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      Trump news at a glance: thinktank finds legal immigrants stripped of protections and sent to El Salvador prison

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      At least 50 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador had entered the US legally, according to a review by the Cato Institute.Published by the libertarian thinktank on Monday, the report analyzed the available immigration data for only a portion of the men who were deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and focuses on the cases where records could be found.“The government calls them all ‘illegal aliens.’ But of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,” Cato said in its report.Analysis finds at least 50 migrants sent to El Salvador prison entered US legallyThe Cato Institute’s analysis goes against the Trump administration’s claim that only undocumented people were deported to El Salvador.The report says that 21 men were admitted after presenting themselves at a port of entry, 24 were granted parole, four were resettled as refugees, and one entered the US on a tourist visa.The Trump administration deported more than 200 alleged gang members to the Cecot mega-prison in March, controversially invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime, as justification.Read the full storySupreme court sides with Trump on Venezuelans’ protected statusDonald Trump’s administration can end legal protections that have shielded about 350,000 Venezuelans from potential deportation, the supreme court ruled on Monday.America’s highest court granted a request by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for the Venezuelans while an appeal proceeds in a lower court.Read the full storyTrump and Putin phone call fails to bring breakthrough Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have held a rare phone call, which the US leader described as “excellent”, but the Kremlin refused to agree to a ceasefire in the war with Ukraine, despite pressure from Washington and European allies.Trump described the call as having gone “very well”. But the Russian leader declined to support the US-proposed 30-day unconditional ceasefire, which Washington had framed as the call’s primary objective. Putin also suggested his country’s maximalist objectives in the war with Ukraine were unchanged.Read the full storyComey says ‘8647’ Instagram post was totally innocentThe former FBI director James Comey has brushed off criticism about a photo of seashells he posted on social media, saying it is “crazy” to think the messaged was intended as a threat against Donald Trump.“I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it, until I heard … that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy,” Comey said in interview on MSNBC.Read the full storyMohsen Mahdawi graduates from Columbia after Ice releaseThe Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was released only weeks ago from federal detention, has crossed the graduation stage to cheers from his fellow graduates.The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He was detained and ordered to be deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.Read the full storyTrump signs law to combat fake images and online exploitationDonald Trump has signed into law the Take It Down Act, a measure that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation that Melania Trump helped usher through Congress.The US president had the first lady sign it, too, despite what sounded like a mild objection on her part.Read the full storyCBS News chief steps down amid tense Trump legal battleThe president of CBS News has announced that she is stepping down, citing disagreements with the network’s parent company as it confronts a $20bn lawsuit from Donald Trump and a looming merger.Wendy McMahon, who has helmed the company’s venerated news division since 2023, said in a memo shared in full on social media that “it’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward”.Read the full storyTrump claims without evidence stars were paid to endorse HarrisDonald Trump lashed out at celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris in late night and early morning screeds on Monday, saying he would investigate them to see if they were paid for the endorsements – repeating a common refrain on the right about the star-studded list of Harris supporters.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US has officially closed its Office of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem, according to an internal state department memo seen by the Guardian, in effect eliminating the Palestinians’ dedicated diplomatic channel to Washington.

      A federal judge has blocked efforts by the Trump administration and its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to dismantle the US Institute of Peace, at least temporarily.

      The Trump administration has reportedly reached an agreement to pay nearly $5m to the family of the woman who was fatally shot by police while participating in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 18 May 2025. More

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      Trump officials reportedly reach $5m settlement in January 6 wrongful death suit

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      The Trump administration has reportedly reached an agreement to pay nearly $5m to the family of the woman who was fatally shot by police while participating in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol carried out by the president’s supporters.Citing multiple sources, the Washington Post reported on Monday that the Trump administration had agreed to pay the family of Ashli Babbitt to settle the wrongful death lawsuit they filed after the attack.Babbitt was attempting to force her way into the lobby of the US House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi, when the Trump supporter was shot dead by a Capitol police officer. The payment of about $5m at the center of the settlement is meant to resolve the litigation from Babbitt’s estate, which initially sought $30m in damages.Attorneys for both Babbitt’s family and the federal government each informed a judge earlier in May that they had agreed to settle the case in principle. The case was scheduled to be tried in July 2026.Although a binding agreement had not yet been signed and details of the settlement were not revealed during a court hearing on 2 May,Judge Ana Reyes of the US district court in Washington DC instructed both parties to provide an update by Thursday.Sources with knowledge of the agreement told the Post that Trump’s justice department would pay just less than $5m, with approximately one-third allocated to the family’s legal team, which includes Judicial Watch, a politically conservative organization, and attorney Richard Driscoll of Alexandria, Virginia. These sources requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing case, the Post reported.Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, reacted to the news of the settlement by calling it a “slap in the face” to the American people.Jeffries said that the settlement was “totally done without any communication to the chief of the Capitol police or his lawyers, and appears solely the result of a political determination that Donald Trump and Republicans are going to try to whitewash what happened on January 6.“This settlement is just an extension of what they’ve previously done, which is to pardon violent felons who violently attacked the Capitol on January 6, including police officers, and now have all been pardoned and sent back to communities across the country where in some cases they’re re-engaging in criminal activity,” he added.“Donald Trump and the extreme Maga Republicans are not going to be able to erase what happened on January 6, no matter how hard they try.”The January 6 Capitol attack that Babbitt chose to partake in was a desperate attempt by a pro-Trump mob to keep him in the White House despite his first presidency ending in defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The attack has been linked to at least eight other deaths, including the suicides of police officers who were left traumatized having defended the Capitol that day.Babbitt’s social media activity showed that she was deeply engaged for months with a conspiracy theory that painted Democratic lawmakers as evil pedophiles with whom Trump was locked in mortal combat. And she also believed lies from Trump and his allies that electoral fraudsters had handed Biden the 2020 election.For weeks before she joined the mob in DC, Babbitt had been retweeting those false claims from Trump himself, as well as the pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, alleging massive voter fraud before his decisive electoral loss to Biden.Trump then clinched a second presidency after defeating Kamala Harris in November’s election. More

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      Judge blocks Trump officials’ efforts to dismantle US Institute of Peace

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      A federal judge on Monday blocked efforts by the Trump administration and its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to dismantle the US Institute of Peace, at least temporarily.Doge, initially overseen by billionaire Donald Trump supporter Elon Musk, took over the congressionally created and funded thinktank in March and had fired most employees by a late-night email after the US president targeted the institute and three other agencies with an executive order.The takeover prompted a couple of lawsuits against Doge and the Trump administration, including from fired employees, trying to impede the institute’s dismantling. The White House claimed the thinktank was in “non-compliance” with Trump’s executive order, whose purported aim was to shrink the federal government’s size. And Doge staff forcefully entered the thinktank’s building after cancelling its contract for private security.US district court judge Beryl Howell on Monday ruled that Doge illegally took over the institute through “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies”.The judge ruled as “null and void” all actions against the US Institute of Peace – including the removal of its board and the transfer of its property to the government services administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe institute employed about 300 people. Besides human resources staffers and a few overseas employees, most at the institute were fired.A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, claimed in an email that the institute was taken over and most of its employees dismissed because it “has failed to deliver peace” – and that Trump “is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars”.A statement from an attorney who filed the dismissed US Institute of Peace’s employees suit said their workplace’s takeover “was a case of egregious government overreach”.The statement added: “Armed agents forcing their way into an independent nonprofit’s privately-owned headquarters, seizing its assets, and destroying records – all in the name of so-called ‘efficiency.’”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      The Guardian view on Romania’s presidential election upset: a vote for stability and the west | Editorial

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      As Romanians voted on Sunday in arguably the most consequential election in the country’s post-communist history, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will have been preparing to welcome a fellow disruptor to the European stage. The first round of a controversially re-run presidential contest had been handsomely won by George Simion, a Eurosceptic ultranationalist who views Donald Trump as a “natural ally” and opposes military aid to Ukraine. On the back of a 20-point lead, Mr Simion, a 38-year-old former football ultra with a taste for violent rhetoric, was so confident of winning that he made a confrontational visit to Brussels in the last days of his campaign.Those expectations were confounded in remarkable fashion at the weekend. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Nicușor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, benefited from the highest voter turnout in 30 years to triumph comfortably. One of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mr Dan was a relieved Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who, in Hungary and Slovakia, already has to contend with two Putin-friendly governments on Ukraine’s western border.First and foremost, the stability promised by Mr Dan’s victory is good news for Romania, which has been in political turmoil since the original presidential election was cancelled amid allegations of Russian interference. Having made his name as a politically independent anti-corruption campaigner, he must now attempt to unite a deeply polarised country in which inequality, graft and poor public services have proved to be, as elsewhere, a launchpad for far-right populist insurgents.More broadly, the size of the second-round turnout – which included a huge diaspora vote – suggests that hitching a ride on the Trump bandwagon is as liable to motivate a mainstream backlash in Europe as generate Maga-style momentum. Given the global volatility unleashed by Mr Trump’s reckless, bullying style, and the dark shadow cast over eastern Europe by Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions, the strategic attractions of hugging the EU and Nato close are more readily apparent than they used to be. Handed the opportunity to turn east, a substantial majority of Romanian voters looked west.Elsewhere though, on a “super Sunday” of three European elections, outcomes were more ambivalent and less uplifting from a progressive perspective. The centre also held in Poland, where the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly won the first round of another crucial presidential election, ahead of the nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki. But the high combined vote for hard- and far-right candidates suggests that result may be reversed in two weeks’ time. One and a half years after Donald Tusk was given a prime ministerial mandate to bring Poland back into the European mainstream, Eurosceptic ultranationalism remains a force to be reckoned with.In Portugal, a snap election triggered by the centre-right governing party saw it retain power, but was notable mainly for the record number of votes cast for the far-right Chega party. Postal ballots could yet propel Chega to second place, ahead of the Socialist party, after a dismal night for the Portuguese left.Mr Dan’s famous victory was undoubtedly the story of the night, confounding a narrative of an inexorable rightwards shift in central and eastern Europe. But amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, and as mainstream parties echo far-right agendas on migration, the politics of Europe continue to feel anxious, polarised and alarmingly unpredictable.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump once condemned Qatar. How things have changed | Mohamad Bazzi

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      On his tour of the Middle East last week, Donald Trump was treated like royalty by the leaders of the wealthiest countries in the Arab world. The US president was feted in gilded ballrooms, his motorcade was flanked by dozens of men riding white Arabian horses and he was awarded an elaborate gold medal necklace. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates went out of their way to show Trump that they respect him more than his predecessor, Joe Biden.While Trump frequently praised Saudi and UAE leaders during his first term, he was highly critical of Qatar, a small emirate that is rich in natural gas but usually overshadowed by its two larger and more powerful neighbors. In June 2017, Trump said Qatar “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” and he supported a blockade against the country, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar’s neighbors accused it of financing terrorism by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and being too cozy with Iran. The blockade, which disrupted the lives of thousands of people across the Persian Gulf, stretched until early 2021.Today, Qatar has emerged as the unlikely success story of Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It was no accident that the Qatari royal family recently offered to donate a $400m luxury jet – a “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 – that the president could use as Air Force One for the rest of his term. The plane’s ownership would then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library, meaning he would be able to continue using the jet after he leaves office. Despite the administration’s convoluted effort to frame this as a donation from Qatar to the US government, it would in effect be a gift for Trump’s personal benefit.It’s yet another way that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family business, which has ongoing deals for Trump-branded real estate projects and golf resorts worth billions of dollars in the three wealthy Gulf petrostates that Trump visited last week. So far, neither Congress nor US courts have tried to sanction Trump over the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which forbids the president from accepting gifts or payments from a foreign government without congressional approval.Qatar seems to have won Trump’s respect with its lavish gift and a charm offensive built around its role as a global mediator that is able to bring enemies together. During the first Trump administration, Qatar brokered a peace agreement between the US and Taliban leaders, which was supposed to lead to a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. During the Biden administration, Qatar hosted indirect talks for a prisoner swap between Iran and the US, which included unblocking $6bn in frozen Iranian oil funds – an agreement that Washington later rescinded.But Qatar’s most high-stakes mediation role has been to serve as the main conduit for negotiations between Israel and Hamas, after the October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The Qataris helped broker a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, and a two-month truce that started this past January and collapsed in March.Yet since the emirate emerged as a primary mediator in Gaza, politicians in both the US and Israel ratcheted up their attacks on Qatar. They accused its leaders of supporting terrorism by hosting members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, the Qatari capital, where several settled after they were forced out of Damascus for turning against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was facing a popular uprising. Throughout the stalled Gaza negotiations, several members of Congress demanded that the Biden administration pressure Qatar to close the Hamas offices and expel its leaders. The Qataris resisted those demands and consistently pointed out that Barack Obama’s administration had asked Qatar in 2012 to establish an indirect channel that would allow the US to communicate with Hamas.After news broke of Qatar’s plan to donate the luxury jet to Trump, some figures in the president’s Maga movement revived complaints about the emirate’s support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who last month convinced Trump to fire six White House national security staffers, wrote on X. She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”But most of the Republicans in Congress who had urged Biden to punish Qatar for its support of Hamas have so far stayed quiet about Trump’s decision to accept the $400m plane and cozy up to Qatar’s rulers. That’s partly an indication of how Trump has successfully banished or ignored many hawkish Republicans and neoconservatives during his second term, preferring to negotiate with Iran and other US adversaries. Qatar’s role as a mediator that can resolve regional conflicts is particularly attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker.In this term, Trump has surrounded himself with longtime friends as top advisers, including Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who is serving as the president’s Middle East envoy and all-around troubleshooter. Witkoff has been publicly praising Qatar’s leaders for their mediation efforts with Hamas since he took office in January – and the envoy’s praise is clearly resonating with Trump, who has dramatically changed his approach toward Qatar. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris during an interview in March with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host and Maga figure. “What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”Witkoff’s comments echoed the strategy of Qatar’s ruler, the 44-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who took power in 2013 when his father abdicated the throne. The emir has tried to position Qatar as a force in global geopolitics not just for prestige, but also as a way to ensure his ruling family’s survival amid sometimes aggressive neighbors. (Those neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have tried to impose their own foreign policy directives on Qatar, as they did during the blockade that Trump supported in his first term.) Qatar still walks a tightrope of proving itself crucial to the US and western powers by being one of the world’s largest and most reliable suppliers of liquified natural gas, and also maintaining ties with non-state groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by positioning itself to play an outsize role as a dealmaker, one that a country of its size would not normally take on. That policy began under the current emir’s father, who launched the state-owned Al Jazeera satellite network in 1996 as part of Qatar’s soft-power campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East. And while Qatar directly funded Islamist groups soon after the 2011 Arab uprisings in Syria, Libya and Egypt, the emirate’s leaders became more cautious in recent years and shifted toward cementing their role as global negotiators.For decades, Qatari leaders have also worked to solidify a military alliance with the US. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, they allowed Washington to use Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha to launch air strikes against Afghanistan. Qatar later invested $8bn to upgrade the base, which has become the largest US military installation in the Middle East, housing up to 10,000 troops. On Thursday, as Trump wrapped up his visit to Qatar, he delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech to US troops stationed at the base. He bragged about economic agreements he had signed with Qatari leaders the previous day, which the White House valued at more than $243bn.Trump also expounded on the value of Qatar’s loyalty: “I don’t think our friendship has ever been stronger than it is right now.” Earlier on Thursday, he praised Qatar’s emir and told a meeting of business leaders: “We are going to protect you.”For Trump, who sees all diplomacy as transactional, that is the ultimate favor he can bestow: US protection for a foreign leader who is trying to resolve regional conflicts – and also happened to offer the president an extravagant gift.

      Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Megyn Kelly puts Trump clash behind her to ride the Maga media wave

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      It was the night before a US presidential election that Donald Trump had called the most important in history. Who could close the deal at his campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? The answer was Megyn Kelly. Trump “will keep the boys out of girls’ sports where they don’t belong”, the rightwinger podcaster said to rapturous applause. “And you know what else? He will look out for our boys, too. Our forgotten boys and our forgotten men.”Turning around and pointing at Trump supporters wearing hard hats, Kelly eulogised guys “who’ve got the calluses on their hands, who work for a living, the beards and the tats, maybe have a beer after work, and don’t want to be judged by people like Oprah and Beyoncé, who will never have to face the consequences of her [Kamala Harris’s] disastrous economic policies. These guys will. He gets it. President Trump gets it. He will not look at our boys like they are second-class citizens.”It was a remarkable intervention by a former cable news anchor whom Trump branded “nasty” when they feuded bitterly during his bid for the White House in 2016. Now Kelly and the former president understood their value to one another. Both knew what it is to be at rock bottom but, 24 hours after the Pittsburgh rally, both were celebrating their own unlikely comebacks.Kelly, 54, has become one of the most influential figures in rightwing media. Her eponymous podcast moves with rare dexterity from heavyweight political interviews – such as the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – to topics such as Joe Biden’s cognitive decline to celebrity gossip about the likes of Halle Berry, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Meghan Markle and the Kardashians.Clearly the formula works. The Megyn Kelly Show posted a record-breaking 176% year-over-year surge in subscribers in the first quarter of 2025, according to TheRighting, a media company that tracks rightwing outlets. She trails Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson but has pulled ahead of Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Steve Bannon.This makes her one of the most prominent cheerleaders for Trump and shapers of his Maga (Make America great again) agenda, most especially its hostility to immigrants and transgender rights. Kelly is even emerging as a rival to her former employer Fox News, which dominated the narratives of Trump’s first term in office.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Megyn Kelly’s various transformations can make you dizzy if you follow them. The days when she had credibility as a truth-seeker are over, and now she’s strictly in the business of following clicks.“Her campaigning with Trump, including on the last night, confirms what the business model is. She is trying to establish herself as the preferred media outlet for the Maga movement. She is demonstrating that even Fox is now vulnerable and is being picked apart by the podcasters who become the viewer choice.”Kelly started out as a lawyer and has described the environment at her early law firms as having a “kill or be killed” mentality. She transitioned to journalism after being inspired by reporters who were cool under pressure. Raised in a Democratic household, she has said she was “really wasn’t political” when she joined Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Fox News network in 2004.Kelly became a leading prime-time personality and star of the right’s culture wars. But a question to Trump during the 2016 primary debate about his past comments on women provoked him to unleash crude and misogynistic attacks, including: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”Meanwhile her accusations of unwanted sexual advances by Fox News’s chief executive, Roger Ailes, helped lead to his firing. The difficult environment led Kelly to leave for NBC in 2017. She admits her time there “ended disastrously” after just a year when she created a furore by suggesting that it was fine for white people to wear blackface on Halloween.But like Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan, Kelly has reinvented herself for the new age of fragmented digital media where tie-wearing authority figures are out and smash-mouth influencers are in. In 2020 she launched a daily podcast then switched to a live radio format in a deal with SiriusXM. A video version streams on YouTube with clips shared on various platforms gaining hundreds of millions of views a month.Frank Luntz, a political and communications consultant and pollster, said: “She had an audience on Fox that was undeniable. She didn’t succeed on network television because that audience is too broad.“Now, once again, she’s gone back to what she’s particularly good at, which is appealing to a segment of the population that wants to hear her explanation for what’s going on in a more detailed and factual fashion than what you might get on cable. It’s the right medium at the right time and she’s the right host.”In a world where newspaper reporters can be frowned upon for expressing an opinion in a tweet, Kelly is unabashed about owning her own bias. “Yes, I’m still a journalist,” she told the New York Times newspaper in March, “but I’m in this new ecosystem where the old rules don’t apply. I’m in this world with, yes, Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro, but my world is also Joe Rogan and Theo Von.View image in fullscreen“It’s a very large world, and how the consumer receives it is by going on YouTube.com on their television screen, or going to the vertical integrations on Instagram or TikTok and just taking in content. What’s the content that you want to receive? I’m on the list of content creators, and so the fact that I’m also a journalist who breaks news and reports on news is an extra. But what’s most important in my business now is authenticity.”Kelly’s renaissance is impossible to divorce from “owning the libs” mentality of Trump and his Maga movement. She told the New York Times: “It’s one of my core missions in life to defeat wokeism.” Her podcasts have foregrounded anxieties over illegal immigration and transgender children taking part in school sports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTransgender people are a particular obsession for Kelly. In a 2023 interview she forced Trump on the defensive when she grilled him over whether a man can become a woman. In a Republican primary debate, she caricatured the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s stance on gender-affirming care for minors and demanded: “Aren’t you way too out of step on this issue to be the Republican nominee?”And when another Republican candidate, Nikki Haley, said children should not be allowed to transition but those who are 18 and older should “live any way they want to live”, Kelly responded furiously on X: “This is utter bulls***. The WRONG ANSWER & an unnecessary weird pander to the rabid trans lobby. The answer is NO, A MAN CANNOT BECOME A WOMAN.”Ari Drennen, LGBTQ programme director at Media Matters for America, a non-profit watchdog, said: “Megyn Kelly is very good at understanding where her audience is and where they want her to be and that’s part of why she’s been able to be so successful in this new media environment. There’s no doubt that throughout the 2024 presidential campaign she was a voice who was pushing GOP candidates to move further to the right on trans issues.”But Kelly is far from a one-trick pony. She has gained particular traction this year with a topic far from Washington: the rancorous legal battle between the actors Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively stemming from the film It Ends With Us. Media Matters’ research found that between 1 January and 20 March, Kelly mentioned Baldoni or Lively 440 times, an average of more than five times a day.She also interviewed Baldoni’s lawyer in a video that has 10m views on TikTok. Drennan said: “She’s leading the way with this celebrity gossip type stuff that has proven to be fertile ground for a lot of these rightwing creators this year.”Other examples include the Daily Wire alumni Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, Drennan noted. “The right has figured that out much better than the left. I feel like on the left there tends to be more of a separation between the types of podcasts and shows that are covering celebrity gossip and the types of shows that are covering daily stuff that’s happening with the Trump administration.”The right is also cashing in. In February Fox Corp acquired Red Seat Ventures, a production company that manages Kelly and Carlson’s shows. In March Kelly announced plans for her own podcast network, MK Media, another sign of how she is riding the Maga wave and adapting to the evolving media landscape.Dan Cassino, author of Fox News and American Politics and a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, said: “The economics of cable TV or broadcast TV and the economics of podcasting are very different. Essentially this allows her to be her own boss. The fact that other people have decided she shouldn’t be on TV or can’t attract the audience that would allow her to be on TV any more is irrelevant because you can be profitable at a much lower scale.“Part of this is also a reflection of the realities of media. Nobody has huge audiences any more. The days when you’ve got a 20 share or 30 share are gone and are never going to happen again. Podcasting is not different in type; it’s different in extent.”Meanwhile, after all the years of their chequered relationship, Kelly would not describe herself as a Trump surrogate but is playing that role to great effect. As the president, who has spurned the neocon wing of the Republican party, toured the Gulf region this week, she remarked with bracing candour: “I feel like when I was on Fox News, all we did was cheerlead these wars – and kind of dismiss, or express disdain, for people who had serious questions about them … With the benefit of all this hindsight, that was wrong.”The unholy alliance reminds David Litt, an author and former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, of the old observation that in politics there are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.Litt commented: “The crux of Trump’s argument was I’m a bad guy but you need me in the White House anyway. Nobody could speak to that argument – both Trump’s personal lack of character and, by endorsing him, say we need him anyway – better than Megyn Kelly. He knew that and she knew that. They saw a moment of symbiosis.” More

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      Trump to speak to Putin and Zelenskyy about Ukraine ceasefire – US politics live

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      The Kremlin said that Russian president Vladimir Putin will hold a call with US president Donald Trump at 5pm Moscow time (10am EDT) on Monday, state news agency RIA reported.RIA cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that the two leaders’ discussion of Ukraine would take into account the results of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news throughout the next few hours.Donald Trump is due to speak to both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to stop what he called the “bloodbath” war in Ukraine.Trump, posting on his Truth Social account on Saturday, wrote that he will speak to Putin on Monday morning. “THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” Trump wrote, in his customary all-capitalized prose. The president has repeatedly cited a death toll for the conflict that is much higher than any official figures, or estimates based on an open-source investigation, without explaining why.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to a state-run Russian news agency that preparations were under way for a call between the US and Russian presidents.Trump’s call with the Russian president will be followed by a separate conversation with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s leader, and Nato leaders as part of the US effort to end the war that has raged since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,” Trump wrote.It’s unclear what kind of progress Trump will be able to spur, if any, in the peace process. Russia and Ukraine have just concluded mostly fruitless talks, the first of their kind since the start of the war, in Istanbul. Ukraine said it was ready for a ceasefire but was faced by “unacceptable” demands from Russia.In other news:

      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.

      As Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants. The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration.

      The US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon. Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade.

      A proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn. With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: president faces intensifying criticism over Qatar plane gift

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      Donald Trump is coming under increasing pressure for accepting a $400m luxury plane from Qatar as several senior Republicans join the chorus of criticism.Leading Democratic Chris Murphy on Sunday called it the “definition of corruption”, while even some of Trump’s close allies have been enraged, with some saying it was the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp and was “a stain on the administration”.Trump lashed out at the critics on Saturday, claiming the gift was to the US and not for him personally. Murphy later told NBC that was not true.Meanwhile, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the Trump administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants as the president wages a broad attack on the justice department and major law firms.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet is ‘definition of corruption’, senator saysDonald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.Rand Paul, a Republican US senator for Kentucky and chair of his chamber’s homeland security committee, told the ABC that the gift of the jet “at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest”.Read the full storyUS lawyers set up own firms to fight Trump onslaughtAs Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants.The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration. More than 200 lawsuits have been filed challenging various Trump administration policies and there have been more than 70 rulings blocking the administration from executing various policies.Read the full storyBessent says Walmart will ‘eat’ some tariffs after Trump demandThe US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade. The statement provoked an angry response from Trump, who said on Saturday the company should “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything”.According to Bessent, speaking on Sunday to NBC’s Meet the Press, Walmart is now promising exactly that.Read the full storyFears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsA proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn.With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.Read the full storyTrump losing patience with Putin, says Finnish leaderDonald Trump is becoming impatient with Vladimir Putin, Finland’s president has said after a lengthy conversation with his US counterpart.Alexander Stubb said Trump and Putin, who are scheduled to speak by phone on Monday, must not decide the fate of Ukraine over the head of its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Stubb said: “If we were to pull it together, we could say that Zelenskyy is patient and President Trump is starting to be impatient, but in the right direction, that is, towards Russia.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 17 May 2025. More