritorious betters in a wave of resentment. They reflect their damaged leader. That is the beating heart of Trumpism.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to 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 More