Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares78 Views

      in US Politics

      US House panel subpoenas Bill and Hillary Clinton for Epstein testimony

      by

      The House oversight committee on Tuesday issued subpoenas to Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as several former attorneys general and directors of the FBI, demanding “testimony related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein”.The investigative committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, sent the subpoenas in response to two motions lawmakers approved on a bipartisan basis last month, as Congress navigated outrage among Donald Trump’s supporters over the justice department’s announcement that it would not release further details about Epstein, a disgraced financier who died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.The subpoenas raise the possibility that more details will become public about Trump’s relationship with Epstein, which stretched for years but appeared to have petered out by the time Epstein was convicted of sexually abusing girls in 2008. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of a sexually suggestive sketch and lewd letter Trump sent to Epstein as a 50th birthday gift in 2003.The president and his allies have long flirted with conspiracy theories around Epstein’s death in federal custody, but the justice department upended those by concluding he died by suicide and a long-rumored list of his client did not exist. That prompted some Trump supporters to criticize the president for failing to make good on his pledge to bring full transparency to the case, which Democrats moved to capitalize on by pushing congressional Republicans into tricky votes intended to make the Epstein case files public.Shortly before House lawmakers left Washington DC for Congress’s August recess, the Republican congressman Scott Perry won an oversight subcommittee’s approval to compel depositions from the Clintons and the former top federal law enforcement officials in a bid to reveal more about Epstein’s activities. Democratic congresswoman Summer Lee also successfully pushed a motion to subpoena justice department files related to the case.In addition to the Clintons, the committee sent subpoenas to former attorneys general Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzales and William Barr, who served in George W Bush and Trump’s presidencies, and Merrick Garland, Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder, who served under Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller also received subpoenas.In the letter to Bill Clinton, Comer noted that the former president had flown four times on Epstein’s private jet, and repeated an allegation that he had “pressured” Vanity Fair not to publish sex trafficking claims regarding Epstein. The chair further says that Clinton was “allegedly close” with Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted on sex trafficking charges related to Epstein.“Given your past relationships with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, the Committee believes that you have information regarding their activities that is relevant to the Committee’s investigation,” Comer wrote.In his letter to Hillary Clinton, Comer draws a more tenuous connect, writing: “Your family appears to have had a close relationship with both Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell”. In addition to details about them, Comer notes that Clinton “may have knowledge of efforts by the federal government to combat international sex trafficking operations of the type run by Mr. Epstein”.Comer set Bill Clinton’s deposition date as 14 October and Hillary’s as 9 October. Others who received subpoenas were given dates ranging from mid-August through early October, while US attorney general Pam Bondi has until 19 August to release documents related to the case.In addition to the subpoenas, Republican congressman Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna are collecting signatures for a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation compelling release of the Epstein files. That vote is not expected to happen until the House returns from recess in early September.Trump has authorized the justice department to request release of the transcripts from the federal grand juries that indicted Epstein and Maxwell, while last week, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell in Florida in what the White House said was a bid to uncover new details about the case. More

    • 200 Shares78 Views

      in US Politics

      I was the US labor secretary. Trump’s latest firing undermines a key agency | Robert Reich

      by

      I spent much of the 1990s as the secretary of labor. One unit of the labor department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Otherwise, this crown jewel of knowledge about jobs and the economy would be compromised. If politicized, it would no longer be trusted as a source of information.So what does Donald Trump do? In one fell swoop on Friday, he essentially destroyed the credibility of the BLS.Trump didn’t like the fact that the BLS revised downward its jobs reports for April and May.Well, that’s too bad. Revisions in monthly jobs reports are nothing new. They’re made when the bureau gets more or better information over time, which it often does.Yet with no basis in fact, Trump charged that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, “rigged” the data “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. Then he ordered her fired and replaced with someone else – presumably someone whose data Trump will approve of.How can anyone in the future trust the information that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job? Answer: they cannot.Trump has destroyed the credibility of this extraordinarily important source of information.When Trump doesn’t like the message, he shoots the messenger and replaces the messenger with someone who will come up with messages that he approves. So we’re left without credible sources of information about what is really occurring.Trump is in the process of trying to do the same with the Federal Reserve – demanding that Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair, cut interest rates or lose control of the agency.What happens to the Fed’s credibility if Powell gives in to Trump? It loses it.In the future, we wouldn’t have confidence that the Fed is fighting inflation as rigorously as it should. And without that confidence, longer-term interest rates will spike because investors will assume that there’s no inflation cop on the beat, and therefore will demand a higher risk premium.Trump hates facts that he disagrees with. That’s why he’s dismembering the Environmental Protection Agency, which has repeatedly shown that the climate crisis isn’t a “hoax”, as Trump claims, but more like a national emergency.It’s why Trump is attacking American universities, whose scientists are developing wind and solar energy, and whose historians have revealed America’s tragic history of racism and genocide of indigenous people.He is killing off the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, which are showing the sources of sickness and disease and how we can guard against them.This is a man and a regime that doesn’t want the public to know the truth. He is turning the US into George Orwell’s dystopian 1984.The Trumping of America is happening so fast and in so many places that it’s hard to see the whole. Which partly explains why he doesn’t want the facts out. He doesn’t want us to know how bad it really is.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His next book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, will be out on 5 August More

    • 113 Shares55 Views

      in US Politics

      The one thing Donald Trump isn’t saying about tariffs

      by

      Donald Trump’s words and actions rarely align perfectly. If you watch carefully, what he doesn’t say can be just as telling as what he does.“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods,” he told the nation ahead of his re-election. The US president declared on 2 April would “forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn”, only to pause tariffs a week later.He promised peace in Ukraine on day one of his presidency, only to later clarify this was “said in jest”; and has claimed very few people can beat him at golf, only for footage from Scotland to raise questions over just how honest that round might be.As a real estate mogul, reality TV star and political campaigner, Trump learned to bend narrative to his will, even if it meant straying from reality.As president, this often leaves a gap between what he says and what he does. In many cases, the administration’s actions are more important to follow than the firehose of words.If you were, say, a US business buying coffee from Brazil, you might have rushed to import it last week after Trump insisted 1 August was the cast-iron deadline for new tariffs. “It stands strong, and will not be extended,” he wrote on Wednesday – hours before signing an executive order that said new steep tariffs on the country would come into force on 8 August, after all.And if you’re a US consumer, you might reasonably ask how inflation can be “dead”, as the White House has claimed, if you’re still shelling out more on groceries each month.The president has an awful lot to say about tariffs. They will, he argues, raise “trillions” of dollars for the US federal government; eliminate trade deficits with other countries; and even punish Brazil for putting his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election. The list goes on.But what about what the president doesn’t say?Trump was re-elected last November after repeatedly pledging to rapidly bring down prices for Americans. This assurance formed a central pillar of his election campaign – a regular refrain in rallies, interviews and debates – as millions found it harder to make ends meet after years of inflation.Every policy comes at a cost. Every tax must be paid by someone, somewhere. For consumers, The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the short-term price impact of Trump’s tariff changes is equivalent to an average per household income loss of $2,400.What Trump doesn’t really talk about the impact of his aggressive tariff agenda on US is prices. One of the few times he has acknowledged it might actually exacerbate inflation led to a bizarre tangent about dolls back in May. Acknowledging that tariffs might cause price rises, Trump suggested American children might have to settle for having “two dolls instead of 30 dolls”.Back then, Joe Biden was still to blame for any signs of strife in the economy, according to Trump. Now, he argues almost daily Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is responsible.The biggest indication yet that the US economy is creaking on Trump’s watch came on Friday, when official data revealed the labor market had stalled this summer. He unceremoniously fired the veteran official in charge of the statistics – and alleged, without evidence, that the numbers had been rigged.With higher US tariffs now in place on a string of countries, the president and his administration will inevitably say a lot about the benefits of his economic strategy. They are already trying to stifle evidence of drawbacks. They might even raise the prospect of a handout – pitched as a sign of this policy’s success, rather than a concession that many Americans are still hard up.But if you’re running a small business reliant on trade, or walking into the grocery store on a budget, reality supersedes rhetoric. Words don’t pay the bills. More

    • 238 Shares85 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: political battle in Texas escalates and president under fire for firing labor statistics chief

      by

      Texas governor Greg Abbott on Monday ordered the department of public safety to arrest and return any House member who had left the state and “abandoned their duty to Texans”, as Democrats thwarted plans to redistrict the state along lines that would favour Republicans.“There are consequences for dereliction of duty,” Abbott said in a statement on Monday, after the Republican-dominated House issued civil arrest warrants in an attempt to compel the return of the members who fled the state in order to deny the legislature a quorom.“This order will remain in effect until all missing Democrat House members are accounted for and brought to the Texas Capitol.”Democrats hold 62 of the 150 seats in the legislature’s lower chamber, so as long as at least 51 members remain out of Austin, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with any votes, including a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five more seats in Congress.Here are the key US politics stories of the day:Texas Democrats deny quorum in attempt to thwart Republican plansTexas Democrats in the state legislature denied its speaker a legislative quorum Monday by leaving the state, forestalling plans proposed by the White House to redistrict Texas’s congressional lines to more greatly favor Republicans. Texas governor Greg Abbott has threatened arrest, fines, felony charges of bribery and expulsion against the lawmakers.Read the full storyTrump firing of labor statistics chief ‘undermines credibility’, ex-leaders sayThe former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioners and non-partisan economic groups have criticized Donald Trump’s shock firing of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July jobs report data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer.Read the full storyHundreds of ex-Israeli officials urge Trump to help end Gaza warAbout 600 former Israeli security officials, including previous heads of the Mossad and the military, have urged Donald Trump to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza as the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, considers expanding the conflict.In an open letter, the former officials said an end to the war was the only way to save hostages still held by Hamas.Read the full storySpeaker Mike Johnson visits occupied West Bank to support Israeli settlersMike Johnson became the highest ranked US official to visit the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Republican House speaker drawing measures of praise and condemnation for his trip in support of Israeli settlements amid a worsening starvation crisis in Gaza.Read the full storyMore than 40 arrested at protest against Gaza war at Trump hotel in New YorkMore than 40 people protesting the war in Gaza and worsening humanitarian crisis were arrested outside the Trump International hotel in New York City on Monday evening.Read the full storyTrump envoy to visit Moscow this week Donald Trump’s special envoy is expected in Moscow days before the US president’s deadline on Friday for Russia to make progress on ending the war in Ukraine or face increased US sanctions.Trump said Steve Witkoff would visit Moscow on Wednesday or Thursday. When asked what message Witkoff would take to Russia and what Vladimir Putin could do to avoid new sanctions, the US president answered: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”Read the full storySome travelers entering US may face up to $15,000 bondThe US state department has prepared plans to impose bonds as high as $15,000 for some tourism and business visas, according to a draft of a temporary final rule. The bonds would be issued to visitors from countries with significant overstay rates, under a 12-month pilot program.Read the full storyTrump officials look to block abortion services at veterans affairs hospitalsThe Trump administration is seeking to block veterans from receiving abortions at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs in cases of rape or incest, or when a veteran’s pregnancy has imperiled their health, according to new paperwork filed by the administration.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Swiss stock market has plunged, the cabinet has held crisis talks and the country’s president has been accused of mishandling a vital phone call with the White House after Donald Trump hit the country with a shock 39% export tariff.

      News Corp, part of the Murdoch family media empire, has announced it will bring a version of the brash rightwing New York tabloid to California in early 2026.

      Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she feels the Republican party has lost touch with its base – but she said she has no plans to leave the party.

      More than a dozen Democratic members of Congress signed on to a letter that urges the Trump administration to recognise Palestinian statehood, in a draft copy shared with the Guardian.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 August 2025. More

    • 150 Shares65 Views

      in US Politics

      Marjorie Taylor Greene says Republican party has lost touch with its base

      by

      Marjorie Taylor Greene, historically one of the most prominent voices in Donald Trump’s Maga movement, has declared in an interview that she feels that the Republican party has lost touch with its base, but she said she has no plans to leave the party.After telling the Daily Mail this week she was questioning whether she still belongs in the Republican fold, the Georgia congresswoman told the Guardian she would not become independent or seek a third party option.“No – I’m urging my own party to support ‘America first’,” Greene said.Still, she made clear resounding frustration with GOP leadership and her place within the party’s planning.“I don’t know if the Republican party is leaving me, or if I’m kind of not relating to Republican party as much any more,” Greene said in the Daily Mail interview. “I don’t know which one it is.”Greene, who boasts 7.5 million followers on X and commands one of the largest social media audiences of any Republican woman, accused party leaders of betraying core conservative principles.She did not criticize Trump himself, instead preferring to express her ire for what she attempted to paint as political elites.“I think the Republican party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,” she said, warning that GOP leadership was reverting to its “neocon” past under the influence of what she termed the “good ole boys” network.The 51-year-old lawmaker, in the roughly six-month mark following Trump’s return to the White House, said she was particularly frustrated with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, saying: “I’m not afraid of Mike Johnson at all.”Her remarks reflect a broader pattern of voter dissatisfaction with traditional party structures. Americans appear to also be holding deeply unfavorable views of both major parties: a July Wall Street Journal poll found 63% view the Democratic party unfavorably, its worst rating in 35 years, while Republicans fare only marginally better in most surveys.Independent or independent-leaning Americans now account for nearly half the electorate, according to July Gallup polling, and public support has increasingly shifted toward Democrats through those leaners in recent months.On Monday, Greene used social media to criticize the lack of accountability over what she deems key issues to the base, sharing a table showing no arrests for the “Russian Collusion Hoax”, “Jan 6th”, and “2020 Election”.“Like what happened all those issues? You know that I don’t know what the hell happened with the Republican Party. I really don’t,” she said in the interview. “But I’ll tell you one thing, the course that it’s on, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and I just don’t care any more.”Her recent bills have targeted unconventional Republican territory: preventing cloud-seeding, making English the official US language, and cutting capital gains taxes on homes. She is also the first Republican in Congress to label the crisis in Gaza a genocide, and has called for ending foreign aid and using the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to cut down fraud and waste in the government.Greene acknowledged her isolation within the party, saying: “I’m going alone right now on the issues that I’m speaking about.” More

    • 125 Shares96 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump firing of labor statistics chief ‘undermines credibility’, ex-leaders say

      by

      The former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioners and non-partisan economic groups have criticized Donald Trump’s shock firing of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July jobs report data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer.Trump, without any evidence to back his claims, alleged McEntarfer “faked” employment numbers in the run-up to the 2024 election to boost Kamala Harris’s chances and said that the recent data was “rigged” to make Trump and Republicans look bad.The Trump administration has continued to repeat the allegations. The National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett, a Trump appointee, has claimed “all over the US government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can,” in justifying the firing.Friends of BLS, a group chaired by former BLS commissioners Erica Groshen, an Obama appointee, and William Beach, Trump’s appointee during his first term, strongly criticized the firing of McEntarfer, Trump’s allegations, and called on Congress to act.“We call on Congress to respond immediately, to investigate the factors that led to Commissioner McEntarfer’s removal, to strongly urge the Commissioner’s continued service, and ensure that the nonpartisan integrity of the position is retained,” Friends of BLS wrote in a statement. “This rationale for firing Dr McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers.”The Association of Public Data Users, the National Association for Business Economics and the American Economic Association also criticized the firing.“Under the law, disliking the data is not a qualifying reason to remove the BLS Commissioner from her four-year appointment. Under our democracy, it is unacceptable to fire someone for publishing data collected in accordance with scientific standards,” the Association of Public Data Users said in a statement, echoing the call for Congress “to respond immediately, to investigate the factors that led to Commissioner McEntarfer’s removal, to strongly urge the BLS Commissioner’s continued service, and ensure that the nonpartisan integrity of the position is retained.”Beach added in a social media post: “the totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”Beach was nominated by Trump as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2017, was confirmed by the Senate in 2019 and served a full four year term until 2023.In an email, former BLS commissioner Kathleen Utgoff, who was appointed and served under the George W Bush administration, told the Guardian: “A functioning democracy requires accurate data so that workers, businesses, politicians and voters can make good decisions. I was at the BLS after the Iraq war. Many people asked me how to create something like the BLS there. They could not move forward without data on the state of the economy.”Republican US senators Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, Cynthia Lummis have also questioned the rationale behind Trump’s firing of BLS commissioner McEntarfer.The last jobs report issued by BLS before the presidential election in November 2024 showed the US only added 12,000 jobs in October 2024, the slowest growth since 2020. More

    • 138 Shares50 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump loyalist Nancy Mace announces bid for governor of South Carolina

      by

      Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a once moderate Republican turned Trump loyalist, officially launched her bid for governor of South Carolina on Monday.Currently serving her third term in Congress, Mace, 47, was once a Trump critic. Now, per the Associated Press, she calls herself “Trump in high heels” and promises to be a “super Maga governor” in the largely Republican state.Mace’s video announcement launching her bid for the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary on Monday focused heavily on her pro-Trump credentials, featuring a clip of the president calling her a “fighter”. She calls for a “zero-tolerance approach to crime”, cutting the state income tax to zero and stopping “the radical gender agenda” and “woke ideology” in South Carolina’s schools.The new campaign cements her Trump-era transformation. The representative for South Carolina’s first congressional district was one of seven House Republicans who signed a letter in 2021 saying Congress did not have the authority to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. She was also highly critical of his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Trump subsequently endorsed a primary opponent to Mace’s 2022 congressional campaign, which she ultimately still won, calling her an “absolutely terrible candidate”.She has since become a fierce ally of the US president, especially on so-called culture war issues, such as transgender rights, and his extreme immigration policies. Trump and the freshly Maga-fied Mace went on to endorse each other in the 2024 election.Just last week, Mace was criticised for disclosing that she loves to cruise the web for videos of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents dragging people into custody, saying she “can think of nothing more American”. She told Fox Report Weekend host Jon Scott that she was championing proposed legislation that would “defund and take tax breaks away” from US cities that restrict how much local authorities cooperate with federal immigration officials.Prior to that, Mace seized national headlines through her vocal opposition to transgender women being allowed to use women’s restrooms. Though as recently as 2023 she had described herself as “pro transgender rights”, she has since made being anti-trans rights a core part of her political personality. Mace has, for instance, repeatedly directly attacked the first openly trans member of Congress, US House member Sarah McBride of Delaware, who first took office in January. Last year she targeted McBride by introducing a resolution to ban transgender women from using the women’s restrooms at the Capitol.“We will not fund any schools that allow biological men in women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, that allow men to compete in women’s sports, or schools that push gender ideology,” she added.She now enters a crowded GOP primary in which competition for Trump’s endorsement – and the backing of his base of supporters – is expected to be fierce, and in which there isn’t yet a clear frontrunner. Among the other candidates are the state’s attorney general Alan Wilson, its lieutenant governor Pamela Evette, and US representative Ralph Norman, one of the most conservative members of the House. The incumbent governor isn’t allowed to seek another term.“I’m running for governor because South Carolina doesn’t need another empty suit and needs a governor who will fight for you and your values,” Mace said during a launch event at the Citadel military college in Charleston. She became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel in 1999. “South Carolina needs a governor who will drag the truth into sunlight and flip the tables if that’s what it takes,” Mace said. More